“Good and upright is the Lord.”
He sure is!
This week found us back into a little more of a routine again. We are all starting to feel back to our normal selves (finally!). The weather has the promise of spring in the air, albeit snow is in the forecast for a couple days from now (#PureMichigan). We have been able to spend some time outside, which is certainly refreshing to the body as well as the soul! We are counting down the days until the new baby arrives. God is good.
With spring in the air, we spent the majority of our week focused on outdoor activities. Even when the weather wasn’t permitting, we spent time dreaming and scheming. We got the most splendid book called, Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Books by Sharon Lovejoy. Even if you are an experienced gardener, this book is full of wonderful gardening activities for you to do with your children. We now have a sunflower house in the plans for our summer! The books is full of wonderful illustrations, and my “little” guy had fun watercolor painting his first pumpkin.
After getting our book and dreaming and scheming, we headed out to the garden to measure it! Little did my son know that we were actually learning something while he had fun using daddy’s measuring wheel. Shhhhh… don’t tell him! We splashed in puddles, found some onions that were forgotten from the previous harvest and were trying to come back up, dug for worms and just had a wonderful time outside!
We practiced counting with seeds and also worked on simple addition. I feel like this is the first time my son REALLY started to grasp the concept of addition. The next day he was far less interested in working on addition, but I got a glimpse of hard work paying off. These beautiful, simple number cards are from the curriculum we are following called The Peaceful Preschool.
With being so close to delivering our third child (10 days until D day!!), I’ve been really trying to focus on the “now.” I want to remember what our normal was like in this phase of two kids. I want to savor every hug, every smile, every milestone. I want to live intentionally. So one of my favorite memories from this past week was packing a picnic lunch, heading to our local nature center and going on a long hike. I knew I would need to carry my daughter most of the way, but my son was feeling ambitious and we hiked several miles! It was a day filled with observing woodpeckers, throwing stones in a pond, looking at scat, rabbit fur and turtles sunning themselves on a log. My son’s questions were limitless as I did my best to answer them. We left with pink cheeks and smiles on our faces! We later spent some time painting watercolors of woodpeckers and white pine needles (did you know there are always 5 needles in a bunch? W-H-I-T-E).
Our handprint art for this week was a flower G-arden.
Easter was also this past week, so instead of getting the kids Easter “baskets,” they got an Easter “barrow.” I enjoyed filling a kid-sized wheel barrow with all sorts of gardening tools: gloves, digging tools, and watering cans. I can just imaging the fun we will be having this summer as the kids dig in the garden and help me plant a small crop.
