Spring Flower Paintings

As one of our Advent activities in December we painted snowflakes and those paintings are still hanging on the wall in the girls' room.  Now that Spring has finally come we decided to celebrate with some new paintings.  We picked up some blank canvases this morning and I let the girls pick out some colors.  They were so excited to get started when we got home.

 We started out by painting the canvases pink.  They had two colors and blended them together as they covered their canvases.

 Once the paint dried we added the vinyl flowers that the girls each picked out as well as their names.

 Then it was time to paint over the top of it all with the purples that they had selected.

 Tonight when they were all dry we went down to their room and they selected a place to hang them.

 Aren't they cute!

 I love doing these projects with my kids, but maybe next time I'll pick a day when we have a little less going on.

Ten Months

Today Gideon turned 10 months old.  This kid is crawling, cruising, popping out teeth, and babbling up a storm these day.  And he is a little storm.  He gets into everything, if a door opens, no matter where is leads, he hurries to it.  Gideon also likes to eat, A LOT!  We are done with baby food and Gideon eats pretty much whatever we eat and boy can he eat!  He also likes to talk and when he gets started he just goes and goes babbling away.  I love his stories that he tells me.

This guy is getting so big and BUSY!  Seriously, this picture was not easy to get.

 Gideon likes to move...

 A LOT!

 He's crawling or cruising anywhere and everywhere and look at all of those new teeth!  He wears me out, but I love him all the same.

Lily's Avengers

 Our Lily loves to draw.  She also has an amazing fascination with The Avengers.  I'm not quite sure how it started, but she loves them.  She loves them so much that she believes that we need to have a section at preschool where rather then learning about time, our bodies, and basic reading skills, we should learn about The Avengers.  This afternoon she was drawing and coloring while I worked on the laundry and when she was done she had a story to tell.  

From left to right you have Hawkeye, Ironman (see the thing in his chest), Black Widow, Captain America with his shield, Thor with his hammer, and the much larger Incredible Hulk.  Those three kids on the bottom are her friends Bruce, Brynley, and herself.  They are studying The Avengers in school.

She drew this all on the back of our irrigation tax statement.

Spring is Coming!

I've been working on cleaning out my flower beds and I found these.  Crocuses have always been a favorite of mine, not because they are particularly beautiful, but because they mean Spring is coming.  They promise that Winter is almost over.  They are that ray of sunshine that breaks through the dreariness.

 I decided to eschew housework today and instead work in the yard.  It was sunny and my bulbs and some perennials are starting to come through which means that the remaining leaves and such left from last year need to be cleaned out.

One of my first jobs however was to add the baby swing t the swing set so that the kids could all swing together.  Lily was good to push Gideon and Charlotte and after a morning of bickering it was so wonderful to see them play so well together.  I think that we all just need to be outside.

 This was Gideon's first time in the swing and he loved it, even if it was a pink swing.

Loving the Legos

My girls love Legos.  They have been building with the sets that Lily received for Christmas quite a bit and last week while we were shopping for a gift for their cousin they saw a set from the movie Brave.  They were so excited, asked for it, and I told that they needed to save up their own money for it.  The next day Charlotte brought me her birthday money and asked if we could go get the Merida Legos.  I told her that she didn't have enough quite yet.  The following day it came up again and Lily and Charlotte brought me their piggy banks and asked if they could go get it.  They were still a few dollars short, but I decided to take them to get the Lego set.  Charlotte gave the cashier their money then I paid the rest.  As soon as we got home they set up to the kitchen table and got right to work.

Charlotte helped from time to time, when she took a break from playing with the Merida figure and the 3 little bear brothers.

I'm really impressed with their ability to follow the illustrated instructions.  They needed help sometimes, but did most of the work themselves.

The finished the entire project and were really proud of what they made.  They only gave me cheesy fake smiles for the picture though.  They just wanted to go play with the Legos and mom was making them take a picture.

Gideon didn't get to play along, I keep him far away from the Legos, but that didn't matter to him, he was still happy.

Gideon's First Haircut

I've been putting it off, because he is so young still, but this afternoon I broke down and cut Gideon's hair.  I'm not overly attached to my baby's hair, if I don't like how it is growing in, I trim it.  Gideon has had this long patch on top with some tufts on the sides and today it looked to puffy because of the stuff growing in underneath.

I took nearly an inch and a half off the top.  It was a challenging experience, using the clippers on a wiggly baby, but we made it work.

Most people probably won't notice, but I really like how it looks.

 He seems pretty pleased with himself.  Apparently I didn't traumatize him.

 Gideon's been dealing with some rough teething issues so we are trying out the amber beads.  He seems not to mind the necklace under his shirt.  At this point I'm willing to try anything.  Thankfully his 4th tooth just broke through this morning, but if these first four teeth are an indicator for how the next 16  will come in I'm scared.  Good thing we kinda like this kid.

Charlotte's Birthday Party

For several months now Charlotte has been telling me that for her birthday she wanted to have a pirate party.  I was hoping that the pirate thing would be out of her system by now, after all, they were pirates for Halloween, but no such luck.  Charlotte is still pirate obsessed.  I set about to planning a little party for her and her friends.

Last night after the girls went to bed I assembled and decorated Charlotte's cake and I;m happy with how it came out.  I learned a few things, messed up in some places, but it was fun to make and she was so excited when she came upstairs this morning and saw it on the table.

At her party we had a treasure map (that I drew up 10 minutes before the party started since the idea occurred to me while setting up) that showed Charlotte how to navigate her party.  We started with some coloring pages while we waited for everyone to get there and get settled in.  We then moved on to a pirate story.  We moved from there to building pirate ships.  I was busy helping assemble little egg carton pirate ships so I didn't have hands free to take pictures.

 I almost always include a pinata in the kids parties because every kid loves whacking at something, no matter their age.

 Charlotte got to start it and then each kid got a turn, youngest to oldest.  Lily took a few good whacks.

 Junior  was the last to get a go at the pinata and he killed it for us.

 That led to the best part, filling a goody bag with candy!

 The next stop on our map was a pirate picnic.  We had some little sandwiches, fruit, and apple juice.  I figured that I needed to feed them some real food before filling them with cake and ice cream.

  The last stop on our map was the treasure chest cake.

 After the cake was consumed we opened presents.  I love how these kids enjoy giving gifts.  They were all so anxious for Charlotte to open the gifts that they each brought for her.  Charlotte loved her presents.

When we got home the mailman delivered Charlotte's gift from Tyson and I, which was a box of musical instruments.  I'm already regretting it, but she's happy.