Has Spring FINALLY Sprung?

We have had the slowest spring ever!  I'm sure it has never, ever taken this long to warm up and stop feeling like winter.  Oh, we've had nice days.  Quite a few actually.  They've just been sandwiched in between rainy, cold weeks.   This morning brought a light breeze but plenty of WARM sun so we're going outside today!  We have lots of flowers to plant, but the forecast calls for a possible freeze on Thursday so we may hold off on that.  But, there are still many shrubs to prune, winter garbage to clean up and outdoor games to play. 

The kids are always willing to do their part in the yard as long as I choose chores that don't take them too long.  In fact, I usually have a hard time coming up with jobs that are appropriate for them.  Today I'm going to give them both gardening gloves and brooms and they can help clean up the dead leaves and other winter trash that accumulated everywhere.  I'll give them each a little area that they can do quickly before moving on.  Once everything is clean I'll get out the balls, jump ropes and hula hoops, chalk and a  bad mitten set.  We have plenty of ways to have fun in the sun!

That's our plan today!  Oh, I'm also going to take an hour this morning to meal plan and get my shopping list ready for the week.  I'll post again when it's done. 

Also, because I forgot to post them last week, I'm including a few pics from our ladybug release. (You may recall from last Wednesday that we were going to buy tubs of ladybugs from a local nursery to release into our yard.)  If squealing and shrieking are a clue, I'd say the ladybugs were total kid pleasers again.  The kids know all about the benefits of ladybugs in a garden, and thanks to this cute site, they know lots of other interesting facts about them, too!