Little Monsters

Little dinosaurs peeking out of their cave at the dino museum.

What A Good Day Looks Like Around Here

Red Fish

After school we made watercolor resist painings of the peacock we saw preening at the farm yesterday. The details were done in oil pastel.  Red Fish couldn't stop talking about how "relaxing" it was to paint out in the sun again. I'm definitely going to have to start thinking of some new ideas for art projects with the girls this year. They are happy to continue exploring materials but Red Fish is also craving some projects that are slightly more directed or have more of a planned direction.  I still want them to explore and use their own creativity as much as possible.  It will be an interesting balance.

New Fish

 I walked the dog while the girls rode scooters to a park a little ways from our house.  New Fish was exhausted by the time we got there because she has never ridden a scooter that far before. It was a bit of a chore to get back to the house but the girls loved climbing all over and not having to wear their coats.

After we made it home and had some snacks and a lot of water we watched an episode of The Magic School Bus (their current favorite) and then went to the library for some reading. A quick stop at the grocery store for taco supplies and the girls thought it was a near perfect day.

Horserides

 I love that we could ski and ride horses outside in the same week.  We have been trying to get out of the house more and it is making us all happy.

Red Fish

How do I put Red Fish's personality into words?  When I drop her off for school she never fails to turn and blow me a kiss on her way in the door.  She literally skips back out to the car after kindergarten every single day. It makes me smile every time. She is a pleaser and she wants people to be happy, especially her little sister. She is constantly doing little things to help her sister and make sure she is taken care of.

After school today I noticed that her pants were on backwards (including the belt.)  When I asked her what the deal was she told me she just thought they looked better that way.  Hilarious.  My kids are starting to get quite a reputation for dressing themselves.  Just about anything goes at our house if you are willing to dress yourself.

Almost Perfect Ski Day

Two Fish and I bought helmets this year.  We always make the kids wear them so we figured we had better start wearing them as well.

We decided to have a very relaxed family ski day. We didn't hurry up the mountain to make it in time for ski lessons. We took our time. It was a beautiful.  Just a little bit of snow and bright sunshine.  It started out a perfect day.  It was a magical ski day for New Fish.  She suddenly decided that she knows how to stop, turn and go down the hill without her leashes.  It was amazing.  Two Fish took Red Fish for a couple of runs down the blue squares and when they came back New Fish knew how to ski. Too bad it is almost the end of the season!  Hopefully she will still remember how to do it next season. We only have one or two days left to go this year.  This was the first time in four years that there has not been a child strapped to my back or attached to me by a leash.  It was SO FUN.  I can't wait for next season.

We went inside for lunch and New Fish fell and hit her forehead on a rock wall.  You would think that skiing would be when she would get hurt but apparently it's lunch we have to worry about.  It was a bad end to a good day.  She is feeling fine now but the goose bump she got immediately afterwards was freaky.

Presidents Day

 Family ski days are my favorite.  The snow isn't great this year but it doesn't really matter when I spend most of the day on the bunny hill with New Fish. Red Fish has been taking a few ski lessons and she is still a maniac on skis.  We get a couple of runs in with Red Fish after her lessons.  It still scares me to see her zipping down the mountain but I'm working on not being a helicopter mom and I know that doing hard and scary things will be good for them, plus skiing is a blast.  There is nothing quite like having the wind in your face as you fly down the mountain.  Skiing is good for the soul.

Sleeping Beauty

 We saw the ballet, The Sleeping Beauty with my parents.  The girls both loved the ballet until we hit the last 45 minutes to an hour.  It was LONG. Even I just wanted them to hurry and get married already. We all had a good laugh when Red Fish said she liked the beginning but her favorite part was THE END.  It has been fun taking them to the ballets this year and I have been really proud of how well behaved the girls have been.  They have been able to sit still through some long productions.

2014 Family Love Dinner

 We had our annual family love dinner on Valentines day.  We decorate the table and try to make an especially nice dinner with fancy decorations so we can celebrate the holiday as a family.  It is a tradition that I really like because I always hated Valentines day when I was a teenager and young adult.  (If you haven't noticed, I basically love all traditions.) This year we had a couple of extra little loves to join us for dinner.  My brothers wanted to take their wives out so we had Thing 1 and Thing 2 over to dinner.  

