Flower Photography

 

Maddie took this picture of the flowers in the front yard, yellow and blooming quite profusely!  The yellow finches are attracted to these flowers and are starting to make more frequent visits for a quick snack.  Maddie was taking a few pictures of the different blooms in our yard, but she's also been doing a lot of drawing lately, teaching herself to draw people as best she can.  She's doing one illustration after another, improving each time.

She's also learning about allergies.  It's been a challenging start to the school year already with the allergies, as she's been sniffling and sneezing a bit more frequently.  We have the allergy medicine ready in the morning, although sometimes she forgets.  On this particular occasion, she forgot, and as a result tonight's taekwondo was something she wasn't ready to deal with.  She got home with a headache and a sniffle in her nose, and she just thought that sparring and exercise might not have been the best course of action.  Smart move.  It could also be a small virus going through the school system, which is something that tends to happen each year.  Of course, the big virus is out there, but the CDC is suddenly easing a lot of restrictions and also admitting that perhaps there was a bit of overreaction to the virus in recent years.  The rest of the world, of course, is collectively saying, "Ya think?"  I hate to sound cynical about this recent revelation from our beloved disease center in Atlanta, but there's this upcoming election, and I'm suspicious this announcement was somehow related to that. 

Anyway, so we stayed home tonight and watched "A Series of Unfortunate Events."  We're back on that after a few years away.  They did a great job with the series, paralleling the books fairly closely with only a few differences here and there.  

We celebrated my mother's birthday with a visit to Chicken Salad Chick, a place she wanted to go to.  I was a nice time together, catching up and talking about all sorts of things.  It's been a while since we hung out together, but family dynamics lately have been somewhat prohibitive.  

We said our prayers tonight after reading from our current book, and though Maddie missed taekwondo tonight, she's not doing too bad.  It was her decision, and it was somewhat precautionary, and that's okay.  She'll make it back later this week when we return.