Photo a Day: Color

My kids LOVE to color and draw. Like, every day, all day long. I love that they love to color.

This little gem is what Brock brought home yesterday from school. I think he was a little embarrassed, but I think it's really funny. It says "I had a bad day when I got hit by a train. I went to the hospital. I am tired of watching TV but I am better."

I asked him about it. I was all, "Were you supposed to write something that was real?" And he said, "We could write anything, so I made up a story."

The train says "Choo-choo! I can't stop!". The little guy (Brock) says "Ah!" The brown squiggly is the train track. The different colored squares are the train cars. And then there's a dude roasting a marshmallow by a purple tent. You know, because people are always camping out by train tracks, right?

Photo a Day: How You Feel Today

Today, I feel tired...

...just like my cat.

It's been a fairly busy few days.

I cut, packaged, and froze 80 pounds of chicken.

I had an eye appointment, and my doctor said everything is looking good from my surgery.

I sight-read some piano music for a musical number in our ward on Sunday. A few girls that were planning to sing couldn't make it, so the pianist had to step in to sing. She brought the music to my house 15 minutes before church started, I played through it once, and then played in sacrament meeting.

I also taught the gospel doctrine lesson (that's my current calling; I teach once a month), and had helped Jakob prepare his talk in primary as well.

I cleaned at my dad's office.

I had a short piano recital for some of my students. Jakob did great, I messed up a little (but I hadn't practiced all that much-I decided last minute to play at the recital). I decided to take May off of teaching, which is probably a good thing, because Pete just started working Wednesday through Saturday for 12-hour days. 48 hours of work, plus 8 hours of commuting time. He's a good man, that one.

I did my visiting teaching. Yay!

I went grocery shopping.

I'm totally caught up on laundry.

Pete and I watched "First Knight". "The law will judge YUH!"

I made cornbread for our ward's chili cook-off, which won a little award. Here's the recipe, from my kids' preschool teacher, Miss Karla:

Cornbread

1 cup butter melted

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

2 1/2 cups buttermilk

1/2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. baking powder

1 cup cornmeal

3 cups flour

1 tsp. salt

Mix butter, sugar, and eggs. Add buttermilk and stir.

Stir dry ingredients together and add to liquids. Stir just until moistened.

Pour into greased 9"x13" pan and bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

And, I fed the missionaries last night. They ate SOOOO much food! I don't know what I'm going to do when my boys are that age, and eating me out of house and home. Note to self: quantity, not quality.

Today, I've done pretty much nothing. Even moms need days off every once in a while, right?

Photo a Day: Somewhere You Went

Monday afternoon was HOT. I don't know if I've ever said that about an Idaho spring before. So I called Pete and suggested we get some KFC and have a picnic at the park for Family Home Evening.

But Monday evening was a little windy, and started to get overcast quickly. We stuck with our plan and got some food and went to the park. After eating, my kids just played and played and played. It got windier, and colder, and even rained on us a bit. But my kids didn't seem to mind. They continued to play in the dirt/mud, slid down the slides and got wet butts, and ran up and down the steep hill in that park.

Not pictured: Brock, because he and Pete left to get some ice cream. Which we still haven't eaten. For some reason I always forget about having ice cream in our freezer.

Photo a Day: 1 p.m.

Today at 1 p.m. was like most of my days at 1 p.m.

Ivy was still eating lunch. Sometimes my kids take 2 seconds eating lunch; sometimes it's more like 2 hours.

I was getting sleepy, because that's what my body does at that time.

And Troy was doing homework, namely, reading to me.

Troy is really good about working on his homework after kindergarten. I am soooo glad that I decided to have him in morning kindergarten this year. He's a morning person anyway. But because he's home for a couple of hours before the other two get home, I can spend some one-on-one time with him, helping him through some of his homework packet that he gets each week. (Some he can do on his own, some he needs help with.)

Lately he's also been getting little books from school as well. He reads each one three times, and we rate how he did with it (was it easy, just right, or hard). He's done pretty well with those, too. Although one of the books today had the word "why" right after the word "happy". I always feel like a traitor having to explain all the exceptions to the English language to my little budding readers, like how one word ending in -y says a hard "E", while the other word ending in -y says a hard "I". What's up with that? So he kept saying "wheee" instead of "why" the first couple of times.

I think it will be so weird when he's in school all day next fall. And then my 1 p.m. will consist of only this one and me:

She's sad because, heaven forbid, I made her sit and finish her lunch that she had been working on for over an hour.

Photo a Day: Inside your Wallet

I once heard you can tell a lot about a person by looking in their wallet, or their garbage can. I really don't know if either of those are true. But here's my wallet:

Pretty empty. Minimalist? Boring? Plain? No personality? Hmmmm.

On the left, my checkbook. Also on the left, in a little side flap, are pics of my kids. In the middle, the change holder (it currently has 26 cents in it), and cards: temple recommend, health insurance cards, my library card. On the right, my license and debit card.

Every once in a while, there's actual cash in there. But it's usually 5s or 1s for kids' allowances. (Which, they don't get paid unless they do their chores. So I don't know if that's called an allowance or a payday.)

I also used to have a credit card, until I realized that having that in there made me spend more money than I should. So now I don't even carry it so I'm not tempted.

And, I'm still old school in the fact that I still write everything down in my check register, including debit usage and auto drafts (even though it's all on my bank account online, which I check every few days). And I have to know where I'm at to the penny (I've tried rounding, it doesn't work for me).

My wallet sits in my purse, which is equally empty. Sometimes there are receipts in my purse-until I get them written in my register, that is. I also have two pens, lip balm, hand sanitizer, keys, and breath mints.

Yeah, I'm going to go with minimalist, to make myself feel better.

Photo a Day: Last Thing You Bought

(Technically, the last thing I bought was pizza on Saturday night, because I was still getting over the awesome stomach bug that Pete passed to me. But this is the thing I got the picture of, so this is what you get to hear about. And it's the second to last thing I bought, so that's close enough, right?)

Pete recently got put in Young Men's as the 1st counselor. They were having a 50s night, and had to dress up. So Pete rolled up the bottom of his jeans, and I got this shirt for him. It just reminded me of the 50s for some reason; I don't know if it was really the 50s style or not, but whatever. We tried to slick his hair back, but his hair kind of has a mind of its own. I should have gotten the really thick black-rimmed glasses, but thought about it too late.

Photo a Day: Flower/Something that Makes You Sad

No, flowers do not make me sad. Let me 'splain.

I love my tulips. Love them love them. They are my first flowers to bloom in the spring. (Actually, they are my only flowers that bloom at the moment. I've had others before, but none that have done as well as my tulips.)

They are my first sign that the long, long Idaho winter is finally melting away. They are so beautiful.

What makes me sad is they are only a spring flower. I would love if they lasted all spring and summer. And I know that's why I need to get other later-blooming flowers. But like I said, whenever I've gotten summer bloomers they've never actually done all that well in the "bloom" or "grow" department.

I do better with bushes. Really hardy, impossible-to-kill bushes.