Dahlia farm

We got to go with my friend Jessica to a Dahlia farm the other day... what a sweet morning spent among the blossoms. 

More pictures, take a gander

A new bird

The Yellow Bellied Nuthatch

This is NOT my picture as I have not been able to get a picture of them yet, but I have nuthatches in my yard. :) I will get a pic myself and post that as soon as possible, but it is neat when we add a bird to our collection.

Learning new things...

At least Logan is. lol... yesterday, he got himself a bowl of cereal. In the middle of the kitchen floor. Complete with milk.

For being 19 mos old, he actually did really well. lol... and he was SO proud. It was close to the cutest thing ever. I didn't scold him. I just had him help me pick up the pieces on the floor and then let him finish his snack.

I am learning new things too. Clickable

Apples, Peaches, and Beans, oh my!

And carrots, and beets, and blueberries... And the list will go on. This month is just about the busiest that we have here at the Rose Garden. And always is. Preparing for school causes lots of paperwork (just under 100 pages in fact), and then the food comes in...

So far this is the list:

Peaches - 100lbs

Apples - 1 bushel (these haven't even really started yet)

Green beans - 28lbs (with terribly cute help)

Snow peas - 12lbs

Carrots - 20lbs (some pictured in the snow pea pic)

Blueberries - 30lbs

Beets - 25lbs (some pictured in the snow pea picture too)

Strawberries - 3 full flats

Soon to come is blackberries, cloud berries, tomatoes, and apples... and that doesn't count the meat.

But we are well equiped to deal with such things... we have really cute aprons and really cute help;

Have a happy day!

Cyanism's of August and other things...

Cyan says some of the funniest things sometimes that years ago we started coining her more colorful phrases "Cyanisms".  Recently she has begun doing more of these again, and I felt like I had to record this one here:

My daughter comes in covered in dirt up to her elbows and goes to the sink to wash her hands, and I ask her "What were you doing?"  "Mole tracking." She says, point blank with a very 'duh' voice: 

She has also taken to 'experimenting'... this sometimes ends up in disaster... like when she decided to 'experiment' with a cup of water and our DVD remote control.  "But it was a very small cup of water."  She says.  lol!  Another experiment had to do with about 5 lbs of sand from the sand box and some of her playsilks.  I caught that one before disaster, thank goodness.

Alex has been gone for just over a month now.  He comes home in two weeks.  I am missing him.  Which is evident by the fact that I have cleaned his room and am now figuring out how to get him a bed frame.  I already picked him up a comforter and sheet set that I think he will love.  I think he will be as happy to be home as I will be to see him.

Logan is such a toddler!  He is starting to really understand what we are asking him to do though.  He puts his own diapers in the garbage, he will hand us things (esp shoes, he LOVES going 'bye-bye'), and he has been signing up a storm!  Is is so funny that he really doesn't talk yet, but he signs like mad.  His newest sign is "airplane" which he uses all the time to show us planes flying outside.  Although most of them are gone before we get out there... but he sure does try.  He is down right obsessed!  He found a board book with a baby looking at "Baby's Favorite Things" and one of them is a plane... he was SO excited and every day he comes up to me with the book turned to that page yelling "Mama!  Mama!"

Today we picked him up a jumpy spring horse.  He has been wanting one for a month now.  We could have gotten it for much less ($20 compared to $70) but I stalled at the Goodwill when I saw one, and decided to walk through the store before I bought it.  DUMB!  I should have snached it up right away, because as the other woman with a baby (much younger than Logan) put it in her car, Logan nearly had his first full on melt down fit.  And he spent the entire evening sitting on his new one (which we picked up RIGHT after that incident becuase the purchase has been coming for a while).  My kids may be spoiled, but they are happy and polite.  As he rocked and bounced on it, he kept saying "tank" (which means thank you) and "bye-bye!" and then he would rock for all he was worth.  It was SO cute!

Paperwork and mad cats

Gosh, this time of year it seems like there is nothing but paperwork. Because my children get funds through a virtual academy, I have to fill out requisition forms for their curriculum. They don't have any out of the house classes, but giving us the funds to get the things we need has been SO helpful, that I have taken the plunge and signed them up. But wow... the paperwork just kicks my butt! I have done probably 50 pages of paperwork today alone. 9 requisitions with full curriculum intentions and reasons (totalling about 35 pages), intent for home based instruction for two, inter-district transfer of paperwork so they have all Alex's test scores.... and that is just today! Sigh... That is a lot of paperwork. But most of it is done now. :)

Last night at dinner Cyan found a sweet little kitty that she decided was her friend. He never bit her, or hurt her in any way... but before I made her put him down and had a talk about kitty body language, I had to take pictures:

Doesn't he look thrilled?

And a cute baby/daddy picture to make you smile: