Free time.

Not for me, although that would be so nice during this busy season. Free time at the gym after gymnastics class. After class, you can pay a few bucks and your kids get to run around in the gym for an hour. This was the first time we took advantage of it, but first we had to get through class. Both classes were .... loopy. While the classes normally run very smoothly, today all of the kids in both classes were having a difficult time concentrating. If I didn't know better, I'd swear there had been a full moon last night. (Especially after the mouse fiasco earlier this morning.)

Exhibit A: Ainsley walking on the balance beam. Look at her body language. She's just strolling along there, chatting to the teacher.

It was actually a funny conversation. The teacher had asked another student who was wandering around in a daze if she was lost. Being three years old, Ains had to tell her that *she* wasn't lost, she'd come here with her mother and her mother knew how to drive, so she knew she wasn't lost, and she'd recognized the building as soon as we'd pulled in, and then when she came in, she'd recognized the teacher, so she *knew* she wasn't lost. Ad infinitum.

Hannah's class didn't fare much better, but she and her cousin got their synchronized balance beam walking down.

What I'm trying to say is, we *needed* that gym free time to get some energy out. An added bonus was that Gray got to be on the other side of the white fence today. No more watching his sisters get to play on the equipment without him while he had to be content throwing cars through the fence.

The block pit at the end of the long trampoline was a favorite, naturally.

Keeping an eye on three kids in a crowd of thirteen wasn't easy. Gray would be on one side of the gym while Ains would be on another.

Luckily, Hannah made it easy. She and her cousins stuck together like glue. Every time I turned around, they were together - always on a different piece of equipment, but together, which meant that my sister could keep an eye on Hannah while keeping an eye on her own kids.

There they are.
And there.
And there.
And there's Gray.
There they are again.
And again.
And there's Gray.
And Ains moving so fast you can barely see her.

And Gray again.
I don't know if I'll be able to keep him on the right side of the fence at our next class. Once you get a taste of the good life ... especially if it involves a trampoline and a crawl tunnel ...

The famous conductor.

That's what I'm telling myself.


Truth be told, he was jabbing the stick in the air yelling "Ya! Ya!" and laughing maniacally.

His sisters told me he was fighting a monster, which only makes sense.

Heroes always get the girl.

*Filed under "If only it weren't so blurry."

Tiny changes.

I always thought it would be the big, noticeable things with my kids that would mark the time passing for me. You know, birthdays, lost teeth, school starting.

It certainly is the big things that make me notice the time passing with my friends and family. She lost her tooth? Can you believe you have a seven year old? She's old enough to be in school already?

But with my children, the big things haven't fazed me yet. It's the little things that make me pause, startle, and sometimes tear up a little bit.

Like the moment a few months ago when I took Hannah to get some new shoes. There was a small selection and the only choices she had in the kind of shoe we were going for (fancy shoes) were sparkly Disney labeled shoes or sweet, grown-up ballet shoes. Now I really dislike branded clothing, but for half a second I caught myself hoping that she'd pick the glittery shoes and stay so young just a bit longer. She chose the ballet shoes. I was very happy about it, once the decision was made, but for me it marked the ending of a period in her life.

And there was the moment a few weeks ago when I realized that my three year old was running to the bathroom with her pants pulled up. Not something *you'd* notice if you were visiting, but for me, it was a big deal. See, I've been trying to convince her for six months that when she realizes that she needs to go to the bathroom so bad, it would be more efficient to run to the bathroom and *then* pull down her pants instead of immediately pulling them down to her ankles and running to the bathroom (at full speed, no less) like that.

Oh, and the moment yesterday when I was chasing my 18 month old around the house, tickling him and he was giggling that hysterical happy-baby-giggle so hard and I startled a big boy laugh out of him. He didn't understand why I stopped chasing him and it took me a second to understand it myself.

Changes that are small are the sweetest and most telling.

Sometimes they're not so sweet, though. I turned 32 this year and didn't even notice. Age is just a number and all that. I'm enjoying my thirties more than any other stage in my life. And then yesterday a kinda hot guy in his early twenties almost ran into me in the store. He said "Excuse me, ma'am." Did you get that? He said "Excuse me, ma'am." I think that at this point I should call him 'a nice young man' instead of 'a kinda hot guy.' *sigh*

It's the little things.

Felt Car Playmat to take along.

I'm not an original crafter. I'm no good at thinking up new and ingenious crafts that will take your breath away. I'm good at looking at ingenious crafts and getting my breath taken away, and I'm good at taking crafts I see and tweaking them to fit my style and needs. That's how this one was born.

This was born from two different crafts I saw online - a tiny fabric tic-tac-toe board to carry in your purse and a monstrously huge construction toy playmat.

This one is about 12 inches around - I used the largest mixing bowl I had to draw the circle on some white felt. Then I added some felt and embellished it.

Apple tree field.

Corn field. (Not a field of lily pads like my husband thought. Where on earth would you find a field of lily pads?)


A pond with cattails, boat, and waves. No lily pads.

Sheep in a field. Went a bit french knot crazy here. Also, they're not really clear - my husband thought they were bushes. Also, my sister couldn't tell what they were - she didn't even get bushes from it, she didn't have any idea *what* they were.

Motorcycle track. A road was taken out here and this substituted at my husband's request.

