Peter Pan

Emily is part of a group of homeschoolers that is funded by the school district and gets together every Tuesday for things like science, art, drama, field trips... you know, the extra stuff that I have a hard time getting around to here at home. It's nice for her to spend some time with a bigger group of kids as well. They've been working for quite some time on a Peter Pan play which they were finally able to perform for the parents this evening! Emily was Curly, the 'Lost Kid' and chose to dress as a fox. It was incredibly difficult to get a picture of her during the play because of where we were sitting and because of the lighting. (And also because I have no clue when it comes to photography and we don't have a smart enough camera to cover for me!)

Here you can glimpse her with the cast at the end of the play.

Caleb was in charge of picture-taking through most of the performance. He didn't limit his attentions to the stage!

Emily post-performance.

Emily loves to be dramatic and play make-believe, so this was a fantastic opportunity for her, and something we could not have pulled off without a larger group.


Also, I just had to note here that Elinor and I were playing with Jacob this evening when he shut himself in the kids' closet. I said, "Uh oh! We lost our baby!"
and Elinor responded without hesitation, "Let's buy a new one. Maybe a girl that comes with a makeup box and a bow."
She said the family prayer a few minutes later and spent some time praying for this baby girl and all the accessories she wanted to come with it (there was mention of a necklace and some other stuff I can't remember).

Life is never dull with these kiddos around!

Our School Day

Things have been going well for us here in Boulder. Some big things have been happening, such as Joseph's new job with Google(!) and our impending move to California.  We are so excited about all of these developments, and feel incredibly blessed, but are at the same time trying to enjoy the rest of our time here in Colorado. There is so much to enjoy! The weather has been so lovely lately that it has been difficult to stay indoors. We often interrupt our school day to spend some time on the playground or to go for a bike ride or hike. If I could choose anywhere in the country to settle for life, Boulder would be high on that list.

Anyway, I've been going through some pictures, and have found some that capture our typical day pretty accurately.

We spend a lot of the morning going through our regular school routine: piano, reading, writing, math, some science, art, and history.

This is Caleb's long-i train. I drew it and labeled the cars; he read the labels and loaded the cars.

Some of the art work in our schoolroom. Most of these were from the Picasso unit.

Emily has been reading a lot lately. Here she continued reading through snack time! Makes me think of myself when I was younger. Aw, who am I kidding - I would still do this if I could get everything done at the same time!

More of Emily reading.

Emily has by far the most material to get through, and I have been impressed by how hard she works.

The rest of the kids do their share too though...

... even the little ones!

Caleb at the piano. See how happy he is? (He's learning out of the book I started with when I was little!)

It's not always super academic though. We do fun stuff sometimes!

They all love the art projects, and everyone gets involved! These usually happen while Jake's napping.

He does take a daily nap, but makes up for lost time when he's up! Here he is helping out with the pizza dough.

 Sometimes though, it's just too much and the day is too gorgeous to stay indoors. We dropped everything and went for a hike when stress levels got too high one morning last week. I try to take them hiking at least weekly, and we usually go on a 2- or 3-mile bike ride with me pushing the double stroller about once a week as well. With so many trails here in Boulder we rarely explore the same one twice.

I don't take many pictures of our outdoor adventures, but this was a fun one at Bobolink Trail.

I have more to say, and many more pictures to clear out of my "to blog now" file, but I will wrap up for tonight with this one awesome shot of three of my kids and a masked superhero.

Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Spiderman.

Darth Paper

To celebrate Star Wars day (May the Fourth, of course), Emily and I quilled this little guy.  Hope everyone out there gets to spend this special day with those they love.

Construction

Somehow, in my many and varied travels through the twisty maze of passages that make up the Internet, I learned about the art of paper quilling.  When I saw a quilled leprechaun, I decided to give it a try.  We love decorating for the holidays.

This little guy is made completely out of construction-paper and copious amounts of glue.  Even the coins and eyes are tightly wound strips of paper.  I watched a brief YouTube video to figure out how to make the shapes. The video was entirely in German, but I still got the gist of it. To make my "quilling tool", I clipped the end off of the eye of a big needle with some pliers and then stuck the pointy part into a pencil eraser. As one of my first attempts at a new art form, I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out.

Emily and I had a great time putting it together. Amanda repeatedly called us crazy while we crafted away and she read about the history of nuclear weapons.

A Mountain Run

Joseph is pretty good to me. I love that he spent so much time working on those crazy valentines just for me! Emily is in awe of his paper-crafting skills and Caleb definitely appreciates the Minecraft pop-up.

