Ahhh, Summer!

The girls and I have taken a break from school work for few weeks. We home school year-round but take several weeks off during summer and around the holidays. Lately we've been enjoying sleeping in, staying in our pjs, long sessions of reading aloud and to ourselves. I've had extra time to work on organizing our schedule for the next year and order new books for the year. The girls have been reading a lot but they are experiencing some summertime boredom. I think it's good for them to figure out what to do with themselves at those times. Since we don't have a tv and I won't let them watch many movies (usually 2 a week) they've got to be creative. We have tons of toys so I keep reminding them about all the stuff that's in the playroom and their bedroom -- hundreds of playmobil guys and littlest pet shop, a closet full of stuffed animals, an unreasonable amount of dress up costumes, etc.

So the funniest thing they said to me the other day was that they didn't want to play with all their toys because they knew they were going to have to clean them all up later in the day! It's true, when they are really into something they will spread out in every room of the house and have little homes or shops that they visit with their toys. It's great fun and imaginative for a little/long while. They are starting to think about whether or not it is worth getting it all out if they are going to have to turn around and clean it all up! I wanted to say, "Well now you know how I feel every day with cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc." Don't worry I didn't say it exactly like that:) 

They had a sleep-over last night so I've had about 24 hours without them. I really don't know what to do with myself when they are not around. Isn't it true that we get so much more accomplished when we have a deadline or a short amount of time to do it? Well, I could be planning the school year, preparing food, cleaning, bills, working on my dance classes, weeding, but...I think I'll work on the blog. I'll get to that other stuff later:)

Daniel and I had a nice quiet evening alone. We enjoyed a home-cooked meal from the garden and he played the guitar while I worked on the computer for a little while. I love it. I feel like I'm being serenaded. Ended the evening with a movie from the library.



For the latest garden news...this is what we've harvested since June 1st (the last post about the garden).

• 18 pounds of onions (almost all of the onions we grew this year)

• 4 pounds of garlic (most of the garlic also)

• 6 pounds of potatoes

• 10 ounces of beets

• 3 1/2 pounds of collards

• 3 1/2 pounds of kale

• 1 pound yellow squash (2 medium)

• 2 pounds zucchini (3 medium/large)

• 10 ounces basil

The big snow

The girls had a slumber party to go to on Friday night but before we all went over to the party it started snowing. See if you can find anything unusual in the picture below.

 

Daniel ran out in the small snow we had last year. This year there was more snow and the girls and I were laughing hysterically when we saw him running through the yard in his shorts again this year! We ended up getting around 5 inches. I couldn't believe it snowed that much in Columbia. I took the picture below on Saturday morning.

  

The kids and Daniel had a great time Saturday building 2 enormous snow men. 

  

Plato not Clay

This morning the girls were sitting at the little table doing writing. The selection that Ellen happened to be copying was from Aristotle. This is the conversation that followed:

Ellen smiled and said, "Daddy was just telling us about Aristotle last night."

I said, "oh really, what did Dad say?"

Ellen responded, "He was very wise, because he said he knew nothing. He was the first philosopher."

Then Arianna said, "yep then came Clay."

Before I could figure out what she was talking about and respond,

Ellen said, "not Clay, Plato!"

I thought that was so funny. Arianna was associating Plato with play-do in her mind which is the same as clay. Hilarious. I had a hard time containing myself:)

What we do when we are not gardening

It's that time of year again -- barbershop time. Daniel has been letting the beard grow for about a year. I guess with the summer heat approaching he figured it was time for a change. This time Daniel thought it would be fun to let the girls do most of it. I was freaking out a little bit as they held their little sharp scissors next to his face. But they thought that was so cool. Ellen and Arianna calmly trimmed with the scissors then moved on to the buzzer. If you think about it Arianna was so young one year ago and she said she could hardly remember what he looked like without the beard. She was so cute as she closely examined his face when they were done. I love it!



Here we are out in 5 Points for the local music night. They close off the streets, put out chalk for the kids, and sell drinks for the adults, all in the popular area near downtown that has cool shops, restaurants and bars. This event seems to attract a younger crowd, mostly college and young families. The girls and I met Daniel there after his class and we played and snacked on into the evening. We realized last week that the 2nd band was really good and stayed up dancing right in front until 9:30! The girls loved watching the band and jamming with us to the beat. So often when we are out at events like this we are talking to other adults and the kids are playing with their friends. It was really nice to just be with the girls, focused on them while playing and drawing, and then Daniel and I got to enjoy conversations as they played by themselves. Maybe we should call it "family date night."
I think Daniel wanted to post the name and a video of the band but he can do that later. We thought they were great. In the next post you'll see why we've been away from the computer and consumed with another backyard project. I didn't realize it had been so long since the last post.

Sharing deep thoughts:)

Me with my dance partner for most of the night.

Walking back to the car.

doing nothing, asking questions, and making babies

Ellen said 2 things today that I thought were really cute so I thought I'd share. First we were in the car on the way home from swimming when she said, "you know mom, you can't really be doing nothing." So I said "oh yea, what do you mean?" and she went on to say that even when you are just standing there you are still standing and that's something. I thought to myself. . . like father like daughter! :) Second, she must have started feeling some of the way I feel when the girls are asking a million questions because she noticed it today. I am constantly answering questions like . . . "when are we going to be there, why are we waiting so long, why did you stop at that stop light, why did you go at the caution light, why is that man standing there. . ." and the list goes on. So it's almost like anything that pops in there head they just ask. Ellen finally picked up on Arianna asking and asking in the car today and started singing a song about questions. She loves to sing and it was so natural for her to just start singing to some made up tune about Arianna asking so many questions. Wish you could have heard it and seen that smile on her face. She knew she was being funny.


The other day, actually it was a few weeks ago, the girls mentioned wanting another baby. I've told them several times that mom is done having babies but they still talk about it. So, this time when the girls and I were at home one afternoon one of them made the comment about wanting a baby and Arianna said "but we need daddy" and Ellen said no we don't. I thought that was interesting so I asked her to explain. She said daddy already made a baby and so I could have another one without him. I just smiled and said "Oh really" since I wanted to hear what else they had to say. Arianna went on to explain that we do need daddy since he has to be here so that mommy and daddy can stand close together and share bodies because that's how babies are made.

tie dye family

I can think of a lot of jokes to go along with this picture. Here are just a few :) . . . just in case you didn't think we were hippies before now . . . our uniform for the next protest. . . look at the boob shirt on that guy. . . Well seriously, the girls dresses turned out great and they loved creating their own clothes. A woman in our playgroup organized a big order of white clothes and supplies. We all went over to her house on saturday and worked on dipping, tying and dying the clothes. We had a lot of fun.

The background is our front yard. Daniel has been spending a lot of time trimming and weeding and cutting and it looks very nice. The whole yard (front and back) have been completely transformed since we moved here.

quote of the day

"Hey mom," Ellen said, "Can we pollinate our fingernails?"

arianna flies

Watch closely as daniel carefully launches arianna! Ellen has learned how to be bounced so she will follow us around and jump right when she knows she will go highest. In this video she jumps a little too soon for the camera but she has been known to go a lot higher than that too!