secret garden

• George and Lila, we went to Strong Start again this morning.  George, you live for that 20 minutes in the gym when we can play hockey.  We take turns being the goalie.  You're actually getting pretty good at taking shots on me
• There's a long staircase from our parking spot to the school, and at the top, there's a small strip of land behind the houses that you guys like to play in.  Today, it was full of bright yellow flowers, and totally looked like a secret garden.  So pretty.  
• I'm drawn to dark, grungy, shadowy spots for photos.  I love the staircase in the middle of our building that runs from the garage to the courtyard
• Lila, after your bath, you picked out a dress...then another...and another.  You put on three dresses because you didn't just want to be pretty, you wanted to be pretty pretty pretty.  I was telling Jane that story, and she said she remembers trying to put on as many pretty things as she could because she thought it would be even more beautiful.  You two are so much alike
• After school we played in a patch of dandelions that had gone to seed.  George, I thought you would like to smash them and get your rough and tumble out of your system before dinner.  Lila, I thought that you would blow them and make wishes.  I was surprised to see the exact opposite from both of you.  George, you blew them very gingerly, and Lila, you ran through them as fast as you could until you had mud sprayed up your back.  You guys make me laugh
• I felt quite uninspired about cooking dinner tonight, so I decided to take a family trip to Save-On, so we could "see what we can see."  We roamed the aisles to see if we could come up with any good ideas.  We finally settled on nachos.  We already had most of the ingredients, and you were all so enthusiastic about it, I knew I wouldn't have to work too hard to convince everyone to eat their dinner.  Our nachos were fantastic.  Totally hit the spot