This is the life

We've had such a fun weekend. We walked the shore at the beach while a storm was coming in. The waves were something like 6 to 9 feet high. The intensity of the wind coming off the lake was somehow soothing and the deafening sound of it helped to clear my mind. There's been so much heaviness and filth in the news lately that it's been really dragging me down (like having trouble sleeping at night dragging me down). The stuff that's being reported these days can almost make a person lose any and all faith they had left in humanity, which additionally puts a grave outlook on the future. Somehow the power of the wind coming off the lake, seeing the intensity of the mighty waves, watching my son joyfully chase the seagulls and climb on large pieces of driftwood, and poke holes in the sand with his pointer finger (I'm not sure why but he stopped every few steps to poke his finger into the wet sand on the shore) restored a calm to me that I was missing.

Friday evening my little guy got to spend sometime playing with his favorite little girl on the planet. Her grandparents live next door to us and she stays there on the weekends. Little Abe does not get to see her that often and plays were her even less but he looks out the window for her every single day. He talks about her often and it's the highlight of his life when the two of them get to play together. Needless to say it makes this momma's heart absolutely giddy when the two of them do get a chance to boss each other around, take turns practicing their skills at sharing, play with water toys in our backyard, explore our garden together and dig in the dirt.

Today he had another fun play date. Some friends of ours collect monarch butterfly eggs from their backyard and hatch the beauties all summer long. They had three that crawled from their chrysalis this morning and invited us over to let them go. The butterfly thing didn't last very long but it was neat and educational and then he got to play with the two boys (a few years older than him) for several hours. I adore these two boys. They are so nice to my little guy, really polite and well behaved and they are very creative.They really don't watch much TV, play hardly any video games, and only get to use tablets/ smartphones when they're grocery shopping with their mom or going for long car rides. I love that they can really have fun for hours just playing together and playing with toys. It sounds a silly thing to say; what kid can't just play with toys? Now a days... quite a lot of them actually.

This evening, if it doesn't rain all day there's a community picnic that we'll be walking over to with these same friends. (I love the rain so I'm not complaining about it) There'll be free food, dinner for all, and this includes pop and chips and usually cake. You say free food and unless my hubby intervenes I AM THERE! (I'm really not a super big pig but I LOVE not having to buy food AND if someone else is doing the cooking too!!!) Local restaurants cater the event to it's really a neat thing to at least stop by each year. Speaking of free food the monarch butterfly momma gave me an enormous zucchini from her garden and a cucumber. I'd offer her some of my billions of tomatoes but she grew those too. I will most certainly be making lemon zucchini mini muffins this evening. Okay, maybe I am a super big pig.

Calming but busy weekend; lots of time with friends, fun had by all, (hopefully) free food, harvested the sunflower seeds, tons of tomatoes and quite a lot of strawberries, gonna try a new muffin recipe from gifted garden fresh produce and I stuck to budget. Happy, happy, happy!

 Spending rundown today: $0. NO SPEND day 63 for the year.

My budget for the month is $436 which leaves $131.26

Average daily spending for 2015: $17.96

(the above average considers tomorrow as a no spend day)