May Play!

What lovely weather we have had!! Well, of course the last few days it has just been raining and pouring on us. sheesh! However, on one particularly gorgeous evening N & I took a walk. I took the camera and shot this picture of the sky.




Hawk-i paid for J to have a hearing test done; we have wondered for years if bad hearing could be the/a reason Justus is so mumbly in his speech. We learned that day that it is most certainly NOT; his hearing is BETTER than normal. *sigh* Here is Justus getting set up for his hearing test.






Lilac season here has come and gone. *sigh* I like lilacs very, very much, but learned this year that Jeremy doesn't particularly.... I guess I won't bring into the house a bouquet of lilacs this big in future years. (blink!)



Natasha put together this bouquet for her dresser! She used some additional flowers for hers, including flowers off a bush in the back yard which we are thinking might be azaleas.




Our platform birdseed feeder has introduced us to two new birds in the last couple weeks! The gray catbird and (gasp!) the Baltimore oriole (male & female)!!

Jeremy was *finally* asked to officiate a wedding!!! It will be in September. So far we have two weddings to attend this year, two weeks apart!

We have been doing some yard work. I'm not going to garden this year, except for maybe planting some flower seeds. Instead, I'm going to use the available time, energy, and finances to do a first year of canning. I thought I would do some canning last year, but it didn't turn out that way. I do have one food storage tip to share that I recently learned. See, it always frustrates me when mushrooms are on sale on the Grocery Game because I would *like* to stock up, but they are good for so few days that we don't use them before they go bad. I researched freezing mushrooms and read that the best way to freeze them is to saute them, but not to the point of being soft), and then freeze them up to 2 months for use in casseroles and soups. I froze them in a zip-top freezer bag after spacing them out to a single layer, and our family has been very pleased with the results!! So far we have used some of the frozen mushrooms in spaghetti sauce and some on a Wildtree pizza (whole wheat crust mix, 'Rockin' Red Bell Pepper Spread, etc. ... YUM), and the mushrooms have been PERFECT!!

A few weeks ago we had the privilege of spending the evening baby-sitting Charlotte (18 mo.) at her house while Mike & Ann's had a rare date night!! Charlotte has a special place in our hearts because she reminds Jeremy and me ssso much of Natasha at that age. :) We had a really lovely time, and when the children and I took Charlotte to the park (Jeremy had to stay inside b/c we didn't have a key to let ourselves back in!) I was so thankful I had my camera!! :) Everything was so pink, blue, and greeeeen! [Iowa is rrrrreally good at GREEN.]






(This picture makes me laugh because Justus looks like he positively *flung* his leg out there! LOL! Action shots can look so WEIRD!)

















At Charlotte's bedtime, after N & I bathed her, Jeremy was The Rocker. She pointed up her finger at him, so he kissed it. :)




Annnnnnnnd (drum roll please), the biggest news of all is that Justus has glasses now!! I think maybe I haven't blogged about this at all, but the eye doctor said he was at high risk of having his right eye go lazy, so she gave him a high-power prescription to 'train' both his eyes, but especially his right eye; the Rx for the right eye is a full diopter stronger than the one for his left, a noticeable difference. A few months down the road we will have a follow-up appointment to see how this is working; she said often the eyes improve so much over such a short period that a new prescription is needed. -wow- It's so, so strange that all this time we'd been wondering about his hearing, which was fine, and never at all caught a clue that his vision might be compromised; only the cursory Driver's License Office-type 'eye check' at a Well-Child Check-Up raised the red flag that got us concerned. [I shudder to think what the situation would be if we'd waited even longer.... :*( ]






N & J like to do their Bible reading time together on the newly-cleared floor of their closet. :) [They purged a BUNCH of toy-type stuff from their lives on this last quarterly 'Kids Purge Day' -- woah, it was almost sad ... like a completely unexpected rite of passage. eek.]





The Johnsons, a wonderful church family of fellow homeschoolers, gave us some hand-me-down roller blades for N & J! They only 'just barely' fit our children's feet, so we have to get as much use as we can out of them ASAP. :) It's a slow-go, tho'. (lol - funny sentence)



Here's an effort at a video from the new camera using a new operating system on the computer. [Ohmygoodness, I think it WORKED!!!!! I might start taking a zillion videos to share!!]




One Sunday afternoon N & J asked if they could do the 'cornstarch and water fun'. :) This picture also reminds me to mention that N has decided to grow out her bangs. We figured that by her birthday they'll be about chin-length, so ... we.shall.see. (There it comes again!! "We.shall.see," is my theme phrase of the week. LOL!) We all agreed that what she needs most is some SUN on that 'five-head' of hers (like her daddy's -- not a typical 'forehead', get it? The high hair line! lol)



In other breaking news, Natasha will be attending her first week of Bible camp the second week of June. She is thrilled out of her boots. Mama, of course, doesn't feel quite the same. *sigh* eeeeeeeeek!!!!!!!!! All our research leaves us *rather* comfortable with the situation, and we are 100% certain it will be an extremely excellent experience (ex-ex-ex) for her, but ... this is the first time she'll be away from us for this long, away from all family. -wwwwwwwoah- (big breath) I can't wait 'til it's over.