{pretty, happy, funny, real}

Pretty

Even storm clouds can be pretty (when they’re miles away and not right on top of you, of course).

Happy

Sleepy Baby, on a drive to the farmstand to pick up even more strawberries this week.

Funny

 

TRIBBLES EXIST!!!!

Actually, it’s a neighbor’s dog’s toy that washed into our drive during the rain last week, but hey, if you take away the tag it looks like a drenched Tribble.

Real

Saving the best for last:

May 31, 2003

Today is our 9th Wedding Anniversary.

“If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.”

–Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear and Loving Husband

{pretty, happy, happy, real}

Pretty

Found in the front yard after a thunderstorm.

Happy

We finally got our first batch of strawberries from the farm market stand!  I did not have any lack of helpers–or should I say snackers?

Happy x 2

When my parents came down they brought this little wooden kitchen set that Mom found at a garage sale for $3 (!!!).  It has been the Toy of the Week and it’s so nice to have a proper spot for all our Melissa & Doug foodstuffs.

Real

My new dryer arrives today.  I am so happy.  I appreciate the nostalgia of hanging clothes on the line as much as anyone, but nevertheless a working dryer will be most welcome!  At the risk of airing a First World complaint, my old dryer broke over a month ago.

Meanwhile….
Hello and welcome to those who are stopping by from Elizabeth’s review on In the Heart of my Home.  It has been such fun “meeting” so many new people and catching up on those I already knew.  And thanks to all who helped put Joy in the Ordinary on the top 25 Religious Fiction purchases in both Fiction and Romance categories on Kindle yesterday.  I’m humbly grateful.

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

School’s out!  We finished up last Friday–just in time for two days of rain, our first family-wide round of summer colds, and a power surge that knocked out our computer!  Yay!

So, I can’t do much this week since I’m scared to death to download pictures off my phone while the computer is recovering.  I have a lovely video on there of Rascal reciting poetry in front of his friends at the homeschool co-op.  This was a major event for him since he shares my love for public speaking (we’d rather hit our hands with hammers).  Anyway, I don’t want to lose it, so I’m guarding my phone like crazy.  It’s getting to the point where I’m about to call the phone “my Precious.”  Ok, maybe not that far.

Pretty Happy.

Piling into the new hammock!  The record amount of family members in the hammock was 6 of 8.  That didn’t last long.  The kids are nuts about this thing.  They pretend it’s a boat and have many adventures.  It even got rather musical one day when Dinosaur began singing songs from Pirates of Penzance–at least until he noticed I was trying to film him.

Pretty Happy Funny

Miss Munchkin’s Mischief Mug.  She’s smirking because this was the day she flat out refused to allow me to put the tray on her high chair (she’s buckled in),  so instead of arguing the point with her, I pushed her chair up to the table.  I had dinner on, after all.  She was pretty pleased.

Pretty Funny

Root Beer bottle “swordfight”!  Lasted all of five minutes.

Pretty Real

OOPS!

Don’t get complacent.

Make sure your computer is on a surge protector.

Make sure your backup drive is in good condition.

Otherwise your computer may glitch out on you during a random power surge.  And then you’re left wondering what do you have left…. We knew this, but we laxed off.

Eight point five years of digital pictures.  Sunshine and Miss Munchkin never got their hold-in-your-hand baby albums made–the pictures were on the computer.

I’m still wondering how many pictures we get back.  That means more to us than anything else on this thing.  We seem to have images saved of everyone’s gchat picture and even Netflix titles that we never saw–that were on the screen at some point.  That’s mildly freakish.  But it remains to be told yet whether we have all of our pictures back and whether they are larger than the thumbnail picture above.

And I am going to spend a week making hold-in-your-hands REAL albums as soon as I can.

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

I utterly forgot to do this last week–not that we lacked pictures to post or things to write about, but mainly because I forgot what day it was!

Pretty

Beautiful Baby in the morning sunlight.

Happy

Crazy kiddos and a sprinkler.

Funny

Oh, this adorable face.  Yes, that’s a doll she’s holding.

