Yep, it is here. We just said goodbye to possibly the best teacher that we will ever have. Is it possible to have your favorite teacher ever in preschool? She has been INCREDIBLE! I cried! I cried writing a note to her. I was boohooing everywhere! My shirt was wet my eyes were red and don’t you know that the UPS man came right then. He looked very scared when he saw me. I still cry just thinking about it. Yep, we will see her next year in the halls but she is just so AMAZING!
Standing here in May summer feels a little overwhelming…it feels long and empty but I know standing in August it will feel so very short and so very full. I want to capture it and bottle it up. I want to save every ounce of it. I want to be present and not preoccupied. I want to enter into my days with a happy heart and an aware heart of where the kids are and what would make them feel loved and cherished that day. I want to equip them, I want to teach them so much, love them so much and explore so much together. There is a whole summer laying ahead…what will we do with it…capture it!

First off YES I put fake flowers on a cake! I was informed that the Cake Wrecks blog would have a fit but I had to admit that it was totally worth it for the happy heart that it gave our kiddo!
This cake is full of nothing but HAPPY! I first stumbled upon this little cake on a random blog and then later discovered that Martha had a recipe for it. I am not sure why Martha always seems to make things a little more complicated but alas I set out to accomplish it because it was just so darn HAPPY! The fun came when we got to cut into the cake at the party and surprise everyone with the rainbow of colors on the inside. So FUN!!!

Icing the cake was a lot of fun as well! Happy happy colors!!!

You know how you can hear a sound and immediately know what it is? You know what it is because you have heard it in everyday life repetitively. It is when you hear the familiar sound mixed with an unfamiliar sound that you pause because in your head you are thinking…oh, no, you did not just do that…
I hear the spindles on our steps turn almost everyday from the kids running their hands past them or from my hand brushing past them as I sit something on the steps to go upstairs. Today I heard the ever so familiar sound of the spindles but then I heard a thud. I knew what had happened before I looked up and I even felt myself, for a brief moment, refusing to look up and refusing to enter into what I thought to be true.
The cry followed the thud and as I slowly brought myself to reality. I saw our child, body on one side of the spindle and head on the other. Are you kidding me? That was the phrase that I was screaming inside my head. We have chatted about this a million times…it is not a wise idea to stick your head through the spindles…it will be stuck there…maybe forever!!!
I never really panicked I was just mad! People stick their heads through spindles on TV, not in real life, come on! I try to push the head through the gap but screaming ensued…it was not coming out that way. Tried to lift the spindle up and out…it went up but not out. Sat there for a little bit contemplating my options. Thought about the butter but it is so pricey. Debated calling hubby just to share about the predicament. While dialing his number I thought about my speech for the worst mother of the year award. Brad suggested Vaseline…it is cheap! Asked the older sibling to come and sit with the stuck one while I went to get the Vaseline. Busy coloring was the response. My response…your sibling is STUCK in the steps…CANNOT MOVE! Please come love on your sibling! Footsteps, I take off running for the Vaseline, I hear, it is okay Buddy! Releave the sibling to return to coloring and I slather the stuck one. Still no go! This stuff works on TV I think to myself! Lots of screaming and really red ears. I give up. Call the hubby again to find the location of the saw! Call reluctant unstuck sibling back to hang out with stuck sibling while I run for the saw. Relieve unstuck sibling and comfort stuck sibling as I move close with the saw. Lift the spindle as high as I can so that there will not be a ton of noticeable damage on the steps. Proceed with sawing at an unnoticeable angle so the other side of the saw is scratching the steps but I have no clue. Lovely! Finally, last cut and FREEDOM! Lots of cuddling and loving and a few shared words of I told you not to do that!

Honestly, be very honest here, does anyone really like to iron? What if we all banded together and decided to just go wrinkly…wouldn’t that be fabulous? It might not look that great but we would not have to iron! just think about it…it could work!
Yes, the ironing pile was huge today…it comes from not liking ironing so much…week after week after week.

The first being to paint the front door. We have gone back and forth over colors for a very long time. We finally agreed, though, with a good bit of give and take on black. I decided that I would paint it and be done. Did you know that painting a white door black takes, well, we are up to 4 coats of paint and we could use a few more? I am not much of a painter so I am pretty clueless when it comes to such things, but, wow! I decided that we would finish that project a different weekend. I am happy with it though and I love the way that it is coming together. Lest, you think that the door looks like the above picture in its finished for now state I promise that I really did do the 4 coats. It looks good from the driveway it is just when you walk up to it that one might notice that it is a work in progress.

