Mood lighting craft

Friday while Caleb was at school, Potter and Molly and I went to collect some supplies for the weekend craft project - faux stained glass candle holders!! We tackled this project on Saturday and it was a huge success! Each child got to choose two colors of tissue paper. From left to right - Potter chose red and yellow, Molly chose blue and purple, Caleb chose blue and green. We also bought some glass gems to put in the bottom of each jar to raise up the candle a bit. Very patiently, they each painted a layer of glue on the glass, then carefully put on the tissue paper and smoothed out the wrinkles and tacked down the edges. Once they were dry, they each put in their LED flickering candles (3 for $1 at the Dollar Tree) and voila!! They now each have their own personal mood lighting while they eat dinner at the bar!!

Geese at Grippen

In the afternoon Friday, the kids and I headed down to the river at Grippen Park. The water had finally receded a bit from its flood stage the previous week. You can tell the geese have not been fed as well over the winter, as they pretty much attacked us for food. We found our lame white goose friend, whose leg seems to be so much better than last year, only a limp for him now. But amazingly, he still is guarded and protected by his two brown geese friends. Not only do they swim on either side of him, they will allow him to eat first and they chase away other geese who may get aggressive with him. How cool is Mother Nature?!?!

Caleb was not afraid to let the geese eat right out of his hand!

Where the geese are swimming, there is a road underneath!!

Beans have sprouted

Our beans that we started last weekend have sprouted!! Friday, the kids had off from school, so one of our projects was to take the pots we painted last weekend and fill them with dirt and our seedlings. Now we wait until the plants really start to come up.

Making spring happen!

Attempt to thwart winter. We painted new pots and started sprouting some seeds.

It came just the same......

I wish I were talking about Christmas, my line taken from 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas', but I am not. That wicked winter storm came yesterday with full fury, and they weren't lying about our storm totals either. In 20 hours, we tallied 16 inches of snow at our house. Bummer!! This would have been a wonderful snow if it had come during the holidays, all white and pretty for Christmas. But it is March. Not fun, we are all tired of winter. Sigh.

The backyard, before the kids trample it up

The branches from the trees in the backyard are usually so high up you can't reach them without standing on the picnic table (which you can hardly see). Now, they are best friends with the ground. Notice that Crash is having a blast. He doesn't seem to care about what season the snow falls.

From the front door. Our driveway is under there somewhere.
This was the measurement on the driveway this morning. Luckily, Dave had shoveled 4-5 inches last night. And thank goodness our next door neighbor always helps do the sidewalk and apron of the driveway.

Dave made a pathway to get to the sidewalk.

Caleb atop a pile of snow that is taller than he is.

In the backyard, my same sad, droopy looking trees, but notice the slide??

Crash always wants more!

Before I went up to the deck, a view of the stairs. I had to walk around the side of the house, through snow up to my knees, to get to the deck. There was (not pictured) another 11 inches of snow on the deck and I could not open the back door to get out. In all, I think we spent 2 hours shoveling around our house. This better be the end of winter.

GO. AWAY. WINTER.

Ok. I could see all of the grass in my front yard, save a couple of big piles by the driveway. There was no more ice. Until today. We are now under a winter weather advisory and supposedly getting another 8 - 12 inches total by in the morning. We are out of snow days. It is enough to make me drink. I had found this cute idea for art on a blog I follow and today was the day to implement!!

Each of the kids (and me!) made a cherry blossom picture. We used a variety of media and I was so impressed with how different they all turned out, despite us doing the same project.

Bird's eye view of everyone's pictures in progress

Potter takes time with his tree
Caleb, total master of the glue and the tissue paper
Molly (and Crash) work on branches
Our finished projects!!!

Top: Molly (left), Potter (right)

Bottom: Lin (left), Caleb (right)

These are so awesome!!!

Green eggs and ham

Last week it was pizza, this week, green eggs and ham. Molly's class celebrated Dr. Suess all week long. Thursday, I went to her class and surprised them as that day's mystery reader! I read the classic 'The Cat in the Hat'. Friday afternoon, we mixed up a batch of terrifically yummy green eggs and ham, with each child getting to crack an egg. You could tell which kids had been exposed to cooking and which ones had not! Molly decided to make a goofy face when I took her picture!

Basketball season

Potter is doing basketball again this spring through the town of Union. It is such a great program and this year I really really like his coach. Potter is on the red team; this year the teams only have 6 kids instead of 10 like last year. More playing time, especially since I don't think all 6 kids on Potter's team have ever been there at the same time! Potter is much better this year, scoring more baskets during the games, playing better defense. He is having a great time!

