A very good day

How can a one year old, a two year old, a five year old and a six year old not have a good day when this is in your backyard! The kids have been mesmerized by the action behind our house for the last couple of weeks. All this construction is due to a new development that is being built in the hills far above our little grey house. They are chewing up the beautiful hills to build very expensive resort homes for very rich people from cities very far away and this is making me very very sad. But I digress...our good day...

After a morning digger watching we had an afternoon of volcano making -
painting in the nude ( miss Ivy) -

and looking for dinosaur bones and Jupiter stones.


While the kids were enjoying themselves I had my first day in the garden. Spring is coming! I raked and pulled dead plants out. I gathered up the last of the leaves that we missed last year. It was wonderful to be outside. This will be my second year gardening and I'm quite excited. Do you think it's a bad omen that I accidentally broke off the flower from my very first crocus? It was there and then - in my exuberance to clear away dead leaves to make it more visible I must have knocked it off. I spied it later in a pile of leaves as I was raking the lawn. I felt like a mother bird who has just let a chick fall out of the nest. Anyhow - I will go forward and hope for the best. Off to bed now - I have six kids tomorrow - should be interesting.