Cultivating Childhood

A quick snapshot of our life today. The front of our home is finally looking like spring has arrived.  Our lawn is even mowed! The kids and I went to Central Market and picked out some flowers to pot.  Button picked out the lovely "pink flowers" (a petunia hybrid).  While mommy picked out some chamomile and sweet peas.  We may not be doing a lot of gardening this year, but we can still put plants in pots.  We also have a bunch of herbs, tomatoes, strawberries and blueberry bushes in some pots in the backyard. Buddy picked out the Purple Superbells to grace our steps.  You may also spy our truck and tractor that gets lots of use in the dirt around our front bushes.  Our kid-sized gardening tools also make an appearance. Button loves to play with his bike.  He's usually sporting his helmet and scooting around on his Skuut balance bike. Buddy's been sick this week complaining that his mouth hurts.  Today, though, he seems to be better.  

Really, this is my last installment from our trip!  Maybe I'll actually get back to writing about stuff I'm thinking about and doing some park reviews again.  In the meantime, back to family news! Our last few days in SoCal were special with my parents.  We had some good times with Papa and Grandma at one of the local parks. From this park, there happens to be a trail that appeared to take us back to Grandma and Papa's house.  So, one day I had them drop us off and we would just walk home.  It was a good idea for the first bit, but then we went the wrong way and had to double-back.  I ended up taking turns carrying each boy on my shoulder on the way back, but we made it!  It was a beautiful walk though.  We enjoyed looking at snails, birds, and different plants.  We also had to walk though an old gas and steam engine (outdoor) museum which was very intriguing to the kids. Another day, we went to the beach.  We decided to take the

The weekend after Easter, we made a trip up to Orange County/Los Angeles to visit some of our friends.  We began our trip by renting our car and heading out directly for Pasadena.  But along the way, we first stopped for lunch at Chick Fil-A to meet up with my brothers on their lunch break.  It was good to get one more chance to see them.  (Sorry, Nate, we didn't manage to get a picture of you before you left). After our quick lunch, we battled the torrent of rain with thunder and lightening all the way up to Pasadena where my friend from high school, Kara, lives.  We had a nice evening catching up with her family and all four of our boys had a lot of fun together doing boyish things!  The next day, we went with them to Travel Town to see all the trains there.  Thankfully, the weather was back to its California norm making for a great day. I love this picture of us! On Saturday afternoon, we headed down to the Biola area to hang out with