Random Pictures by a Biased Mother

A few weeks ago...maybe even more than a month...my kids decided to come out of hibernation, button up their coats and zip up their hoodies and brave the winter chill. Marianne LOVES being outside. I am already dreaming of living outdoors in the summer where she will be happily entertained by dirt and sticks and rocks. Ahh...Anyway it was late afternoon and the sun was giving off this wonderful bright lighting and so I had to snap some pictures. Here is Bekah in her hat. If I didn't tell you already, Bekah lives in this hat from about October until March. The room mom in her classroom didn't recognize her the one day last month that she didn't wear her hat. She said her head gets cold. Who can argue with that?

I also caught Jacob in that snazzy lighting. This boy is currently OBSESSED with ocean animals. He eats, sleeps, and breaths sharks and sea turtles and eels and octopi. He is, right this minute, pouting because he didn't get to watch Jaques Cousteau's Ocean Tales on netflix and I'm not even letting him look at National Geographic online. I am so mean.

 I don't know if any of you have this problem, but most of the time the boys' room looks like fisher price threw up in there. Toys everywhere. I am in no way a neat freak, but their room [insert shiver] was overwhelming. So I took all of their buckets of toys and dumped them out in the middle of the room, and pulled everything out of every crack and crevice and then sorted everything so it had a place - Imaginext toys, nerf guns, legos, trios, and on and on. Then I had Beau take pictures of each box. Then I made a check-out sheet for each toy box that said, "By checking out these toy I realize that I alone am responsible for cleaning it up."
And so the Occupation began. All of the boxes and buckets of toys went in their closet so absolutely nothing else was left out to play with except for stuffed animals. They had to write their name on the check out sheet when they wanted a toy and had to clean it up before checking out another toy. It was super successful for the first week. It is still fairly successful, although the actual check-out sheets have gotten lost under the bed.

 For the months of January and February, most of Bekah and Jacob's free time was spent doing science projects for the science fair. I had an itch to try my hand at dying fabrics with natural dyes, so I convinced Bekah that it was a worthy science project. We had a lot of fun doing it. The really dark orange fabric, third from the left on the top, was actually died with onion skins. Amazing, huh?

 Jacob and Rus did something with turning water into a gas that burned. I didn't really understand it a whole lot. I don't know that Jacob really did either. But he did enjoy himself!

Also many weeks ago Steve O. came over to entertain, wrestle, and be a human jungle gym for my kids have dinner. My kids adore Steve. The love to climb on him, jump on him, and basically physically abuse him the entire time he's here (or at least until their bedtimes). How could you not love a guy who lets you do this...And you can't tell in the picture of course, but he was also jumping up and down with them all on his back.

Marianne went through a phase of being absolutely and completely opposed to taking a bath. So I had to put her in the sink a few times, which she found notably more acceptable. This girl has a LOT of hair, like her momma. I'm so proud.

And she looks good in a mohawk, too.

There. Don't you feel so updated?