Snapshot Sunday

How it began.

Steph's up. Love the shots of red in most of the pictures.

Sunnymama is up. Coat hangers must be in the air today.

Sherry's joining us today! Yay!

Heart Rockin' Mama's in. Tadpoles - she's got tadpoles.

Rinnyboo is up.

West Coast Girl joins us again.

Kyre's not up today, but look at this cake she made!

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.

Puppet theatre.

In all of my decluttering/packing I came across a stash of puppets.

I collect puppets wherever I can find them - yard sales, thrift stores, dollar stores - because they are so expensive. The wolf and owl you'll see featured below are thrift store finds - they're actually golf club covers.

I've had a few puppets out, but the girls have showed no interest in them. This infusion of new blood, puppets they didn't remember seeing before, was all they needed to get going. Especially my little story-teller. I'll walk you through it.

H: "Open curtain! A dog is walking down the street when he sees a wolf come towards him." (I love Ainsley's face in this picture.)

"The dog says GO AWAY, THIS IS DOG TOWN!"

"WOLF TOWN!"

"DOG TOWN!"

"WOLF TOWN!"

"WOLF TOWN!"

Oh, dear. This is getting out of hand. We may need an outsider to help out here.

A: "OOOOWWWWLLLL TOWN!!!!"

H: "Close curtain."

Treasure hunt.

Matt hid candy around the property and then made a treasure map for the girls to follow. They were thrilled - especially Ainsley who constantly carries around a rolled-up 'teasure map' (a bamboo place mat).

It's not often me *not* taking the pictures, so I thought I'd throw this one in. Because.

And they're off.

Around the bunkhouse.

After a long, dangerous trek around trees, through a garden, and past a frisky puppy, we got to Ainsley's candy.

Then off again, past many more obstacles.

Then Hannah's candy. In a tree!

Pretty straightforward from there to Mother's candy. The man knows me.

Vacation ideas?

Quick call for ideas - husband wants to go to the coast for a vacation. He's thinking Oregon or California, maybe the Newport area? They have a nice aquarium there.

Any ideas? Any 'must-sees' in that area? Or anywhere along the northern part of California/southern part of Oregon's coastline? Anyone between Southern Idaho and the coast want us to visit on the way through?

Right This Minute.

Grayson nursing on my lap, the girls walk by to go outside.

"Where you going girls?



A: "Hunting. My cat eat WABBITS!" (The stuffed cat on a leash is hidden behind her skirt.)

H: "YEAH! We're taking this" (shows me her bow) "and we're going to hunt deer and moose and elk and everything with antlers and we're going to eat them because they taste so good. We're going to share them too, with people who don't have food. They'll like to eat them. But we have to go now, Mother, before they all run away."

OK. Have fun.

Independence and Butterfly Wings.

Hannah's been asking for a bike for awhile and we finally had enough money to get one. (Thanks tax return!) So off to our neighboring town's Wal-Mart to check out the selection. Three bikes for kids her size.

Matt stuck her on one and she pedaled around for a bit. One of the pedals fell off. Screwed it back on. Two aisles later it's off again. Next bike.

Matt stuck her on and she pedaled around for a bit. Took a turn too fast (2 mph instead of 1) and the handlebar alignment was off. Matt fixed it, but didn't want to mess with a bike that got messed up so easily from a kid tipping it over. Tipping bikes over is kind of par for the course when you're learning to ride.

Last one. Princesses plastered all over it (and $20 more for the privilege of the decals). She didn't get all the way down the aisle before one of the training wheels came off and she tipped over again. When Matt put it back together, he stuck her on and the seat twisted. We looked at each other and decided without words that a larger portion of the tax return was going to have to go to bikes.

We promised Hannah she would get her bike the next day at a proper bike store. We're snobby that way.

The proper bike store also had three choices. None with princesses. Which, strangely enough, Hannah didn't seem to mind. In fact, she ignored the pink choice altogether and went with the orange one. The orange one with the bee on the seat. "Did you know bees are eusocial?" she asked the salesman. "No, I didn't" said the salesman. "Yes, the boys are just for having babies. The girls do all the work. They make the honey. They're even the guards!" says she. "Did you see this pink bike with all the flowers?" says he. (Nice try, buddy) "Yes. Bees love flowers. Then they do the waggle dance" (she demonstrates) "to tell other bees where they are." He looked kind of bewildered and tried "Want to get on and ride it?" That worked.

Ainsley picked out a dark pink one. Grayson tried chewing on the tire of a nearby unicycle. I considered letting him.

When we got home it was dark (our nearest proper bike store is in 'the big city'), so Matt let the girls ride their bikes in the house. When Hannah went to bed, she wheeled her bike into the room with her. What a thing to wake up to!

In the morning we heard some banging and Ains said "Hannah up!" Sure enough, out she came.
But don't think I'm just giggling at Hannah's attachment to her bike here. This is what Ains was doing when she told me Hannah was up. Oatmeal on the bike. Thank goodness for training wheels.

After breakfast we headed out and Hannah got the first major taste of independence a kid gets after they learn to walk - riding a bike far and fast.

