Joyous April and May 2019

April and May were some pretty nice months.  During April, we celebrated spring with a nice meal and dessert, and I took Elizabeth and Olivia to Elizabeth's best friend's birthday party at their school's cafeteria.  We enjoyed walks to see the new spring flowers.  I enjoyed looking at the flowers near the highway when I waited for the kids' bus to come in the afternoons, too. 

 

I made tiramisu for the first time, for our spring feast, and it was so good!

Eating lunch with Trusten, as I often did during my psych clinical observation hours in the middle school

Carissa went alone to visit her family sometime in April.  I found myself getting a night all to myself when the kids were gone.  I got some beans and rice from Taco Bueno and ate them in the Fresh Market parking lot before going inside to purchase some tiramisu from the deli for my dessert, which I ate when I got back home.  

Carissa texted me all the images from a book she had written and illustrated when she was in the second grade.  It was a wonderful story, and I learned that she also was very save-the-earth, anti-litter, even at that age, just as I was.  I'm sharing the front and back covers here.

"[L]oves to do math grids and loves to read books."  Class A nerd, lol!  I love it.

My favorite!  I love when it's time to pick wild daisies!

In May, Carissa, the kids, and I went for a walk around Lake Atalanta in Rogers on Mother's Day after eating at Taco Bueno.   I graduated Crowder College with an Associate of Arts in Psychology-Autism Option, along with prerequisites to enter a teacher education program for my bachelor's degree.  The kids finished the school year.  At the end of the month, we celebrated Trusten's 12th birthday.

Olivia drew this beautiful picture.

I read this aloud to the family.

Elizabeth wants to be a firefighter.  I also have a school worksheet where she wrote about wanting to be one.

Well, that's it for April and May.  June and July coming up soon!  Until then...

March 2017 Spring Delights

Outdoor Spring Wonders

I was so happy that my lilac bush bloomed well for the first time in years.  It had either not bloomed at all or barely did and would be ruined by frost. Even one year when it partially bloomed, the tiger swallowtails never came.  Their numbers, I think, decreased greatly after the two terrible droughts we had a few years 

A Delicious Treat

I finally got around to making the chocolate tart that calls for avocados.  It may sound gross, but it's very good, and the smooth texture is amazing. 

Spring Feast

We had a feast to celebrate spring.  Nathan cut up a lot of fruit and grilled some steaks.  I made two dips—rotel cheese (and no, I do NOT use Velveeta) and spinach-artichoke, punch, dish-baked potatoes, and asparagus.  

Everything was so delicious!

A Venture Taken in the Winter

I can't remember when I took these pictures, but I used Nathan's phone and later sent them to myself, and they are labeled May, I think, which is weird, because I didn't send them in May.  I sent them probably the same day.  I imagine this took place in January or February.  Nathan remembered an area he saw when hunting and wondered whether someone piled the stones deliberately to hide something.  (We were all hoping for treasure.)  It was so very cold that day.  It was a letdown that there was nothing there.

I wish I'd have taken a picture of the rocks in their original place before Nathan and William started digging.

I guess that is all I have to share from March.  I have a lot of pictures out of order.  I am regretting every updating my OS on my laptop.  I hate, hate, hate some of the features.  iPhoto is all gone, and...well, I'll just say things aren't the same, and I'm aggravated.  I found more pictures of the trip the kids and I took on the day we visited the pond after I made the January post.  They were stuck elsewhere. Anyway...

Until next time...