The girls have traditionally dressed up for our love dinner so they got out some of our old, tiny dressups for Thing 2 and danced in the kitchen while I finished making dinner. I'm going to be very sad someday when the dressups aren't a part of our everyday life.

I was prepared to roll with the chaos of having four small children at a fancy dinner but things went so smoothly that I was shocked.  The kids were all delightful and they like the homemade, gluten free lasagna and they were all delightful for dinner.  I even got compliments on the food, which is a rare occurrence when you are a mother feeding picky little kids.  I was rather pleased that Two Fish and I could handle the four kids for a special little dinner without any extra stress.  It was fun to have the four little cousins together.

Lasagna, garlic bread, salad, grapes and sparkling pomegranate juice with ice cream sundaes for desert.

We watched a stop motion Disney love story and then tried to get all of the littles off to bed.  Thing 2 was bound and determined that she would not sleep at our house but the other three went straight to bed.

Missionary Dinner

Every year our ward (our church congregation) has an activity for the youth to experience missionary work.  They get a "mission call" to different homes in the neighborhood and we feed them and they give our family a lesson they have prepared.  Two Fish always makes Filipino food and brings out all of his mission things and pictures and lets the kids ask him questions about his experiences as a missionary.  I think our family might enjoy it more than the youth.  We always get to host these awesome teenagers and my kids just soak it up. It makes me miss working with the young women in our ward.

Tiny Dancer

She never gets tired of dancing and singing.  She lives in a musical every day.  She desperately wants to take piano lessons like Red Fish and we tried a couple of them at home but her little fingers are just too tiny.  I am hoping she will loose interest again for awhile so I can hold her off for a bit longer.

Happy Girls At The Library

We are trying to start going back to the library on a regular basis.  Hopefully we can not loose any books this time.  Going to the library is supposed to be free.  The girls like to spend an hour or so looking through the books before making their selections. Now that Red Fish can read she likes to read a couple of books before we leave. New Fish is very happy to be the audience.

Random Fun

It's a crazy picture but my camera battery died right after it was taken.  Just want to remember how fun dinner and games with good friends can be.  Thank heavens for Sunday dinners, life long friends, laughter and simple fun.

Date Night

11 years since he proposed.

Valentine Production

The annual production of the valentines has begun.  The girls started by cutting out hearts and paintint them with watercolor.  They used saran wrap while some were drying.  They added speckles with salt and splotches with drops of alchohol and experimented with different effects.  I enjoyed watching them explore the materials.  They still have a lot more valentines to make so maybe we can think of some other effects to test out.

Cousin Love

 We had a family dinner on Sunday with our O side of the family. I love Sunday dinner. We were missing one cousin but it looked like this was one of the last times we will have this many of the cousins together for awhile.  Dinner was not gourmet or exceptionally well panned but these kind of evenings are the stuff that memories are made of.  Dinner, family and crazy cousin time is all that is really required for forging what will hopefully be lifelong bonds. There was a lot of chaos as evidenced by my attempts at a group picture but I think it shows how much they love each other.

Crazy cousins

Ages 3 through 16

These girls love each other.  Cousins really are built in friends.

Paper Collage

The girls have been very interested in cutting construction paper up and making different shapes.  Most of the time I think it just makes a big mess but I really liked this little collage creation I found on their desk. It is one of Red Fish's creations.

Marbling With Milk

Stringing beads for Valentines themed jewelry while Daddy reads Harry Potter them.

The girls have been busy reading and creating lately. Two Fish has been reading Harry Potter to them (they are on book 3) and I've been reading a bunch of different books to them. Winter is starting to give us all a little bit of cabin fever and everytime we have friends over they all go crazy because they are so tired of being inside under close supervision without enough room to move their bodies. Thank heavens for their gymnastics class where they can get a little bit of their energy out.  They are so desperate for room to move that every time the sun peaks out they dash outside to run and ride bikes.  Inside they are bouncing off the furniture with cartwheels and handstands and the usual antics.

 We tried marbling with milk for the first time. I've seen a bunch of different ways of doing this but we just went with what we had on hand.  The girls filled baking sheets with milk and then used eye droppers to put liquid watercolors in the trays.  Then they added hand soap to the tray and put a watercolor paper in to soak.  The effect was pretty cool.  After the papers dried they cut them into heart shapes to make more Valentines.  Hopefully our papers don't stink later.

The tray with the watercolors suspended in milk and soap

One of their papers after it had been dipped in the tray.