A Little Gosling

Hannah Beth had her big dance recital last week. The whole dance studio presented a ballet called "The Proud Princess." Hannah Beth was a gosling, and was very cute. This was her second year doing ballet. I kept asking her for a couple of weeks before her performance if she knew what she was doing and felt comfortable with it. Her answer every time was, "I don't know." (And she's not even a teenager!!) So, I was not sure what to expect, but she did great. You can see from one picture that she was looking over to her teacher for direction, but that is the only time I remember her doing that.

She continues to tell me now that she wants to do gymnastics next year instead of ballet, so we'll see. Maybe we'll get to see what she can do in the gym and if that is something she'll enjoy.

You might be able to see in this last picture that she lost her other bottom tooth - just a couple of days before her recital.

Davis Household Rules - According to Hannah Beth

The other day Hannah Beth and I were watching one of those TV shows where a group of people come into someone's house and help them get rid of their enormous clutter and then they sell a bunch of their stuff in a garage sale and make their house look great. Hannah Beth thought it would be great if they came to our house. I thought it would be tragic if my house got so bad that someone like that had to come in! I wouldn't mind the room makeover, though! Then Hannnah Beth started telling me some rules that she thinks we should follow in our house. Then she went right into what shethought Daddy should make (which amazingly sound an awful lot like what we've read in a Berenstein Bears book that we have called "The Messy Room"!)


Rules for the Davis House (According to Hannah Beth)

1. If you get something out, then you need to put it away when you are done.
2. Don’t go outside without asking an adult.
3. After you put your plate away you should pick up anything off the ground that you might have dropped while you were eating.
4. Put your shoes away after you come inside.
5. After you sit on the couch fix the pillows.
6. If you pop a balloon you have to put all the pieces of it in the trash.
7. Don’t turn on the TV without asking.
8. No TV until the afternoon.
9. Don’t stand on the carpet when your feet are dirty.
10. Don’t go in the pool without asking a parent.

What Daddy should make (according to Hannah Beth):
1. A big storage closet and we could make boxes out of cardboard and we could paint or color them and we could put some toys in them.
2. Toy boxes for upstairs.
3. Make a peg board to hang our coats on.

A Double Surprise!

Thomas is out of town for a few days, so to keep us busy and having fun I decided to surprise the kids and so after we picked up Hannah Beth from school yesterday we headed to the zoo. Hannah Beth was very curious, of course, and kept trying to figure out where we were going. She made a lot of guesses, and finally figured it out. She was very excited. Nathaniel had fallen asleep in the car (which was a good thing, since we did a lot of walking!), so he didn't find out until we were actually there.

For some reason the kids LOVE these statues of animals that are all over the zoo. They spend more time on those than watching the real animals! I was trying to figure out why, and realized that it is probably because it is something they can touch, climb on, etc. instead of just see from a distance. Kids love to be up close and be able to play, explore, etc., don't they?! After we got home I asked Nathaniel what his favorite part of the zoo was, and he said it was feeding the goats. Again, something up close and active! I didn't get any pictures of feeding the goats because I was helping them and my hands were yucky.

Our zoo has a carousel, so we took a spin.

Nathaniel was convinced that this alligator was not real, and would not believe that it was a real one... until it finally started moving!

Other times we have been to the zoo, the gorillas have not been very cooperative, but today they were right there and lots of fun to watch!

As for the second surprise, we were heading into the Aquarium and we ran into Hannah Beth's best friend from school, Brooke and her brother, Cable (just a little older than Nathaniel) with their grandparents. So we spent the last couple of hours with them. Everything is more fun when you have a friend to share it with (and be silly with)!

Another Mother's Day Gift

Hannah Beth gave me this sweet book for Mother's Day. She made it at school, and it is a precious keepsake. I was just thinking about the fact that blogging it not only lets me share it with you, but it also helps me save it for even longer than the book will last! :) She may want to show this to her kids some day.

A Wonderful Mother's Day!

For Mother's Day this year, I received:

Homemade cards from the kids (thanks to Grandma for help!). It was all Hannah Beth's idea to make hers into a butterfly. She loves art projects!


Nathaniel was so proud of himself that he made an "H" on his (and a "T").

