This past month we’ve spent a lot of time enjoying being out in God’s creation, enjoying spring and the fabulous weather that comes along with it.
Warning: This post will contain lots of pictures with trivial glimpse into our daily life.
We love bike riding. About 2 or 3 years ago we stumbled on what a great (read “free”) outing biking can be. The entire family can enjoy time in God’s creation, we get exercise and it’s just plan out fun. We took our first bike ride for 2012 on Memorial Day and it was so much fun. The best part for me was Stephen pulling the kid cart……two little kids get heavy pretty fast.
About a week before our first bike ride I started checking out Craigslist trying to find an inexpensive bike for Carlos, Jeremiah and Natalie. All three have grown so much in the past year that their current bikes were way past small…..Poor kids their knees were knocking on the handlebars. I found several options and Stephen went to look at the bikes. We ended up buying Natalie’s bike from Craigslist, but the bike Stephen looked at for Carlos was a disaster. The actual bike was NOT the bike in the photo. The bike in the posted photo was very nice looking, but the actual bike was a piece of junk. I was really disappointed…..not only that the bike didn’t work out, but that the people basically false advertised. Anyway, God was working in those details because on Saturday morning Stephen noticed an ad in the paper for a yard sale not far from our house and they listed bikes for sale as part of the ad. Stephen went to the yard sale and found a great bike for Carlos for $20……so we got a great bike and saved $30!! We are still in search of a bike for Jeremiah…..boys bikes are so much harder to find used…….probably because boys wear their bikes OUT.
Stephen has always wanted to run and so several months ago he started a running program call Couch to 5K. On May 19th Stephen completed his first 5k. I’m so proud of the hard work and determination he put into the running program. Exercising without a workout budding is SO HARD, but Stephen was faithful and did a great job running the race…..second place in his age division. My two little sisters, Elizabeth and Mary ran in the same race and won first and second place in their age division.
I have zero aspirations for running, though I have actually missed working out since we cancelled our Y membership a couple of months ago. Maybe I need to find my Pilates video……..
Jeremiah, Natalie and Ben…….my three middle children, who we call the “Middles” love playing outside. They’ve spent hour upon hour playing in our back yard. With most of those hours being spent making a tree house in our pine trees. Building tree houses resonates with me because I did the same as a kid. Just like my kids, my siblings and I took old boards and nailed them into the Maple trees in our front yard. Making those beautiful trees look like redneck trees. And now my kids have done the same, though thankfully our pine trees are in the back yard!!
Several weeks ago I purchased a beautiful hanging basket Impatient for my front porch. This flower is just beautiful. The blooms are so bright. And apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought so…..a tiny brown bird (I have no idea what kind she is)decided to build a nest in my plant. I was surprised and a little perplexed as to why she chose a plant in my very busy and loud front porch to build her nest and raise to her family. The kids and I peaked into the nest one afternoon after the mama had left to search for food. There were five specked eggs.
Last week the kids were playing on the porch after lunch and after a while I went out to clear away the dishes and I noticed that two chairs had been pushed together and a plastic table was sitting on top of the chairs…….the porch was littered with blossoms from my plant…….I knew someone was in BIG trouble! Sure enough, my “Middles” decided that the plant was not a safe location for the new babies, so they took the eggs out of the nest (dropping and cracking one) and moved them to a new nest in one of our Bradford Pear trees. They told me that the eggs would be “safer” and they liked the new nest better. I asked them, “how will the mama find her eggs since you’ve moved them?” The middles weren’t sure, but they were sure the new nest was “much better”. Very carefully I put the eggs back in “their”nest and thankfully the mama does not seem to know that her babies are world(or at least “yard”) travelers.
House of Smooches 