Surviving til summer

So I've gotten behind blogging. The warmer the weather, the more I want to be out in it and the less I blog. Just have to condense all the fun from the past 4 weeks into one post!

Ali won 2nd place for her bee project at DPA!

The girls have been swimming every time the temps get into the 70's...

Addie got the most adorable haircut ever...

We had a fabulous Easter Sunday...

the orange tree bloomed and Pete put screens on our bedroom windows so I can sit in bed, watch the Braves, listen to the crickets and smell the sweetest  smell in the entire world- orange blossoms.

Addie sang like an angel in the EBA spring concert...

My neglected porch got a little TLC with the addition of 6 new ferns..

We had a GREAT time at Cocoa Beach with Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Carlos...

We've resolved to enjoy the sunshine first, and do homework last.  We are anticipating summer. I can feel it! I cannot wait to get more family time when school's out!!

Hello Spring!

My sweet Ali Grace made the Honor Roll this 9 weeks at Edmund Burke Academy. I'm very proud of her. I don't think Ali would mind me telling you all that she has ADD. Because she wasn't hyper and didn't bounce off the walls, it was very hard to diagnose. All I knew was that it took her hours to do what others could do in minutes. I detest homework- that's a known fact, but truly, she should have been able to do a few math problems each night without tears. Her 4th grade teachers really mistook excessive homework for rigor (a common problem amongst teachers I believe) and the homework was outrageous. That compounded with her ADD made for complete misery so she started Concerta. It was a miracle drug for her. After a year or so it started to bother her that she had no appetite at lunch. As you can see, she's thin as a rail and I felt like she was old enough to decide for herself whether to take the meds or deal with the ADD. She wanted to try to go without it. She has done so well! She has to work a little harder than others and mindless homework is painful for her, but she pushes through it. Most of her homework assignments this year have been reasonable and that helps too.

We had a great time this weekend. The weather was gorgeous! The best thing was Aunt Jess, Gran, Emma and Sarah visiting! Jess came down for a job interview and we rode over to Harlem to see their new house! Getting a new house is so exciting! Isn't it gorgeous?

I can't even describe how happy "The Elder Bennetts" are to have "The Younger Bennetts" living so close by. Addie, Ali, Emma and Sarah are just inseperable when they are together and I am thrilled that they are going to put in many many cousin hours over the next few years!

After touring the new house, we went into Augusta to get Ali Grace yet another dress for Social. Hopefully this will be it for awhile! She really needed some new church dresses anyhow. Gran hung right in there with the four horsemen (chaos, bedlam, madness, and mayhem). 

Pete bought us a whole flat of FLORIDA strawberries. Oh so much better than the California ones! The Bennett girls plus Rubi enoyed sugary strawberries on the porch. Oh how I love little berry stained faces!

The girls nagged and nagged until finally Jess and I relented and let them get in the pool. It was 78 degrees outside but the water was cooooooooooooold! I was admonished by a friend about sore throats and earaches. Hogwash! That was my reply. Heck my kids are hardly ever sick. We haven't had a sore throat in years and the only ear infections we ever get occur in late

July due to being underwater 90% of the summer!  I attribute their good health to playing in the dirt and polar bear plunges!

I wish I'd gotten a shot of Sarah Rose. She was the first one in. She is SO SO precous! Her little teeth were chattering when she got out but she said "Aunt Carmen did you see me? I kicked that water's butt!"  It cracked me up!!

One of best reminders of spring I noticed this weekend! My orchids are blooming! Ignore the dirty window.  : )

This is the part of the blog where I'm going to resist ranting excessively about my piece of junk dishwasher that just died. It's 5 years old and cost a fortune. Pete had already replaced the motor in it once. One of those fancy shmancy models. LG. Don't buy one. That's it.

Enjoy your week everyone.

Oh- one last picture of Ali Grace tonight before Social at the Augusta Country Club. Just growing up too fast. Way. Too. Fast.

New Day in the House of Bennett

Maybe I have lived in the sticks too long but I think this goat is the cutest thing ever! I must have it. 

