Bleach pen t-shirts.

While I was packing I came across a lot of small crafting supplies bought for projects that never got done. Some of them I thrift stored, some I saved because, you know, I *will* do them.... sometime ... and some I dropped everything and just did the project. Finally. This was one of those. I found the bleach pen. I found t-shirts. I found girls. I turned them loose. They designed their own shirts while I packed and tried to keep little brothers away from them. I really love the way they turned out.

Hannah did an African scene. She used my chalk fabric marker to draw it and then traced the chalk lines with the bleach pen.

Ainsley did a sunny day. I got close-ups of my favorite parts. This is a snail beside a flower and the flower is dreaming of when it was a very young flower, just a stem.

This is a bear that is thinking of eating the snail.

Hannah's was much more crisp than Ainsley's. I think it's because she did hers first, but I don't really know.

Cute, fun project.

Sanity saving box.

We're in the middle of a big move here. Have you noticed that you grow to fit the house you live in? Yeah. Maybe we should have taken the smaller house 8 months ago.

I'm trying to pack up a big house while four kids and two dogs need attention - there's just no way around it. Letting them watch movies all day when they're doing it just because they're bored is a recipe for crankiness and that's a recipe for fighting and that's no good. And that's just the dogs.

I have an 'Emergency Box' that we use when someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed or if we've had too many consecutive days of windy or rainy weather or if regular life is just not cutting it that day. I went through it about a month ago, culling and refilling and adding to it so that it would be ready for when I needed to keep them busy. And it's been fantastic. It's stopped situations like this from happening too often.

 So, you know, worth it. In fact, were I to Pinterest this post, I'd call it BRILLIANT.

 The box is always changing based on what I find at dollar stores, craft stores, what the kids are into, things I think might make them say "Whoa. Cool." Or at the very least "I think I want to stop losing my ever-loving mind about not being able to find my blue toothbrush - and no my green one, pink one, or Tinkerbell one won't work! - and look at that." Sometimes that's all I need to change a day.

This time around the box has:
- A container of instant snow. Awesome fun.

- Science kits.
- Homemade tangrams from foam sheets.
- New notebooks and colored pencils.
- Glow sticks. (Did you know that if you accidentally break a glow stick and then whirl it around in the bathroom it looks like fairy dust hit the walls and the toilet seat? You could also, if you wanted to, tell your Daddy that his butt now glows. But that's entirely up to you.)
- Crystal 'trees' that grow in hours.
- Bubbles. About three different kinds. They're almost all gone.
- Plastic balloon making kits. Really cool. And messy.
- Balloons. Three different kinds - regular, water, and those big ones with rubber bands on them.
- A cast iron pan that makes pancakes with animals on them. Found it on clearance from $25 down to $2.50. Score! We made those in the middle of the afternoon yesterday when tempers were getting short. (As Ainsley put it "Thanks for making these for me, Mom. I was getting high-tempered.")
- Wooden animal skeletons that you glue together.
- Tattoos. The temporary kind - the other kind take too much parental attention when I need to be packing.
- Small puzzles.
- Foam beads for necklaces and bracelets.

The majority of those cost $1. The science kits, instant snow and crystal tree were a bit more. Most require not much more than helping them get going, some don't even require that. The ones that require more involvement from me I count as a well-deserved break for me and/or an investment in a happy environment.

Back to packing.

How Sarah sees her world.

Close-up.

HI!!!


Heh, heh, heh.

Too much cuteness.

Candy making, butterfly chasing, game playing ...

Studio Ghibli watching, dinosaur researching, Dora annoying, ice cream eating, iPad playing, book reading, dog training, baby giggling, wardrobe clearing, wardrobe planning, frog feeding, hamster catching, and just the teeny tiniest bit of baby napping.

It was a full day.







My big accomplishments for the day - spring cleaning all of the kids' wardrobes. Cleaning out the camper from our first camping trip! Helping Hannah make raspberry suckers. Only eating three spoonfuls of Nutella.

We watched a Studio Ghibli movie that I was wary about - Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I was wary because it's never been recommended as all of the other Ghibli movies always are (Hannah's favorite is Castle in the Sky and Ainsley's is My Neighbor Totoro). I don't know why this one never gets recommended. It's by far my favorite. Fantastic female protagonist and beautiful storyline and soundtrack.

A very full day.

Saturday we spent the day in Utah with family. Both sides of the family - one in the afternoon, one in the evening. My girls were in heaven. Gray and Zander just rolled with it.

We got to spend time with Grandpa who is a photographer and loves to teach the kids how to take pictures.


The cousins we spent time with first have lived back east for 8 years, so it was a lot of fun for my kids to get some quality time playing with them. They only live two hours away now!

My redhead brother holding my redhead son.

Having ice cream at the same place my partner and I had our first date. The girls thought that was so exciting and romantic and .... "Wait! Does this mean that I have to marry Grayson because we're having ice cream together here?!?!" No, sweetie, you're fine.

We went by the big Mormon temple there to get a picture taken with a Flat Stanley we're hosting and the kids rolled down the HUGE hill before I could stop them.

It *is* kind of an irresistible hill.

I have no pictures of the girls playing with their cousins at the next house. We got there, I was surrounded by dance costumes and giggles and then they all disappeared for two hours.

So Zander and I played with sidewalk chalk ...

and I tried to breathe and stay calm as Gray zoomed down the driveway over and over on a skateboard.
I will not be an overprotective mom. I will not be an overprotective mom. I will not be an overprotective mom. I will not be an overprotective mom.

Grayson joins in.

I now have three superheroes in training. THREE! I'm creeping up on Professor Xavier's school.

And with that, I'm going to leave you with the awesome cuteness that is Grayson in karate class.

Valentine's Day

Ainsley has Chinese New Year, Hannah has Valentine's Day. A day to celebrate love - she was born for that. So her Daddy has stepped up to the challenge. Every year he gets all of us flowers and last year he made us heart waffles for breakfast.

This year, though, he went all out. Decorated the house with the girls and then quarantined us in my bedroom for two hours. Two. Hours.

He had Grayson come get us one by one and give us the flowers.


Matt lit the candles. (Ainsley was the only one of us who dressed for the occasion.)

Zander laughed at all of us.


Then we got to sit down for dinner.

All of us girls love seafood so he made us a dinner with favorites for each of us - pan fried lemon shrimp, halibut, garlic mashed potatoes, and bacon asparagus. And sparkling cider, of course.

So very good.

The girls said thank you and he said "I like to spoil my girls once a year and make dinner." Which is funny because he loves making dinner, so he does it every night that he's home. Which worked out better for me when he wasn't working nights. I'm just saying, making dinner wasn't unusual for him - making such a fancy dinner, though, was. I'm not a big one for romantic Valentine's Day celebrations. He's winning me over, though.


(Hannah's picture of us. It was a close-up.)

And Zander just laughed at all of us.