what's goin' on

Currently there are no fewer than many things going on around this house. We have been looking around for a piccolo to rent for Samuel who has taken an interest and are sorry to say that we have found only one place that rents out piccolos and he is out at the moment. (We found another place I think but the man wouldn't rent it to us out of a moral responsibility to Samuel's future playing. According to this man, kids who start playing the piccolo now become too accomplished and quit when they hit high school because of peer pressure. So he wouldn't rent it to us. He would much rather Samuel not play the piccolo today then stop sometime in the next 11 years. Oh well.) We are on a waiting list and are the first people the other place we found will call if they remember they have a waiting list for piccolo rentals. We have been met with a lot of very practical and very uninspiring advice and information about Samuel being way too young to start playing a piccolo and how people neeevvvveeer start on a piccolo (they start on flutes) and a lot of this is why it is so hard to locate a rental to try out. Apparently, it is just not done. And we have been working on not letting all of this talk temper our enthusiasm. I have high hopes. Samuel's go up and down in frustration.

We have been reading some more great books by Dick King-Smith and I am happy to say he has a ton of them so we have lots and lots of reading. The kids are learning quite a bit about England while reading his books because some of them feature royalty, for example, and they are learning things like the Queen of England likes Corgis and all about farm life and more about pigs than you can imagine. One of the last ones we read was The Three Terrible Trins about some mice outfoxing some cats and a man with a glass eye. It was fun. We are currently reading Ace the Very Important Pig. More pig fun with a corgi thrown in.

Eva has been painting and today announced she wanted to be an artist when she grows up. She painted a lovely story about two monsters and herself standing under the sunshine with some beautiful pink flowers and little yellow to liven it up. It is drying right now and we found just the spot to hang it up.

The first bulbs are popping up out front and the wood violets are still blooming since November! I splurged and paid some gardeners to clean up the front yard and you can see all of the little bulbs pushing up. Our oak tree still has some leaves that will probably drop during this next round of wind we are getting during the next couple of days.

We were at Goodwill yesterday getting some jeans for me and a bread pan to make bread. I got rid of my aluminum ones in the last move and wanted glass this time. Eva was carrying around her momma squirrel and baby squirrel-y (who carries a red crystal). We went to the toy aisle after I found some jeans and Samuel found a dinosaur that roars and Eva found another stuffed chick (thank goodness because Chicky was looking for her momma) and the chick quacks when you squeeze his left foot. Eva said, "I never thought of a chick making a noise when you squeezed her left foot." Me either. I thought the sound was worn out when I bought it!

So, there we are, loaded up with jeans and new guys and a few puzzles I found for a dollar and Eva looks down at her hands and says, "Where is baby squirrel-y?" And I say, "You have to be kidding me...(in my head, I don't think I actually said it out loud)". And Samuel groans and we all look around at this gigantic Goodwill. This is no city Goodwill. This is a huge Suburban Goodwill, the likes of which I had never seen before I moved here. Goodwill at the next level. Mega-Goodwill. So we assume he is lost in the toy aisle and we start looking and I talk to another mom who has also lost a stuffed animal at Goodwill in the past and she said they had put it away and they did find it. Her little boy said he would help us find it but kept being distracted by finding a remote control to go with a car he wanted and the mother was distracted by the remote control car with no remote that she didn't want.

Eva wanted to go find their lost and found. We finally did find an employee, the manager I think, and talked to her about baby squirrel-y and she was helpful. She took down our name and number and wrote down "lost stuffed animal, squirrel" but not the part about the red crystal that the kids kept adding for clarity. She also told us what I had already thought, that Goodwill does not have a lost and found. Basically, they assume anything they find there is property of Goodwill and it is shelved to be sold. Of course, there are exceptions. If you lose your wallet or your purse, for instance, they will set this aside for you (if they know it is yours; I think an empty purse or wallet would be shelved.). But Eva was crying and the woman was touched and she said she would help us look. She was optimistic and had just the right amount of practicality and optimism that we needed to resume our search. It was on the way back to the toy aisle that Samuel and I simultaneously remembered the bread pan and we said at nearly the same time, "It is in the glass aisle!" We headed right over and walked down the aisle looking at Eva level. I looked up slightly and what to my wondering eyes should appear? You guessed it, baby squirrel-y! I squealed. We all shouted hurrah! I told another woman in the aisle the she had witnessed a miracle that day. She smiled. The manager heard our hurrahs and came right over asking if we had found it. She was happy and congratulated us. We ran into the woman with her son from the toy aisle and she said, "That's just the size of the one we lost; same color too." Smallish and brownish, about 2 1/2 inches high, holding a red crystal. Yep. We found baby squirrel-y. It looked like the other woman was getting the remote-less-car after all.

I told the woman at the check out that we had just spent the last hour looking around for baby squirrel-y and held him up (or is is her? I can't keep it straight.) She said, "That's why I always have 'em leave things like that in the car. It is too risky." Yep. But sometimes, the squirrel family really really really wants to come too. I wonder if they will feel so adventurous next time? Maybe it will be baby kitten's turn by then. He can stay in the car alone.

On a totally different note, we have been enjoying this book, Totline's Alphabet Theme-a-Saurus by Jean Warren. Predictably, it is an alphabet book, but it has a lot of words with pictures (great for visual learners) and a lot of songs about the letters (I love music learning) and also some activities. Eva is loving it. Today she said, "Everything starts with E." And I told her, "Yes, the word everything does start with the letter E." She was thrilled. She also loves the idea of a big letter and a little letter. "Like a momma and baby letter!" Yes!

This week I have made bread, spread it with homemade summer time raspberry jam, made orange sorbet, made beet risotto (it is a lovely color!) and many many many pita pizzas...There is a squash roasting in the oven that I hope will inspire me for dinner. I got this great book from the library that I love looking at called African Crafts by Judith Hoffman Corwin and I am hoping to make banana fritters. If anything, the pictures are an inspiration for knitting patterns. Oh, and the kids and I watched The Gods Must Be Crazy last night. I had never seen it. We all really enjoyed it, although the kids kept saying there wasn't enough of the Bushmen. Their way of life was certainly appealing!