Category: Roman

I ran by the dollar store earlier this week to surprise the boys with a small end of the school year gift…among the winners were these sticky foam animal mosaics that have been a big hit with the big boys (especially Xander) and a bag of pipe cleaners that they all have been playing with in different ways. We were having a restful morning, and the boys had all settled into a project…Jonas was doing a paint-with-water page and Xander was working on a sticky foam mosaic…and Roman was restless so I busted out the colander and pipe cleaners for an activity I’ve heard can keep toddlers busy for a little while. It did and then the big boys wanted to join in too (we only had two colanders so Jonas found a cheese grater that worked just as well). Yay for easy mornings and for the creativity that rest brings.

Tom and the boys and I went to Touch-A-Truck this afternoon at Pinkerton Park (it’s an annual event where the city brings out trucks from the Fire, Police, Sanitation, Streets, Water, and Parks to celebrate and honor the City Public Works Departments). It’s so awesome and what a wonderful educational opportunity for the boys to learn more about our community helpers! They checked out a SWAT truck, a Bobcat, a John Deere tractor, a garbage truck, and a school bus. The favorite by far was the bucket truck that held a man high up in the air who threw down soft earth balls to all of the amazed kids below. A sweet surprise for this mother’s heart was…when each of my boys climbed into the Bobcat…the first thing they did was look for the seatbelt and try to put it on! The boys were chomping at the bit to play at the super fun playgrounds the whole time, so they did that before and after too. There is NO way I could have managed it all without Tom, so yay for Daddy being so hands-on and for being able to come with us!

Jonas got the coolest gift for his birthday last year…a crystal mining kit. He has totally loved digging through the rock with his special tools to unearth crystals. So, when Tom found a few dinosaur bone digging kits on clearance, he brought them home for the boys. It was the perfect thing to bring out this week, as Jonas has been sick and we’ve been taking it easy at home. It definitely made a mess (next time we’ll take it outside), but they had so much fun with it which is what matters most.

The boys and I love hanging out in our front yard. We had an impromptu Easter egg hunt when Jonas got home from school this afternoon.

We are FINALLY starting our garden and are so excited!!! I don’t think I’ve been more ready for spring in all of my life.
The boys and I picked up a big bag of really good garden soil to work in (I have no clue what I’m doing…I just thought it might be nice to give back to our hard working garden) and some vegetable and herb plants (tomatoes, bell peppers, rosemary, and lavender) that we saw on sale this morning.
They were all big helpers to Mommy…transporting the plants and soil from the car to the garden, spreading the rich soil out, and planting our vegetables and herbs (and even a few perennial flowers we decided to add this year…echinacea and hollyhocks).
Big surprises this year are a three year old rosemary that didn’t make it through the cold winter, a few blackberry bushes that have come up voluntarily, and a handful of bulbs that we had to rescue and plant in pots because the waterlogged soil where they were planted was pushing them up and out of the ground (we’ll be moving those in the fall).
We’re also looking forward to planting our carrots, onions, and cucumbers that we’re starting indoors.
You know…it’s funny…when I was out planting a few of the tomatoes during nap time…just the smell immediately brought me back to childhood summer memories of working with my Grandpa in his garden. It was enough to bring up all of that missing him and made me want to cry. But how blessed is it sometimes to have our memories so attached to our senses that, from the simple action of putting a tomato plant in the ground in early spring, we can be instantly taken back to walking the rows of our Grandpa’s garden in the heat of summer with a stainless steel bucket, enjoying our quality time and watching carefully as he points out the ones that are just right for picking. A beautiful forever memory…hopefully we’re making some too.

The boys and I had so much fun today using the pot press MeMe gave us last year to roll newspaper into little compostable pots to start our carrot, cucumber, and onion seeds.