Welcome, May

That is...welcome, SECOND HALF OF MAY.

Where has this month gone?!

I know part of the problem is that I was out of town two weekends in a row (Jacksonville, FL Mother's Day weekend and Gulf Shores, AL this past weekend).

I visited Gulf Shores with three of my friends I will soon say goodbye to (when we move to FL in a month...gulp). 

We stayed in a cute little beach house, surrounded by hundreds of other cute little beach houses, on this street:

That's all I have time to share at the moment. More on the trip(s) later (hopefully).

So Long, April

Ruthie approached me this evening as I was helping Chet clean the kitchen after dinner. She said, "Okay, I'm ready to go! And I have three dogs."

(The other two dogs were tucked away inside that greenish-blue sling and in the cat backpack.)

I can't think of a better way to end April!

TGIF!

On to May!

Wild Acres

Yesterday the kids and I met my friend Stephanie and her daughter Nora at a family owned...petting zoo? It's called Wild Acres, and they LOVED it.

Here is Sydney feeding a porcupine, which was also in her lap:

I was able to get a good picture, because I was standing OUTSIDE the porcupine enclosure. It turns out that porcupines are in the top five of the world's largest rodents. 

No, thank you.

The animals I willingly touch include cats, dogs, and horses, in that order. Oh, and sheep, because I petted one of those yesterday, and it was fine.

Happy Thursday!

Lunch After Church

This past Sunday -- for the first time since Chet deployed in February 2020 -- we went out to lunch after church.

Here was the timeline:

1. Chet deployed (I normally don't take the children to restaurants by myself)

2. COVID happened

3. Chet returned from deployment (July 2020), but wasn't allowed to go to restaurants until THIS PAST FRIDAY (I wish I were kidding)

We celebrated Chet's release from "captivity" by going to a restaurant we like that serves both breakfast all day AND Thai food, and has a pond of fish:

What more could one ask for?

Happy Wednesday!

Sydney and Me

Sydney wrote a paper about Walt Disney for her end-of-year project, and presented it to her class this afternoon. 

Dressed up like Walt Disney

She did great, and I'm so proud of how hard she worked this year!

Sydney's Painting and Lorelei's Cookies

A few weeks ago Sydney went to a painting class with her friends from our homeschool group and painted the American flag on a canvas.

I, of course, do not have a picture of her with her finished painting. However, if you look closely in the post about Easter Sunday you can see it hanging on the wall in the dining room behind Ford's head.

A sweet friend also sent us cookies after Lorelei's surgery (more on her surgery later, I promise!):

How was your Monday? Ours was spent getting ready for our last homeschool group meeting for the school year.

Fishing

Yesterday (Saturday), Chet and Ford went to Academy and came home with worms.

Around sunset yesterday, Chet and the kids walked over to the lake across the street from our house and caught some fish!

(They've fished in this lake several times, but have never caught anything. I stayed home to wash the dinner dishes.)

The children each have their own pole, which has always felt superfluous to me, but actually came in handy last night, ha!

Happy Sunday!