Fighting winter

Argh!  It is the winter that wouldn't end!  Our neighbors had all said the winters were mild here, with hardly any snow.  Liars!  We had oodles of snow and still had more snow all the way into the first week of April...with threats of snow later this week!

At least lately, we have been sneaking walks to the beach between the snowflake storms on days when the sun is shining.


Our latest walk reveled that the lake is slowly melting and the beach is visable again. 

The kids had fun running around and throwing rocks into the shallow water.  We even found our first beach scores of 2014... a few shells, cool rocks, beach glass, and rounded brick.

Can't wait for spring to get here!

Memory Monday - Box

I remember the fun of giant boxes.  On he rare occasions when we got a huge box at home, it was hours of good times.  I recall that we often made houses out of really big boxes, complete with cut out door and windows.  I do remember being given markers to help decorate our houses too.  I recall one time actually having a real cardboard house for awhile.  I also recall that that particular house stayed outside on the patio and then the spiders discovered it.  I was NOT a fan of spiders.

Inside, slightly smaller big boxes were made into pretend cars or boats or other vehicles for my sister and me or for our dolls.

Now I tend to do quite a bit of ordering off the internet so that I can buy our staples in bulk.  This results in many boxes coming to our door throughout the year (frequency is definitely higher around the Christmas holiday).  The latest box housed a huge supply of paper tolls = huge box.

The boys loved it.

It became a house...and then a trap... and then a car when flipped upright.
When upside down, I cut out the ends and it became a tunnel for cars, tractors, teddy bears, and little boys.
Markers were passed out so that it could be decorated...with lots of swirls, stripes, doodles, and car drawings.
It then was leaped upon...which led to it becoming slightly collapsed...

So it became a ramp for cars!

They were so entertained with this cheap free toy for several evenings before it got officially broken down for the recycle bin.  Yeah, cardboard boxes!

Latest artwork

I finally figured out how to scan my boys' artwork so that I could include it on the blog

and in the books.

 

Jude's rocket from their space unit.  He can point out and name all the letters.  

He can also recognize his name when it is written.  Jude can sing the alphabet song but the middle bit is garbled: "l m n m n el el el o p."

 M is for music.  Jude's handiwork here from their music unit.  He still sometimes calls his "M" as an "N".  They are now on the letter S for spring.

Tamlin's drawing of himself... with spiky hair...and a belly button.  

Tamlin's drawing of Brian... complete with smile... shoes... and black hat.  Tam has started to recognize many of his sight words.  However, he still flips his "b" and "d".  He had to practice writing the letter d before writing "Dad".

Getting Tam registered...

Kindergarten Registration or Interrogation?

Sweet Jesus there is a ton of paperwork for sending your kid to school.
And the questions!  Does it really matter or is it the school's business if my son was born early or late? The form was way more intense then I expected.  Luckily, I can save my progress and come back to it later.  Sheesh.

And no where can I find out the answer to the question...full day or half day class?  No where!  And no where on-line / on the form does it tell me what the stinkin' school hours are!

Sigh.
I'll let you know when I've got this all straighten out.
It should be easier.

Easter Eggs

 Easter is a approaching so we engaged in the traditional dying of the eggs.  Our family is not too fond of hard boiled eggs, so I blow out the innards instead.  This results in hollow eggs to dye and a bucket of egg yolks for use in french toast and popovers.   We used the wires run through the hollow eggs in order to hold them down in the dye.  With two boys, we had to have enough bowls and colors for everyone :-) 

 

Tamlin has always been a haphazard egg dye-er.  He tends to favor the greens and blues with lots of chalk designs.

 Jude was much more (seemingly) thoughtful with his eggs.  He would deliberately choose his color...or multiple colors.  He tried for purple, but ended with a bluish-brownish color often times.  He liked reds and yellows the best...and stars, lots of stars drawn with chalk.

Both boys look so serious here!
And you can see their latest hair trims via the "House of Mom's Scissors."  I did keep Jude's hair slightly longer, but trimmed up the sides and shaved the bottom, giving him the uber-sheik bowl cut.

 How funny are these two photos?!  I don't know how I got nearly the same expression on both their faces.  Oh, you can certainly tell that they are our sons.

And here are some of our awesome egg results = beautiful.  The other great thing about blown eggs is that I can keep a few from year to year for our Eastery displays.  I love making these memories with the boys...especially because I can remember dying eggs with Grandma Elsie in her kitchen (with the big boiler full of dozens of hard boiled eggs).   Happy times...and hoping for spring to come quickly.

Memory Monday - Parlor Trick

I remember my dad telling us that he had a horrible accident when he was younger and that he could now remove his finger at will.

Yes.  The ol' pull off my finger tip parlor trick.

When I was little, I was quite convinced this was totally real.  Eventually, when I was older, I did figure it out and perfected my own technique for pulling off the trick.  Now, I have a captive audience :-) 

I showed Tamlin and Jude that I could pull off my finger.  Cool.  Well, Tamlin thought it was wicked cool but Jude was very worried.  Jude is also worried when someone "steals" his nose too.  "Momma's finger owie?  Finger gone?" 

Oh well.
I had better learn a new awesome trick soon.