She also learned that riding on gravel isn't as easy as riding on a slick store floor and that riding downhill, while scary, is thrilling.

Since yesterday, I go nowhere without neosporin and band-aids.

Wildflowers are so abundant right now that even bike riding can wait for a few minutes.

Then the wind overpowered her, so we went into the shed to escape it. We found a dead butterfly which made Ains very sad. "Buttfwy dead? No wings? No FLY??? *sob* ... Me hold it?"

So we looked very closely at the butterfly.

Very closely indeed.

Then Ains took the magnifying glass exploring. Baby goats...

and ponies.

And once more with the buttfly.

More birding...

The book goes with us everywhere now. It's wonderful, really, to connect with a part of the world that you've taken for granted before, that you've allowed to flit around in your peripheral vision but never really notice. And it's wonderful to watch your little girls doing the same thing.

We see birds. Everywhere. So the book comes with us everywhere.

In Wyoming at Grandma and Poppa's house, we see birds more anxious for spring than even we are.

Sandhill Cranes.
Canada Geese.
Robin.
Crossing our driveway in front of our car, Hannah squeals to stop because she's seen a 'new bird'. A Killdeer. That one's fun to talk about.

In a nearby farmer's fields that are being flood-irrigated, we chance on two more varieties.

Mallard ducks.
Spotted Sandpiper? Closest we could find in the book.

Then we go to 'the big city' and see a House Sparrow in front of the toy store.


We're still in the crush phase of this obsession. We're still easily identifying and finding new birds. We have yet to hit the 'I know all the common birds and we'll *never* find the other birds' hump. Right now it's pure excitement every time we see a bird. And that's fun.

I would love to have an experience like this with my girls. Having a birding mentor would be wonderful.

How we got started.

Other birds we've seen.

PYWUTES!!!!

Sorry to yell that at you, but seriously...

PYWUTES!!!

She likes playing princess with her sister just fine, but pirates and the open sea are calling to my girl.

She even makes her sister peep out of portholes to look for 'Waand Hoooo!' because 'Waand Ho is in da Souf Seas.' I have the Island Princess to thank for that. Thanks Barbie.

This one just looks bemused by the whole thing, even when he's told to walk the plank.

Polyandry or Polygamy - which is preferable?

To a five year old, that is.

Driving home from the store tonight, Hannah started in on one of her rambling thought processes. Matt's ready to invest in some type of recorder to take with us places to record these things.

H: "I've decided that I want four children. Not just three like you have, Mother, but four. Well, you really have four. Daddy and me and Ainser and Gray. That's four. But do you want more?"
S: Well, I wouldn't be opposed to more, I guess, if it happened. Why do you want me to have more?
H: "It's not that I want you to have more. Just sometimes I look at your tummy and think 'Mother's going to have another baby' and then I tell myself 'No, that's just fat, that's not a baby', but before I think that I get excited that you're going to have another baby, but it's not a baby in your uterus, it's just fat in your tummy.'
Sarah: *goggle-eyed*
Matt: *trying to stay on the road and not get a hernia from holding in the laughter*
H: "I've been thinking, though, that maybe you should get married again, Mother."
Sarah: Really?
H: "Yes. You can love two husbands. I know it. So you should get married again."
Sarah: Why on earth would I want to do that?
H: "Well, for the money, mainly. If you had two husbands, we would have more money."
Sarah: Huh.
H: "Or, and this would be even better, Mother, your other husband could go to work and Father could stay home and play with us. I've always wanted Father to stay home and play with us, so you should get married again, so he can."
Matt: So the other husband would just be for making money?
H: "Well, that and having more kids."
(now it's my turn to try not to laugh)
Matt: What if I married another woman instead of your mother marrying another man?
H: "That would be silly Father. Then you would have *way* too many kids. And I've already got a mother."
Sarah: What if I went to work and she stayed home with you?
H: "Well, that could work, but I wouldn't like it."
Sarah: Why not?
H: "It's pretty obvious, Mother. I wouldn't like her hairstyle."
Matt: Oh, that is obvious. How did we miss that?

This went on for the twenty minutes it took us to get home. And the jury's still out on whether polyandry (an extra father to go to work so that her father could stay home) or polygamy (an extra mother with a bad hairstyle) is preferable. I'll keep you updated.

Edit: I got some help on correct terminology (see the comments), so I replaced 'bigamy' with 'polyandry'. That's what I get for going from memory with those words. Thanks Big Love!

Violet tea, tigers and butterflies.

We had a lovely day today. We looked for these in our yard ...

collected leaves and flowers, and made violet tea.


We really enjoyed it. It looked and tasted just as described on 5 Orange Potatoes.

Then, since I had some necessary computer work to do (reprinting my entire much-used recipe collection binder - don't ask), I set the girls up with painting on the table beside me.

First, suncatchers.


That went fast.

Then really inexpensive little animals from the craft store. Four for each girl - horses, monkeys, tigers, and elephants. That should have kept them busy for awhile, and it did. Twenty whole minutes.



So I gave up on the computer work and we went to the park.

As I said, lovely day.