So, living in Colorado is an adventure. Yesterday I mapped out a run for this morning, and it ended up taking me a good two-and-a-half hours because of a few things. First of all, it was up in the mountains and I was not always totally sure which way I was supposed to be going, so I backtracked a couple of times to check signs and things. Secondly, check out this picture:

 

 This portion of the trail was solid ice. There was really no way to run on the side, so I had to pick my way across it. And it was like this for a good quarter mile. It was thick and slick and unavoidable. Slow going.

The third factor was the steepness of my carefully selected path. I did not check on the change in elevation when I mapped my run. I took the picture below because it was an awesome view and a good break in the trees, but it was right before the final, steepest ascent of the run, which lasted about a mile and a half.

I'm pretty sure I ran up one side of a mountain and down the other. It was hard. And slow. But beautiful.

Joseph gave me a call when I was two miles from home and reported that Jake had stuffed a bead up his nose and needed to be taken to Urgent Care. I made it the rest of the way home chanting, "Jacob's got a bead in his nose. Just keep running!" to myself (in my head). It's all taken care of now though. He's fine. And Joseph made a play dough baking soda/vinegar volcano with the older kids while we were out! It was an eventful morning.


These have all been cell phone pictures I've been posting, since Joseph likes me to run with a phone when I'll be gone for a while. As I was putting the pictures on the computer, I came across these gems from a long time ago.  Can you tell which baby this is below?

 Yeah!! It's Baby Elinor, enjoying the Texas heat. Isn't she just a doll?

 

And these guys. They look like an oddly matched celebrity couple headed out to their sweet ride (a 1998 Ford Windstar).

Be mine. Be crafty?

I wanted to give Amanda flowers for Valentines. Here's what we ended up with:

Amanda said that it looks like the kind of thing you'd buy for a dollar from the Savers knick-knack shelf. I'm not sure if that means she likes it or not. But Emily's a fan. We've been having daddy-daughter craft sessions to make new kinds of paper flowers.

Feeling inspired, I decided to try my hand at some kirigami.  I don't think Amanda has ever played Minecraft.  But the kids play frequently on the Kindle.  I haven't played for a while, but it used to be quality family time.

This Valentine's a little "Creepy".  When closed, a pair of eyes look out at you. 
I'm afraid that our printer's on its last legs. So the colors didn't come out quite like I had hoped. Still, it was fun to design.

I played around with various phrases, "I pick you." or "You're a blast!" or "Even when I'm a blockhead, you build me up."  But the old classic, "Be Mine", just seemed right.

Emily is so fun. She will shut herself in the office for hours at a time to craft decorations for the house, props for a theater presentation she wants to perform, or toys she wants to have. I loved this decoration she put up. Our home is erupting with love.

Happy Valentine's.

cell phone dump

So, right now I am trying to distract myself from the $300 of running clothes in my Zappos cart... so I thought it would be a good time to put some of my greatest blurry cell phone pictures up here for my mother's enjoyment. (Love you, Mum!)

About a year ago, Jacob got pretty sick. Joseph and I feel like we are experienced parents (at least of babies and toddlers) by now, so we felt pretty calm about it all. We noticed his cough sounded a little croupy, so we did the shower treatment... repeatedly... all night long. Around 4:30 am I decided I'd had enough and his breathing was scary enough that I took him in to the children's hospital in Austin. They took one look at him and took him back to a room right away. Apparently his breathing was what they called "stridor" and is pretty serious. They gave him a steroid and then a breathing treatment of racemic epinephrine, which helped for about ten minutes. Then they gave him another breathing treatment, and another, and then they admitted him. He totally perked back up and was normal again by mid-morning so I requested that they send us home ahead of schedule.

Here is Jake mid-treatment...

and a couple of hours later.

This one other time, one of my wonderful young women was fiddling at a food trailer park in Austin. Em and I went out to enjoy and support. And to play with this giant Jenga set.

Pretty awesome.

If you look closely at this picture below, you can see Emily standing on a make-shift stage wearing a red baseball cap on her head and holding an unlit torch. This picture was taken back in her street performing days when she was trying to raise money to buy gifts for her siblings. Not really, but she did make $5, which she later used for Christmas presents for Caleb and Emily. She's pretty awesome.

Okay, what really happened was that we were wandering down Pearl Street and this street performer was looking for volunteers to help out. After a couple of other girls chickened out, Em stepped up. She's a natural.

One of El's earliest experiences with Autumn leaves.

Caleb trying on Em's elephant costume for an Anansi play that her school group did.

Jake experiencing the snow.

Okay. I think I'm alright now. I'm just going to head back to Zappos and weed some stuff out of that cart.

My run this morning...

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!