Playground Days!

Our church put in a playground last summer, and we used it quite a bit in the fall, but it got quite a bit wetter and cooler by mid-December, and we haven't been able to use the playground much on art days for a while now. This week we finally had a mild day on which it was not raining, and the kids were very happy to get back outside on the play sets! Esther just loves climbing up and sliding down repeatedly, and Rebecca and Elias enjoy the whole place. It is really very nice to be able to sit and watch, knowing that the playground is fully fenced with a locked gate, and I hold the only key! 

She walked around with the bit of mulch on her face the entire afternoon, I only realized it was there about 10 minutes before we had to leave!

Spring Has Sprung!

Or at least, we hope it has. We have had some very pleasant temperatures lately, which have allowed us to spend large quantities of time playing outdoors! Hooray for being home and able to drop our indoor plans and spend the day outdoors! If we were out at daycare/school/work we wouldn't be able to enjoy these days! We would love to see the warmer weather remain, especially after our unusually snowy winter, because we have no heat in our van, and it is pretty chilly travelling on the days that are cold, but we will certainly take what we can get!

Esther was attempting to throw rocks into the ditch like her older siblings... she hasn't figured out how to let the rock go at the right time yet though.

 Esther is enjoying the joys of being able to move around outside. This is her first year really being able to do much outside, and she loves to take her little riding toy out to ride up and down our road while the other two ride their bikes! 

Discovering that rocks fit down the holes in the manhole cover.

 We've decided that our children are very observant at church-- they set up the drums and a chair, got out a kazoo, and then got a broom to act as the microphone, and spent about 15 minutes being a praise team on our front lawn. Hopefully, since this occurred in the middle of the morning they didn't bother too many with the noise! :)

And, proof that spring is here (even if it is COLD today-- seriously, we started the day with snow)! Crocuses are blooming in my lawn!

Snowy Days

We have had a number of snowfalls this year, but only a couple have stuck around long enough to really amount to anything. It has certainly been a chilly winter though! We are all looking forward to the warm weather actually staying, as we keep fluctuating up into the 60s and back down into the 30s or even lower. Brr. It wouldn't be so bad if it would just stay cold, but the ups and downs are not fun at all!

2.5 months old

 The kids had a blast in the snow that did stick around long enough to really do anything with. Rebecca insists she wants to go visit Cokum and Mooshum in the winter sometime. Perhaps someday I will be brave enough to drive up there during storm season, but I'm not really sure I want to do that with little people! It's hard to plan around winter storms when it comes to travelling.

Rebecca learned how to make snow angels this year. Elias is not yet quite coordinated enough to make them, to his frustration, but Rebecca made quite a few.

Justin built a snowman with them. It is just slightly shorter than he is, so I guess probably about 5 ft tall. Unfortunately it got knocked down within a few hours of being built, but it was fun while it lasted. I was impressed there was still snow on the ground when the snowman had been built. Elias actually recently brought me some pecans in their shells asking if they were there because the snowman was hiding. We had used pecans as the buttons for the snowman.

3.5 months

Rebecca has been begging me to teach her to knit, so I sat down with her this winter to teach her to do so. She still needs a refresher every time she starts to knit again, but once she gets going again, she actually does pretty well! She says she wants to make a scarf for Esther. We'll see. She keeps getting bored and leaving it behind.

Addeedators!!!

At least that's what Rebecca calls them! We went to Florida last week with my parents, sister, and niece, and everyone had a good time. Rebecca LOVES reptiles of all sorts, and has been asking to visit alligators for a while, so one of the things we did was went to Gatorland. She got to pet a baby alligator, and I think that pretty much made her day (and maybe her vacation-- she still is talking about the alligators!).

Cool "did you know" fact: Alligators can close and retract their eyes so far into their skulls that they can have holes in place of their eyes. This helps protect their eyes from objects as they swim through brush in water.

Yes, they feed the alligators chicken.

We went and fed the giant tortoises after seeing them hand feed the alligators. I think both girls really enjoyed seeing and touching them.

We took a train ride around the park.

Then we took a walk down a boardwalk through the breeding marsh. The trees are COVERED in birds nests, and there are alligator nests on the ground by the water.

The bird was hitching a ride!

WHITE Alligator!

We let the little ones play in the water and on the playground before getting back into the cars to go back to the rooms. :)

Some fun

With the warmer weather has come a lot of outdoor play time. We spend at least 1-2 hours outdoors every day, often even more. I get compliments from all the neighbours who are in their 40's or older on how much time I spend with my children outdoors. They tell me how good it is for the children, and how wonderful it is that we aren't sitting inside watching shows on the television all day. They're shocked when they find out we don't own a television, hehe!

I introduced Elias to chalk.... which he enjoys making marks with.

However, he enjoys eating it even more. He has pink spots on some outfits to prove this, because pink seems to be the only colour of chalk I have trouble getting out of clothing.

Cokum sent Elias (and Rebecca) a new book called Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox, because they both loved it when we borrowed it from the library, and Rebecca actually got mad at me when I made her take it back! So, my mum went into Costco where they apparently still had them in stock, and got it in the board book version! As you can see, Elias is absolutely thrilled by his new book.

We tried to introduce some solids to Elias' diet. He's had troubles with those (vomiting, constipation, etc), so we're back to just nursing for a while. However, the following is the result of feeding him anything with green beans in it. He takes it out of his mouth and smushes it on his face. Anywhere. It was bath time after he ate that day!!

Rebecca informed us one day that she was going to go to work for Daddy. She got his bag buckled onto her back and everything!