Bits & Pieces :: April

*All dressed up for church on Sunday.  I had my shoes on already so the kids look so short next to me!

*Flowers are starting to bloom everywhere even though the weather has been hot one day and cold the next. 

Forsythia being blown around by storm clouds

Pretty hyacinth -- too bad a photo can't be scratch and sniff.

*Car city has come back to life, even on a rainy day. 

*Chloe wanted her hair cut earlier this month (again, like Thumbelina).  She loves to brush it and let us all feel how silky it is :-)

*Evan keeps adding creatures to his pipe-cleaner bug collection.

*Pipe cleaners are fun for lots of things.... especially when Uncle Chris throws in his creativity to the group.

*Chloe is always in a corner somewhere doing something crafty.  One day she spent two hours in her room making feed sacks for her horses.  She has a jar of mixed beans that she uses for horse food that got sorted and bagged and neatly labeled.

*Out at Jed's house, there is a zip line across the back yard!

*Also there are toads and frogs everywhere.  Last summer, (at Jed's) a bunch of the boys found seven huge toads and collected them in a bucket.  One was bigger than my hand.  This little frog is more my style.

*Evan is always trying to make Roy sleep in his lap -- usually forced against his will till he claws himself free.  This day was just right....

*Evan has been so interested in magic tricks and card tricks.  One of his trick books showed how to pick up a piece of ice with only a string.  With a little bit of magic (and salt) we did it.

*At the playground with homeschooling friends.

No one is ever safe from the POKE!

*Spring and running just go together.  Free from snowpants and clunky boots, you just can't help yourself.  Even me.

*While swinging, Evan and Chloe thought they heard a garbage truck on the road nearby tip over (it was actually just the door slamming on it) and it sent them into fits of giggles.  So much laughing!

It's hard to be a girl on a swing.

*Look, trees are budding!

*More running, this time they found wild-growing chives.  Yum!

*Chloe saved up tissue boxes and toilet paper rolls for months until they were piled high.  She had big plans, she said.  Indeed.

Upon completion of this horse, she promptly made another.  Because that is what she does.

Chicken Herders

{photos from earlier this week visiting with friends}

You've Got Mail

Chloe has spent hours in this little nook behind the chair.

She has a pile of paper, a container of markers, a pair of scissors, and endless amounts of creativity, patience, and attention for creating mail...stacks of mail....

..... for me....

She never tires of drawing the same things repeatedly as you can see ;-)  And when the drawing is done, she folds it up and puts it through this little window. 

That's how I get my mail each day.

Return of the Sun

We went out at noon.

We soaked up sun for hours and hours.

The kids planted their terrarium seeds after mushing up dirt for an hour or two.

Roy was in kitty heaven on the warm boards of the deck.

The kids didn't ask for a snack even once.  

They only ran inside to collect "supplies" a few times and to go to the bathroom. 

It was almost 6:30pm when we dragged them inside for dinner.

We needed that.

Needed: One Craft Table

Sitting on the floor to play has been a part of our everyday here since Evan was born.  Games, puzzles, art stuff, toy set-ups.... whatever.  And now that the kids are getting older, I see them starting to hunch over to play and it doesn't look comfortable (or healthy for those spines). 
We need a craft table but there is nowhere to put one.  I'm hoping to figure out a way to make it happen in the current art corner of the living room right under the big window, but who knows.  Until then, we sit on the floor....

We've been playing "Herd Your Horses," our new game from Gramma who visited last week.

This game is wonderful!!  There are several games you can play on one board and all of them are fun.  Chloe is addicted to it and has already memorized most of the horses names.

There are solitaire versions of the game so those of us who don't prefer competition can still have fun ;-)

The art corner is forever a mess, but since the best light comes in these windows we all gravitate toward it, even if we aren't doing art stuff. 

A new stash of shiny party umbrellas was the highlight of several days in a row of playing.  They even took them outside to play, stuffed them in containers for car rides, and also brought them to church.

For the past month or so, Evan and Chloe have both been really interested in ocean life. Chloe has been interested in fish for years, but the movie "Finding Nemo" really set this thing in motion for both of them.  Chloe likes the colorful fish and the sharks while Evan gravitates toward unusual stuff like pufferfish and anglerfish.  They asked for some anglerfish pictures (among other things) for coloring and cutting out, and spent an entire morning doing this:

Details, details, details.  And Chloe's look as good as Evan's.  They love scissors :-)






The past few days have been so nice out that the art corner is only busy in the early morning while it's still 40 degrees out.  By late morning it's above 50 degrees and sunny!! 

So, maybe we don't really need a craft table.  Maybe we just need it to be spring.

Easter

Easter Morning!!

It seems I just don't pick up my camera very often any more, so the photos are sparse yet again.  After breakfast, we gave the kids their Easter presents:  a real Bible for Evan (his first) and a stack of CDs for Chloe with Bible verses set to music.  It's important to us that Jesus is the reason for this day and the kids were so grateful for their new treasures :-)

After that they were free to hunt for baskets which their dad hid this year.  Evan found his strung to a rope down the chimney hole in our unfinished attic, and Chloe's was under a box downstairs.  This might be Todd's job every year.  We opted for natural treats like fruit leathers and banana chips which are just as exciting to the kids as gummy worms since we rarely buy them.  They were thrilled.  We also like to put a little surprise in the basket too:  a pure white kitten for Evan and a husky dog for Chloe.  They both liked the little surprises the best out of everything. 

For a family that doesn't eat a lot of sugary food, Easter is a difficult holiday to navigate, but this year felt just right.  We went to church without any sugar-high to deal with and some really nice music to listen to as a family.  (Again with the lack of pictures... we don't dress up super fancy on Easter anyway, but still....)