Why, indeed?

Today I accused Jacob of having a bad temper after he threw his plate across the table in a fit of rage. Elinor, in her halting, but very clear toddler speech, said, "Then why did we even get that baby?"

The number of laugh-out-loud moments in my day is astounding.

A Good Toaster

Aargh. One of Jacob's favorite things to do is to put tiny things in the toaster. Joseph and I have learned to empty it out before we toast anything (and also we're working to put a stop to the craziness). Tonight I forgot, so right now Joseph is working on prying one of those plastic twistable crayons from the wires inside the toaster. It's pretty thoroughly melted. Aargh! Jacob! It's the toaster my dad gave us at our wedding and it's been working great (for 9 years!!) until now so we're praying we can keep using it for a little while longer!

Joseph came home on Saturday after being out of town for four days and the kids were so excited! Caleb and Emily drew a few pictures to decorate the living room with in honor of the special day. Here's one of Caleb's:

So, it's a bad photo, but can you see tiny Jacob being held in Joseph's fingers? I love it!! Also, please notice the color coding - boys are blue, girls are pink. Naturally.
Curious about that spiky ball on the ground? So was I. I asked the artist, and turns out, that's actually a hole with candy canes hanging around the edge. Good to know, right?

We also celebrated with the best German chocolate cake ever and by spending the remainder of Saturday doing fun stuff as a family.
The snow finally melted enough for us to pull the bikes out again.

Caleb is always super cool on his puppy dog bike.

Elinor (in her mama-made dress!).

Jake does his best to keep up.

Emily's not so much into bikes, but she loves to climb.

See?

Baby Boy loves his daddy.

All of them. In their new sherpa-lined hoodies too! We've been searching for the perfect jacket, as they get very heavy use in our family. Jake's is Hanna Andersson, El's is Land's End, and Caleb and Em's are Mini Boden. The Boden ones are the winners for sure.

Em's in a mama-made dress too! All this good usage is making me want to pull out the old sewing machine again!

Family Pictures!

Our last family pictures were taken when Elinor was a baby. To look at the pictures on our walls, you would never know that we have a fourth child! My sister Michelle was kind and generous enough to spend a morning with us in November trying to capture a decent picture of our family. And that is not an easy task!
Here are some favorites:

Isn't this so sweet? Joseph and I were probably behind the scenes restraining Jacob from taking a flying leap in.

I don't love this picture of myself, but I think it's funny that we're working hard to look good while our child falls into the river behind us! I'm pretty sure my pocket was full of fruit snack wrappers and grubby baby wipes.

Our frontman Jacob.

The girls. El looks a little possessed.

My boys.

I love Caleb's face here. And Emily in that tree behind them.

I often end up loving the candid shots more than the posed ones.

Those four. Caleb was being a little aggressive keeping the group together. Jake was ready to make a break for it.

Jacob is already something of a thrill seeker. Little boys. They're going to be the death of me!

This was almost a good family picture! Em would not stay out of the trees!

I think this is our official family picture of 2014. And maybe 2015. And possibly 2016?

Thanks, Michelle!

Nature and Science

Yesterday we decided to check out the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Getting there was quite the ordeal, and involved a lot of really bad traffic, a closed highway, and a lot of confused driving around a city that I don't know. I would have driven us straight back home, if I'd have known how to get there! (See? That's how badly I was lost!) Fortunately, Joseph saved the day and we got there. I just know I'm going to look back on this in 10 years, when I know Denver like the back of my hand, and laugh at my clueless, sense-of-direction-less self. That is, assuming we stay in Boulder... which really, is not very likely at this point.
Anyway, we finally made it to the museum and all of the kids and I agreed that it was worth it. It was so much fun! We only explored the first floor (and we were there for a good three hours), but hopefully we can go back sometime and check out the other two.

As we walked into the museum we were greeted by this giant walking dinosaur skeleton. Elinor was a little nervous about the whole thing, and I'm not sure Jacob even noticed, but Emily and Caleb got a kick out of it.

