january

Gus and Nora are such great little buddies.  They are always doing cute things together, like for example, pretending to be turtles...

This is why it was extra hard to Nora to see Gus go off to preschool two days a week.

He, however, was thrilled about it and had his buddy, William, going with him...

 The little sisters were left behind, but at least they have each other to play with...

 It also means I get to have just Mom and Nora time.  This is usually how I would stop her from crying on the first few days we left him.  I would say, "It will be just girls."  It kind of worked and eventually she got used to him going, but she still tells me she will miss him.  However, she also just really loves missing anyone she isn't currently with.  Sometimes she just says in her saddest voice, "I just miss everyone in the whole world."  She is a bit dramatic, but I know she really was sad to see her buddy go even if it was only two days a week.  It means I play with her a lot more.  We have lots of tea parties...

 Our weather was quite beautiful for most of January, but we did get a big hail storm which they kids thought was super fun.  It is the closest thing to real winter weather we can expect.  I like that it is novel and then the sun comes back out.

 January is also prime citrus season in Phoenix.  We have one orange tree that is slowly dying and stopped producing fruit and one grapefruit tree that is still very small and only give about 3 grapefruits.   However, so many neighbors have fruit and were happy to part with it.  The boys had been begging to have a lemonade stand since they are saving up to buy their own tickets to Disneyland.  I told them they would have to do most of the work themselves so they juiced lots of oranges, grapefruits, and lemons...

 Despite all my talk, I did my fair share as well.  Our kitchen was a huge sticky mess after all this and my arms were actually sore from hand juicing, but we had a lot of juice to sell.

The kids set up their stand on a lovely Saturday morning and stayed until the late afternoon...

  I put a notice about our stand on the neighborhood website and everyone told me to charge a dollar which I thought was steep, but they said people are happy to give money to kids and you won't have to deal with change.  Well it was good advice and we had tons of customers.  I couldn't believe it, but they actually made $90!  We had a lot of generous neighbors who gave donations when they heard the kids were saving for a Disneyland trip, but I was still astounded that they made that much.  One lady gave them $10 and said, "I love to see young entrepreneurs."  The kids split the money and put it into their Disneyland fund.  Jimmy was excited that he now had enough for his ticket and Gus only had about $5 more to go.   Once I knew that Disneyland was really happening, I started planning a trip for Zach's spring break.   I was probably as excited about it as them.