Defaulting to bullet points...

Not only have I not blogged for about two weeks, but tonight all I'm bringing to you is bullet points. There are so many things in my head waiting to be blogged, and I hope to have time soon to sit down and really focus on some serious topics, but in the meantime I want to at least record some current happy thoughts about my girlies before time does its predictable thing and erases them from my memory. :-)

• The girls have been paying a lot of attention when we're driving lately. It's great because I've long wanted them to learn how much they can entertain themselves on a long drive by watching what's going past the windows. What I did not anticipate, however, was that we would end up talking nonstop about the things they're seeing through the windows! The other unexpected "bonus" is that I have three emerging backseat drivers. At least half a block before we reach a red light, the chorus begins, "It's a red light, Mummy! You have to stop! Watch out for the other cars! Are you going to stop? Don't forget to stop, because red means stop!" Yes, it's a thing of beauty. Stop signs are another new dislike of mine, for the same reason. Also, because someone had the dumb idea of actually putting the word "stop" on stop signs, which gives us another thing to discuss every.single.time. we come to one. "That's a stop sign, it says stop! S-t-o-p is how we spell stop. G-o is how we spell go...." Bless you, creator of the stop sign.
• We've been making some changes lately toward healthier eating. (This will get its own blog post sometime soon.) The biggest change has been to add a lot more fresh fruits and veggies into our diets, and that's gone over really well because the girls love those as much as we do. However, I've been getting a lot of requests lately for "mac and cheese", which until these recent changes had become more of a weekly staple than I would like to admit. So tonight I was so happy when Ashley ate three helpings of my homemade fettucini alfredo (fyi, this is easy to make with organic ingredients!), and then announced, "This is way better than mac and cheese!"
• The girls and I spent two hours outside this afternoon -- playtime for them, yard work for me. Ashley spent a huge part of that time chatting up the neighbors, social butterfly that she is! I love how confident she is, and that she will just casually talk with an adult about her plans for the summer, etc., without it even occurring to her to be nervous. Anyway, I began the huge task of cleaning up our yard for spring. The previous renters obviously didn't do much of anything with the outside of the house the entire time they lived here, and it is all an overgrown mess! Adding to the mess is all the gravel that got pushed into the yard every time our driveway was plowed this winter, and the whole picture is quite daunting. I raked and raked and raked, and still have plenty of gravel in the yard, so I was super blessed when my sweet girls joined ranks to come pick up the gravel, one little rock at a time, and throw it back into the driveway! It may not be the fastest approach, but it's one that made me so proud of my sweet helpers. :-)