Potter getting ready to take a shot

Trying to block coach!!
Waiting for the ball, he is totally open!!

Molly's gymnastics demo

Aero gymnastics had their spring demo yesterday. Girls in the Level 2 or Stars program, and all the boys (all 3 of them!!), show a routine for each of the 4 events: vault, beam, floor and bars. Sadly, for most of these, Molly is moving so quickly that the still shots I got are blurry!! What you see is 1) warm ups, where she is looking grumpy 2) in line with her group (Stars - an advanced group of girls for her age) getting ready to sing the National Anthem 3) Molly right before her floor routine and 4) Molly with her Stars friends getting their awards and medals. I cannot say enough how talented she is and how much she loves her gymnastics!!

UPK Art Show

The third annual Art Show at the preschool was Friday night. Each child had three pieces of art work of their own either framed and/or matted and then hung on the walls of the school. Families could purchase their child's art work for a donation to the school. We are all in front of Caleb's masterpieces, his blue and red Jackson Pollock imitation and, below that, his Star Wars themed piece. This is such a huge huge turnaround from last year when he WOULD NOT do any art at all. We are all very proud of him!!!

Hat Day

Molly and Potter had hat day at school this past Wednesday. Caleb wanted to join in the fun, and who can resist taking such a cute picture of her kids? Not me!!

Sledding Day at Glendale

After a snow day on Friday and lots of snow (like another 6 - 8 inches) we loaded up kids and dog and went over to Glendale, our new favorite place to sled. Everyone, and I mean adults and dogs, went down the hill in a variety of ways. Just look at all this silliness!!

Dave on the 'sled of death'. Once this gets going, there is nothing that can stop you, save an ice wall.

Molly and Potter had gone down together; I got this as she went flying past me.

It is a hard walk up these hills........

Potter was such a great brother and gave Caleb a ride up the hill on the sled.
Caleb does his penguin imitation in place of waiting for the next sled....
Caleb at the bottom of the hill, Potter on the way down, Crash cannot be far behind....
Molly is just about to hit Potter as she went down like grease on a hot griddle

Molly's haircut

All the kids went for a haircut yesterday, but Molly's was the most exciting. She has been wanting to have shorter hair now, so she decided to get several inches whacked off.

This is Molly's before picture. Honestly, her hair was almost to her waist.

This is the after picture, I am pretty sure she got 4 - 5 inches cut off. She looks so much more grown up now!!!
Maybe I should post a picture of her with her new haircut while she is looking AT the camera!! Next time!!

Nature Preserve hike

On President's Day, we went for a snowy hike in the preserve. It had snowed a good 6 or so inches, and no one else, save one skier, had been out there, so we were walking in a winter wonderland. When we crossed over the bridge and started around the lake, we discovered that under the snow was a thick layer of ice that made it pretty dangerous to walk on, so we opted to head back the way we had come and look for beavers and porcupines. We saw neither. Bummer.

Family walking in the snowy preserve

Caleb trying to be a penguin and slide??
The kids in their secret grotto. We have this same picture of them from last summer.
A beautiful view of the frozen lake from on the bridge.

Delinquent me..........

Ok, it has been a really long time since I have blogged, sorry! It seems that life continues to be very busy, despite the holidays being over and everyone being back at school. There are some random pictures here that will catch up a little bit of what has been happening.

Molly now has lost 4 teeth total, her two on the top are gone (in this picture) but now her adult teeth are coming in and quite visible. She still looks very cute ;)

Molly and Potter have now each earned two trips to Pizza Hut in rewards for their reading, sponsored by their school. I have taken all three kids for lunch on days off from school and they enjoy the Pizza Hut buffet bar quite a lot!! Congratulations to my wonderful readers!!

And while we are on the topic of pizza, Molly's class celebrated filling their Tiger Paw jar, yet again, by having a pizza party yesterday in class. I was able to go and help out one of the groups make and bake their pizza. As you can tell, they are all quite proud, and boy howdy, was there a lot of cheese on those pizzas!

As a side note, I made a trip down to Florida in February to visit my parents and take care of a few things with them. Sadly, it decided to rain and be overcast until the morning I left. Boo!! Not sure they deserve to be called 'The Sunshine State' any longer. On the plus side, we went out for dinner one night and I got to eat fried shrimp that I know had just come out of the Gulf that day. Superb!!!