............. Fever!!

At the risk of "jinxing" it, I am so enjoying this weather. It is warm and sunny and just beautiful. It makes me want to use words that sounds silly in casual conversation like "splendid" or "marvelous" or "glorious" or...well, you get the picture. We've spent time outside every morning and would go back out in the afternoon but the boys are tired and are napping (another good reason for one of those words listed above).

Max the horse is now living at our house so we are feeding and watering him each morning when we take care of the chickens and the dog. At this point, the boys still think it is totally fun and cool. I am going to keep track and see when the excitement ends. HA! We will be starting a unit on horses next week. Oddly, I am struggling to find information online. Gonna have to get some books on order from the library. :-)

We fed the birds this morning and started a "study" of the art of John James Audubon. I have a book of his works and we are looking at the pictures...unfortunately, it is written in French so an observation is the best we can do. Fortunately for us, I am following some of the methods of Charlotte Mason who believes that you let kids see art and then "get out of the way." They can see things if we give them a chance. So that is what we are doing with our Audubon book. The descriptions they give of the paintings after I've taken the book back are really quite surprising in their accuracy and attention to detail. They notice things I don't notice while I am looking at the picture.

I can't wait to start a garden. Since the garage is such a HUGE job to finish up this year, I will have to settle for a small one. I really just want some tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. I think that would be acceptable. I think we are going to try to plant some sweet corn with my mom and dad. That means I will be able to can tomatoes, salsa, and ketchup. And we will freeze corn. If anyone has any extra green beans to spare, we would love to have some of those too. :-) I just won't have space this year I don't think.

It is so nice that our cabin fever has been replaced with Spring Fever. It's funny that we use the same word to describe both feelings when one is a negative feeling of confinement and restlessness and the other is a positive feeling of newness, growth, life, and freedom. All in all, I am just thankful spring has sprung!!!!