The second project from the weekend was to check out the garden. I covered it in cardboard boxes for the winter. Consider it a layer to hold in the moisture inviting worms and other wonderful things for happy soil. I was very anxious to see what it looked like underneath and to stir up the soil just a little bit combining a few layers. I used a new to us tool which was very fun! A lot of work but fun all the same. I was happy to see so many worms and better soil underneath. I need to lay down a layer of newspaper and add some leaves and pine needles and get to planting in the next few weeks. I am really excited that it is almost gardening season again.

Two projects in process is a good thing. Still a few more to start as the weather continues to warm up.

I definitely was not excited about it as the shelves are from Target and are probably not the sturdiest thing known to mankind (did I mention that I helped put them together) but I also definitely took the time to grab the camera and snap some pictures because what wonder this child has…head first as well! Wow!

At last brother has a big boy bed. Technically we have owned the bed since October but painting outside in the cold garage just was not super appealing to me so when we finally hit the 50′s with sunshine this last week (it is just a memory now…surely spring will come sometime…maybe) it was out to paint! I found the bed at an antique store buried under some other items. I had been searching high and low for the bed that I had concocted in my head and at last I had found it! It appeared to be really old or maybe it had an intensely hard life. I just know that it needed some loving! After cleaning it up and applying many a coat of paint it is finally together and in his room and his bed is officially up off the floor! We have one ecstatic little boy in this house!!!

“An invalid lady procured once the cocoon of a very beautiful butterfly with unusually magnificent wings, hoping to have the pleasure of seeing it emerge from its cocoon in her sick-chamber. She watched it eagerly as spring drew on, and finally was delighted to see the butterfly beginning to emerge. But it seemed to have great difficulty. It pushed and strained, and struggled, and seemed to make so little headway, that she concluded it must need some help, and with a pair of delicate scissors she finally clipped the tight cord that seemed to bind in the opening of the cocoon. Immediately that cocoon opened wide, and the butterfly escaped without any further struggle. She congratulated herself on the success of her experiment, but found in a moment that something was the matter with the butterfly. It was all out of the cocoon it is true, but its great wings were lifeless and colorless, and dragged after it as a useless burden. For a few days it lived a miserable sickly life, and then died, without having once lifted its powerless wings. The lady was sorely disappointed and could not understand it. But when she related the circumstance to a naturalist, he told her that it had all been her own fault. That it required just that pushing and struggling to send the life fluid into the veins of the wings, and that her mistaken kindness in shortening the struggle, had left the wings lifeless and colorless.”
“The Christian Secret of a Happy Life”
(If you are interested in reading the book, it is really and incredible book that makes you dig down deep and think, you can find used copies but make sure that you do not get a newer abridged version because you will really miss out.)
By: Hannah W. Smith
1875

I feel like this is where I stand…with scissors in hand. Will I cut the cocoon open because it is easier, faster and it is what the world accepts as timely and good? Or will I lay the scissors aside being patient and allowing the butterfly to struggle and fight that its wings might fly full of color in its own unique time?

Some friends and I had the honor of hosting a shower this weekend for a Mama to be. My friend who often says that she is not crafty came with these little happy pom poms to hang and place around the table. I had seen them before but decidedly classified them in my head as way to hard and time consuming to make, after watching her put them together though I have declassified them and decided that they are doable. They just seem to make you so happy. They are still hanging up at our house and show no sign of coming down any time soon because they just make you smile!

We have some really creative friends who come up with really FUN ideas! Just for instance last night we gathered for our small group Christmas party and as dinner winded down and we moved to the family room to be more comfortable this large stack of pictures appears as if from nowhere. We notice some shuffling of the pictures and there are many confused glances and smiles. Next thing you know we are playing the worlds largest game of Memory with almost 200 pictures. The fun part was that they were all pictures of us together. It was really sweet to play a fun and crazy game and relive some really fun times that we have had together over the past four years.
I confessed from the beginning of the game that I am really good at Memory games that are made for ages 2-5 but over that not so much. We played with two teams last night and it was really helpful as you need a lot of minds to remember a board that large. It was also a little tricky as some pictures were the same people but at a little different angle. Very FUN! Definitely give gigantic Memory a try you will have a blast!