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.

 

*********************

 

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.

*********************

 

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.

 

*********************

 

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!

*********************

 

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.

*********************

 

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)

 

*********************

 

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."

 

*********************

 

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).

 

*********************

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.

il giardino

I went outside to take a picture of this:

and ended up taking pictures of these:

Tales from the Weekend

On Friday HH and I both spent time working outside in the yard. The sugar snap peas are planted, and the little lupine sprouts are planted, and the garden looks a little better. And the birds are finally using the feeder (that, of course, has nothing to do with our efforts).

On Saturday I went to run some errands before a birthday party & a craft group meeting. Unfortunately I only made it about a mile and a half before the jeep transmission stopped working. When HH came to rescue me I found out that I'd been leaking transmission fluid the whole way. So errands didn't get done & I missed the party (the bizarre part is that the jeep broke down last year just in time for the same birthday boy's party...it's not like it's always breaking down, so the coincidence is weird). I was able to carpool down to the craft group, and these are the brownie cakes that I took (the group name is Dragonflies). I just circle cut the brownies (from this recipe), did a chocolate glaze & did the starburst dragonflies from the decorated cookie blog (where I also got instructions for the Easter cookies).

Luckily the transmission wasn't toast, it seems that there was a leak in a something-or-other, and HH (who is, of course, very handy) was able to fix it reasonably well. It still needs to go in for a check, but in the meantime it's driveable. So we were able to go up to church with my sister L & her family (my great-nephew was blessed--last week was O's blessing & this week was K's). Anyhow, afterwards was a potluck, and here are some pictures.

My sister L has 4 grandsons, so there was no end to little boys for my girls to play with. Aren't they cute?! Little E, on the far left, is 8 months and I think he's just so DARLING with his glasses! They were all well behaved, too, which is always nice.

Yes, chick, this is what little boys play with. Good thing that my neice M is playing too--she's baby K's mama so she needs to get used to little boys.Babe with cousin Andrew...he was jealous of her toys, and was probably getting her to say Matt Damon, but he's probably going to have to wait a while....Today I'm watching a friend's little girl. Chick and T are less than a month apart, and both love ring-around-the-rosy.

And the green grass grows all around

I'm writing, not packing.

I'll get to it in a minute. We're leaving for a trip to Utah at midnight (Travis, Dave's friend and ex-roommate, is getting married). I've picked out the girls' clothes, and some goodies (I made granola bars & selected a few magazines from my ever growing pile of reading material). Still have a lot left to do, though.

On Thursday I made a little change purse for my aunt's birthday. She collects them, so this one is homemade & has pictures of the girls. Chick calls her Nana (the two Grandma's are called Grandma, but my aunt is an honorary grandma, so the name is fitting). Anyhow, not the greatest photos.

On Friday I used some scrap material & ribbon and made the Lazy day skirt from Oliver+S. Here it is. I totally think it's the cutest...I'll be making more for sure--especially since Chick is growing out of her clothes & skirts are especially great for summer. I improvised the pocket & lining. The top fabric is because I fell in love with a scrap of fabric that wasn't actually big enough. (She's licking her lips because I bribed her to do the picture by giving her lip gloss...which obviously backfired on me. Doggie slippers from thrift store--new Childrens Place, for $3, I think).

Anyhow, this weekend we borrowed a rototiller (thanks M&J) and worked on our garden. The seeds that I started indoors are starting to go a little crazy, and I don't know what to do since we're leaving for a few days and I won't get to tending them today.... Anyhow, at least part of the garden will be raised beds. We're using wooden crates that HH picks up from the scrap pile at work--they are shipping crates for airplane/helicopter parts, and I'd guess it's about 4x6? I got the first one in on Saturday. We probably don't have enough soil to do all raised beds this year, but I'll put at least one more in. No pics yet.

I totally overdid it on Saturday with the gardening, because I was sick and all of that hard work didn't help. Sunday I stayed home from church with Babe and we slept a lot : )

Uh, so I saw a link on Nikko's blog for the Wardrobe ReFashion blog, and I'm thinking of taking the pledge. I saw this skirt at the thrift store the other day & am going to make it into two summer dresses. I love the fabric. Stay tuned.

Ok, now I'm really going to go pack. Talk to ya'll in a few days.