Well, the weekend was great.  Jerusha has been hounding Ryan to fix her bike tires, and so he got up and spent the whole morning fixing bike tires.  We have puncture weeds all over the neighborhood, and our tires are constantly popping.  In the afternoon, he and most of the kids decided to ride their bikes to the new park.  They just updated the city park and added new equipment.  Anyhow, Oak even wanted to go which surprised me because he knew how to ride a bike last year, but has seemed to have forgotten over the winter.  Ryan's employee gave him a boy bike, but it still had training wheels, and that seemed to throw him off too.  Anyhow, he rides, but pretty slow.  I decided to wait for ten minutes and follow in the van so that I could pick up a tired Oak and Jazz.  I figured they would wear out quickly.  Not so, they rode the whole way...even Oak with his clunky training wheels.  The kids played on the new equipment for awhile, and Ryan rode over to a floral shop and bought me some flowers for Mother's day which was a great surprise.  They then rode all the way home (Oak included!)  I was way surprised at Oak.  He did great even though he said he hated the trip. It was probably an eight mile ride.  It was only 30 minutes before he was clunking around on the training wheels again.

 

Jams, Sags, and Rooshkie at the top

     Yesterday was Mother's day, and it was great.  I think I have enjoyed my last few mothers days because I refuse to feel guilty and picked on.  I used to feel inadequate on Mother's day when I would hear all of the heroic mother stories that they tell in church, and I also used to have all of these grand expectations of my husband and children.  A little thanks and recognition is all that I now require.  Jamie wrote me a nice note, Jazz had made me a pen with a flower on the end of it, Jerusha made me a crepe paper flower, and Chlo had dictated a nice note.  It was great.  Oak also attempted to do the dishes.  He fizzled pretty fast, but hey, he thought about helping out.  Ryan told the girls to clean up lunch, but they were all dragging and so I told them that they were going to go to bed earlier.  Ha, that was a joke.  They decided they wanted to sleep outside, and so they piled their bags on the back lawn.  They giggle goofed until 11pm or so.  It made me mad because they wouldn't wake up for school.  This was after all kinds of promises to just go out there and go to sleep.  Anyhow Chlo took the skull from Halloween to sleep with and I just cannot figure out how a cackling, flashing, skull with a zombie-like voice can be a comfort to her, but it must be.  She slept with it around Halloween time too.  I find it kinda morbid, but hey, Chlo needs it, so more power to her. 

     Thanks to Mother, Chlo has been demanding waffles in the shape of butterflies.  I usually just cook her a waffle and give it to her no matter what it looks like and just exclaim "look.. its a butterfly!"  This morning she wanted a waffle in the shape of a lion.  I had to draw the line.