Oh spring, how I love thee

Simply put, I love March. I love the entrance of spring and the exit of winter. It is so beautiful in Arizona with highs in the 80's during the day and lows in the 50's. Just perfect! I love the orange blossoms that send off the wonderful scent of citrus, I love having our windows open during the day and at night, I love seeing our grass turn green from the ugly brown that we have seen all winter long, I love spending time outside while the kids play, I just love spring. Another thing I love about this time of year is Lent. I didn't practice lent until last year when I was challenged to give something up for lent. I gave up facebook, which can be such a time sucker, and didn't log on to my facebook page for an entire 40 days. I decided to do the same thing this year. So from March 9th (Ash Wednesday) to April 25th, I will not be on facebook. It seems to be a great thing for me for many reasons, the main one is it means less time on my computer. I feel like I manage my time pretty well, but less time on my computer means more time to do other things, more important things. Also, I find myself thinking in "facebook statuses" often. If your not on facebook, you'll have no idea what that means. But if something funny happens or something exciting is going on in my life, it usually becomes a facebook status. So now instead of sharing it on facebook, I will actually tell it to someone- face to face. That's really the way it should be anyway! It seems like my facebook fast becomes a great reality check for me and when I do finish my fast and find myself logging back on to my facebook page, I seem to have a new perspective. So with that said, if I had been on facebook this past week, here is what you may have seen in my status updates:

Annagrace was singing the song that goes, "I believe I can fly", she pauses and says, "Mom, I really like this song because I really do believe I can fly."

I was at Petco and a man walks in and asks if they sell sunglasses for dogs. I found this a bit strange. And no, Petco does not sell doggie sunglasses.

We planted some pansey's in our pots in our front yard and our chickens keep eating them when we let them out to play in the front yard. Have you ever tried to discipline a chicken, they don't listen that well. 

We went on a family date to see the movie Rango, it was a WEIRD movie and I did not like it. I would not recommend it but that's my opinion. However, my husband and kids would agree. Bummer.

Camden has been saving his money, birthday money, commission money (that's what we call allowance), I paid him to help me on a photo shoot, he helped dad install security cameras at a local business and got paid a little for that too, and tomorrow he has been hired by Papa to help build some shelves. This means that Camden gets to go purchase an iTouch tomorrow afternoon! This is a huge accomplishment for Camden, saving money is VERY hard for him and we are very proud that he not only saved, but worked really hard to earn the money to do this. 

So that's a little bit of what has been going on at the Ray house for the past couple of days. And I cannot leave this without posting some pictures, and there are a lot.

Annagrace spent her birthday money and savings money and bought a new bike. She LOVES it. However, do you see those tassles on the handlebars? Well, they are no longer on there. The other day she asked if she could cut them off, her reason was that she is just not a girlie girl. It just cracked me up as she said it because she was wearing her princess helmet and had just painted her very own finger nails purple.

Here we are planting our panseys and geraniums. I had my little helpers. 

And our crazy kids have started swimming. The water temp, 64 degrees! They are nuts!

And someone is waiting to lose her very first tooth. It's a stubborn tooth and Anna has been working hard on getting it to come out. Her little treasure box is waiting.

Any day now, she really can't wait!

and that's all folks!