Nice Kitty

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but my sister is a landscaper by trade, and she's pretty good at what she does. Not a mow your lawn, put in a few plants from the Depot, type of landscaper but an organic practices, native perennials type of landscaper. Her yard always looks AMAZING. Fun and durable for kids, edible little niblet of berries mixed in everywhere, interesting plant choices and every thing looks natural and healthy and vibrant and cared for. Pretty much the exact opposite of what I half-jokingly call the "back to nature" look of my yard. I spent the morning kind of peeking around at what was new in her place while she made blueberry muffins and the kids played.

This afternoon, the kids and I drove to Sunriver to spend the night with my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law in their new house. And this may be the best 3 hour drive I ever took with the kids. Previously, for drives of over 2 hours, we have put DVD players in the car for the kids to watch. It works, they are quiet and occupied and we get to talk but it's kind of a pain. There are wires everywhere and the kids never sleep in the car and someone always needs something plugged in or adjusted. This trip I had a flash of brilliance and instead of DVD players we used ipods. Miss E has one of our old ipods that is now "hers" and I grabbed another one for Mr. T and made it his. I loaded both with the kid's music and several kid's audio books. It was awesome. They were both quiet and occupied during the drive but not to the extent that they couldn't/wouldn't talk to me when I said something. The ipods were much easier to work and Miss E helped Mr. T figure his out so I didn't have anything to do except drive. And listen to music. And buy them french fries and chocolate milk and lemonade - you know, road trip food. I cannot stress how much easier it is to do things with a 6 and 7 year old as opposed to younger kids. Plus, I just like going places with them.