Purim Weekend

I thought I was finally on top of the blogging regularly and then life happened. Again. 😁I was down with a stomach bug or something for a few days, feel like it's taken over a week to get back to normal. 

These pictures are from a few weeks ago, the weather was beautiful, we took the kids on a walk which ended up at the reservoir throwing rocks (always) and then later that night we had our Purim party. 

Goofballs

Casey (our orange cat) came with us on our walk

The boys upped the ante, and were throwing big dirt clods.

Clara has become quite the rock collector.

Her face after I told her that her that she can't keep her rock collection in her room. 💔

Clara was Queen Esther

Ella was Bithia (Pharaoh's daughter that rescues Moses from the river)

Hamantaschen 

Sharon made 3 different kinds, I'll admit my favorite was the one with frosting.

The girls reading/ acting out the story of Esther.

The boys opted out of dressing up this year, but they were excited about shaking their groggers.

The week in photos...

For a construction update, this was where we were at earlier last week... looking into what will be the bathroom and closet area. Cary had finished most everything as far as plumbing so we were ready to install the tub.

We were taunted with what appeared to be a nice day, but if you walked outside, it froze your face off. This was a set of steps next to my rock wall, it suffered a casualty during a snow storm and someone clearing off sidewalks, the person who did it shall remain nameless, but I'm still very upset about this as it is not going to be easy to fix! 😜

It's spring, we are dealing with unpredictable weather, so it was kind of a common theme during the week. 😀

Aidan had a science fair!

Yay, it's over! 😉

This was a Ficus tree that I bought during college in a 3" pot during my fanatic houseplant phase... I gave it to Janille in 2008 when I got tired of moving hundreds of houseplants around every time we moved.  😄 (Good thing too, because we moved 3 more times after that) Janille was getting rid of it a little while ago, and so we took it back because I was feeling sentimental about it. I brought it over to our house to see if there was anywhere it would fit over here, and that's a no-go. This thing is over 8 ft tall now, this picture does not do it justice, it takes up a lot of room. 😏

Aidan and Ella had a piano recital, I'll post the videos at the end.

We had awful winds for two days straight 💩

and then hail and snow 

Inside, Cary got the tub installed. Yippee! 

Life

It really warmed up in the middle of February, just long enough to tease us with the idea of spring.

I even got out and worked in the yard a couple of days, moved some rose bushes, and trees around that needed to be transplanted. 

I want to do more, but the weather changed and being outside is no longer enticing...

I think it might be safe to say that the Italian Cypress did not make it through our winter. 😉😋

I won't give up on it yet, but evergreens do not recover from winter kill/ burn that easily. 

Storm is coming.

The nice thing is that we've gotten snow, but it only sticks around for a few hours.

Hyacinths

Usually in the spring you walk around looking for signs of life and do a happy dance, I was a little surprised to see these popping up in February! 

I can't decide if I should be excited or worried. 😐

Daffodils

Tulips

I'm wondering if the cats are going to let me put flowers in the pots this year...?😆

The kids throwing rocks on the frozen water... 

We drove up to what was formerly known as "Kenny's Mine" (to us).

Conversation I had with Aidan while he was playing a video game. 

We stopped at the gravel pit yesterday afternoon and who knew it would hold the kids attention for so long?!