Small baby giraffe? Sure

I just learned I'm even shorter than a new baby giraffe that was born on the small side. Who would have guessed? The baby giraffe was small at 5 feet tall! I can live with being short. I've always been that way. But I'm really glad being human means I only have to carry 8-9 pound babies (among lots of other good things too). A baby larger than I am boggles my mind, even if its normal for their species.

When Spencer saw the baby giraffe. He kept saying, "That's so cute." He knows how to put so many words and phrases together I never know what to expect. All I could do was laugh to hear him. It was surprising that he recognized the baby giraffe as being different than an adult giraffe having only seen pictures.

Where's my child?

I just ran through the house looking for Oliver. I could not figure out what he was doing so quietly. I returned to my desk to see he was completely wrapped up in a blanket sound asleep. I thought it was just a pile of blanket on the floor. He was right next to me the whole time. I knew he had been there but was sure he'd gotten up at some point. He dose not normally fall asleep like that. Oh I'm relieved and got a good laugh.

An Ice Cream Story

Mmmm... Ice cream. Got to get every last drop.

Its alllllll gone.

Could you share?

Yippee!

We're buds now.

Ice week

This was my week to teach preschool. We meet three days a week and each mom takes two weeks of teaching at a time. We don't have any particular curriculum each mom just comes up with what they want to teach.

I found some really fun activities with ice so we had a week of ice and the letter i. We did things like seeing what would happen if a blue ice cube and yellow ice cuber were put into clear soda, which would melt faster - ice on a plate or ice wrapped in a towel. There were more experiments and today the whole weeks lessons culminated in making homemade ice cream. We did the roll the cans on the floor method and it was a great success.

Oliver thought it was so great he asked if we could do it again this evening. Sure! I only bought enough cream for the preschool batch and Spencer can't have milk anyway so we tried out rice milk. I'll tell you it will never be my top choice for ice cream but it was passed as a cool sweet treat. The kids gobbled it right up.

Mixing

Adding Salt and Ice

Let it roll!

Mmmm...

I can see a fun date night, after the kids (Spencer in particular), are asleep. I'm thinking thick rich cream, maybe chocolate too. Oh lovely ice cream and chocolate my long lost friends...

Signs of Spring

I'm seeing signs of spring! The snow has melted off (not that it won't snow again though) and the crocus had blossomed.

I just received my 2009 spring seed catalog. I've already looked through it a dozen times. I'm trying to limit what I'll get. As much as I'd like to call myself a gardener, I'm not there yet, just my hopes are. I also have limited space so I probably won't get everything I'd like. Maybe that's better though. We all know how I like to jump in over my head with new projects. It'll force me to just focus on a couple of plants! Now just to choose... corn, peas, blueberries, squash, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, lettuces, green beans, carrots, watermelon, or cantaloupe... I won't even get into the flowers. Oh I love these catalogs.

We went to the library yesterday because somebody put the video I tried to renew on hold. It was a trip I wanted to skip but had to take anyway. While we were there, I grabbed a stash of music for the week. It was really a rather random selection. In the group was Sarah McLachlan's Rarities, B-Sides, and Other Stuff, Vol 2.


I remembered hearing some of her songs a few years ago and thought I'd give it a try. This CD isn't exclusively her music but a compilation of duets and and remakes. I really like it. I'll have to keep a look out for Vol 1 because it gets even higher reviews on Amazon than Vol 2. I haven't really taken advantage of the music at the library, but I think it will be a new stop each week from now on.

And the heavens opened

I dropped my older two kids off to preschool, I went for a wonderful walk and feel much better about just about everything. I went to Flat Iron Park. Its up on a hill and the walking paths over look the city. A good portion of the walk you feel like you're on top of the world. A walk by myself, or with a child in a stroller like today, helps me get things into better perspective and a good work out too. Love when I can accomplish two things at once with little effort!

Spencer and I waited outside to wait for another mom to drop Oliver and Evelyn off from school. Its a beautiful day, clear sky and on the warm side, though still cold enough to be in winter layers. I felt like singing and what came first to my mind was a hymn. Like something from a movie, as I sang it got brighter and brighter and warmer and warmer. There must have been a cloud moving away from the sun but it felt like the heavens opening as I sang. Ah what a beautiful blue sky we have today. I love sunshine.

PEZ or socks, you choose

This week Chris has to leave for work shortly after 4:00 in the afternoon to attend more supervisor training. So we eat dinner as a family at four and then Chris leaves. The kids were really disappointed to have to say bye to dad.

To distract the kids I said we could build a blanket fort and eat a treat. We built the fort and went inside. We haven't done this for a long time so it was a real hit. Our treat was PEZ that I won at a baby shower over the weekend. We all sat and nibbled. As we were enjoying our treat Oliver said, "This is better than my socks!"

By his excitement I think that was a good statement but I had hoped the activity would rank higher than socks!

Apples to Apples

Since Chris has returned to school to improve his artwork we've really been immersing ourselves in art.

Tonight we decided to paint after the kids went to bed. Neither of us has seriously painted since before we were married. I've done some painting projects but mostly crafting paint by number type projects. It was a bit of a struggle for us to get back into the groove of painting. Even a little frustrating but after a bit of work we both ended up pleased with our evenings work.