Real

I mentioned in a previous post how my husband and son brought home three cakes from a wedding reception.  Every table had its own individual cake and one of the three that made it to our house after the reception site was cleaned up happened to be a perfectly uncut chocolate cake.  It remained perfect for half the week while we made our way each dessert time through the other two.  Then, one of the boys could not resist temptation.

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

Pretty

Our Lady’s statue was placed in a new spot in our yard, just in time for the peonies!  I’d love to see a rosebush behind the statue…. Just thinking…..  We moved the statue because this little flowerbed, premade for us by previous owners, actually had flowers in it.  Unlike my attempts at flower-gardening around her previous spot.

Happy

My temporary yarn bowl!

And the sunshiney yellow washcloth-in-progress for my sister (a belated anniversary present, one she knows she’s going to get because I had her choose the yarn).  I never thought I’d use a yarn bowl, mainly because most of my knitting is done
“on the run,” but this candy dish (cleaned) fit the bill one day and I’ve been stashing my project in it ever since.

Funny

  While I was working at the kitchen counter, big sister gave Miss Munchkin a nearly empty bowl of applesauce.  Miss M loved it.

Real

My real confession is that none of my bookshelves are exactly as I could wish them to be.  I have a nebulous plan for organizing them, and hope to spend part of my summer in that project.  However, some shelves desperately needed assistance before summer….

OH! THE HORROR!

Luckily I had a guardian angel moment and remembered where I’d kept the plastic bins I nab at Target every August for moments like these…

There, I can breathe now.  The labeled bins are actually alphabetized, so the kids can look by title for their book (i.e. Hedgie Blasts Off is in the H-I bin).  The unlabeled ones are seasonal books (Autumn, Christmas, Spring) and then two bins of science/nature books, some early-readers, and the green John Deere book bin.

Of course, I still have to clean off the top of the shelf, but at least some margin of sanity is restored.

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

We took off the last half of Easter Week to have a Spring Break Staycation.  Haus Meister took some vacation time and we stayed home (except for runs to the grocery store and hardware store, of course) and had a very relaxing time.  I almost didn’t want to take the break–wanted to plug right on toward finishing the school year (we have 3.5 weeks to go).  However, that was nonsense and I’m glad we took the time off.  I didn’t get as much knitting done as I hoped but I had high ambitions and got a set of “patriotic” washcloths finished–red, white, and blue–which are just needing me to sit down and photograph.  But lately I’m addicted to the quick instant camera in my pocket (also doubles as a phone), so ideally I’ll get to the big camera again soon…

Pretty

Yesterday was my sister and brother-in-law’s 3rd Wedding Anniversary, so I thought I’d post the picture of Princess with her Aunt.  Princess was only about six months old at the time of the wedding.  My sister’s name means “princess” so I like to think of this as the Princesses Picture.

Happy

Dinosaur has a tractor buddy in his birthday-sharing sister.  Sunshine has been enjoying watching the All About John Deere series plus the John Deere Action series, and recently she noticed to her joy that we also have a plethora of John Deere books!!!!

Funny

Pantry raiding, anyone?  I keep forgetting about that bottle of gatorade!  It was put on the bulk shelf and obviously unless its in a giant sack, that’s the point of no return…unless the baby finds it….

Real

Have time? Have garage? Build Boat!

Haus Meister is working on an Annapolis Wherry Tandem rowboat from Chesapeake Light Craft.  It’s a beauty even at this stage.  Boating’s in the blood on his side of the family.  When Haus Meister was a teenager, his dad restored a 1960s Chris Craft (oh, I do hope I got that right) that he found neglected near someone’s dock.  Fortunately, Haus Meister’s project will be finished about seven years sooner than his dad’s.

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

Indescribably Beautiful

 That was the view from our church parking lot on Palm Sunday morning.

Happy

With all the projects I had on my plate this Lent, getting the book ready and also knitting some things for gifts and our etsy store (to be posted this weekend), I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make three matching Easter dresses for my girls.  Instead I settled on two new dresses, as Miss Munchkin is benefitting from her sisters’ largesse of hand-me-downs and wore a dress with smocked pinafore that my mother-in-law made for Princess when the latter was a year old.  So I asked my mother-in-law  if she’d be willing to make dresses if I provided the pattern and  material. She was all too happy to comply!  She’s a much better seamstress than I am anyway.  I’m great at 2-hour projects–it’s all I can manage in this season of life!  ;)  Anyway, the pattern is this one by Carina Gardner that I bought at the end of last summer but never got to use.  The material on Princess’ dress is the A is for Annabelle line from the Tasha Tudor Store and Sunshine is sporting a dress made from the One is One line also from the same.

