Digging With Friends

What's more fun than digging in the dirt?

Certainly none of the kids with us a few days ago would disagree.

We spent the cool and breezy day at Spring Villa Park. The purpose: to celebrate a birthday and dig for quartz!

I should mention that when I told my husband where we had been that day his response was swift. "You do know there are major sinkholes out there don't you?"

Ok, so I did see the signs posted at the entrance that said "Danger: Sinkholes in the Area." I tried to convince myself it didn't mean sinkholes as I understood sinkholes. Maybe it meant large holes in the ground.

Nope. It meant the kind of holes that could completely swallow up an entire area. And my husband, who doesn't get worked up about much, made it abundantly clear.

So while we had a lot of fun, I think we'll find somewhere else to dig next time around.

Reading Through The Winter

Who am I kidding? The title to this post makes it sound like we've been holed up inside trying to stay warm.

HA!

There may have been a couple of cold days so far this winter, but it's been rainy and mild here in the Southeast.

Reading is a huge part of our daily lives, and we read in all kinds of weather in any season.

During our morning read aloud time I've introduced Shakespeare through Charles and Mary Lamb's collection of Shakespeare stories for young children. In case you didn't know this, Shakespeare is not a fast read, so we have been working our way through this for about two months. The first few stories (each is about 12-13 pages long), I would read in their entirety. The rest I've broken up into two or three parts.

We've also ventured into some classic Winnie the Pooh tales through Audible.

We are currently listening to "The Railway Children" each morning during breakfast.

I spent January and February with these three novels:

"Longbourn" is basically the Downton Abbey story of Pride and Prejudice. It's hard to like the Bennets much when reading like this.

"Crazy Rich Asians" is a total guilty pleasure read. Designer names abound, so much so that toward the end I was almost ready to chuck the book if I had to endure one more name-dropping episode.

"Quiet Dell" is not for the faint of heart. It's a fictional account of a true and horrific crime that occurred in the 1930s. Luckily, the reader is spared most of the gory details and deals in the before and after of the crime.

Inside Out

Mattie is a huge fan of Pixar's film "Inside Out."

So much so that she watched it once a day for 24 days straight. We've all breathed a collective sigh of relief that she has taken somewhat of a break from her daily habit. I think it's been almost a week since she last asked me to play the movie.

In the midst of the "Inside Out" watching days, she talked a lot about emotions. She spent a lot of time asking questions like:
"Mom, are you happy?"
"Mom, are you sad?"
"Mom, are you disgusted?"
"Mom, are you afraid?"
"Mom, are you mad?"

or

"Mom, which one is your favorite?" (Disgust and Sadness)
"Jack, which one is your favorite (First Fear then Joy)
"Dad, which one is your favorite?" (Anger)
"Mom, do you know which one is my favorite?" (Fear)

And for several weeks there was "Inside Out" inspired art. She wanted to paint each emotion, plus Bing-Bong (he's pink) and Riley (she's orange).

We did some abstract shapes, and she decided we could only use the colors associated with the emotions expressed in the movie.

I got into the spirit one day with some dot artwork using the colors of the emotions. I think I titled it something like "Drops of Emotions."

We even had the soothing background music, if you can call it music, that appears on the menu screen after the movie is over playing in the background while we painted.

It was actually quite therapeutic!