Nature Walking with EK

~ I love to see what EK sees when she goes a’walkin’ ~

God’s Little Princesses (and don’t forget about His Prince!)

{ Yay!  I’m all caught up on my backlog of what’s-been-going-on pictures!  At least as caught up as I’m going to be! }

At the beginning of the month, The Curse of the Funky Eye hit our home.  These two lovely ladies were of the Funk, and EK was battling some other icks of the season (which is insane.  It’s short-sleeve warm in February!)
Because it was a Wednesday night, I felt that these two needed to stay home and not share the Curse of the Funky Eye with everyone else.  Instead, we got into EK’s Christmas gift: God’s Little Princess Devotional Book.

Some time back, I had reviewed a similar book by Sheila Walsh, and was very  pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t all cheesy as I thought it would be.  While it didn’t hit sensitive areas, it shouldn’t have – these Little Princess books are geared toward  a younger lot. 

As you can see from the first picture, there was crafting involved!  When EK is involved, you can bet your buttons there will be crafting involved!  We read about the “first queen,” Eve.  After we read and talked, EK got this great idea to make crowns!

She is so amazing with SA – what a wonderful mother she will be!  She was cute and loving and gushing and helpful to SA through the whole thing!

~ GOD’S LITTLE PRINCESSES ~

As soon as Papa, MG and HR came in from church, HR saw the crowns and *had* have a crown!  While MG got ready for bed and headed upstairs, he got to work.  This boy spent time on his crown, then proceeded to lovingly “help” SA add a little more flare to hers.  I told him she will appreciate it more later ;)
 

And here is God’s Little Prince:

(and there is not a sweeter, more loving prince in all the land!  he is going to be a wonderful daddy and husband one day!)

Our Week, 13-17 February

I think we are going to be one of those homeschool families that develop an on-for-a-while, break-a-week routine. 

This past week was that “off” week.

While I did snap a few shots of the children, this past week was full of non-schoolish things:

Mad Cleaning Monday, for the Valentine’s Date with Papa to Two By Two BBQ in Rocky Mount (which all local omnivores need to try out!  They have bluegrass and gospel music sometimes – Junior Sisk was at their grand opening!)

Town Day Tuesday, Valentine Party Edition – many children + food + large gymnasium as the containment unit =  you can guess, can’t you?

Wednesday – too tired from Monday and Tuesday to be worthy of a snazzy name, but not so tired that we can go back 30 minutes into town for Friend Day Friday supplies!

Thursday – too busy preparing for Friday’s events to get a name! MG and I made a Pinterest-found recipe for chocolate-pb granola bars for our house and Resonate (our church’s college/young adult ministry).  Verdict:  so-so.  I might have used too much butter, because they didn’t firm as much as I thought they would.  No issues with consumption, though!  We also made the bread dough for the Make-Your-Own Personal Pizzas for Friday’s shindig.  It’s what I call the “Cheater Bread Pizza Dough,” because it comes from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book, and those folks break ALLLL the rules.       Including putting your salt with your yeast.  GASP!  (that is one rule I can not break.)

Friend Day Friday!  I shared yesterday, and Amanda waxes more poetic ::HERE::

What did you do last week?

snow Snow SNOW!

(can’t you just hear Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and the Clooney sisters right now?)

Sunday brought snow!

sledding on the Mountain Boy

hot chocolate

snowball fights

snow cream

… and more hot chocolate!
End it all with a horse movie, tuck in three tuckered out children to the last chapter of The Magician’s Nephew and one sick toddler nestled beside.
Monday… More snow!!!

The sun was shining on the 5+” of snow!  HR and Sa actually got out in the white stuff!

There was more fun to be had…

  
..more sledding!  All the way down past the chicken coop!  Even I got in on that sledding action!

        

More hot chocolate, I say!
More snow cream, or actually Maple Snow (maple syrup + snow)
More and more play involving Papa, snowballs and sleds
Soup and Grilled Cheese Sammies
Lots and lots of wet clothing = thankful for the woodstove!
Trek with Papa to the creek to see what was happening

“Mama!  I gotta move all this “show” (snow)! My sweet boy!

A beautiful gift!

