Blues and purples...

This color combination is giving me such joy...I was so tempted to add in more colors and now, am so glad I held on to my original plan...Happy Spring!

Happy Give-Your-Kids-A-New-Toy-for-No-Reason Day!

Today, when a big box arrived from one of my favorite online shops, Reallygreattoys.com, I decided not to wait, but declare it a holiday and hand out some fun new things! The kids went crazy and played beautifully together from lunchtime until bedtime and even put everything neatly on the coffee table for Daddy to see when he got home after bedtime from his board meeting...it was well worth his raised eyebrow over the seemingly random expense!

I have a nice high shelf in my closet, and thought I'd hide these new toys up there, like, I'm 'getting ready' for real holidays in the future, but you know, kids grow up fast! I mean, really!

Our 'baby' is already 14 months old and 'talking' about bunnies and sheep and flowers (in baby signs) so should I really wait till her next gift-able holiday to give her a little toy bunny or a set of cows? That would mean waiting till Christmas! She may be actually talking by then!

And my 6yr old, he is sooooo into the Titanic right now. Sheesh. Am I going to let him watch the movie? Heck no. Can I prevent him from bringing home book after book about that ship from his school's library? Not really. However, I can, and do refuse to read these morbid books as bedtime stories, but he is so insistant that they be read to him at some point during the day, it's not been easy! I also recently realized he's been playing 'Titanic' in the bathtub. Ugh. He really wanted to understand 'why' the Titanic is still on the floor of the ocean. (Well, it's really, really, really in deep water...and, um, it's a graveyard? ...I don't know.)

He is only 6. But he is already 6! He already has his own ideas about so much! And (since he was a newborn his first Christmas) I've only had 5 Christmas's and 5 birthdays worth of 'official' gift-able holidays with which to shape him and his world! (I'm only half serious, but I am half serious.) I want his world to be a happy one! With meadows and little bunnies and flowers everywhere! And possibly fairies and gnomes! I mean, why not?!

I think I am trying to extend his so-called 'innocence of childhood' with a little retail therapy for myself mixed in. :)

So, today he received a really "Awesome! I can't believe you bought this for me! I never even saw this in a store! I would have begged you for this! Please can I go take a bath right now?!" toy that I think he likes and will help him work through this whole Titanic obssession, in a more scientific, less morbid sort of way. Hopefully.

And we also got a sweet little meadow with flowers, bunnies and sheep.

And also a darling Gnome Home.

Because.