This week....

was cold!! It is supposed to get into the 60's this week, and I can't wait! I honestly don't mind the cool weather, but there is so much to get done and we need the warmer weather to get through it all!

Friday was Dr. Seuss' birthday, so the elementary kids celebrated with a big Seuss style parade. I helped Faith and Kyle whip up a couple of Cat in the Hat costumes, and they had a blast being part of the parade.
Beth loves sunglasses... I found her a pair of Bratz shades for $1 the other day, and she has barely taken them off since!

Earlier this week, Beth and Todd and I planted some seedling cups to get our starter plants growing. We had a little bit of everything... broccoli, squashes, tomatoes, carrots, peas, beans...

and now we have sprouts! We haven't killed any of them yet!

After church today Jack and I got to work rototilling the garden area. We have to fill the garden bed in with top soil, so we rototilled the ground by fence, and started bringing the dirt over to fill the bed. We got about a third of the way through before it was too dark and cold to do anymore. The part of this picture in front of the garden bed was full of wild onions, stray grass, and a strange border of rocks, bricks, and wood. I got all of the border pieces cleared out, and after Jack helped me get the area tilled I got most of it smoothed out while he worked on transferring dirt. I am going to make a new border with our big decorative rocks from the front yard and make this a strawberry patch.

Today was one of those days where I really wished I had a video camera so I could make this a video to share instead of a picture. Chet and Faith were standing under one of our big trees, looking up, and making sing song sounds. A bird in the tree (probably a mockingbird) began making the sing song sounds back at them... the exact same rythym and tones. The kids and the bird were there at least 20 minutes singing to each other.

On Friday I took the girls to see Freedom Writers. This story has moved me since I first heard about this group of kids, and after reading their book I had to see the movie. Oh man.... I cried through most of it. There is so much about this story that I love... I love the teacher's method of teaching, I love the success the kids had with turning their lives around and becoming critical thinkers, and I love, love, love, how it was done through the power of combining reading classics and personal writing. I have been thinking about starting a private blog that is just mine to use as a diary, but this really compelled me to go ahead with it.

This has gotten really long, but thanks for reading! I think I found a way to fix my Photoshop problem, so I hope to have some new releases up tomorrow. I'll talk to you then!