(Note:  for some reason this post disappeared from LiveWriter for a while and as I was working on my homeschool post, there it was!  So note that this was on the 18-20th of February – sorry gang!)

Play Day

 

. : : BREAK BREAD : : .
Baked Oats~fresh fruit~ daaark Highland Co. maple syrup
Sausage & Grit Scramble
Milk, OJ, Water
Hazelnut Coffee, two carafes. please

. : : PLAY : : .
inside
upstairs
downstairs
outside

::The Rope and the Tree::

How did I not get barn shots in here?  They loved that place, and scared the beegeebees out of mamas for jumping out of very high places!


The Eldests :)

playing dress-up :: all were children at the time? not sure who was the mother…

Knitting with Lecia and babies with Julie and Amanda and coffee for all!

Time for more food – personal pizzas!

{ WITH EAGER HANDS }

The grain mill.  Who would have thought it be such a treasure?  There were eager hands aplenty-eager to both grind wheat AND fold towels! 

No playdate in the country is complete without a nature walk. 
Or run.
Or bike ride.
Or Stop-And-Look-At-Every-mud-Clod-in-the-Road.

Ava has been with us for a while, but Liam joined us for the first time!  (his biggest brother is sitting up there with MG)
babywearing mamas are beautiful, I tell you!  Amanda is wearing Ava in my ring sling…you can see her jazzing it up over at her place.

And as the shadows stretch longer, we know that the walk,
the nibbling,,
the talks,
the play,
the coffee,
the risky jumps out of barn windows
must end.

But with the setting of the sun, there is a promise of another day, another time to play!

will you be my valentime?

Did this wee “holiday” sneak up on you?  It sure did me!  I shouldn’t be surprised, as I don’t think I have ever really been a Valentine kinda girl.  The past two years I have been more gung-ho about it, on the children’s behalf….

…not so this year.  I was most assuredly not feelin’ it, and even though I have lots of nifty ideas pinned on my Valentine’s Day board at Pinterest, nothing moved me to action. 

The girls got their own valentines going for our homeschool co-op Valentine Party this Tuesday, and I think that’s pretty great, actually. 

But still, I felt like we had to do Something.  Do you ever feel like that?

So I snatched another idea from Pinterest and set out to make cutesy swirly heart cinnamon rolls.  I knew better than to think I’d make these guys from scratch, but I also learned something: Cinnabon cinnamon rolls don’t actually unroll. 

This is what they were to look like going into the hot box:

source

We had a blast squishing them up into hearts, but of course, they came out like normal rolls – and Yum Yum Yum! 
We read 1 Corinthians 13, “The Love Chapter” and just sort of made small talk around that <3 (Mama, do you remember this Bible?)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
One idea that I saw and thought was pretty dang cool was a valentine balloon – so that’s what we did….2 hours before the party.  {cough,cough}

Here is our take on the Valentine Balloon!

Step 1: Blow up a balloon, but not too much.  Hold it with your fingers to keep the air in.  Using a Sharpie, write and/or draw your Valentine sentiment on the first 20-some balloons, and then leave the rest blank because you are in a hurry and the 2yo keeps running off with said Sharpie.

Step 2: Repeat until you can’t wait for Step 3, which is  about 10 balloons in.

Step 3: With assistance from a patient, calm and serene mother, push a small piece of wrapped candy into the unblown balloon.  In the absence of a patient mother, feel free to use the closest fast-talking, procrastinating, wild-eyed mama you can find.

Step 4: Blow each balloon much smaller than you think you should so that it will fit in the Valentine bags at your fast-approaching, oh-my-heavens-we-have-to-leave-in-30-minutes-and-I-haven’t-made-the-black-bean-dip-yet homeschool co-op Valentine’s Party.

Step 5: Bag ‘em up in (clean) trash bags, load who and whatever you can find into the car and hightail it outta there!

I think they were really well received at the co-op shindig, and in my defense, I *did* plan to do these much earlier, but I didn’t find my balloons until that morning.  (Craft Closet organization intervention, anyone?)

It was really a fun party, with tons of food (the black bean dip DID make a fashionably late entrance of 20 minutes, which is right on time according to any watch I use, LOL!)

Valentine Shindig 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

How did you celebrate Valentine’s Day?