What A Difference Three Weeks Makes

When we left our home three weeks ago, I was waking up the kids for school in the pitch black night.  It was also dark by dinner time, and snow was still falling pretty regularly.

When we returned, although flowers are not yet blooming and the old snow is still in the yard, it was LIGHT.  What seemed to me all of a sudden.  I get to wake the kids up in the morning, with the sun already rising.  And the air feels warm, like we are definitely headed in the right direction.  I know that soon I will be slightly annoyed at the 3am sunlight, but right now, it feels absolutely perfect.  It was a nice way to come home.

Also, Cedar finally started crawling on our trip.  She is a girl on her own schedule, but she is now on the move.  She also has one singular mission in life no matter when you set her down.  And that is to get to the Legos.  Wherever they may be, you will find her hightailing it in that direction.  And then beaming in glee with fists full of mini figure heads and other totally chokable tiny pieces.  She may be Porter's best friend later in life, but right now I have to pull her howling body away from certain death all day long.  Hopefully this is a short lived phase, because it is hard for Porter to keep the one thing he plays with all day every day constantly out of her reach.

And a couple of pictures from our travels.  Look, they are all smiling at once!

Home Again

We just returned home yesterday from a three week trip down south to see family and friends.  It was wonderful and busy and exhausting like these trips always are.  I survived flying with all three kids by myself, and we immersed ourselves in big city fun.

I also took a lot of pictures of groups of kids, most of which ended up something like these.  

And those are the good ones.

We are now digging out of the post-vacation mess, but I hope to be cooking and parenting again very, very soon.

Weekend in February

Besides the usual skiing lessons, we had a lot of fun things to do with the kids this weekend.  Porter's teacher had selected a piece of artwork of his to hang in the elementary school art show at the mall (such as it is here), and we got to go to a reception there.  Apparently it is totally embarrassing.  Especially when your mom takes a bunch of pictures.

 

Molly had her annual preschool play/fundraising event.  She's a little too young to understand the whole concept of the skit, and she sat patiently in the back almost the whole time just waiting for someone to call her out.  Which they never did.  And then she promptly fell off the back of the stage, where I rescued her screaming upside down body from a pile of old props and electrical cords.  Still, she had fun.

Bryce also built this amazing stool for the silent auction.  That's the Alaska state flag inlaid on the top!

Finally, we got to observe Molly's ballet class.  They are strict about almost everything, and don't let parents watch (or interfere) most of the time.  I took a lot of pictures, but when I went to look at them later, Molly is either blurry from running so fast or looks something like this.

She was so distracted by us being there that I can understand why they don't allow it.  And I could hear the future report card comments.  Talks when should be listening.  Can not keep hands to self.  Oh well.  It was still the cutest thing ever.