Anyway on to today's news. Yes my friends, it's a new day in the House of Bennett. This Mama has had enough. What it WAS was....

Since I have to leave for work so early in the morning (our school starts at a ridiculous time of the morning), Pete is usually the one who makes sure the girls are dressed in the morning. He has a hard time picking out Addie's clothes because she has everything from a size 4 to a size 8 in her closet. So I decided this morning to just quickly go up and get the clothes out that do not fit and get them in a bag for Goodwill. Big big mistake.

As I approached the landing upstairs, I saw paper everywhere under the guest bed. Keep in mind Francisca just cleaned on Friday. I felt my blood pressure rising. When I got to the top of the steps I saw giblets of paper everywhere on the floor. Of course I was ticked off! I called for the broom and the dustpan and furiously started sweeping- all the while wondering where in the world all these little bits of paper could come from. Then, the Lord revealed it to me plain as day. I turned my head and saw the wall covered in the same little bits of paper. I looked around the room and the bits of paper were on the walls from ceiling to floor. I touched them to figure out what it was...then the crime was fully revealed to me! Those knucklehead children of mine had gotten into a fight with wet tissue paper and had thrown it all over the guest bedroom. I came totally and completely unglued. My Mama just THINKS she gave the speech of the century when I was a kid. We call that famous speech the "I pay a fortune to live in a nice house and your rooms look like you live in the projects". My brother reenacts that speech each Christmas for our entertainment. Well I showed my Mama up today. These children did not need church today because I gave them all the sermon they could handle. We cleaned and cleaned and I forbade them to even look in the direction of the guest bedroom and to even THINK about using ipads ipods or i anything else we might have in this house until they knew how to live in a house like humans!

So it's a new day! There will no longer be any:

*dishes of any kind upstairs. You're not an animal. Eat at the table.

*Sleeping all over the place. You will sleep in your bed. Not on the sofa. Not on the floor. Not in the cabinet. (Yes- one of them had pulled all the quilts out of a wardrobe and slept in it)

*going into the guest bedroom for any reason. Off limits!

My mother in law, sister in law and nieces are coming down Thursday so that Jess can interview for a teaching job. If they'd gone upstairs into that guest room with it looking like it looked this morning I would have had a heart attack of epic proportion!

While they worked upstairs, I worked in my closet. It's getting better. I can at least open the door now. I have a truck load for Goodwill. I am simplifying y'all! Too many clothes stresses me out. I bought 3 new pairs of pants, 5 new skirts, and 7 new blouses. I think everything else is going  to Goodwill!  Now if spring will just get here! I wore a cute JJill skirt today around the house. It's a darling spring style and it's too early in the year to wear it out but I wore it around today and my attitude is better. LOL!

This week's weather is supposed to be markedly better than last week. I hope so because having my porch doors open today was good for my soul.

Busy

We've had a busy few weeks around here and I haven't had the time nor the energy to blog!
Just to hit the high points....
Addie Belle Bennett turned 8 and had her birthday party at the Aquatic Center in Augusta. She has some cute as a button friends and we all had a good time. Hard to believe my sweet Adeline is 8 years old. She is truly the apple of my eye.

Ali Grace started Social.  We all kid her about needing Miss Manners training! She is doing well, but it hasn't been easy on me watching her grow up seemingly overnight. Since Colten is a February baby too, we celebrated at Coleman Lake last weekend. All three Cooper grands love crab legs. Luckily, Addie is getting better at cracking them herself.

The weather has been cold and rainy. I'm getting by though. I keep repeating to myself spring is just around the corner!! We've had a few intermittent days of sunshine this month... Every single time it even LOOKED like the sun might try to shine, we went outside!

But when it was just too nasty and cold to get outside, Poppy made it bearable with strawberries and sugar...

And snuggling by the fire isn't so bad....

