Thankful.

Today was a long, slow day filled with lots of crafting and giggling. Hannah crafted around me while I cleaned in the craft room. When she was done, she showed me her vases full of flowers.

After she started messing around on the paint shelf and found the face paints that I'd picked up on Halloween clearance, I got no peace until I agreed to make her a butterfly.

Then Ainsley wanted something simpler - a heart and a rose.


Grayson wanted nothing at all, but I was on a roll by then.

Starting in on Thanksgiving week, we did our Thanksgiving tree tonight. Hannah helped me cut the leaves and got them all organized in a bowl with the pens.

During dinner, we wrote what we were thankful for on the leaves.

Hannah put a lot of thought into her 'Thankfuls'. Last year was constellations and books. This year was her dog, crafts, her pony, and balloons (her latest obsession). I made the cut both years. It's nice to see a thankful leaf with 'Mother' on it.

Ainsley picked out her 'Thankfuls' this year like she did last year. "I tankful for..." (looking around) "pizza. And pens. And leaves." And on and on it went. Cats, her horse, and Smurf cartoons made her list also.

After dinner we put the leaves up on a tree I'd put on the wall.

We have a lot of leaves on our Thankful Tree this year.


That seems right.

After Thanksgiving, I'll pick a few leaves to put in their keepsake boxes.

Well, this isn't working.

Health issues equal blogging issues. Instead of being excited to post every day, I can go days before I realize that I haven't even *thought* of posting.

So many pictures, waiting to be posted. Most of them never will be - catch-up isn't really my style.

I will leave you with these pictures of Halloween - pictures snapped quickly of our little fairies (and a ghost cousin) and a little Peter Pan. Wish I had better pictures of the costumes, but my camera appears to be off-kilter and most pictures come out fuzzy, so we take what we can get.



And these pictures of our favorite Halloween crafts.

Stiff Fabric Ghosts

Crow puppets.

And this - the most important thing. Do you remember my sister? She used to look like this.

Now she looks like this.

And there was much rejoicing. (And no small amount of baby lust.)

In progress.

Three Halloween costumes.

Two straight days of sewing. Two costumes are almost done, one is being cut out.

The girls have been playing their own games around me - and with me when I take much-needed breaks. I went tearing up the stairs yesterday when I heard Ains yelling 'MOTHER!!!' and was told that she was just yelling for her bunny's mother and "You go work on my dress". Nice.

Gray's not at the independent play age, so he's with me.


Yeah, he's right here with me.

Seven hours to go ...

May Day

I couldn't get these up last night because Father came home and introduced his daughters to The Three Stooges on Hulu and there went the computer for the rest of the night. Lots and lots of hysterical giggling from the computer desk, though.

We made baskets and tissue flowers for May Day. We do not have anywhere near enough live flowers for baskets. Blurgh.

The tissue flowers required tissue squares being layered and then folded accordion style. It was one of those "Oh, you're getting so big" moments when Hannah watched the video and made the flower all by herself.

Ainsley also wanted to do it by herself, which meant the squares of tissue paper got rolled into a tube, crumpled, put on the chenille stem and stuffed in her basket. They were recognizable and darling.

Grayson chewed on stuff.

Then we gathered our baskets and visited neighbors. It's pretty hard in the country to be sneaky about hanging baskets and running. You have to drive half a mile up their driveway. They have to play along a lot. And they did. It was a lot of fun to sneak with the girls. One older lady (about 83 years old) heard the girls giggling around the corner and snuck up on them. She told them that if they got caught, she got to kiss them. They now want every day of May to be May Day.

"Is it raving you are, girl? To capture a leprechaun is no easy thing!"*

Two nights ago, Hannah tried leaving out shoelaces for the leprechaun because he is a shoemaker. He took the shoelaces and gold chocolate coins and got away.

So yesterday she got serious. She asked me to read her all of her leprechaun books yet again. We looked at our bookmarked leprechaun sites. She made me write down the following facts:

1) Leprechauns are shoemakers.
2) Leprechauns like gold.
3) Leprechauns are grumpy and live alone.
4) Leprechauns are drunk a lot.
5) Leprechauns are tiny.

If caught, remember the following:

1) Leprechauns are tricky.
2) Leprechauns won't lie. But their truth is tricky.
3) Leprechauns can't get away if you keep looking at them, so they will try to trick you into looking away.

Remembering all of the above, she set about making the final, most important (last chance until next year!) trap.

Alcohol. (Apple juice - we're fresh out of alcohol. And she had to borrow her sister's My Little Pony cups and bowls - she didn't want him to drown in a bigger cup.)


Shoelaces - lots this time. Chocolate gold coins. Not only in the bowl but in a path leading up to the bowl.

She was certain she had him this time. He'd probably get too drunk to get away but if he could hold his liquor, he wouldn't be able to get away fast enough with his arms so full of shoelaces and gold. Hee hee hee.

But 'tis no easy thing to catch a leprechaun.

He got away, probably drunk as a skunk. He drank all the alcohol and left the cups and bowls in a mess. He tipped over the gold coins and left a trail of them out the door. He dropped some of the shoelaces. The box knocked off and trapped his hat. He didn't get away unscathed, but he did get away.

Hannah had to inspect every piece of evidence.


Then she had to call her father and tell him all about it.


Until next year...

Books we had fun with:
*quote from Leprechauns Never Lie - how a leprechaun tricks a lazy girl into helping her grandma
Leprechaun Gold - how a leprechaun tricks a man into taking the gold he owes him
Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato - a lazy man catches a leprechaun who talks him into taking a potato seed instead of a pot of gold

A website you have to see:
The Leprechaun Watch - a webcam set up in a prime leprechaun viewing area. After you've read that page, click on 'webcam' up in the top lefthand corner. So much fun!

