Smelling the Roses

We had a really nice weekend! We didn’t have too much planned, which was nice for a change. Both boys had had pretty good weeks at school, so we did a movie night on Friday. One of our neighbors had loaned us their copy of Ponyo, so we finally got around to watching it so we could return it. It was cute (although Josh thought it was a little kooky…and even though Zachary acts like he thought it was silly, I think he liked it, because he was glued to the TV – didn’t even ask for popcorn, and barely noticed when we eventually gave him some).

On Saturday, Zachary went to karate in the morning, and we had a day off of baseball (no baseball activities during spring break, or the weekends on either side of spring break). I got my haircut in the afternoon, and we enjoyed the nice weather. Zachary spent most of the evening at the karate school, where they had a Parent’s Night Out. They didn’t have a particular theme this time – just pizza, games, a movie, etc. He had a good time. While he was there, Liam asked if we could watch a movie again. He requested an encore of Ponyo, so we watched that again. I think we may be getting our own copy – he really seems to love it! After he went to bed, Josh & I watched The Descendants. Good movie. But now I want to go back to Hawaii…

Yesterday was just beautiful. We went to church, and then Josh & I each took a turn going to the gym. But after I got back, he & Zachary went to the driving range, while Liam & I hung out at home. We walked down to our neighbor’s house to return the Ponyo DVD, and we just took our time going back – something we don’t often take the time to do. I let Liam stop as much as he wanted to pick up those little helicopter seed things (you know – the ones where if you toss it in the air, it spins like a helicopter as it floats down?) He even picked them up by the handful & tossed them up in the air! Then we found a caterpillar – or, “callipitter”, as Liam called it. He really wanted to take it home, but I wasn’t so much up for him carrying it. So we searched for a stick, so we could try to get it to climb on, so he could carry it. We finally found one, and got the little guy to climb on board. Liam carried his little callipitter all the way back to our house, talking to it the whole way. When we got back home, we took it to the back yard, and put it in the grass. We just watched this caterpillar make his way across the grass, all the way to the patio. Liam found other sticks & kept moving him from stick to stick – he was thoroughly entertained! And it was nice to just let him be entertained, and not have a time limit on it. It’s so rare that we have time to stop & smell the roses like we did yesterday, so I enjoyed it as much as he did. And the weather was gorgeous, so that was a bonus. We even decided to eat dinner outside. It’s kind of a rule, when it’s that nice out.




I also forgot to mention in my last post, that Liam has started an activity! We had tried to get him interested in karate, baseball, soccer, you name it. He’s always been sort of wishy washy about it all. We haven’t pushed him, because after all, he’s only 4. But then his school sent home a flyer a few weeks ago that they were going to start offering tennis. We asked him if he wanted to play tennis and he said yes, sows signed him up. They started a few weeks ago and it sounded like he really enjoyed it! So we're getting him his own little racket & foam balls so he can play/practice at home too. Also because I'm curious to see him play - since the tennis class takes place at school before I pick him up, we won't usually get to watch. So who knows - this could be a fleeting interest, or he could be the next star of Wimbledon!