1. This picture is new in my shop tonight, and I have also entered it in the greeblepix contest! Yay for spring blossom photography! I’m addicted. Until the blossoms are gone, you can count on seeing eleventy million pretty flowery pictures around here.

2. I bought the book Best Easy Day Hikes – Boise to give us some ideas of where to take the kids on excursions this spring/summer. (I know I’m a dork for buying a book about where to hike in my OWN HOMETOWN. But this way we don’t have to come up with any ideas, we just have to pick something and go! Less planning, discussing, deciding, more GOING! Anyways.) I took a little mini-walk from the book at lunch yesterday, and I am excited to take the boys out hiking and exploring this summer.

3. Speaking of walking … Rachel finally started walking this weekend! YAY! She just stood up and started, like it was no big deal at all … like we haven’t been telling her to WALK ALREADY YOU LAZY GIRL for months. And then yesterday afternoon she did a faceplant on the sidewalk and scraped her face up. 24 hours of bravery before her first injury … doesn’t seem to have slowed her down today, thank goodness. Still walking all over the place. Our scraped up baby girl (this was last night – she looks worse today.  Hopefully she heals soon!):

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Summer Sunday mornings at our house …

Hi Honey. Guess what. Next month is Mother’s Day AND my birthday. Just thought I would remind you.

And on another, completely unrelated note – look at this list of really cool stuff I have found lately. This list has nothing at all to do with the upcoming important holidays. Nope. Nothing at all. It is just a completely RANDOM list of cool stuff. I like to share lists of cool stuff. For no reason whatsoever.

Coincidentally, if random readers of this blog follow the links below, they might find places to purchase some of this cool stuff for themselves. Or their wives. Just coincidentally.

1. Lolas! Doesn’t that pink-shirted, blonde-haired Lola remind you of someone familiar?
2. Photomatix Pro. Remember all of those cool HDR images I have shown you lately? Wouldn’t you love it if I could make my own and hang them all over the house?
3. Lenswork Magazine. Lenswork is full of beautiful, classic, black and white photography. Inspiring.
4. Camera case. How cute are these? (via Modish) I would totally carry my camera around in one of these cases.  If I had one.  Which I do not.
5. Erin, over at House on Hill Road, is going to open up a shop really soon, selling patchwork camera straps. Those would look so great on, say,  a Canon DSLR.
6. Christine Berrie’s camera illustrations. I bet photography enthusiasts would really love to own one of those. Maybe. I mean, you never know.

Anyways, honey, I hope you enjoyed this TOTALLY RANDOM list of fun items. Now you can get back to your regularly scheduled day. Love you.

P.S.
Don’t forget to take out the garbage today, K?  Thanks!

My 8-year-old stepson is struggling in school. He is a really smart boy, but he is not at all interested in school. He would much rather be visiting with his friends or outside playing basketball. He is really physical and athletic – definitely all boy. It is a constant struggle to get him to sit down and focus on something “boring” like math or reading.

We have started printing out extra homework sheets for him to work on. At night, after he does his “regular” homework, if he wants to play video games he has to do some extra worksheets. Each worksheet earns him 15 minutes of video game time. (I try to get worksheets that take him at least 15 minutes to get through.) This has had two benefits – he plays less video games in general (because sometimes it is too much work to do homework first … so he will just go do something else instead… ) and it actually has him ASKING to do homework. We don’t have to fight him to do homework, instead he volunteers. Amazing.

This year I have even been wishing we had the ability to home school (not an option for us for a variety of reasons – custody, money, etc.). I admit I am generally kind of a skeptic of home schoolers … I just imagine myself as a child – already shy and quiet – if I were home schooled I would have been deathly afraid of people and would have had no friends. (And also … who are these parents with endless patience and ability to get their kids to actually listen to them? I am all about instant gratification. And teaching is not at all instant gratification – you don’t see results for a long time in most cases. That would be really hard for me. And also there is the whole fact that my kids will listen to ANYONE but me it seems … but I digress.) But with Dayton, the social aspects would not be an issue. I have never met a more social, outgoing, friendly child in my life. He could actually benefit from LESS socialization. I am becoming less skeptical of parents who choose to home school. (Don’t yell at me if you are a home schooler – I actually don’t really know any families closely that home school so I admit I have a very uninformed opinion of the issue … I fully believe there are tons of families out there who successfully and happily home school – I just don’t know any and I think it would be incredibly hard to make it a successful, positive experience.)

Anyways … for now we have to settle for extra homework practice whenever we get the chance. And our incentive program has magically been helping. I made up some worksheets for Dayton to practice counting by 3s, 4s, 6s and 7s. I am going to make them available as a free download for any one else who may want to use them for practice. I think I will start a series of these … any worksheets that I find are helping our kids will be available here for anyone who wants to use them!

Here they are, just click the links for the worksheets:

Second Grade Math: Counting by 3s and 4s
Second Grade Math: Counting by 6s and 7s

See:
-Colors! Bright colors are everywhere this week … in my crafting I played with brightly colored thread.  You can see the flags against a blue sky above.  Vibrant yellow Daffodils are in bloom.

Hear:
-Geese honking and ducks quacking during my walk in the park.
-The boys playing “ninjas” with their plastic swords – home for spring break!
-Rain dripping in the downspouts and splashing against the windows on Wednesday.

Taste:
-Red Wine
-Hashbrowns and eggs for breakfast … mmmmm … my husband is such a good cook!

Smell:
-Wet cement and dirt from the rain.

Touch:
-Sewing projects. I always feel so homey when I sew.

I am getting really mad at how this is formatting – I give up! everything is all lined up funny … aargh. I will have to figure it out later this evening.

Ok, I fixed it, sort of.  It’s not quite how I wanted it but at least I don’t want to throw things at the computer when I look at it.

Baby Rachel had her four-month checkup yesterday. At her two-month checkup, she was in the 25th percentile for weight. Now, two months later, she is in the 75th percentile. She loves to eat! AND she loves to sleep … 9 or 10 hours a night with a few daytime naps for good measure. It takes a lot of beauty sleep to maintain all that cuteness!

Look at those rolls! Too bad we can’t all look so cute in rolls like those …

I think she has teeth breaking through the gums on the bottom … my baby girl is getting so big! I cannot believe how fast it goes.

More basketball this weekend!