It's My Birthday Month

Maybe instead of aiming for weekly posts, I should try for a monthly recap instead.  I don't seem to be hitting Our Week every week any more.  

Trap shooting season has started.  Rear view mirror picture from dropping Jack off at practice.  

Bri sent a box of goodies to the kids.  There were Legos,

and a cookbook, which we've already tried a recipe from,

and a bag of treats.

I fired up the sewing machine for Spirit Week.  One of those ridiculous things that makes me miss homeschooling.  Like science fair, my nemesis.  

Katie's Paris skirt for Europe Day.  (Europe day?  What the actual heck?) 

Hannah's Europe Day skirt

I switched from the sewing machine to Crikey for Jack's Europe t-shirt.

On Europe Day.  Jack loves his tactical kilt, and has been wearing it at home ever since.  You do you, boo.  

I have no room to talk about odd fashion choices.  Guess what I wore to school on the day I read the kids Rainbow Fish?  A few people blink at me when I show up in a wild dress, but at this point, they're pretty much getting used to it.  

We even did a Rainbow Fish craft after our story.  This went well with the kindergarteners, first, and second graders.  Sometimes it's a better fit for one end of the age group or the other, so it was nice to have something everybody enjoyed.  

I had a birthday.  There was a cake at work.

And flowers from some of my favorite people.

Lots of flowers

They perked the house up.

I'm not really a cake person, so Jo & Mo made cobbler for my dessert.  (spinning, musical birthday candle)

Got to see one of my favorite humans very briefly.  

A couple thoughts about this book pile:  If you like Paddington (I'm currently reading the first one to my 3rd & 4th graders) More Than Marmalade is a youth biography of Michael Bond.  I really enjoyed it.  

Secondly, my favorite line in the latest Outlander book so far (I'm only on page 553) is, "The lawyer looked as though he'd been taxidermized by someone who hated him."  I'm still chuckling over that mental image.  

Also, we got Adventures in Asian Art a while back, so I requested it again because I wanted to do a spring flowers vase art project at school.  I didn't end up reading it to the kids, but we did have fun making mixed media creations.  

  

  

We talked about the blooming trees.  They drew their stems with brown marker, then fingerpainted the pink flowers.  While the paint was drying, they designed, colored, and cut out their vase, gluing it on over the bottom of their stems.  This project was a hit with everyone, K-4th, so I was pretty happy about that.  

Since the Strange Planet book I got from our fundraiser was a hit with our high schoolers, I picked up another Nathan Pyle book.  I've read about half of it, but it keeps walking off because other people find it amusing, too.

It's fun to have a cat that likes boxes.  Grumman does not.  Fi never met a box she didn't have to try on for size.  

This seems sufficiently long for today.  I'll take a break here and come back tomorrow with more.