Spring is here and I am busy. Where once there were bare branches, the trees are now sporting lots of baby leaves, which grow bigger overnight. The weeds are trying to claim the yard for their own. Dogwoods are in full bloom. Warm air is the norm now rather than an unexpected luxury.

We have at least a month left in school, but I have been scanning our schedule to see if it can be just a month and not more as I have a lot of other things waiting to fill the hours I have set aside for school. The kids are spending more and more of their days outside making dandelion chains, mud-holes, and who knows what all else. This last week, on a day when I had too many things to do and I was desperately striving to accomplish at least a few of them, I was thankful the kids were happily playing outside. That is, until Elise comes into the house, holding two completely brown arms and hands in front of her while saying, “Look Mom, I made mud!” My reaction was less than kind, but after going to retrieve Will from the mud-hole, only to find him already partially muddied, I changed my mind and told them to have fun, but not to venture inside until they were ready to be done. Will disobeyed this instruction several times, and I finally caught him at the door with muddy hands, a muddy cup full of water, and a muddy door knob. He had been the assigned water person for the mud-hole, as this apparently wasn’t a self-sustained hole. I tried to explain to him why he could not keep coming in and out with mud all over his hands and feet and sent him back out. Shortly after the hole dried itself up, and the kids moved on to other fun. I brought them in one at a time for baths, as one tub of bath water wasn’t enough to clean more than one dirty kid at a time. Will tried to convince me that he was no longer dirty, since the mud had long since dried on his arms and legs, but he too was thoroughly washed.

Will started gymnastics last week, and despite us having to coax him onto the mat, he ended up having a great time. On the way home I asked him what he did:
Will: “Weren’t you watching?”
Me: “Yes, I watched part of it, but I wanted you to tell me what you did.”
Will: “Well, we got 2 drinks and at the end we got a stamp on our hand.”
Me: “Is that all?”
Will: “Yep.”
After a bit of coaxing, he dived into an explanation of one of the actual gymnastics related activities. I don’t know if he thought the drinks and stamp were the highlights of the class period, or if he thought perhaps those were the things I had somehow missed.

Seth is learning all sorts of new words, and loves to talk. Sometimes his sentences come out sounding like gibberish still, but he is becoming more and more easy to understand. He has one exceptionally clear phrase that is actually somewhat helpful: “Help me.” I thought this was extremely cute until I heard it coming from his mouth at the top of his lungs while trying to escape from the Walmart cart I had buckled him in to. Sigh. . .

Elise has got to tag along lately to wedding showers for my sister Hannah. She is finding that these are not as fun as she had thought they would be, though. I’m sure if she were planning these, they would involve some sort of costumes, big elaborate cake, and goody bags for all the guests. 🙂 She is going to be Hannah’s flower girl/junior bridesmaid.

Elise’s dress for the wedding is one of the many things on my to do list. I am also preparing things for Baby Vardo’s first booth in the Dogwood Festival at the end of the month. I also hope to make the kids outfits for Easter. So my sewing machine will be busy over the next few weeks, assuming I can find the time to sit down and run it.

John’s making progress on the vardo for Baby Vardo. It is starting to take shape, and I can just start to imagine actually being able to use it.