Birthdays and Busyness

We've had a crazy and a half last week or so. Part of the busyness was celebrating my and Christian's birthdays, since they're only 2 weeks apart from each other. 65 years between us this year! Before partying C installed a new loft bed for Anne and we set up toddler beds for the twinsies. Yesterday I finally finished painting it (with the help of Laura and Kale'a!) and got the room basically back together today. Wow, is it girlie! Someday we'll paint the lovely red bed white. Anyhoo, here are some pics.

 We all just dote on baby Kale'a :)

 Grace made two of these amazing tart-things- SOOO yummy.

 Happy Birthday to YOU!

 Uhhh, am I in trouble? (uhhh...yes! just as soon as I'm done taking the picture...)

 What do you get when you cross flour, milk powder, and baking soda? 

(answer: I'm still not sure- I haven't tried baking anything yet with the new "mixes"!)

 Signs of life

 "Palace Rose" Pink. Very pink.

 I put 1-year (ish) old collages together for all my kids- these I printed out from Snapfish and got cheap $5 frames from Wallyworld. Perfect!

 Christian carved this per request of his favorite 6-year old. :)

getting the new garden beds ready!

Reading

When all else fails in the pursuit of peace in our home I sometimes remember to pull out a book. For some reason it seems to always calm the kids down, and the twins are no exception. Christian captured our little "peace session" today, although there are some rowdies down the hall that were...well, at least they were having fun and not fighting! :)

Spring???

Although Spring is still officially 11 days away, we decided that today would be a good day to start. It's officially over 50 degrees, so the kids took off outside in the shirtsleeves and bare feet after going for a nice walk around the block! It's been awhile since I've put up any good pictures of the older kids especially, so enjoy! :)

Farewell, Winter! Don't hurry back! :)

Artwork

I think I sorted the kids' artwork back in January, but the kids asked me to do it again today, as their storage space was overflowing. I think Anne had drawn at least 200 pictures in this time frame. I threw away about a 4-inch thick stack of papers, and whittled away the ones we kept to a much more reasonable stack. Here are a few of the favorites...

Elijah enjoys drawing monsters and creatures with weapons, generally swords (David/Goliath is one of his favorite stories)...
This first picture also shows the best he's written his name so far...

Yes, this snowman is carrying a sword.

Peter, on the other hand, mostly draws race cars and warcraft. Although lately he's been working on faces.

(Sorry for the distracting typing showing through the paper- these are mostly drawn on scrap paper)

Anne's creativity is kind of amazing, I think. Maybe she'll be a designer someday, who knows. She really puts a lot of details into her girls (occasionally she pops out a viking or two, but she generally sticks to trendy-looking girls) in a short amount of time. Generally she pulls out 6 sheets of papers and has a detailed figure on each one within 15 minutes.

Anne said this one is "a Hawaiian dress shop"

This one is a girl standing on a stool at a mirror (kind of like in our bathroom, except no sink)- she has a fish tank and apparently a cupcake with a candle. What more could a girl want when she's putting on makeup? :)