Real Funny

I am going to boast in this one.  I, Haus Frau, Wrecker of Cakes and Failure at Icing, finally succeded in making one work!!!  Further, it was the infamous three-dimensional Lamb Cake that my family attempted to make every Easter and all but one year managed to have it 1) fall apart when the mold opened or 2) lose an ear or both or 3) lose it’s head.  I thought to try it for kicks and using this cake recipe and this icing recipe*, I managed to keep it in one piece until cutting.  And yes, I e-mailed my parents every hour to let them know it still stood.  They are glad I’m not on Twitter.

The peas and carrots are actually from Jelly Belly and are mellowcreme.  It’s an evil mind trick, really.  Sunshine had a few of these and then had some real vegetable peas in her aunt’s seven layer salad, and then spit out the vegetable in disgust. Great.

And someone was quite impatient for the official cutting of the Lamb cake.

All in all we had a most Happy Easter surrounded by family and extended family, and fun with cousins and more sugar than we need.  And more than we’re going to have next year, so here’s my reminder to myself:

DON’T EVER BUY FOUR POUNDS OF JELLY BELLIES AGAIN.

*did not use real corn syrup but the alternative.

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

 

Just a pretty picture and pretty thought today.

Yesterday I took a picture of this lovely flower blooming in the backyard.  It is the perfect color for Holy Week, no?

Moments after the picture was taken, I heard a small voice behind me.

DINOSAUR: “Mommy, the little fireman has something for you.  It’s a gift.”

And he shyly handed me the flower.

He’s not usually demonstrative like this.  I gave him a kiss and he smiled and ducked into a bush.

Have a blessed Holy Triduum everyone.  I’ll see you in Paschaltide.

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

Capturing Contentment in the Everyday…

We haven’t been idle around here, although the blog has been silent lately.  We’ve been outside!  The weather is fantastic!  Also, I’m furiously knitting a lovely set of dishcloths for a girl I once babysat every Saturday for five years–oh, about fifteen years ago.  She’s getting married at the end of April, and I would like to send it to her before then!  Before going on with this week’s {p.h.f.r}, I want to thank all of you again who left such kind and encouraging comments on last week’s post.

Thank you.

Pretty

The girls now have their pink room, and we re-hung the Tasha Tudor print over their beds again.

Happy/Funny

On April 3rd we celebrate Trooper’s 8th Anniversary of NICU Graduation, or the Day We were Launched Into Parenting.  119 days of him being in the hospital and a nurse on hand to answer every question, and then all of a sudden it was home with just the three of us.  I’ve never been more elated and nervous at the same time.

But hey, we all made it!  And look at him now — he’s our big guy playing Angry Birds Space and eating bread in his inimitable manner.

Funny

Well, she is funny.  What she thinks she’s doing in the LEGO box is something I can’t figure out.

Real Funny

Ok, if he doesn’t become a farmer, he’s going to run away and join the circus.  I haven’t figured this out yet either.

Funny

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

Capturing Contentment in the Everyday…

Happy, Real

It finally happened.  I had my “Jo March” moment.  You know that scene at the end of the 1994 movie when Winona Ryder’s character comes in the door with a basket and sees her manuscript lying on the kitchen table and starts shouting for the housekeeper: “Hannah, someone’s publishing my book!”?  Still with me?  Ok? Well, that was me today.  My book arrived.

It’s hard to describe how I felt at that moment.

Only I didn’t run around screaming for Hannah, perhaps because the kids were about and we don’t have a “Hannah” here.  Or perhaps it’s because I already did that last Friday when the book went online.

Pretty Funny

Dogwood picture for my Mom!

Baby now sits solo!

And I got new shoes…

Because the dogs got at the old ones.  And there’s Real for you, too.