Surviving At Home

I’m very excited to share this week’s activity report with you because I just loved researching my family tree. I started when I was about 13 years old, taking notes and filling in the blanks of my family tree journal that I had gotten for Christmas.

Young children can help create many different family history projects; they don’t have to strictly write in a journal. There are lots of ideas in this report and your kids will have fun while learning about some personal history!

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I am very excited to announce that the first of our summer activity books is ready!

Surviving the Summer at Home is a series of themed activity reports that you can use to keep your kids busy and unplugged from their video games this summer. I know those awful cries of, “Mom! I’m bored!” so this is just my little way to help ease that stress.

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Subscribers…please let me know what you think! If you leave a comment here, I will definitely read it and respond!

I’m beating the clock by 30 minutes but here is my Tell Me Thursday story! You can see my picture by scrolling down or clicking here.

This is a picture of a newly bloomed peony in my backyard. These are truly the easiest perennials to grow! I purchased the small plants years ago, plopped them in the ground (how’s that for “official” gardening lingo!) and have watched them grow and bloom wildly ever since!

Peonies thrive in full sun and with minimal work. Since it’s a perennial, you need to cut back the dead stems and leaves every fall but then it turns around in the spring with baby sprouts and glorious flowers.

The only drawback is that they are top-heavy, so you need stakes to hold up the plant and the flowers. The flowers open up SO wide that these skinny long stems can’t possibly support them upright. They also have a very short blooming season, maybe one month, before they are dead. The foliage lasts longer so at least my garden doesn’t look dead right away but I would love to enjoy the flowers for a longer period. C’est la vie.

Every year I look forward to my peonies blooming. It’s a shame that we had such a massive rainstorm two days ago because the rain can make them bend over, too, but I look out my window every single day and just marvel at the glorious color.

You can’t be in a bad mood looking at that beauty!

For more Wordless Wednesday pictures, visit 5 Minutes for Mom

Come back tomorrow for the story behind the picture, Tell Me Thursday.