Fairy Jar Project

Baby food jars, glitter, spangles, glow sticks

Spangles and glitter in jar

Contentes of glowies poured into jars and rolled around to coat jar.

I think I need a 12-step program....

... or maybe I'm just egg-citedly egg-centric?

I love coloring eggs. And can get a little out of control especially when there are wee ones about to egg-courage me.


Having a couple of friends over was the perfect egg-cuse to get the dye out of the closet and get the mixin' going'!




Later that day while visiting the Eisley's and dipping even more eggs, Ben got a chance to play easter bunny for the younger boys. See Holly White-Wolfe's article: Egg dying - fun family tradition for Spring.




Even little Cleo has to get in a dip or two while working on her afternoon snack.











But seriously folks...............

Here we have the hollow blown eggs (the Easter Bunny will fill these with confetti or maybe some chocolate covered rasins before sneaking them out to the yard.)

Next are the raw eggs. (Yes, I even dye the raw ones.... why not? The dye is already made.) And finally the hard boiled ones. (Two dozen of these babies. Oh, my kids *love* hard boiled eggs. It is thier favorite breakfast.)
A total of approximately 3 dozen eggs.

I bought the color last year after Easter at 50% off ($.49 a package!) and it has been the best entertainment for the last two days. And besides, the eggs become artwork in their own right..... I mean, really, look at the color and texture.... and then you can eat it!
Oh, one last egg.

Food

Phelan and I made some whole wheat biscuits and used cookie cutters to make them in bunny and duckie shapes. I've never made whole wheat biscuits before and these didn't rise so well. They were still tasty... Cleo was even calling them 'cookies'.
I wish I had gotten a pic of the whole dinner..... venison steaks with gravy and green beans with mushrooms. *yum!*


And a very proud mommy moment for me.... two little kids thrilled to death and dancing over a cucumber snack. Either that or they were too hungry to care.

I read an article somewhere that said the vegetable that kids eat the most and are most familiar with is a french fry.

Really?!

Not my kids... not the other kids that I know. Just today for snack we had hummus with carrots, snow peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and cheese. Most the kids I know eat pretty similarly. I have to wonder who these kids are that the article was talking about, or if, living in Sonoma county, we are spoiled, granola munching hippies? (I'm totally ok with that. Just concerned about these other veggie-free kids.)

Baby Gorilla Love

A couple of months ago I started asking Phelan what he wanted to do for his birthday. Last year, his 3rd birthday, he really 'got it' for the first time and he decided he wanted a Monkey Party, so we rented a jumpy and made a banana bread cake. And everyone had a bouncing grand time!

This year both kids (well, the whole household really) had been sick for the couple of months prior to his birthday and as it got closer, Phelan said he wanted to go to the zoo. He had never been to the zoo, I'm not sure he really knew what it was. But it was enough that we decided that a family trip to the SF Zoo would be a great way to celebrate his 4th birthday.

So Daddy and Sissy took the day off work and we headed out. It ended up being the best trip ever! The kids were great. The homemade picnic (can you call it a tailgate in a minivan?) was delightful and we had the most amazing experience with the baby gorilla, Hasani.

The kids were looking through the plexi glass window and Hasani came up and streeetched his little fingers up to barely grip onto the teeny windowsill.

He pulled his head up to peep through the window at the kids. He fell a couple of times but kept coming back to the kids ignoring all the adults gathered around.

The final time he dropped down to the ground, he looked over his shoulder and and waved a 'follow me' gesture to Phelan and Cleo.

Truely a magical moment in my life.

Show me your Messy House

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have these friends who seem capable of swinging work, kids, home cooked meals, personal interests, and keep immaculate homes.

I am not one of them!!

In fact one of the reasons I started blogging more was to see if I can take snippets of my daily life and make them look like more than what they are. It's my personal cheer leading section proving that I do not endlessly spin my wheels. So here I post about all the cool stuff I'm doing and in the background (or off camera) there is this maelstrom of distruction going on that looks like this.........

I want it to look like this all the time....

But, often things get in the way.

Sometimes woundrously fun things, sometimes it's just sick kid after sick kid.

Here is little miss Cleo doing the bowdrill thing out in a rare moment of sunshine after being sick for over two months.

She even looks like she knows what she is doing!

As much as I want a tidy house, I much rather have happy, healthy kids who I get to spend time with doing cool things with. As the sun has been peeking out this spring, there have been a few days of "screw the laundry, dishes, dinnner vacuuming we are going OUTSIDE!"

And I'm finding now, as the kids are staying healthy *knock on wood* the tidyness is slowly returning to Gormley Keep and the kids and I are still getting to do our cool stuff.

And they are amazing as ever.

Happy Birthday Phelan

Happy fourth Birthday to my beautiful crazy little boy!!

You have grown so strong and so tall..... it seems like yesterday when.....

........you were the tiny bundle in my arms.

I love you.

2nd try......

... Still no coal.

But Phelan enjoyed giving the bowdrill a spin.

I need to aquire some new materials and work on my set. New fireboard for sure and maybe a couple spindles.... and I think Phelan needs a set of his own sized for him. Mine was a bit much to handle for him.

I was successfull at working on those bowdrill muscles! I haven't used those in quite a while and boy! am I out of shape!! I was shaking afterwards! I'll just keep practicing with my current set, uilding those muscles till I get a sweet set built.