Chris's work:


Katrina's work:

One of my favorite parts of being in an art class is seeing everyone's take on the same assignment. Chris and I were painting the same three apples set up on the kitchen table. Our approach to art is so different. He focuses more on the details and I'm more concerned with the colors and giving an impression of what I'm looking at. The same goes for the type of artwork we are drawn towards in galleries.

Jousting in Pajamas

Anyone up for jousting in pajamas? I didn't notice that he even has the setting right with the castle in the background until I was making this post.

The Sunflower Farmer's Market

Today I went to the Sunflower Farmer's Market. Its like a small grocery store that is mostly fresh produce and meats. They have some other items too but its not near the size of your typical supermarket. They might call themselves a farmer's market but its not all local produce. What's surprising is they have more variety in their produce even though they are a smaller store.

I walked through the store and just filled my cart with produce. I felt so good knowing it would be good for me, looked delicious, and was kinder on my budget than the regular grocery store (even Walmart).

I still had to go to the regular grocery store for a few items. When I walked in I realized why I am so tempted when it comes to sweets. They were everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. There were sweets in the Sunflower Market too but the difference really shocked me. I think I'll be shopping more and more at the Sunflower market, come summertime, the local farmers market will likely be even better.

Speaking of sunflowers and farmers... I've seen some gorgeous photographs of fields of sunflowers. I don't know if they sell these for flowers or seeds or just have them for the pure beauty of it. Its a tempting idea for the someday field I hope to have next to my someday house.

Scripture Breakfasts

I read scriptures in the morning with the kids. It just seems to be a good time because they are sitting still and tend to be quieter than normal.

We've switched from reading the pictured scripture stories to just reading directly from the Book of Mormon. I thought this might be a difficult transition but I think its actually gone better than I expected. There's a lot of explaining and we only get through one column a day. Sometimes it doesn't seem like we get much out of it, but even I don't always get something out of my daily reading.

Today we were reading and I thought some props might help the kids understand the story. Hopefully this doesn't sound disrespectful to anyone but Nephi and his brothers were a scrap of paper that was on the table, Laban's house was the milk carton, Nephi's old house was a bowl of cereal, and the angel was a spoon. When a hole in a rock was needed for a hiding place Nephi and his brothers went under the table and the wilderness was a meandering over the table top and loop-de-loops around Spencer's head. If the props don't give it away, we are reading the story of Nephi and his brothers obtaining the brass plates. I had the attention of all the kids. They even wanted to continue the story once we reached the end of our daily column. We read three columns!

When I went to clean up breakfast Evelyn asked me where the brother's dad was at. Good question for a three year old. She was really getting it. I set our props back up and showed her that Lehi stayed in the wilderness while his rather grown up boys traveled back to Jerusalem to get the plates.

Tomorrow morning Nephi goes back to Laban's house to get the plates. Knowing my boys this will be a story they'll be thrilled to act out, gruesome by true.

I'm glad we switched to reading directly from the Book of Mormon. I think it will help the kids later realize they can read and understand scriptures, especially if they are already familiar with the language. I wounldn't have guessed it would be going this well. The kids even take interest in just looking through the pages and pages of text. I know not everyday will as successful but its sure promising of more good mornings to come.

I love antibiotics!

First off a sorry to anyone I've complained to in the past couple of days. (Its terrible to realize where your children's faults stem from yourself.) Well I don't think highly of the world when I don't have sleep. Sometimes I need to tell myself to take a nap and came back later, just like I do to my kids.

I am so thankful to have antibiotics for little Tato's ears. Spencer has had RSV, just like the rest of the kids, but he ended up with infections in both ears. His crying (more like screaming) and fussing all day and all night reminded me of my reflux baby a year and a half ago who needed to be held 24 hours a day. Its exhausting for everyone but like I said antibiotics are wonderful. After 24 hours of meds he's running around and playing like normal. Thank goodness!

Well today everyone seemed to be doing better. It was a bit warmer outside and some of the snow melted. Both Oliver and Evelyn ventured out to play. It was funny to see Evelyn watering our long dead container garden ten or so feet away from snow. I think she must want spring just as badly as I do. I hear its going to rain this week and that sounds wonderful. I wish there weren't a snow storm following it. Actually now that I've had some sleep the cold weather isn't as bad as I have thought. I do look forward to thawed fingers and toes during spring and with the snow melted I can go for walks with the stroller again.

I caught Oliver and Evelyn laying on the couch eating apples with their head in a basket. I don't understand what prompted that but it was cute. I ran around trying to find where Spencer had stashed the camera (yeah I left it out, my fault). By the time I found it they had moved but were willing to repose when they saw I had the camera.

After quiet time Oliver and Spencer were having a shoot out using needless syringes as guns. Oliver turned to Spencer and asked, "Are you a good guy or the bad guy?" I was surprised to hear the response was bad guy! Probably a good thing because Ollie tends to want to be the good guy. I hope I'm not in for trouble with child who considers himself the bad guy at one and a half years old!