In my little world lately, part two

Ok, noteworthy moments from March.  March was a pretty exciting month, but a lot of the pictures I took are from random moments at home.

First off:  Otter's flair for fashion.  It's very exciting to walk to the bus stop when you are behind someone this fashion forward.

Owl is "fancy" a lot too, but on this day she looked pretty subdued in contrast to her sister.

After we got home from the bus stop, Moose built a boat.  I'm afraid I don't remember where they were travelling.  The Swiffer was the oar, of course.  Just before or after this, the chairs were a train and were headed for California.

 

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Last year I went all out for Dr. Suess's birthday. This time...I did not.  I went and read books to the kids at the school for their Read-a-thon, but that was about it.  Chick got really into the spirit of the day, though, and did a bunch of Suess-themed drawings out on the walkway.

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Chick, Monkey and I went to a princess-themed ballet that was performed by the BYU ballet team.  It was fun to get all dolled up :) 

There were lots of people that we knew there so we got a picture of the girls with a few of their friends.

 

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Monkey loves her baby, Ella.  She looks so young in this picture...and she IS young, but she's definitely working on growing up.  In fact, she read her first chapter book ("Holly the Christmas Fairy" from the Rainbow Fairies series) a week ago, and another 1.5 books since then!  Way to go, Monkey!

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The benefits of having a junk yard, continued: It's easy to have a library (the same area has been a post office in the past...it's flexible like that).  The girls wrote book titles on pieces of wood... my favorite was, "The Dog that Ate Peas."

While the big girls were getting literary, Owl inspected a baby slug. 

And Owl and Otter spied on the neighbor's yard.
(Owl is looking at the screen right now, and said, "Otter is wearing my coat there!  That's funny!")

And Moose and Monkey spied on the tool shed :)

We've had some really nice weather days lately, which has provided lots of outside play time, and yard clean-up time for me.

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Chick's class had a field trip to the Aquarium and (thanks to my Mom for watching all of the other little people) I was able to go.  It was fun.  Most of my pictures didn't turn out, but it was really beautiful--I especially loved the variety of coral and plant life. 

Fun fact:  Scientists estimate that every grain of sand in the Puget Sound has been cleaned by going through a sea cucumber.



(Of course, Chick and I thought of OUR otter when we watched the otters)



(the girls in my group)

 

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The day after the field trip, Chick got an award at school.  It was for good academics overall. 

Next year she'll be changing schools because she'll be in the district's "highly capable" program.  Going to orientation, expo, and tour for that was part of the excitement this month.  She's not excited to change schools, but I'm really excited FOR her.  The program is an enrichment, project-based one...it was slightly intimidating (some things sounded more like my experience in COLLEGE than anything I'd had in elementary school!), but really really awesome.  Fun projects and really thoughtfully put together.  Plus having her be more challenged will be great.  In looking into the program I heard this quote from another parent:

"If you are the smartest person in the room,

then you are in the wrong room."

 

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The other day we went to Flower World, which I'd never heard of, but is a super huge nursery with lots of animals.  We didn't have much time there before they closed,  but loved every minute of it.  We enjoyed exploring the various ponds and such within the nursery, as well as the farm animals that were out on the grounds.

I bought a butterfly bush, columbine, hellebores, and astilbe.  Yesterday I got it all planted (the kids helped).

 

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We've read some good books lately.  I read "Enchantress of Crumbledown" which I'd read as a teenager.  It was still just as interesting and inspiring as before. 

I also read Outliers, which I found very thought-provoking.

Oh, and "Gone-Away Lake" as a pre-read to gauge how well it would go over for my kids (I'll be reading it again to them this summer).

My favorite that I really did read aloud to them was "The Castle in the Attic."  We all enjoyed it.  We did a poster-sized venn diagram to compare & contrast "The Castle in the Attic" with "The Indian in the Cupboard."  I enjoyed both books, but I think I like Castle better.  Fun book with good messages.

We'll be doing a kid's lit based weekly "camp" with some of our friends, so I've been looking into books in preparation for that.  I bought a few, and requested several from the library, based on reviews that I read about them.  I'm excited for the camp.  It'll just be for the older three kids, but they'll get to do fun projects and activities to go with the books and hopefully help bring the books alive.