Books, movies, outdoors

 The kids and I finished the read-aloud of "The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid" by Colin Meloy.

It took a while, but I am glad we stuck with it.

There was a complete pivot about 2/3 into the book that I absolutely did not expect... it changed everything and made the last few days of reading super-fun (because we all wanted to know how things worked out for Charlie).

Yesterday, we started "The Hired Girl" by Laura Schlitz - loving it so far. 

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We have a pretty extensive list of movies to work through. The "Return of the King" (LoTR) is finally ready for pick up at the library, so we'll be watching that this weekend. (Kids really liked "Fellowship" and "Two Towers" that we watched over the spring break, so I expect this is going to be a hit.)

My husband is not into fantasy or sci-fi, but he loves comedy, so we'll be watching "Spaceballs" sometime soon.

C requested "The Secret Garden" - will put it on hold at the library.

In the plans: Spirited Away, The Roman Holiday, and some Wallace and Gromit cartoons.

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Kids have been feeding geese every day. We ran out of bread, so they've been using cheerios. Apparently, the geese are also very fond of granola bars. No chicks yet - mama goose is still sitting on the eggs.

Girls have been playing "elves" in the back yard, which involves making complicated potions out of grass and flowers, using C's chemistry set. 

Stuff is blooming and new things are coming up in our garden. We really need to clean up the weeds (no one wants to do it!), but even when messy and overgrown with weeds, it's pretty awesome to be able to pick kale and lettuce for salad!!!