Ainsley's favorite thing is the flower filled turnaround in the center, Hannah's favorite part is the apple trees. Gray likes running over the sheep.

Then I backed it with some fabric from my stash, finished the edges with bias tape and bias tape loops and threaded a bias tape drawstring through it.

If I had had the tools, I may have finished the edges with bias tape and then put grommets in and threaded a drawstring through those.

All finished with 3 little cars from our toy box.

Ready to throw in the purse.

Perfect for any place - like gymnastics class - where you need some longer distractions.

And I thought it was bad when the *kids* got ahold of the scissors.

It's much worse when their father does.

"It can't be that hard to cut boys hair," he said before I went to my book club.

"It's getting long," he added. "Besides, I have guides on the razor."

"Please don't cut his hair." I said.

"It just had to be evened up," he said when I got back. "But then it kept getting shorter and shorter. Cutting hair is harder than it looks."

"Sigh," I sighed.

Let them eat cake.

Hannah (the Queen) and Ainsley (the Princess) decided to host a tea party for the cats and dogs.

That didn't work out as well as they'd planned, so they settled for the next best thing - a brother. Who is Not A Prince, by the way.

They talked him into joining them by offering him a drink of tea (water) sweetened with sugar (chocolate chips). He fell for it.

Then they got distracted talking about Many Important Things.

Gray tried to understand, but he was getting bored, so he started looking for a way out.

The Queen noticed this and fed him a tea cake (graham cracker). He bit. (Heh.)

And then the talk got boring again. Look at the poor kid trying to keep his eyes open.

There they go ... drooping ...

He just wants a way out. "Maybe if I roll off the chair and onto the porch and keep rolling, they'll laugh so hard they won't offer me anything else and I can get away."

Which is what he did. Rolled all the way over to me and we got the well house swept out and ready for winter - can't have the well pipes freezing and breaking. That is what we commoners do while the royalty eats cake.

Watching them grow up.

Our little barn swallows are almost ready to leave the nest. If you're very quiet when you walk into the garage, you'll see this.

If you're not quiet, you'll get this.

One of 'em's a coward.

They are *so* close to leaving the nest (compare this picture to the same birds last week) that I sat down to try to get some good pictures. My goal was to get a picture of their parents feeding them, but I had a bit too much help for that to happen.

I was able to get this ...

and this ...

and this.

When I came back out by myself a few hours later, the nest was empty. And so it goes.

The best part of the day.

This is one of those days where I'm afraid your interest will wane because, well, we went to the park.

How many park pictures do you want to look at?

You're probably there with your kids every other day and if you've seen one park, you've seen them all.

But stay tuned, because this little guy made a break-through today.

First, I want to tell you about this girl - we'll call her Ariel.

We were at a park one day and Ainsley - who is notoriously aloof around new kids - and most kids she's met many times - immediately started playing with her. They ran around that playground giggling, holding hands, and jabbering to each other, not seeming to mind that one was jabbering in Spanish and the other in English. When Ariel and her parents started to leave I ran over and gave them my phone number explaining that my daughter really doesn't take to a lot of kids and I would love it if they could call next time they came to the park.

Luckily, they did, and we've been slowly building a friendship. All of us.

When we go back to the town we used to live in (tonight it was for some lawn work at the old house), we call and meet up to play.

Last time they visited our new house, I gave them some banana bread (I was trying a new recipe from A Homemade Life) and it was so good that Ariel's mom asked for the recipe. Today when I handed her the recipe, she handed me a plate with four pieces of 'Mexican custard' on it. Oh, it was so good. Hannah ate one piece, I ate one, Ainsley tried a bite and didn't like the texture. I gave Grayson a few spoonfuls and he seemed to like it ok. I wanted to talk to Ariel's mom, so I gave him the spoon and he started doing this -

Then I got distracted talking and he dropped the spoon - I think it was slowing him down -and started taking handfuls. By the time I regained control of the plate, there was only a quarter of a piece left and his hands and face were very, very sticky.

Now, about Grayson's breakthrough. Do you remember this? The passive-resistance-I-hate-swinging-and-you-can't-swing-me-if-I-just-hang-here pose?

Oh, yes. That was so last week.

This week, with the discovery of big kid swings, the world's looking very, very different.

What a change. He watched the girls climb onto the swings and tried to climb on one himself, so I put him up there and started swinging him. Fifteen minutes he swung there before I tried to take him off. Then he made a noise that made me stick him right back on for another five minutes until he was ready to go. He was in heaven. Explain that to me.



Of course, it could just have been that his hands were so sticky that he couldn't let go.

So the most exciting part of the day for Ains was getting to play with her friend, the most exciting part for Gray was either discovering Mexican custard or discovering that big kid swings are the best things ever, but the most exciting part of the day for Hannah was discovering a real, no kidding, honest-to-Murgatroyd, ain't no one foolin' here fairy ring.

It was on the lawn and it was very unusual. A complete, perfectly shaped circle with mushrooms (maybe toadstools?) all around the edges with none inside or outside the edge of the circle. Fairies certainly danced here last night.

Oh, yes, Magic entered her life today. This was almost as good as seeing a real fairy. She's a believer, my girl.

So it was just another ordinary day at the park.

If you believe in ordinary days, that is.

I'm glad you let me tell you about it.

Sweet dreams.