::right now::

::first leaves on our backyard maple::

::his first lego "ve-hee-cle"::

::happy face apple slice::

::underdog for Finn::

::first fire of the (almost) spring::

::cookout remains::

::buds awakening::

::a hand to hold::

::seen above the trees::

{this moment} - cooperative watercoloring

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. See Soulemama to play along.

storytelling

The art of storytelling is lost in so many families these days. I think of Pa telling Laura and Mary stories from his childhood or my grandmother telling us stories from hers. How many families these days just sit around telling stories, both real and imagined, as a form of bonding and enjoying each others company?

A few months ago, I decided to invest in a set of storytelling cubes that I found on etsy. They turned out to be a huge creative investment for the small price. Each cube is hand-drawn with 6 different items/people/places of a magical or fairytale quality. The kids have played with these cubes, alone, with each other and together as a family for hours on end in the few short months we've had these cubes. One of my favorite activities around 3rd-4th grade was for my teacher to give us a list of words (usually holiday related) and have us write a story including all of the words from the list. This is my version. (And it's infinitely more fun to do as a family.)

(The story that Elizabeth and I made up from the cubes above.)

Once upon a time there was an eagle of the west magical land. The eagle soared over the kingdom every day to hear the lovely harp music that wafted up through the trees every afternoon. Every day when he heard the harp music, he came down to visit his friend, Julian, to hear about the stories and wonders down on earth. The eagle's favorite story to listen to was the story of the magic carpet that Julian used to own that had been missing for over 20 years now. One day the eagle of the west magical land saw a 3-headed giant on the magical carpet that said "Julian" on the bottom. The eagle snatched up one of Julian's arrows and dropped it in the direction of the 3-headed giant. The giant held up a shield and blocked the arrow. The eagle flew down to the Enchanted Garden to eat a carrot which turned him into a warrior. He was strong and he knew it so he grabbed a nearby house and flung it at the 3-headed giant. All that was left at the end was a giant helmet and the magic carpet that he could return to Julian.

Yarn Along and pondering Lent

For the Yarn Along this week, I'm working on a waffle hat for a gift, using some supersoft baby alpaca, and I'm reading aloud The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to the kids in the evenings.

We've been talking about and preparing for Lent over the last couple of evenings and decided to follow in Ginny's footsteps and have the kids keep a gratitude journal for the 40 days of Lent.

{Shrove Tuesday pancakes}

They seem enthusiastic about the idea, well, except maybe Finn who doesn't seem to understand what gratitude or thankfulness means. Even he got on board once I made a list of things he enjoyed throughout the day and asked him to pick the thing he liked best. If anyone has a surefire way of explaining gratitude to a 4 year old, I'll take any suggestions you can offer!

Paulie and Philip were both thankful for our Shrove Tuesday King Cake, which was sweet to my ears, and Elizabeth is grateful for the new unit of study that she recently began at school on Appalachia. She's enjoying the new project that she's working on at school.

I decided to personally take the journal and gratitude effort a bit further by adding generosity, patience and kindness to my list. I plan to record an act of each in my journal each day and to concentrate my efforts on my family. My hope is that by making a concerted effort to perform acts of generosity, patience, kindness and gratefulness toward my family each day of Lent, those intentions will become a mindful habit.

{Shrove Tuesday King Cake}

Maybe my mindful intentions will even raise the level of generosity, patience, kindness and gratefulness between the kids. Wouldn't that be a wonderful gift during this Lenten season?

smelling bottles

While I was visiting my friend Jenni, we decided to make some smelling bottles for our kids. We started with 12 clear 1 dram glass bottles (found on ebay), a couple of cotton balls and 6 different essential oils.

We dabbed each essential oil (vanilla, orange, lemon, eucalyptus, cinnamon, and peppermint) on 2 small pieces of cotton and put them into 2 separate bottles, then put a colored sticker on the bottom matching the bottle with the same scent.

The purpose of this work is to be able to smell each bottle match the bottles that are the same. So few works stimulate the sense of smell in young children. How fun to have an opportunity to take a sniff and find a match. I can see making this into a game for my older children as well.

To take it a step further, I decided to find pictures and print them on cardstock to make matching cards for each set of bottles. This enhances the dimension of the work as well as creating an association for each smell.

Finn has loved this work so far. Right now we are just pairing the bottles and putting them on the cards.

He likes for us to each take a sniff of the same smell at the same time.

Finn wanted to take a picture of mommy smelling the bottles too. He managed to get me in the frame and mostly in focus so I thought I'd include it. He said, and I love this, that we should always take pictures of each other doing work. :)

This might be a great opportunity to learn the term olfactory. How official to have an olfactory work in our basket now!

a day in DC

Elizabeth, Finn and I took a road trip this weekend to visit some friends in DC. We spent most of the weekend just hanging out with our friends, although we did manage to take in the parade and some light shopping. Today, we decided to venture out to the nation's capital to take in some sights. Alas, the weather was not cooperative, so "taking in the sights" was more of a museum trip. Fortunately, we were able to meet some other friends at the museums which made the excursion more fun. I mean, what's more fun than DC in the rain with lots of littles in tow tracking through miles of museum. :)

(I just love how Finn, Judah and Charlie look like giants peering into the world of the dinosaurs as they gaze at this diorama.)

