the little gatherer and other things

This weekend has proved to be another difficult one. I was in the ER for the seventh time and still with no answers. We just changed our medical group and I was able to see a Physician's Assistant yesterday and I am hoping to be hopeful (if that makes any sense). It's always harder when you don't see it coming, when you have been feeling good for a couple of weeks and then, it's here again. We are now waiting for another GI referral and we are hoping that whoever it is will be interested in what's going on and willing to help. A couple of things that I hope they checked for is Crohn's Disease and to give me extensive allergy tests. We'll see...

Other than that, it is Spring Break around here. On top of whatever it is that I have, I also have a cold. I didn't want to put a damper on Natalie being home with me this week and so I decided we would make a craft and take a walk. I put on Kiki's Delivery Service (it was a part of her easter basket goods, a long with a the parent trap (lindsay lohan version), a book, a skelanimal chick, several flower seeds and just a tad bit of candy) and we began to make a couple of God's Eyes. She did hers with different strings/yarns and colors and it became a bit of a rectangle shape. I thought it would make a perfect natural canvas and told her to get her basket so we could take a walk across the school to see what things she could find.

The day was beautiful and sunny without being hot. It seemed liked it just glowed and we both kept remarking on how pretty everything was.

Posing by the tree, with her 'serious closed eye' modeling...

It was a very nice walk until we had a little accident with her camera. It fell and now it only takes blurry photos. I can't stand not having a camera, even a little cheap one and we've seem to just have had rotten luck with keeping one.

My parents returned from their mini-vacation in San Diego and Nat recieved a beautiful dress from a store called Naartjie. I wished these photos had better focus but I hope you can get the idea. By the way, you can't really define them, but she is wearing owl earrings given to her so sweetly by Miss Helena (she gave me a pair too)!..





I had to resort to using my camera phone to show our little woven branches and what natural objects we used with them:

I also was catching up on my blog reading and found a perfectly timed post from my friend Lisa over at 5 Orange Potatoes about children and nature awareness. The Children and Nature Network , chairman Richard Louv, has declared the month of April to be Children and Nature Awareness Month. Lisa and her girls are always doing amazing natural crafts and activities and she has posted a great outdoor challenge button for anyone who would like to participate. I definitely need to post this over at Believing Nature but I thought since Nat and I had a mini nature sort of day, that it would perfect to post here first.

I am hoping that this cold will leave soon as well as any other thing that might get in the way of Natalie and I enjoying the outdoors during this pretty Spring week...