day 59 - Birthdays

On Sunday we celebrated my sister's birthday (she was born on Valentine's day), my brother's birthday (he was born 2yrs & 3 days later) and my nephew's birthday (6yrs ago to the day). Each had a cake :-)

day 58 - Icicles

 

We get some pretty impressive icicles going on our house. These are not in a spot where I can get to them & measure them but I'm guessing the longest ones were at least 3-4 feet!

day 57 - treasure

Not to far from our house is a wonderful old estate. It is open for tours and you can have events, such as weddings there. The kids had fallen asleep on the way home from the library today & it was snowing and so I grabbed the camera, drove over and took some pictures. Here is a view from the bridge looking at the garage and part of the house. You'll be seeing more of this wonderful treasure throughout the year.

day 56 - Lapbooks

My son & I did a Valentine's Unit Study. In addition to learning about Valentine's day, he also learned about the heart, candy hearts and valentine cookies. To finish the study we put together a lapbook. He liked that :) He was so exicted he made another ready to be filled with info of some sort or another.

day 55 - tornado

Today while I was nursing my baby, the other 3 kids were happily playing in my daughter's room. Later I went in to find this! No wonder they were so happy. The window was also wide open :0 (it was only in the 20's outside today). I'm in the middle of packing away clothes that are to small which gave them the boxes & some extra things to throw about.

day 54- GPS

We have a GPS that a generous friend gave my husband when he upgraded his. I rarely use it around town because I'm usually going to places I know or my husband & is driving & he knows how to get to where we need to go. Tues night I was going someplace new & to an area I was only semi familiar with. So since I have a GPS and it was dark and snowy I felt it was a good time to put it to use. (Sorry for the bad photo, I took it with my camera phone)

day 53 -

day 52 - Nature Center

Today we went to a program at one of our local nature centeres to learn about wooodland Indians. Here the speaker is showing the difference between a summer hide & winter hide of a deer, an animal whose skin would have been used for clothing.

day 51 - Tulips

My husband bought me tulips for Valentine's Day :-) They are starting to fade a bit now. It was wonderful that he remembered that tulips are one of my favorite flowers.

day 50

day 49 - Snowman

Today was rather warm, predicted high for the day 36 degrees. The boys went out to play & wanted some help building a snowman, so I joined them outside & helped them out. Here he is, pine cones smeared with peanut butter then dipped in thistle seed for eyes, a carrot for a nose and orange slices for his mouth and a container w/ thistle seed for a hat. Figured we might as well feed the birds with him.

day 48 - white

My youngest son has this little section of white in his hair. Depending on how the light hits it, it can be hard to see. I'm curious to see if it stays once he loses all his baby hair and the new hair comes in.

day 47 - Snowflakes

Today my son made a snow catcher & I attempted to photograph them up close. Here's one of the better ones. I love to look at them.

day 46 -

Reviewing our school lesson for tomorrow.

day 45 - Valentine's Dinner

Part of the dinner I made for Valentines was the above. My husband really, really liked it. I'll be making this again. It is in a really great cookbook called Hollyhocks and Radishes. As well as great recipes it has these letters & wonderful little stories in it to read.

day 44 - Cereal

Cereal is one of my mainstay's for breakfast, esp right now since eggs are not in my diet because they don't sit well w/ my son whom I'm nursing.

day 43 - Goodbye

I typically do pretty okay with houseplants, especially if they do okay with infrequent, erratic watering. I had for many years an African violet on loan from my sister in law when they lived in Switzerland. When they returned it went back to her, it had been a gift when their son was born. It had grown, thrived even, under my care and bloomed a ton. This was my replacement one. I've had it for many, many years but it never really grew any bigger and I don't think it's ever flowered. It's been in the same window as the other one and I don't think I watered the other one any better. Yet this one has slowly withered away & as you can see, is barely clinging to life. I think the time has come to say goodbye.

day 42 - Together

I took a picture of a picture today. One of our wedding photos. I wanted to join in on Facebook's Valentine week of posting a picture of you & your spouse together. Thanks to Drea, I got the idea of photographing the photo. We'll be celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary this August. I actually don't look at our wedding photos to often, it brings up anger. I think our photographer did a lousy job and it shouldn't have happened.

day 41 - Snow

The snow started falling yesterday just before 9am. This morning around 7:30am we had 7 inches of snow :-) Our first decent snowfall this winter season.

day 40 - Tea

I've always liked tea and don't drink coffee. Recently though I've been drinking a lot more tea than usual, generally every night. Here's what I'm currently drinking.

day 39 - Antique

I had thought about this as a possibility previously and Drea sharing her chandelier with us the other day inspired me to photograph mine. This was purchased many years ago by some friends of ours and it graced their home for many years. I loved it when I saw it. When our friends moved north into a home with a different architectural style, they offered to sell it to me and since we were in need of a chandelier for our dining room, we bought it. I still love it.

day 38 - Connect

I've been very sleep deprived for a while. I feel like I haven't been focusing on my kids enough, really connecting with them the way I want to. So I want to try & plan some fun activities & crafts to do with them. This book got pulled out of the closet recently and I plan on putting it to good use with the kids. You'll be seeing some of the things we do in the future.

day 37 - Bath

My friend from Switzerland sent my kids something for the bath this Christmas. The first bag turned the water yellow & smelled like lemon pudding. The second bag turned the water pink & this one didn't smell so hot but the kids enjoyed having colored water.

day 36 - paper airplanes

Today my oldest son (5 1/2) came to me & asked me to make him a paper airplane. So I did & he didn't like it. I mentioned that somewhere there was a book that showed how to make a bunch of different paper airplanes & said wehre it might be. He went & looked for it, found it & requested I make this one. I did & here it is. I made another one later in the day too.

day 35 - Nutella

My daughter enjoying a breakfast favorite, Nutella on bread. It's one of the few things everyone in our house enjoys.

day 34 - Rubba Scrubba

On my way to take my photo for today, my dryer beeped at me. All the years that I've had it, it's never done this. So I went to check it out. The lint filter light was on & it was beeping. I pulled out the lint screen & there was a little bit of lint on it but not much. I clean it after every load. So I cleaned off what was on it & then looked at the compartment that houses it. There was a bit of build up on it, though not huge. I recently pulled out a tool that I haven't used much, FLYlady's Rubba Scrubba. I thought it might just do the trick to get in there & loosen the stuff up & it did, quite nicely. So I took a picture of the tool & some of the lint that it had released instead. The other item shall have to wait, maybe tomorrow.