Skipping School and More

On Monday the kids cousins were in town, so we skipped school. I don't feel bad in the least. When your cousins live far away you should be able to skip school to play with them. Besides that, even when Taylor did got back to school on Tuesday she said she was the first one to get her math homework done, and that was doing 2 days worth.

Michael had a lot of fun being able to play with boys! Poor kid, he's surrounded by girls at home and at church and there are even more girls than boys at story time. They decided to try and link up as many Kinex as they could and see if they could hang them over the landing and touch the ground below.

The girls also had a lot of fun. I know that they were playing dress-ups for a while. I think they were princesses at one point in time. They also went outside to play and spent a good deal of time swinging and playing in "the forest". I was happy to take the day off of doing housework at my own place and visit with family.

On Tuesday I got a call from Robert asking if I could come and pick him up from work, he couldn't move. Robert has had a pinched nerve in his back that runs down his leg. Well, he moved just wrong and set it off. I took him to the chiropractor (again) and then we went home to try and let him rest. He didn't get much sleep, though. I called my sister-in-law who is a massage therapist and she came and gave him a massage on Wednesday and then another trip to the chiropractor Thursday and another massage Saturday. He is doing a lot better now. He can actually move around a bit without wincing all the time. Hopefully he can get all better so that he can go back to work since he was unable to most of last week.

Friday the kids had no school so the teachers could have some kind of training or something. I was glad, I like having the kids home with me.

I went to visit a friend this week and she had the coolest set-up in her living room window. She had a large aquarium on the ground with 2 hoses leading out of it. Above the aquarium was a large pvc pipe cut in half with stoppers on the end and planted in the pvc were tomato plants. She also had a grow light above the tomatoes. Her plants were quite large and some big, green tomatoes. It made me really wish for spring and fresh tomatoes. It was cool, though. The fish water was piped up to the tomatoes where the plants would filter the water and absorb the nutrients, before going back into the fish tank. Hydroponic tomatoes with fish fertilizer. I was trying to figure out if I had anywhere in my house where I could do that. With my kids around, though, I'm thinking probably not.

Speaking of plants, I have some nice ones growing. A couple of years ago I got this neat set-up and it is so easy to start my plants in and takes up less room. Of course, when I transplant them all it will take up more room, but for now I have quite a collection of tomatoes, peppers and a few flowers in here.

I also re-purposed some old cups of the kids and turned them into planter cups.

The kids each have "their" plants and they love checking on them. We planted quite a few more flowers this year. I am determined to have some flowers around our place and to have it pretty outside. Some of the ones that have come up are lobelia, aster, marigold, and columbine. There are a few more, but I don't remember what they are and I don't want to go check right now. I'm just happy to see some green and hoping for warmer weather to get here.