Oh May, I Love You!

I always enjoy May! The hope of summer is so close you can taste it, and everything is in bloom, and the sun is shining! It's a happy month. :)

See our kids riding on their bikes? I took these pics with my cell phone!

Josh and I just got back from San Diego, celebrating our 15 year wedding anniversary, and we had SO much fun!! I'll do a separate post on our trip, but boy was it a great time away! And thank you to Dad and Janet for staying here with the kids!

Since we've been home my time has mostly been divided between my grandparent's property we bought, the swimming pool (lessons x3), and our garden. I've been avoiding house work because it's so sunny outside and I'm still in vacation mode. ;) And the garden doesn't feel like work because it's mainly just for fun.

For Mother's Day Josh treated me to a full day getting the garden ready, and then taking me and the kids out to a sushi dinner (my favorite!). We also tried Benny's Donuts next door to the sushi restaurant and they were yummy! Selah also got a surprise that weekend: our friends who farm had Ameraucana chick eggs and we had a broody chicken, so they surprised Selah and brought them over to let our chicken sit on them, and hopefully we'll have chicks soon. Selah is so excited because she's always wanted a chick, and the Ameraucana chickens lay blue eggs.

A love note from Ben:

Jude and I recently found my Granddad's old corn seeds in a gardening box. We soaked them and planted them and we're hoping and praying they sprout!

Post swim lessons, checking on our seedlings. :)

We have about half of everything in that we're going to plant this year. We still have yet to plant squashes, pumpkins, and beans.

The driveway, after walking the garbage cans down. This rose bush is so pretty!

The moon and Jupiter, early one morning as the sun was coming up.

Grandma Chris joined us at swim lessons one day when Josh was home. The kids liked showing off for her. ;)

Selah waiting her turn to jump in and swim freestyle.

The warm weather has had the kids playing in the water a lot these days. This is our newest chicken, Leia, and it took Selah no time at all to warm her up to riding in the bike basket. ;)

It still feels weird to call my grandparent's property our property, even though we bought it and closed on it back in February. I'm sure I'll get use to calling it our property, but in my mind it will probably always be their home.

The back creek is so pretty with everything turning green.

We had all of the fruit trees pruned and it created a lot of work for us to pick up all of the branches and haul them to the burn pile in our field. Papa so kindly let us use his tractor and trailer.

The deer enjoying the pruned branches.

The backyard of one of the houses on the property (my Grandparent's house), where the creek is. I think it's so pretty. They have always had it looking so nice each summer.

My mom has been working hard helping my grandparents move and get settled at her home, where they are building an addition. It's been neat to have so much time together as a family as we've all been at my Grandparent's home, working together. And it will be neat to gather at their new home too!

I've been listening to a podcast recently that I really enjoy, called Your Morning Basket. It's based on the Charlotte Mason style of schooling. It basically says to start your day with the things in school that you wish you could get to, but always end up getting cut. So we've been doing that and loving it. We'll play quick games for things like multiplication memorization, and spelling, and we've been doing art, and we read a couple chapters every morning of a book. It's become my favorite time of day with the kids, before we move onto math and the big things.

Alright, off to do those dishes that I've been happily neglecting all morning... and afternoon.