Washing her wheels.

This weekend Rebecca's tricycle was in desperate need of a bath. The pollen of the past few weeks had collected until the red paint had a nice layer of yellow dust. She had a blast and the trike is sparkling once more.

Learning new habits!

I guess Spring has really gotten into our systems here at the Alldredge house. We've been Spring cleaning a lot over the last couple weeks, not the usual dust out the cabinets kind though. We've been Spring cleaning our habits. In Cincinnati we got to hear Catherine Levison speak and so much of the Charlotte Mason method of schooling deals with habits. Her theory is that it takes only six weeks to make a new habit or break a bad one... so we came home and gave it a shot. First off the TV was banished to the bedroom closet. After the first few days of withdrawl we realized how much we all really love reading and how often we were watching shows and then moaning about all the books we wished we had time to read. Now we are at the library all the time! And we have the time to discover all sorts of fun storybooks with Rebecca. I even caught here this morning reading to her baby doll and she had the book down pat! Now six weeks hasn't passed yet, but it seems that habit is nearly kicked so we are on to the potty training. Hmmmm. This one is going to take a while I'm afraid. Rebecca has the ability, but no desire. We've now incoporated a lovely green posterboard chart into our decorating scheme here at home with stickers and crafts as incentives. We'll see how it goes. Now on to tackling the budget and unnecessary expenditures. Whew! No wonder I haven't made it to the gym yet this week..... I'm just trying to keep up! ;-) Its actually been a lot of fun and we're making it sort of a game trying to help each other stick to our goals. Here are some pics of our book filled weekend and such. We got a great deal on some home schooling books and are sort of going down memory lane together looking over our old school texts.... and learning a few facts that somehow got us through the tests but diappeared sometime between highschool and parenthood. LOL

Box Lunch Date

For Aaron's second 'date of the month' we took boxed dinnners up to the Newburgh Locks and Dam. It was a really beautiful day here Saturday. A few days before we were having 85 degree weather, but then this evening we needed our jackets. Crazy Spring! After dinner we found a little trail through the woods and helped Rebecca collect flowers, leaves, and sticks to take home and examine. She liked the sticks best!