The Longest Hair Ever

What use is a very long rope to a little girl?  For making Rapunzel hair, of course.

She she ties it around her head and then runs all over the yard with it trailing behind her (in her underwear on this day.... is it just my kids who hate to wear clothes??) or she drags it all over the house or bundles it up in her arms (like Rapunzel does in the movie Tangled) or she strings it up all over the deck creating giant spider-web type traps.

If you expect to walk through her play area, ducking and stepping and moving her "hair" without making her cry, you are wrong.  She plays seriously and doesn't like to be disrupted even if you do have to get into the kitchen because your oven timer beeped and she has her "hair" through the door handle.... not that I tried to do that.  

Although it's become a bit inconvenient to work around, I do love her creativity and her growing proficiency at tying knots.

Oh, and also the way it makes her cute little ears stick out :-)

Their Trail

I saw them here first.

Still in their undies.  Making up "Gonk World" in the rice box with Lego droids, shells, beach glass and frogs.  I told them I'd be straightening up in the storage room downstairs and walked away.



I came up several times to put things away, get a drink, make sure teeth got brushed, grab plastic bags.....

When I came up to make lunch, I realized that my children hadn't fought all morning.  They were actually in their room together... laughing!



I followed this trail around the house.... evidence of a morning spent together or at least near each other :-)

Gonk World invaded with spacecrafts

A game of Life (and a snack)

A zoo

An artful explosion

Some private cozy book reading

Some private sweet horse play

While I made food, they played here:

Bonding with Gonk droid slides

I wish every day could be a little more like this. Where will the trail lead tomorrow?

Chloe's Art

Chloe loves to paint.  Sometimes I walk into the kitchen, having just taken a shower or something, and find her surrounded by paint containers and clouded water cups and finished pictures drying nearby.  Sometimes I just find the pictures with no evidence that she has been working (other than a few stray paint lines on the table). 
She is imaginative, to say the least. 

I have not felt it necessary to give her tips on 'how-to-draw' anything, knowing that she'll figure it out if she really wants to.  And she has.

This one she made using the little Crayola jar paints (the only paints we could find that didn't smell awful like a chemical plant).  I knew right away what it was -- a horse stable and pasture, surrounded by a beautiful fence.  She put the crosses on the doors and added a hayloft over them without ever having talked before about 'what a barn looks like.'  I love that.  This picture came right from her heart onto the paper.

And this one.... I love it!! She wanted to paint a rhino, but try as she might, she couldn't 'copy' the shape from her animal book in a way she was happy with.  So, she asked me to do it.  I penciled an outline (without giving her any kind of drawing lesson) and she did the rest.  It is absolutely stunning in person.  The watercolor are so vibrant and varied.  She sees this world in such a marvelous light, when even a boring gray (smelly) rhino can be a masterpiece.

Fix-a-Flat

Bats

The swing on our deck is a playground for the kids.  They love the high bar for all sorts of daring stunts.  Recently this is Evan's favorite -- the bat.

Usually Chloe hangs by her knees but still holds on to the bar with her hands.  She calls herself "the sloth" (while Evan taunts her from below calling her trick the "fake bat").  Motivated by her teasing big brother, she wants to be a real bat although she still needs a little reassurance that she won't fall when she lets go with her hands.

Whatever it takes, right?

Family Beach

The beach was empty this morning. 

It was just our kids in the water and running along the sand -- perfect for some family time.

Todd had a day off work today so the kids loved having rides on his back to the "deep end."

We had hours of fun, and just as it got too hot and more crowded, we were ready to go home for lunch.

Still feels like summer today!

Growing

A lot of effort went into getting this one sunflower to grow, so we're pretty proud of it.  There is a little girl named Carista (she's Chloe's age) who lives in the house behind us who likes to reach through our fence and pluck our plants right out of the ground.  In June we planted four seeds and three sprouted!  But, while playing in the backyard in July, she pulled them all out..... we were mad.
We tried again, planting more right away, and got three more sprouts from our four seeds.  Even after telling Carista not to touch them and explaining why, she still stuck her little paws through and pulled again.  She yanked one out and ripped the leaves off the other two! Todd started feeling like it was a war.  He put some wire mesh on our chain link so she couldn't fit more than a finger through (which she still tried several times), and the strongest of the two sprouts began to thrive.
And then one day it burst open to reveal a bright yellow center -- we all went running out to admire it.  We love this little flower, finally growing.