Addie kept us entertained.. We met our friend Keith in town for supper one night and Addie couldn't eat a bite for being totally repulsed by the Alabama "A" on Keith's windbreaker. She spent the entire dinner complaining about it. I found it almost as endearing as the time I overheard her whistling "Glory" while riding her horse.

Overall it's been a cold rainy nasty month but the time changes this weekend and we can smell spring!!   Here's a few more pics from this past month...



Coleman Lake (Colten and Addie's birthday)



Ali's second Social function

Addie Belle helping Poppy pick up the chicks

YIPPEE for SPRING on a farm on a dirt road!

I'll Take the Dirt Road

This weekend was just about perfect. The girls played great in their basketball games..

This is a picture of Ali's team. They are the sweetest bunch of girls. 

Ali Grace won the Offense Award for her team this week!

Addie Belle had a great game too. She got a "hoop"! Which means she scored a basket. She plays on the boys team and they're all a bunch of ball hogs so she's always happy when she has the opportunity to score.

Friday night my Daddy took us out to Coleman Lake for supper. Pete was out of town with the horse judging team so the girls and I batted our eyelashes enough and convinced him to take us out! :) 

Ali had crab legs. She eats as many crab legs as a grown man I swear.

Addie wanted to order crab legs too but I have a family rule that you don't order crab legs until you can crack them yourself. Of course Nanny knows no rules when it comes to grandchildren so she ordered them and Nanny cracked them for her.

I had the North Carolina Flounder special. It wasn't something I'd order again but it was very good lemon grilled. The hush puppies were out of this world good and the service was excellent.

But Sunday was by far the best of all. I know we need the rain and so it was hard to be grumpy when I saw the weather report which showed a massive wall of rain heading this way for the next couple days. But thank goodness today was just gorgeous. Addie wanted to ride the horses so bad she about drove us all crazy until we relented!  There was a cool breeze and the sun was shining most of the day. Couldn't have asked for much better.

And that brings me to some VERY happy news I need to tell everyone who hasn't heard! Pete's brother, David and his family are moving to Fort Gordon! We thought they were heading to Germany after David finished his Nurse Practicioner licensure at UVA but turns out it's Augusta instead! We are just over the moon! They haven't lived that close to each other since they were roommates in college. I suppose I should be a little worried though since the last time the two of them were together here at my house, they were target shooting with some sort of something another I don't know about and it caused an explosion that shook the windows of our NEIGHBOR'S house! We live in the sticks! We don't have close neighbors. But the one semi-close neighbor we DO have came flying over to The Big House  across the road thinking there was some terrible accident at the farm. Nope. Just the Bennett boys. It turns out 4 Bennetts on a dirt road are fine. Five exceeds the critical mass and then it all goes down hill. So anyhow, I think the Pete was a little disappointed that David and Jess want to live in a more "metropolitan" area than Vidette, and close to Augusta. I just reminded him that the sticks aren't for everyone and that he should count himself a blessed man that he married a girl who loves clean country livin'!  Any closer than 30 miles from Augusta is out of the question for this girl.

So back to today.. Addie was confident she could catch a horse herself so she headed out on a mission... that's how Addie heads out everywhere.. like she is on a mission.

She was a little disappointed that her daddy had already caught the horse. She is always up for a little danger like a stampede or something. She's usually disappointed when we won't let her risk her life doing something.

Addie is the rodeo cowgirl type and Ali Grace is the graceful quiet rider in the family. Addie makes you cringe when she rides by a ditch or something because you just know any minute she could give that horse a kick and be jumping the ditch. Ali Grace is so quiet when she rides, you barely know she's there.

Roxy the wonder dog had to  be put in the back of the gator so she didn't get stepped on. She has a penchant for running around under the horses' feet.

Definitely can't do this in the suburbs...

We finally got the saddles and tack put away and pretty much laid around the rest of the afternoon.

My riding helmet... the only thing I can still wear from college!  :)

My heart skipped a beat when I saw the first daffodils coming up. Spring is around the corner!

We're headed over to the Big House this evening since Poppy is throwing some chicken on the grill.

You city folks just don't know what you're missing.