Happy First Birthday, Lord of the Dragons!

Before he turns one

I love pictures of this sweet child. Here is one more picture post of my angel before he turns one. Sniff.

Now We are Six Part 1: Goody Bags and A Robot Scavenger Hunt

He-Man's birthday was yesterday. I will have a series of "Now We are Six" posts because that is just how much we have been celebrating (and will be celebrating) around here. Whew, I'm pooped.

We recently attended the 6th birthday party of a good friend and he had decorated brown paper bags as his goody bags. We really liked this idea and so we borrowed it. He-Man had a great time decorating the bags with some new stencils (turned out to be a sixteen dollar set of wooden stencils from Magic Cabin... we found them at Goodwill on their half price day. SCORE!) He took great care with picking just the right color for writing and drawing on each friend's bag. He wrote most of the names himself and he also filled the bags with the goodys himself. He was very organized, thoughtful and systematic about the whole ordeal. I was impressed.

For months (and I mean like since early fall at least) He-Man has been planning a robot scavenger hunt. He didn't really know how he wanted it to pan out but he wanted to do this for his birthday and he wanted to invite all of his friends. Well, we are blessed to have a LOT of friends. When the forecast called for rain on the date we had selected for the friends segment of his birthday, I realized that maybe we should limit the number of friends we invited because the original plan had been to have everyone bring a picnic and to enjoy our 1.5 acre lot. The inside of our home is not quite so spacious. So we had to narrow the guest list down in order to accommodate everyone comfortably.

Here you see the set up of the "Crazy Bunny has stolen all of our Wall-E robots and hidden them in eggs and we must save them" scavenger hunt. Pictured are the 26 robots and small slips of papers with the names of those robots.

As it turns out, it wasn't raining during our gathering and the bunny took advantage of the weather and hid them in our front yard. You will read more about that in my next post :)He-Man spent at least an hour on this task. He had to read the name of each robot and match it with the robot and then place both the robot and the name into an egg. He was so proud of himself when he completed his job. Unschooling at its best.

I also typed up a list of the names of robots and put it on a clip board with a pen. During the robot hunt, I was the "go to" person and everyone who found a bot had to tell me who it was so that we could cross the name off the list. Then they dropped the egg into a bag that Courtney was holding. I think it went really well and all of the kids seemed to enjoy the activity.

Play

Lately, some of my bloggy friends have been posting links on Facebook to articles and such about play. We have been having a lot of play happening in this house as of late. Combine our new tv viewing habits (a change I felt inspired to make after the Charlotte Mason seminar at Sherry's house) and the fact that a certain little baby is big enough for floor play and you have some major playing going on. I love it. Can't express how happy it makes me to see my kids engaged

in building

in pretending

and even just zooming a little car all over the floor (which is exactly what Draykie has been doing the past few days. )

My mother-in-law has just recently retired and therefore has found herself doing some things that she's meant to do for oh, probably about twenty years. You know how it goes. She has gotten out all things Legos from when the Captain was a kid. He and his siblings have to sort through it together but once they do, I suspect some of them may come to live at our house. I'm so excited about this. I NEVER owned a Lego set. I always wanted one but I think I was told they were too expensive or maybe for smart kids or for boys. I don't know. But for some reason I never asked for any because they intimidated me. So, He-Man has brought two of these Lego sets home and has played endlessly with them. When we are at their house, same scenario. While I was at the aforementioned seminar, he stayed with his grandparents and played Legos for three hours solid. Amazing. I will keep you up to date on the Legos! I'm sure they will be the topic of many posts to come.

Finer Things Club

We had our first meeting of the Finer Things club (like Pam, Toby, and Oscar do on "the Office") yesterday. We served blueberry tea and freshly baked cookies, looked at art books, listened to fancy music, and even used our real china (a wedding gift from the Captain's grandmother and grandfather... it had been their china. they also got us the cabinet too).

Vases with Friends

My friend Kristi invited us to decorate vases with them as a project related to last week's co-op on Greece. So we happily said yes. We love to paint! And we love our friends! I really like the way that they turned out (the vases and the friends too, I guess!!). The kids seriously got into the artistic process and I have been inspired to whip out the acrylics more often as it cleaned up more easily than I thought and they didn't make nearly the mess that I would have expected them to make. Sweet. Thanks Kristi!

Snow and Ice

Post from the past that got lost in the computer sabbatical!



On one hand, this "inclement weather" has really bummed us out. The Captain had to miss yet another Vanderbilt Fencing Tournament and I had been really excited about carpooling with a good friend to spend the day with a bunch of awesome mama friends. But on the other hand, the weather happened during the Captain's off week and our being stuck at home has led to cups of hot cocoa, snow cream, afternoon naps, catching up on laundry, and some much needed relaxing. Luckily the day with awesome mamas has been rescheduled for a time when I will be able to attend so it's all good.

So the first day of our winter storm brought lovely snow. With that lovely snow I made these little guys:

Strawberry Snow Cream Snow Man pops. Big hit, lemme tell ya.
(Natural strawberry flavoring, natural pink color, rice milk, agave, cinnamon, stir)
I personally preferred the "frappucino-like" snow cream that I made using natural maple flavor, agave, rice milk, and cinnamon. The kids, however, liked these little guys. And I liked having a use for my silicone molds since I have sworn off baking with them.

tiny bird tracks on my patio

my house, even more gorgeous covered in precipitation

looooove having the easel on the front porch. it's out of my kitchen and the kids are more likely to use it!

heading next door to check on our neighbors

incredible ice. destructive yet beautiful.

it's a good thing that the net on our trampoline was already destroyed because this ice storm just totally did it in. no idea how we are going to afford to replace it.

snow angels didn't turn out so well with all of that ice under the thin layer of snow

the limbs are so heavy from ice. i want to hug her.

this is the view out of my kitchen window. how lucky am i?

the bird house that my dad made He-Man

The beauty at my home just seems to be magnified by this weather. I often forget just how much beauty surrounds us. We are lucky to live out where the air is cleaner, the grass is greener, and bunnies romp and play. And when we get a huge snow like this, I kinda wish we had a hill to sled down but still, I'll take what I have!