Drought Busting

The good news is that it is raining...and raining. The bad news is that we have an undesired moat forming around the front of the house. I don't even want to think about the crawl space as earlier this winter I discovered that our pump had stopped working and just have not been very motivated to work on that yet.

My original "To Do" List looked something like this:
1. Clean off front porch - the warm spring-like temps has resulted in the outside children dumping a lot of their paraphernalia as they move in and out of the house. If not remedied soon we will be that house in the neighborhood.
2. Go to store and buy new cell phone card - mine expired earlier this week and I just forgot about it. Tells one how much I use the thing.
3. Go to grocery store and pick up the two items I needed to make Mary's special request of stroganoff for dinner tonight.
4. Have our 'project' period for school today - today we were going to make dye using onion skins and dye some spare yarn I have. Unfortunately this project also requires a period of drying time for the yarn.

So, have I mentioned that it is raining. Not just a gentle, soothing spring rain. But, torrential "the skies have opened" type of rain. What ended up happening today:

Mary has been so very anxious to try out recipes from her cookbook I found at the used book shop on Wednesday that she banished me from the kitchen and made "eggs in a nest" for breakfast. They were very tasty. She really is a very handy cook.

We did go out to the store, but with the rain I decided we had to be content with ONE store to get everything - Walmart. I don't necessarily hate Walmart, I just really would rather shop other places. But today it fit the bill. So we wandered for an hour or so adding things to the cart, and I did remember the things I needed to get. That is a success for me.

I came home and there was a phone call from my mom that she and my step-father had decided to cut their trip short and were on the way home, could they stop by for lunch. I did a mad rush clean up of all the things we had just left 'as they were' on our way out of the house earlier.

We had a nice lunch and an all too short visit with my parents. The kids were so wound up seeing them again after what seems like a really long time. Everybody it seemed had something to share with Mamaw.

They left, Robbie went down for his nap and I put Little Einsteins on for Emily to watch and she promptly fell asleep. Watching the children sleep and the rain fall made me realize how tired I was. I started the stroganoff in the crockpot and laid down on the sofa. The older kids were content; Katie had her new set of makers and Mary had a new computer game to figure out. I had a nice nap until the parade of school kids arrived.

Needless to say very little on the "To Do" list was done. We've had fun, rested - what a rainy Friday should be. Later tonight I'll pull out some card games and Mary will read to daddy or I - and we will call it a day.

I mentioned above about going to a used book shop earlier this week when Mary got a new cookbook. I found some awesome additions for our library:
This is a collection of childhood biographies, mainly composers but one is of Picasso. I picked up every one they had.
These are small country guide books put out by Highlights. The copyright is 1996, but as it is mainly general info and pictures they should still be usable for our country studies. Mary, Katie and I have already decided that next year we are going to do "Country" unit studies for Social Studies. They have chosen: China, Japan, Greece and Italy.

Mary wants to do some more baking today - hot choc chip cookies. Mmmm, I think that sounds very good on a rainy evening.

Peace,
Amy