We spent a lot of time at the Space Exhibit. There were a lot of cool things that sort of required two parents to be there (or fewer kids per parent) for the kids to really receive the full impact of the demonstration, but there was enough to keep my kids happily occupied with me just supervising.

Here Caleb is working on docking a space shuttle. The surface is like an air-hockey table and there's an outline for where he needs to park the ship.

We attempted to attend a planetarium show. What we saw was impressive, and Emily and Caleb really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, due to difficulties involving younger kids kicking seatbacks and crawling up and down the stairs (ahem... mine), we had to duck out early.

Here's Jake on the moon.

Elinor was there too.

Caleb spent his time manning the space shuttle. Isn't that a great space suit?!

The whole crew.

This was a mars landscape demonstration, showing how water has carved different formations into the surface.

After the space stuff, we headed out to see the rock display. It was incredible! Emily was in heaven. She loves anything to do with rocks and crystals.

Next we stopped for lunch and to get the kids' faces painted. They were all so happy with what they chose. Caleb kept pulling faces to try to make his bat's wings flap.

We poked our heads into the Egypt exhibit, since that's what we're studying right now. By this point the kids were becoming a little harder to keep under control so we decided to call it quits while we could still remember it as a good experience. :)

Fortunately, the drive home went a lot more smoothly than the drive there and we arrived home without incident.

And just FYI, Elinor's shirt was inside out and backwards the whole day. Her shoes were on the wrong feet too. She has taken style matters into her own hands lately. And who am I to stop her?

Are Those Christmas Jammies?

Our family is currently at the phase where the kids are okay with being dressed alike. In fact, they think it's pretty awesome when we can wrangle matching clothes for all of them. Hence, the Christmas pajamas tradition.

Umm... yeah. We are at a good matching stage, but not a good picture-taking stage.
Anyway, they turned out pretty well this year, if I do say so myself.

Christmas this year was nice. We braved the snowy roads to travel to Utah to be with family, so we got a lot of Grandma and extended family time. We also somehow managed to get together with all of my sisters and got this awesome picture (minus Elinor's nose-picking).

For gifts, we've been doing "something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read" for the last couple of years and it's been working really well. I like that it curbs my tendency to go overboard and also steers our gift-giving thinking in such a great direction. My favorite thing this year by far was the books the kids got. Emily got The Seven Silly Eaters, which has been a family favorite for years. Caleb got Creepy Carrots, which none of us had read before, but was an instant hit. And it's totally his style. Elinor got Llama Llama Red Pajama and loved it right away. All of these books have such great illustrations and are so much fun to read aloud. Jacob is too much of a baby to count as a person yet.

See? He'll probably get a book next year though.

Pizza

If you've rolled out your pizza crust and find that you're out of cheese and have to run to the store for more, remember to fork the crust, as it might have risen a bit while you were out. And your pizza might come out more bubbly than you intended.

Art

Today I mostly wanted to talk about Elinor.

She has recently discovered her inner artist and has put out some impressive artwork. Here is a selection of her standout pieces:

One of her earliest. It started out as an octopus... then it was a jellyfish... and now it's a sun (all at the suggestion of Emily and Caleb). Joseph and I like how the smile starts on the forehead and goes all the way around.

Those are ant bites all over this guy's head. Texas ants have traumatized my kids forever.

Doesn't he have the sweetest expression? She was figuring out toes here. Not sure what the big mark on his face is all about, but it shows up in a few of her subsequent pieces as well.

Monobrow.

The wild-eyed little thing in the corner is Joseph's favorite of the lot.

This is a snowman. It was a breakthrough in the hair drawing technique.

This is my all-time favorite. Just look at that teeny face and those flippers! This guy could be a pokemon!

 We may not have the most distinguished taste in art around here, but this is what the "gallery" in the school room looks like right now and I'm pretty happy with it!

And, a few random pictures.

Here's baby Jacob who just needs some love and attention.

Here are my zombie children eating popcorn and watching a movie totally oblivious to the chaos surrounding them. But isn't that how it always is?

He's a big kid! No, really! He can do schoolwork too!
Check out that furrowed brow! (That means he's REALLY serious about this.)

The Minecraft stupor. It's got all five of them.

Pantswitch!