When we got up this morning, the trap was sprung.



Hannah lifted up the box with her net in hand.



But he'd escaped - and with all but one of the coins!

We're going on a quick, last minute out of town trip tonight, so she's leaving him some coins "to make him think I'm generous. Hee hee hee" and will reset the trap tomorrow night. Wish her luck!

Catching leprechauns.

Hannah read a Little Einsteins book in which the Little Einsteins caught a leprechaun. She talked nonstop about leprechauns for several days, so when I saw 'leprechaun traps' mentioned on a forum as an idea for St. Paddy's day, I suggested it to her. Boy howdy, that set off some excitement. I'm not much for Hallmark holidays, but this might be fun.

First things first, she declared. "We must have gold chocolate coins." We must? "Yes. We must." Why chocolate? "Because, Mother, if we don't have enough money to rent all those movies I want, then we don't have enough for real gold coins. .... Do we? Can I rent a movie?!?" No. Let's find chocolate coins.

Five stores later, we found chocolate coins. When Daddy came home from work, she was waiting, bouncing up and down with excitement. They gathered the supplies and discussed the drawbacks and benefits of different ideas. Ainsley licked salt dough beads.


They put the trap together. Ains climbed on the table.


They tied the string from the pencil to a gold coin and placed the coin in the bowl. Ains worked on a wedgie.


Hannah covered the bottom coin up with a few more coins to fool the leprechaun...


and then added a note that said "Here are some coins, leprechaun. We won't hurt you. Hee hee hee." I tried to get her to leave the "Hee hee hee" off, but she thought it was necessary.


All done and ready for the leprechaun to get greedy.


Ainsley inspected the finished product. No matter what the body language in this picture tells you, she is not in charge in this house.


Then the girls practiced catching leprechauns with their Elefun nets. That was a good ten minutes of energy released right before bedtime. The girls' parents may have egged them on for another few minutes for purely selfish "please-go-to-bed-soon" reasons, but that's neither here nor there.


Hannah has informed her father that if this leprechaun trap doesn't work, she's enlisting his help in making a robot to use the Elefun nets to catch the leprechaun tomorrow night. It was her top choice for a trap, but her father talked her into trying the old box, stick, and bait method first.

When I mentioned that leprechauns usually live in Ireland, Hannah decided to enlist the fairies help in tricking the leprechaun. She took the nature art she made from her gathering expedition the other day ...


and stuck post-it notes all over it explaining her plan and asking for their help, because, in her words, "Fairies can talk around the world so they can tell him to come get his gold. Hee hee hee." She was careful to note that she was just catching him, not hurting him. Then she stuck it out on the porch table. She and Ainsley kept peeking out the window, looking for fairies, every ten minutes for the next hour and a half. We obviously didn't make them practice catching leprechauns enough.


Ainsley wrote the fairies enough notes to make a book. She wouldn't tell me what they said. When I asked her, I got a pointed finger in my direction along with a "NO, momma. Mine talk fairies. Mine notes." Okay, then. A girl must have some privacy.


We'll see what happens tonight. We've told her that she only has until March seventeenth to catch one.

Does anybody have any good ideas for this? I figured that for every night he doesn't show, we'll find out more about leprechauns and use the new knowledge to try and catch him. I've got some leprechaun books on hold at the library for my husband to pick up and I have some interesting websites bookmarked. When we were in line at the store to pay for our chocolate coins, Hannah was telling the woman behind us about her plan to catch leprechauns and when she got distracted, the woman told me about a St. Paddy's day tradition they had when her kids were little. She said that while the kids were asleep, they would turn chairs upside down and do other generally tricky things around the house and blame it on the leprechauns. Matt thinks that sounds like fun. I am a wee bit skeered.

Valentines and potatoes.

Having trouble keeping up online these days, but I wanted to share these.

Almost two weeks ago now (gulp) we made valentines. I cut out hundreds of valentines (my scissors had to be sharpened) and set out glue sticks. It was a mad house and the two girls created the cutest valentines.

At first Ainsley's had more glue than hearts, but then she realized that it wouldn't stick to her if she covered the glue completely with hearts. And you wondered why I needed to cut out hundreds. (Or, if you're a mom, you didn't wonder for even a second.)


Then labeling the hearts.




After I made a heart flower for Hannah, both girls tried it out. Hannah made one and Ainsley went crazy making them. We have at least ten taped on our bedroom walls.


This one didn't make it to the wall.


A few days after that, we went to a library story time where they let the girls make foam hearts. Hannah made hers "extra bumpy because I'm going to give this one to Grandpa Rex and he needs to feel how much I love him". Grandpa Rex can't see very well.

It was an extra bumpy heart, so it needed a special envelope. She wrote his name on it herself and even wrote "I love you I love you" above his name. She'd just learned that "I (heart) you" means "I love you", so she wrote that. In a manner of speaking writing.


A few days later when I had scrap pieces of rope from making a baby hammock, they wanted to use them to make yet more valentines.


And valentine necklaces, of course.


Then Daddy sent them flowers for the day itself.





Love Day, indeed.


And this is what happens when you're taking pictures and Daddy walks in the door.


Random pictures, but they make me smile... While doing laundry, I heard a thumping noise. When I came out to investigate, I found this -


She was teaching Grayson how to throw potatoes down the hallway. He was a quick study.


Ignore all the buckets. I was organizing food storage.