The First Clothesline of Spring!

Mmmmm.....I love spring. It's currently 68 and sunny here, kinda windy but I'll so take it. It just makes the clothes on the line dry faster. And let me tell you how excited I am to be using my clothesline again. See, I hate the dryer. It's a waste of energy, it sets in stains, it shrinks and wears out our clothes faster. Since, we live in a older house we have great big, 12" square hole-in-the-floor heat vents. So all winter I have two of those folding drying racks set up over the bigger vents (and shirts on hangers hanging in random places) and dry our clothes that way. But, I can only hang one maybe two loads at a time, so I have to do laundry every day to keep up. Don't get me wrong, I love that I can heat our house and dry our clothes at the same time, with the bonus of adding much needed humidity, but, I get really tired of doing laundry every day. Needless to say, when I checked the weather this morning and it claimed the high would be around 65 (after a week in the low 40's), I was super happy. Yippee! I get to use the clothesline again! I actually like hang clothes up. It's soothing and repetitive and brainless. I like the *snap* of shaking the clothes out before I pin them up. I like that if I missed a stain I get another chance to get it out. I like the me time that I get when (after the smalls are in bed) I go outside and fold our clothes as I take them down, it's time to think and reflect without feeling like I'm ignoring my family or missing something. I LOVE the way the clothes and especially the sheets smell when I bring them in. Ooohhh, the sheets. Today as I was hanging the laundry, Husband was moving the compost pile onto the garden and working it in. My first thought was, "Don't do that now, it'll make the laundry stink." As I took a breath to ask him to do it later, I realized it didn't stink, in fact, it smelled good. Weird, right? I couldn't believe it, I think I'm still happily surprised. And it's nice to be surprised once in a while, no?

Could It REALLY Be Spring?

Oh my, what a wonderful, warm, sunshiney weekend. It was actually 45 degrees on Saturday here in Northern Michigan, which is usually unheard of. I keep trying to remind myself that it can't really be spring yet, that it almost certainly will snow again before spring is actually here to stay. But my spring loving self just keeps hoping that maybe, just maybe winter is over. I mean, look, my crocuses are popping up and surely those crazy things know what their doing. They wouldn't come up just to tease me.... would they?!?

We celebrated the beginning of spring with the first bonfire of the year. This is becoming something of a tradition, which I just love, as far as I'm concerned the more traditions the better! We went out to Mimi and Poppa's because traditions are better with grandparents and that's where the sledding/snowboarding hill is. Mimi still loves sledding. Drew and Ian will go down a few times, especially if they can convince her to "do a double-decker belly whopper." Which means Mimi lays down on the sled on her belly, one of the boys lays down on her back and then they go down the hill face first. It's gotten a lot harder to convince her this winter now that they weigh about 43 lbs each. They did them all the time last winter and the winter before that she'd even do triple-decker belly whoppers, with both boys laying on her, brave woman. Now that they are good on their snowboards, though, they'd rather do that then sled.

Ian (above) and Drew (below) both liked watching the snowboarders in the Olympics this year. Before the Olympics started most of the snowboarders actually came to our town and stayed at the ski resort here to practice. Majorly big doings for this little town. Apparently we have the biggest half-pipe east of the Mississippi. Who knew!?! Drew and Ian got to go watch them practice one day and thought it was the coolest thing ever. It really made them practice on their boards more. They also discovered, while watching the Olympics that "real snowboarders wear goggles." They were pretty disappointed that we didn't have any. But when we got out the play tools last week they found their safety goggles in the bin and (note pictures) those work just fine. I love it when they come up with their own (free!) solutions to these kind of problems.

Of course, Ian (below) had to climb a tree to finish off the day. Drew ended up climbing it too but, my camera ate all three sets of batteries I'd brought with me before I could get a picture of him in the tree. Speaking of the camera, pay no attention to the dates on the pictures, obviously the camera had some sort of stroke.

Sewing with Drew

Drew came home from school on Friday, watched me knitting on my new slippers for a few minutes, and said "Mama, I want to knit." Yipee!! Finally, one of my boys wants to learn to knit! So I said (as calmly as I could) "Okay, let's go to the sewing room and pick out some yarn." To which he replied "Not with yarn, Mama, with fabric." Huh? "You want to knit with fabric?" "Yeah," he said, " I want to make a pillow for Zuzu (an alien) and my Monster Chunk." Ohhhh.... "You mean you want to sew?" "Yeah, sew. Zuzu needs a pillow and he'll share with my Monster Chunk." Okay, so it's not knitting but, wanting to sew with me is still pretty cool and some awesome Mama/Drew time. So off we went to search the fabric stash for the perfect fabric. And out of all the fabric, and you know I mean All the fabric, I have he would pick plain blue! At least he picked red thread to set it off a little. He helped me cut it out and then I had the epiphany to use safety pins to pin it. That may sound like a giant "DUH!" to some of you, but I felt so very smart to think of it. I figured he'd poke himself enough using a needle for the first time without adding straight pins to the mix.


I think he did very well for his first time. His stitches are pretty straight and not too huge. But most impressive of all is that he actually finished it all in one day. That's some serious commitment from my bouncy boy. He took it and the lucky recipients to bed with him that night. The next morning he told me, "Mama, Zuzu and Monster Chunk slept GREAT last night. They really like their new pillow!" Too cute and so much fun. Thanks for sewing with me Drew, you made my day.