In preparing a kids craft project for Father’s Day I enjoyed going through the multitude of father-daughter photos on our hard drives. Here are some of our family favorites to treasure and make into art!
More on that soon.
What a loving, fun father! Those are some great times.
We so enjoyed our girls road trip through Northern California up to Oregon to visit my aunt.
We’re now in recovery mode, so we’re taking the rest of the week off from the blog. We’ll see you next week when we’re feeling more rested!
I love a good road trip.
Load up the car, head out for a long weekend, experience something new: count me in!
I’m sure you’ll find it absolutely shocking that I haven’t been on one in, oh, about four years, imagine that. What with the whole pregnancy and parenting thing, we just haven’t gotten around to it.
This weekend we’re throwing caution to the wind, shaking it up and taking a road trip. A mother-daughter road trip through Northern California up to Southern Oregon to visit my aunt.
We’re leaving Daddy at home for some very needed R&R with a clean house and a pantry stocked full of gluten-laden treats. He’s under strict orders to live it up and, um, clean up after himself (got that, honey!) since my gluten-intolerant ass is leaving the premises.
Now the question remains, did we forget anything? Because I don’t think we packed enough stuff.
We haven’t even gotten the luggage, cooler and purse in the car yet. Oh, and the kid! Can’t forget her!
Enjoy your weekend and we’ll see you back here on Tuesday.
Over and out! The girls are heading out…
Remember this darling nest in the wind chime on our front porch?
A birds nest by our front door in the sugar bowl of our wind chime sounds so idyllic. Beautiful, bitty eggs and the opportunity for an incredible learning experience for our daughter. Behold, a rarely seen stage in the bird life cycle!
Well, the eggs have hatched and it’s not a pretty sight.
We’ve discovered that the, well, obvious downside to a birds nest is the tremendous amount of poop that accomulates outside the nest… i.e. on my windchime!
THANKS VERY MUCH BIRDS! I’m gonna send you a cleaning bill when you vacate the premises.
Plus, those cute baby birds? They’re loud. That’s not really a downside though. We all get really excited when we hear them chirping! Our daughter announces, they’re feeding!
Oh boy are they feeding and getting big fast. At four days old, they are now so large that they are starting to no longer fit inside the nest (that mama bird sure didn’t plan ahead in her nest site selection!). I love that they’re too big for the nest though because now they are popping up out of it, so we are starting to be able to see them. I love that cute feather fluff.
They are pretty darn cute.
If only their poop didn’t ruin my photo.
We have a back porch that we’ve never used.
In the two years we’ve rented this house, we’ve walked past the porch en route to the grill and stepped on the porch steps to water our shade-loving plants, and that’s it.
Clearly, our back stoop has been neglected. And, yes, those really are dead plants in the pots on the steps.
Our porch is parallel to the kitchen, so I realized that if we set up the porch as a toddler messy play area then I could work in the kitchen alongside our daughter, with the screen door open. It’s also nicely shaded and, being on the north side, remains cool all summer long. This also means that I don’t need to load up my daughter in sunscreen before sending her out to play, another bonus for a busy mom.
Of course, the toddler LOVED the idea of setting up an outdoor play space. She helped me sweep, wash and scrub the porch… removing several years worth of cobwebs and critters.
We replanted the shade-loving annuals for the steps on the porch with some of the flowers from my Mother’s Day Bouquet.
We set up a sand and water table, a HUGE upgrade to last years homemade version that the neighborhood cats just loved to visit. This table with a tight fitting lid is MUCH better. Plus, she gets much less wet and sandy since she’s standing up instead of sitting in the sand table. A big plus.
She loves it already. And I love that I can write blog posts at the kitchen table while she’s next to me playing. That’s the thing about small houses: I may be in another room but I’ll never be more than 20 feet away at all times. Here’s one instance when it’s a plus!
Here’s to many summer afternoons full of messy, creative play on our back porch!
