Thank goodness for wheelbarrows

As I'm sure you've noticed by now, I'm not very good at being consistent and keeping up with this whole blogging thing. So let's just pretend that I'm reporting on the events of the past two weeks in a timely fashion, shall we?

May 5 - Our wonderful neighbor across the street ordered a truck full of mulch and had it dumped outside his house. Apparently he does this every year and offers it to any neighbors who want some. We bought a "yard," which I guess is about 10 wheelbarrows full. Luckily, Dan had help when he went to collect it. That little red wheelbarrow I found at the Salvation Army on H Street has really come in handy.

thirty

I'm thiry years old today, and feeling a bit reflective.

Some things I've done well in the past 10 years:
-giving birth to and caring for three amazing, healthy boys (though I know I could always be more patient!)
-teaching children with autism, and now managing my own practice for kids with social and communication needs
-dealing with some extremely difficult and painful situations with my family

I must confess that something I've not done as well at is caring for my husband and treating him the way he deserves to be treated. In the mix of children, work, and everything else, my relationship with him often falls to the wayside. I am starting today at trying to rectify this, and I hope that in 10, 20, and 30 years from now, I can report that I am doing much better at this.

I also hope to continue to be a more creative, imaginative, and resourceful person, and pass this on to my children and those around me.

backyard flowers outside -> inside

In the spring and early summer, I endeavored to use every available inch of space in our backyard for planting. This included a small strip along either side of the fence. The flowers have grown beautifully and over the weekend, I noticed that we had enough to bring some inside!

Henry was happy to help me cut and arrange them.

He made one for himself, ran upstairs, and set it on his nightstand.

{my dresser}

{Felix's room, next to the picture Henry made the morning Felix was born - in fact, I think it was being made downstairs while Felix was born upstairs!}

the morning after {hurricane irene}

We decided to take a walk this morning to see what impact the hurricane had on our neighborhood.


I discovered this wonderful flower box, which somehow I had never seen before...

The worst we found was this:

Henry decided to see what would happen to various objects when he threw them into this puddle (rocks, leaves, etc). Jude and Felix enjoyed looking on:Jude just kept saying "wow!"

I was pleased that our flowers fared well through the storm.

Check out the lantana! It's looking good, if I do say so myself!

Henry really wanted to visit the fallen tree again, so after dinner we set out to see it once more.

We got there just in time to see this:

I've never seen such serious looks on my boys' faces as when they were watching that bulldozer.

I know there was a lot of damage done by this storm, so I am very thankful that the impact on our neighborhood was so minimal.

The Children's Garden

We spent a glorious morning last week at the Botanic Garden. This is easily my new favorite destination, as it engages all three boys simultaneously! They walked in, surveyed the scene, and chose what to do with themselves without needing any direction from me. I would have been able to sit down and drink some coffee or do a little knitting if I hadn't been so busy snapping photos (still with my iphone, as I haven't gotten around to getting a new "real" camera yet).

Felix, of course, enjoyed crawling around and splashing his hands in the water that Henry and Jude spilled. He managed to sample several plants throughout our visit before I caught him and fished the leaves out of his mouth. I assumed they wouldn't put any poisonous plants in the children's garden and I appear to be correct, as it is now Monday, and he is still alive and well.


Jude's favorite activity was sweeping with the broom (he loves sweeping and vacuuming at home, so much that he has his own little broom and a vacuum that actually sucks up dirt), but he also enjoyed the little house as well as watering the plants.


Henry spent most of his time watering the Lantana tree in the middle (did I mention before that Lantana is my new favorite flower?), but also enjoyed working the water pump that spits water out of the fish's mouth.



We were fortunate to have the children's garden to ourselves for about half an hour, but it soon got crowded so we moved on. Here they are inspecting a little fountain in one of the other rooms:
We ended our visit by walking around outside, and found ourselves at the First Ladies' Water Garden, where of course they got soaking wet. My policy on fountains in DC is go on in until someone stops you. Why not?

Sunday at the National Gallery

We attended the Stories in Art program at the National Gallery this morning.
It was wonderful, as usual.

This time, Henry learned what "still life" paintings are. He got to make one with stickers and crayons at the gallery, but was very eager to go home and paint his own still life using produce from our garden like Rosa in the book we read, Still Life Stew. He and his Aunt Karen painted side by side.



One of these days I'm going to do a whole post about Henry's art. It truly is amazing.

carrot harvest

We harvested our carrots last week! I kept wondering if they were done, and then all of a sudden they seemed to be popping out of the ground, so I ended up picking all of them at once.

"What are we going to do with all these carrots?" I wondered aloud.

Henry said, "Let's make carrot cake!"

Indeed.

I combined this recipe and this one and it turned out great.
Henry insisted on decorating the cake with Spiderman and some candles.

Once we finished the cake, we all agreed that we needed to change things up, so I made carrot cupcakes. Yum.