We started out at the Natural History Museum. The dinosaurs were a bit hit, as always, and the butterfly room, which I'd never visited before was a wonderful experience.

Elizabeth was even fortunate enough to have a butterfly land on her hat. You should have seen her trying to videotape the butterfly on her own hat.

We headed over to the gems and minerals room after the butterflies. Elizabeth passion, second only to art, is rocks so she was in heaven. Finn was less than impressed until he realized that they had lots of "please touch" rocks in that area.

Finn and Zach even had a great time racing their cars over the different "please touch" rocks. What better way to explore the textures and shapes of the rocks.

Upon leaving the rocks, we headed to the mammals. Finn felt sorry for the giraffe who was bent down to drink but didn't have any water in his watering hole.

I overheard a conversation between Finn and Zach after I read the placard on the anteaters. Finn said, "30,000 ants is alot of ants to eat in one day." To which Zach replied, "if 30,000 ants is how many they usually eat, I'll bet they could eat 1 MILLION on a hungry day!"

Some of the littles began to fall apart in the mammal room so we decided to break for lunch. As lunch was finishing, Elizabeth and I snuck away to visit the knitted reef that Cindy insisted I visit since we were right there. It would be impossible to take pictures to accurately reflect the craftsmanship, vibrant color and amazing cooperative effort in this project so I didn't even try. This picture only reflects one section of the knitted reef, and it's just amazingly beautiful to behold. Elizabeth and I had a wonderful time walking around the room trying to figure out some of the materials and depictions of the knitting.

After lunch, we headed next door to The National Gallery as Elizabeth never wants to miss any opportunity to take in an important art gallery.

Finn admired the orange guitar in this Picasso.

Elizabeth went back to the scene of the crime where she rubbed a quarter on a Barnett Newman painting many years ago. For some reason, I always thought it was a Rothko which bore her markings, but when we got to the spot, there hung this Newman which looks very similar to a Rothko. She always snickers when Paul or I tell her the story about how she got very indignant with the angry guard when he accused her of touching the painting. She retorted, "I did NOT touch the painting! My quarter did!"

Finn and Elizabeth both enjoyed the Matisse room.

It's not often to find so many of his large cut-out works together in one room.

And Elizabeth took several minutes to revel in the Barnett Newman Stations of the Cross room. It really is moving to see the paintings together, one after another, with simple black and white on an off-white background.

We really had a lovely time seeing all of our friends today. How lucky we are to be able to just pick up and take a road trip to see everyone and some history and art to boot!

{this moment} - birds of a feather

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. See Soulemama to play along.

Yarn Along, my own sweater

My Yarn Along picture for this morning doesn't show what's currently on my needles, but what finally came off the needles just last night! I finally finished the sweater that I've been working on for myself.

The books are a stack of vintage children's books that I picked up at a tag sale over the weekend. We've been having great fun reading through these sweet books, most of which I had never heard of, every day since the tag sale.

And the sweater...

This is the first sweater that I've ever knit for myself and I'm so excited to be able to wear it finally! It's the Cozy V-Neck Pullover with deep ribbing from Fitted Knits...and fitted it is. The yarn I chose is so soft though so I don't mind the fitted nature. The color I'm using, Marsh, was discontinued, but I purchased enough when it was on clearance to also make myself a hat. I'm open to a good suggestion for a heavy worsted yarn hat that would look nice with this sweater!

I do think I may take the bottom apart and add another couple of inches. I think I might like it better about 2 inches longer. Yay, I'll be cozy and toasty in my new sweater this morning...at least until the temperature hits 64 like the weathermen are predicting.

Happy Wednesday!

eating Finn's sprouts

After letting Finn's sprouts grow for almost a week. We decided to harvest some of them yesterday for dinner. The picture below was taken yesterday morning 6 1/2 days after the initial soaking of the beans. Finn's mung beans sprouted in about 24 hours were rinsed every 12 hours following the initial soaking.

The sprouts increased in volume significantly each day and you could easily see the level of the sprouts rising in the quart jar. I initially thought the quart jar might be a bit of overkill for a mere 1/4 cup of mung beans, but as you can see, they completely filled the jar by the sixth day.

All of the kids, save Elizabeth, our least adventurous eater, were excited to try the sprouts so we trimmed and washed our sprouts and lightly patted them dry.

Our stir-fry has never looked better than with a sprinkling of fresh sprouts on top, and the added crunchy texture was a lovely addition to each bite. Not to mention, I was excited about the added vitamins, minerals and amino acids to our dinner.

We still have quite a few sprouts left so I might try adding them to our green smoothies next. Smoothies are a great way to get all kinds of healthy things into our kids so we drink them frequently. It might not be as beautiful as our stir-fry, but those sprouts will be eaten for sure!