Spring is Here...Finally!

I hesitate to say it out loud, but I think we are finally going to get a week of nice weather! Granted, our yard is about as pleasant to walk through as a swamp, but at least it's warm. This past weekend we decorated the front sidewalk with sidewalk chalk and decided we needed to make some more green chalk so we could do our grass, trees and flowers justice. The picture above is Doodle's animal family of a teddy bear, two dogs and a cat family. Needless to say, they all really enjoy writing and drawing on the sidewalk. It also makes it nice when it rains at night so we have a clean slate the following day. We started out today making some more sidewalk chalk, after which they moved on to drawing with the old chalk and riding bikes while I tried to tackle the weed/flower/grass ratio by the front door. I have some larkspurs coming up and taking over (not a bad thing, but hard to keep things trimmed around them). I dug out many dandelions, trimmed the grape hyacinths and cut off the old tulips.

During their inside time the past few days, we have really gotten to hear/see some funny things while they're playing. Hanny has been spending a lot of time playing with the box of little animals on her new dresser. She's very verbal (or the animals are) while playing with them, to put it mildly. She talks a full volume and uses an extreme amount of drama in her conversations. It was to the point yesterday I thought she was giving one or both of her sisters what-for, but it turned out the animals were arguing. You just never know... At one point today I heard her use the words "shall" and "shall not" in her monologue...correctly. Where exactly did she pick up those particular words?! They're not exactly words we use in daily conversation. I don't even use a King James Version Bible. Who knows?! Her dear, sweet, too quiet sisters were equally funny. Gary and I had noticed that they were quiet, maybe too much so. We didn't interrupt them because, well, the quiet was kind of nice. I peeked in the bathroom door and got to see one of their baby dolls taking a bath in the sink. She was clean. They had used the toilet brush to get her clean. Oh, not the real one! I thought that too when they told me, but as it turns out, they had used the one that had come in a cleaning set. I breathed a large sigh of relief. They've really taken up with the dolls in the past week or so. They've been doing lots of combing hair, basic care, etc. Maybe there is hope for their motherly, compassionate side! :) There's always something to smile about, sometimes I just have to look a little deeper!