Friday in the Sun

Fridays are really great days. The kids get out of school at 12:45 so we feel so luxuriously rich in time throughout the rest of the day. Today Emi had a violin lesson at 1 (the teacher was waiting on our doorstep as we pulled into the driveway from school! Oops!). After that we sat around for a while and ate some food and then headed outside to enjoy the weather. Caleb brought me this teeny flower for my little froggy vase:

It sorta looks like the frog is vomiting hot pink petals, but I still like it.

 He also wrote me probably the strangest note I've ever received:

Corrected as well as possible for spelling and grammar: "Dear Amanda, I hope you are having a good time. Are you playing a game? I love playing games with my kids. It was nice of me to give you this note, but it is over. Bye." He put it in the mailbox, so maybe he was pretending to be another adult? Or maybe he thinks of Emily, Elinor, and Jacob as his kids. One thing I think we can all agree on, though, is that it was nice of him to give me this note. Too bad it's over.

While we were playing outside we washed the car. It was tricky because it kept drying so quickly in our bright California sun. Don't worry, you Utahns and Iowans. I'm sure there are ways to enjoy -10 degree weather too! :) There was some shrieking and running and soaking with the hose involved. After we all changed our clothes we headed out to Home Depot where I thought Emily's head would explode from excitement. She's been reading this book about gardening pretty much nonstop for the last couple of days so she had definite ideas about what we needed to buy to get ready for our garden. We ended up with a few little trowels, a couple of shovels, some bricks to complete our border, some topsoil, and some sandpaper for an unrelated project. As soon as we got home she and Elinor headed out back to start prepping the soil. It didn't matter to them that it was 5:30 pm and getting dark.

 Here's hoping this gardening thing works out. I'd better do some research of my own!