In Memory of Sunny Days

The weather in Boise has been a little...schizophrenic. We've had some gorgeous weather, sunny, warm, almost hot -- but now it's all rainy. And not just a little late spring shower. As I type this, the rain is loudly drumming a beat n the skylight above me. Not cool, Mother Nature. Not cool a 'tall. To get my mind off the grey clouds, I thought I'd talk about all the nice things we did when it was sunny.

I planted my first garden a few weeks ago!

I put in some peas and tomatoes in ground and strawberries, carrots and green onions in pots around the patio. I was so excited last week because a real, true strawberry was starting to grow! It was little and red and looked so sweet.

Then I went out one day to water...and it was gone. You know who took it? THE SQUIRRELS. Those little...buggers and I are going to have issues this summer. First off, they keep digging in my dirt. The garden dirt, the dirt in my pots, leave my dirt alone! And you know what they bury? Peanuts! The worst thing you could bury in our yard, considering both Caleb and I are allergic to them. And now they ate my strawberry. The first edible thing I've ever grown with my own two hands. I put some netting over my strawberries and carrots so hopefully that keeps the little rodents out. Caleb and I were enjoying the sun we got a glimpse of for a few days. We have a nice, big driveway so we've been doing a lot of chalk drawing on the concrete.

It's a great way to work on Caleb's letter recognition and phonics. He's getting pretty good! He can identify all the letters and knows quite a few of the sounds -- mostly the ones that kind of sound like their names like B, D, M, and Z (Zamzow's helped us with that one).

We played a game where I wrote a bunch of letters on the driveway and then asked Caleb "Which letter makes this sound?" or "Which letter does the word 'dog' start with?" We'd sound it out together and then he would go run and stand on whatever letter it was.

It was fun and he was learning -- love it! Another day we made a tin foil river.

I saw the idea on Filth Wizardry and knew we had to try it. Caleb had a blast floating his bottlecaps down the "river" and it kept him occupied for a long time which, no lie, is a big plus because that means I get to do my own stuff. I think next time we're going to try glueing on some masts and sails out of sticks and fabric.

Hopefully this weather will perk up soon. I've got all these fun things I want to do with Caleb but we need some sun! I'm gonna go do a sun dance.