Spring has Sprung early around here!

We are enjoying an early spring up here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest...I saw daffodils in bloom nearly a month ago, my tulip buds are showing themselves, our lawn is starting to need to be mowed, and we did some spring cleaning inside as well!

Here's some signs of spring around our place:

[caption id="attachment_533" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Future Berry, beautiful bloom now!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_532" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Waiting to be added to our gardens..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_534" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="These beauties never completely stopped blooming this winter, and they are in full bloom already!"][/caption]

Spring is for cleaning, and just for fun, last Saturday our livingroom was messier than usual, so we took a before photo, and then had it cleaned all up in 30  minutes!  Here's the before and after photos:

[caption id="attachment_535" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Before (notice Esther is enjoying dumping out her toy bin???)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_537" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="After - 30 minutes X 2 women = CLEAN!"][/caption]

We've been so busy this year, we've been doing homeschooling, music lessons, art lessons, a trip to my mom's house (with 2 kids),  and many other things.  We've also been busy seriously looking at deeper things.  We made some drastic changes to how we live our lives years ago, and have pretty much stayed the course we plotted out back then, but over the last few years we've been coasting along and gently breezes have blown us a little off course without our even noticing it!

[caption id="attachment_538" align="aligncenter" width="178" caption="One change is Esther started sucking her thumb..."][/caption]

So we've been re-evaluating some things, and looking at other things with "new glasses" for the first time!  We have decided we need to watch far fewer videos (Saturday nights after baths is all we are doing right now), play more games (we re-organized our school/toy/game-room last week), read out loud more (we just started reading The Magician's Nephew as a family, with the older member taking "parts"), and in general spending more time together doing things together!

[caption id="attachment_539" align="aligncenter" width="276" caption="Another big change is Esther is learning to climb the stairs...first time we've ever had stairs...time to buy a good baby gate!"][/caption]

So, that is my "excuse" this time for not blogging in forever, once again!  If you can get on facebook, you'll find me there...I'm not on as much as I have been in recent weeks, but I try to do little updates there from day to day...I'll leave you with some before and after photos of our school room make-over:

[caption id="attachment_541" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Before..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_542" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="After (Westside)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_543" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Eastside"][/caption]

Soon we willl be tackloing some long awaited projects...finish painting trim inside and outside the house, and putting in the back yard lawn!  Those are HUGE projects, but I'm sure we can get them done this year!