what i've been doing

• making Easter dresses (well, okay, they are done)
• recovering from hosting the annual Easter Potluck dinner party
• spring cleaning
• laundry
• cheering on my son's baseball team about two nights a week
• making spring wardrobes for the girls
• finishing reading The Hidden Power of Kindness: A Practical Handbook for Souls Who Dare to Transform the World, One Deed at a Time
• working on being a wholly kind person
• enjoying the beauty in my new flower beds: bluebonnets, coreopsis, snapdragons, poppies, larkspur, sedum and many others
• starting my post-lent reading: That Distant Land: The Collected Stories (Port William) by Wendell Berry. Loving it!
• contemplating dresses for Sunshine's upcoming First Holy Communion and Rosebud's first harp recital
• chatting with my neighbor on the porch while the children scale the mountain of dirt in her front yard each evening
• learning to play my new guitar (playing Ode to Joy for the family makes me feel thirty years younger...literally.)
• planning a botany study
• nursing my meyer lemon tree and banana tree along with water and fertilizer and lots of encouraging words
• laundry (yes, I know that was already on the list)
• nuzzling with my already ten month old Baby O
• reading lots of The Big Alfie and Annie Rose Storybook'>Shirley Hughes to 3 1/2 year old Little Queen "pe-cause" Ms. Hughes is our most favorite authoress
• pondering summer travel plans and summer stay-at-home plans
• getting ready for my son to turn TWELVE years old!
• easing eagerly into the spring/summer menu...visiting old issues of MSL for inspiration
• teaching myself and my daughter to knit
• keeping my son at bay while I decide if we can really build a second chicken coop for our ten chicks or if we should just give some of the birds away
• slowing down to nurse the baby
• planning a strawberry picking expedition so we can make some fresh preserves
• serving two dinners each night...I think we have simultaneous growth spurts going on in the household
• researching grain mills and deciding that it is time we start making our own bread again
• enjoying the most beautiful season of the year, weatherwise
• setting goals and dreaming big