A Study In Elias

My baby is 16-months old.  He’s easy going, active, walking, clever, climbing, investigating, chattering, I could go on and on.  He’s just a heck of a lot of fun and definitely keeps me on my toes.  Tonight he was hammin’ it up for the camera.

Not Elias but a couple of cute boys anyway.

What happens when the fairy won’t stay on the car and falls to the ground.  Poor baby.

Hm, how do I get the darn fairy to stay on the car?

Maybe if I hide and pretend I’m not looking.

Then he figured out that he could half bury himself in the couch.  Cute.  I wonder what sorts of things I’m going to find down there now.  Or who.  It’s a good thing he’s the youngest or he’d be trying to stick his siblings down there.  He might still try knowing him.

I love, love, love my baby so much!  (All of them of course.)

My Girl Is FIVE!

And today we celebrated with a little party.  She got to invite friends from her PreK class and has been talking non-stop about it for weeks now.  Finally, the big day came for her.  My favorite five-year old girl.

To help decorate for her Tangled party I drew Rapunzel's tower on our sliding glass door.  It was not easy to photograph.

After the guest’s arrived and played for a while it was time to open presents.  Princesses and pets galore.

 

Elias is actually pushing the ride-on train with another child on it.  He’s getting SO big!

 

Then time for cake!

After the party guests left Rob put Zion’s training wheels on the bike that a friend passed down to her.

Then Zion, Gideon and Gabe went out for a ride.  All three can scoot around on wheels now that Zion has some of her own.  Yay!

What a great day and glorious weather, thanks God!

Fall Days

We had a great Fall day here today.  It wasn’t sunny but it was great.  I had Rob buy me a saw the other day and today I got to go out and hack off the bottom branches of the tree outside our backdoor.  This made me SO happy.  Happy because now I can walk more than three steps out our backdoor and not have to hunch over now.  Yay!

Rob and I with the help of the kids got the latches replaced on the bunny cage and the cage all cleaned out and refreshed, dog “flops” picked up, the dead garden plants pulled up, the branches piled up, the bird feeder refilled and the leaves raked and tossed out.  And that was all after lunch and before dinner.  Then Rob and I teamed up in the kitchen and made ham, corn on the cob, stuffed Acorn squash and dinner rolls.  MmMm.  What a great day!

Around the House

Had a great day puttering around the house yesterday.  I’m still amazed at everything I got done.  In addition to general cleaning and normal kid stuff (you know, feeding, changing, bus stop…) I decorated for Fall (a little late to cross that off the to-do list but at least I got it done before Christmas) and organized a couple areas in the house.

First, the top of my cookbook shelf (that would be a four-shelf bookshelf actually, I have a small cookbook addiction – not just small cookbooks either, I collect big ones too, and ones in between – ha ha ha) was a true hazard to anything that might need to be put there.  I wish I’d taken a before picture, but here it is after:

Let’s just say this is a dramatic improvement.  It’s so much nicer to look at this.  The black bowl holds some of the veggies we get from our CSA, this time it’s potatoes, onion and a couple of kinds of squash.  The peppermill and two spice containers were my grandmothers and still hold ginger and baking powder (which I don’t plan to use), the old egg beater and iron came from antique stores a town over, the cotton branch was a find of Rob’s on his last business trip.  I love that he brought it back for me, the kids were fascinated with pulling cotton off and feeling the seeds inside.  We would not find something like this around here, that’s for sure.

I pulled out the Fall decorations box and got the house all dolled up with oranges and browns (my favorites) and used the pumpkins and gourds we got from the CSA to decorate the front stoop.  Now doesn’t that look warm and welcoming!  The CSA sells corn stalks and I was hoping to nab some but I couldn’t fit them in the van with the kids.  Kids?  Corn stalks?  Kids?  Corn stalks?  *sigh*  I guess I have to choose the kids.

Last night I had my first knit night for a while.  When the ladies left one of them pointed out my newly decorated front stoop had welcomed a visitor.

This little guy was sitting on my door handle.  Isn’t he cute?! 

Getting’ Crafty

LA Looks Hair Gel, clear – $2.97

Generic one-gallon freezer bags – .97

Food coloring – in the cupboard

Doing a craft that cost less than $4 and took less than 10 minutes but absolutely thrilled Zion – priceless

Today Zion and I made sensory bags to aid in writing skills and such.  Not like she really needs it, she actually has pretty good skills there, but I saw the craft here and knew I wanted to try it.  And I kind of hope that Gideon will like to play with the bags too and it definitely couldn’t hurt him.

First I plooped a bunch of the hair gel in a bowl and let Zion choose what color to make.  She wanted orange (yay, we can also talk about how colors mix to make other colors) and teal.  Well, she didn’t actually say she wanted to make “teal” but that she wanted to mix blue and green and according to the food coloring box that makes teal.

I fell enamored with the cool pattern the food coloring made as it ran down the hair gel mountain in the bowl.  Oo, pretty.

Then Zion added the green drops.  Two or three drops quickly turned into six or seven by accident so the color ended up more green than teal. What can you do?

She really was trying to be careful.

Then she got to stir.  Oh, how she loves to stir!

In the end we made two sensory bags that the kids can practice writing with their fingers on.  In the post I found the creator inserted laminated photos and pictures.  I figured since both sides of the bags were clear I could just lay the bag over pictures for the kids.  If that doesn’t work I may put some in the next bags we make.  I still have hair gel left (and Lord knows I’m not going to use it on my hair)!