Pirates and doves and Italian Plums

This week, I've been working hard at meeting new people! I've started a local google group website for parents who want to network for playgroups and other kid friendly activities, and to spread the word, I'm carrying around small slips of paper inviting parents to join and handing them out to everyone I see with kids. This makes me way more outgoing then I normally am, and I've met at least 4 other mothers who are brand new to the area and/or around for a rather short time. Everyone seems pretty excited about the website idea, so I hope it takes off. 

in other happenings:

This week a neighbor with an empty house next door invited us to pick all the Italian plums we wanted! They are super good fresh, and super good roasted! I've baked trays and trays and then frozen the fruit. It is great on oatmeal! I also just halved and pitted a bunch and froze them just like that. 

While picking plums, I saw that someone had emptied a fish tank, including the sparkly gem rocks into the grass. I collected a bunch and tossed them in the sandbox for Julia and Olaf to have fun with. Olaf likes to bury them for Julia to unbury. 

Our poor chicken is molting! this is an event wherein they loose their feathers, then regrow bigger, better ones. The poor chicken looks like she's about to croak, but I think she's over the worst! I've been collecting some of her nice downy feathers, and decided they would be lovely in clear glass ornament balls. 

and lovely they are. I've also made ones with tissue paper doves and ones filled with lavender. 

From the blog we bloom here, I got the tissue paper dove idea. It's a Martha Stewart craft punch. To get a clean tissue paper punch, I sandwiched it between regular paper and I cut tiny hearts out of tissue paper by hand for the doves to carry, and then modge-podged it all onto candle cups. This candle cup is for a Christmas ornament swap! They are getting a feather ornament and some folded stars and some Klamath Plum jam too!

Julia's had fun with trains lately. 

and Olaf is ever improving on his pirate ship

Julia has suddenly fallen in love with the book Goodnight Moon. "Mah Meh Mene" she calls it, and she wants to read it over and over and over again. She will bring me other books to read if I ask her, but this is definitely the favorite right now. She woke up yesterday and announced "Olaf" but kind of backwards "Aowf-o". It's pretty cute and Olaf is super pleased with it. She's been saying Joe's name for awhile now "Do-do" but Olaf is a much harder name to manage. She is also into shoes, picking them out, and trying to put them on herself. This usually ends with screams of frustration from her but sometimes she succeeds and sometimes she consents to help in getting them on. Inevitably, she wants different shoes 3 minutes later, so I look forward to the day she doesn't need my help to change shoes.
Also, Ron is home from the hospital! I went next door and said hello yesterday for the first time since the accident. He's up and about, but moving slowly. I knew he was home because the hood is up on the truck! He can't do much, but he's definitely on the road to recovery. He was pretty happy to say thank you to me for helping save his life, and I'm pretty happy that everything worked out as well as it did in a terrible situation.