My indulgence is these DELICIOUS cream cheese muffins. I won't even go into how many calories are in them, but I love them and was very excited to get these! :)

And some beautiful and very colorful flowers! The kids and Daddy did a great job spoiling me. We also went out for lunch to a yummy buffet. Lots of veggies!

Right before church Hannah Beth and I were in the dining room and I looked up at her and she looked like this:

I was concerned at first - I thought she had a bloody nose! But no... she smelled my flowers a little too closely and got pollen all over her face! I had to laugh. It was actually a little hard to get off! :)

Then later in the afternoon we all got a treat! Our first swim in our pool! It was a warm enough day, but I often don't go swimming the first few times we go because I like warm pool water and the kids and Thomas are much more willing to brave the cold water. To my surprise it wasn't bad - cold at first, but I was able to get in and get used to it and really enjoy it. The biggest joy was seeing the kids and their excitement over finally getting to go swimming in our pool. Hannah Beth loved practicing all the things she just learned in her swimming lessons at the YMCA. Isn't that one of the best things about being a Mom? Just seeing their pure joy and excitement over things! It was wonderful family time together, and I also got some sweet pictures!

My Vegetable Garden (So Far!)

Last year I had my first garden. I pretty much just stuck some plants in the ground (although I did add a bit to the soil), and it was very haphazard. I didn't even make nice neat rows for everything. It was fun, though, and a good learning experience. I got some crooked neck squash and quite a few tomatoes. This year I have read up some more on vegetable gardening (although I have a ton left to learn) and decided to make raised vegetable beds. We have only gotten one done so far, and will probably just make another one as we have time and energy this summer. This is the back corner of our yard. When my Mom was visiting she and Thomas helped me clear out the area- it was mostly weeds, but also some grass creeping back that way. So, this is what I started with:

In the meantime, I planted some seeds in starter peat squares since it was time to plant. This year I planted cantelope (we just dried these seeds from a cantelope we had!), green peppers, cherry-sized tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, green beans and cucumbers. My tomatoes didn't come up for a while, but now have finally come up. We'll see if they end up surviving. I went to my mother-in-law's to pick up the children one day and I mentioned that my green peppers weren't growing, and next thing I knew we were downtown Bethune (SC) picking out some plants. I ended up getting a bunch of pepper plants (including a red and yellow one) and 2 strawberry plants and Nathaniel eyed a watermelon plant, so I said "Why not!" I may have gotten in over my head - we'll see!

We had a bunch of these bricks that lined the lawn area and separated it from the natural (pine trees) areas in our back yard when we moved in. There was something about the backyard that I didn't really like, but couldn't really put my finger on for a while. I finally realized that I felt like our yard was too divided - that there were too many "sections" of the yard. So, I took the bricks off of one side, and I like it much better. I realized the bricks would be great for raised vegetable beds! This way the kids don't walk on the plants or soil, we put in some good soil for the plants, and it looks nicer. This one is 23 feet long!


So today I FINALLY got my plants into the vegetable bed. It is exciting to see it filled with plants and I can't wait to see how my garden does this year!

To Mommy from Hannah Beth

Hannah Beth came up to me one day and gave me this piece of paper and said that she was giving me some math problems. I was very impressed - Hannah Beth is in preschool and they have worked on writing numbers and counting, but have not done any math problems. I often do math problems orally with Hannah Beth to help her understand the concepts of addition and subtraction (for example, I'll ask her, "If you have 4 apples and I give you 3 more, how many do you have?") and she does quite well with that. She plays with my calculator and she knows how to add numbers together on it and press the equals sign, so that is the only way I can think of that she knew how to write them out!


This one may be hard to read...

... unless you read it from the bottom up! She gave this to me a couple of days ago and told me what it says - "Open it on Mother's Day"! I love how Hannah Beth sounds out and writes words. She can read simple words, and we've talked about one vowel and two vowel rules, sh, th, ch, and a few other things, but she still sounds things out really slowly. I think she could probably do a lot more with reading, but I haven't really pushed her (she still has a whole year of kindergarten ahead of her!). But when she is ready, I have a feeling that she'll really take off.