End of April

 

Our pool is, once again, breeding 18 million tadpoles. Those dark spots? Tadpoles.  Our local tree frogs LOVE the pool.  For now.  We are still a month out from opening the pool so we are probably going to have a lot of little frogs.

Kevin's mom kindly gave the kids an Easter House to decorate.  They did.  It was beautiful. Then they ate it.  Why waste food, right?

You may remember that we adopted two little tiny kittens a year ago or so.  They were very small and needed to be bottle fed for a week or so.  Jet is on the left in this picture. The cat on the right, with Jet's arm around her neck, is Cocoa.  Opal, Jet's sister, is living with Naomi and Lydia. The funny thing is Opal went to live with the big girls (she was not doing well with annoying dogs coming over from a neighbor's house, to the point that she wasn't eating well) and then Cocoa showed up and Jet adopted her.  It is adorable.

Naomi sold us one of her tablets with an Apple pencil. The kids are ecstatic.  They are drawing a lot.  Have I ever mentioned how artistic they are???

I wrote "Cats Need Water" and Rose wrote the other things.  Obviously she is not spelling well. Yet.  I am thankful she is my 9th kid because I am totally mellow about the phonetic spelling.  I know from experience that she will naturally improve as she reads and writes.

Easter and Other Stuff

 

More than half of us went to church on Easter.  We used to avoid Easter because we had so many children and Easter services were jammed and the kid's church and nursery were jammed and we were stressed.

But our new church is huge for the size of the congregation.  So it was fuller than usual, but still plenty of space.

It was a good sermon. Jesus is risen!  Our Savior lives!

Then we came home and had an egg hunt followed by an Easter feast.  Naomi and Lydia graciously filled the eggs and Naomi hid them. The kids were happy, especially Rose, who adores egg hunts!

Spring has sprung and Kevin and our sons went out and did a bunch of chopping and carrying of random branches.  Then we had a bonfire. It was fun. No marshmallows or anything. Just the joy of flames and heat!

Rose wanted to make cupcakes for the family.  Miriam helped her.

Then Rose made a cute little lunch with bowls full of snacky things.

Mocha thinks that Moonbeam's flank is a nice pillow.

Mostly it was a good week. I still feel melancholy about the little girl that died a few weeks ago.  So sad.

I had a terrible nosebleed two nights ago and then again the next morning.  It was really hard to get it stopped. It would stop and then start back up.  Ugh. So on Thursday I took it easily and drank lots of water. I haven't had a nosebleed in more than 24 hours so...yeah!!

This weekend is busy. Miriam works tomorrow and 3 of us are going to help at our church's food pantry.

Kevin and I have been talking his post retirement life, which is still a ways off but not too crazy far off.  The government is nice that way; if you work 30 years, there are significant benefits regarding annuities and fun stuff like that.

It will be nice when he retires. I know some people get bored but Kevin won't get bored.  We have all these kids, for one thing :-). 

April 6th

Plushies in a pyramid

Plushies made by...

Rose.  With some help from her older sisters.

Cute purple and pink cats made by Sarah

We have a new cat. Of course we do.  Because we live in the country.

Rose wanted to make a feast for lunch today, the highlight of which was cupcakes.

She also filled bowls with various snacky things.  It was a good lunch for the kids.

 

April 1st

 26 years ago, Kevin asked me to marry him!

Yes, on April Fool's Day. I did not think it was a joke.  Even then, I knew when he was joking and when he was not. Also, he wouldn't make that kind of joke.

So yes, 26 years!  He was 26 when we married so half of his life has been either engaged or married to me!

(Our engagement was short -- 3 months!)

I am an older woman by a year, so in a year I will have spent half my life married or engaged.

We released a new book yesterday, the Fire at Longbourn. It is doing well so far. That makes me happy!

I am writing another one, of course because that is what I do.  I am struggling a bit with the plot.  It is not flowing yet. But I'll get there.

Mostly this week has been great but I have to confess that I am feeling quite sad right now. A friend from work lost her 3 year old granddaughter a week ago.

I don't know details but it was a horrible accident where the child got tangled up in a hanging macramé chair or something and strangled.

Every parent I know has lost track of a small child at one time or another.  99.9% of the time, there is no harm done.  But my friend's daughter and husband are living the nightmare that comes when that 0.1% happens.

I remember well that Rose, who was a runner, once took off when I was distracted while we are visiting Young's Dairy, a local ice cream place which is a large expansive site with goats and other animals to pet and feed.

By the time I caught up with her, she had almost gotten to the parking lot.

Angela fell into a tub of water once and I was right there, but I had left the bathroom a minute earlier to run and get some towels. I didn't realize she could climb the step that goes to our tub. I plucked her out immediately and no harm was done but what if she had fallen in when I was out of the room for thirty seconds?

So yes, we all lose track of our kids and usually nothing bad happens.

But it did a week ago and my heart breaks for the little girl's family.

So yeah, I am grieving for them. But am thankful for good things in our lives.