A Plaid Sunday

I want to live in Alaska when I grow up.

Ethan: I want to live in Alaska when I grow up.

Me: You just said you were tired of ice.

Ethan: Yeah, but all those beautiful sights and camping.

Me: I think you could do more camping here.

Ethan: Sarah Palin goes camping like once a week.

Anna: Sarah Palin's lived there her whole life. She hasn't found a warmer place.

In Case You Ever Wanted to Know What Trouble Looks Like

***

Sparkling Snow

Best Gluten Free Cookies Ever

I wanted to eat them all myself!
Bob's Red Mill Triple Chocolate Brownie Cookies - melted chocolate, brownie mix, and chocolate chips. You know you want to make some.

A True Berry?

The children were discussing whether a strawberry is a true berry, Rose insisted that it was, "see? straw - BERRY."

Icy Day

Anna Kate: Can we have our dolls outside? We're playing Antarctica!

Ethan's 10th birthday - Game party sleepover, take two

Pa and Gran made drastic improvements to a crude fort built of

found materials. Now it has a dry raised floor and is better

closed in against the weather. And Gran added her decorating

touch. She also painted his orange bedroom walls sky blue to

match his nature theme and Pa installed some new shelves for his

nature treasures.

This was one of Ethan's top birthday wishes along with a Twilight

turtle that his Gramma got him. Folkmanis makes beautiful

puppets and this Sequoia Tree Wildlife Playset is no exception.

tacos with the fixings and root beer floats


this was immediately put to use - in my downstairs room
It really is rough having a birthday in January. :^)


Art quality drawing paper - he was just running out.
This is his passion.

And owls are his favorite animal this year. This was

almost an owl pellet dissection party.

Folkmanis' Snowy Owl puppet from Mama and Dad.

Playing the borrowed Wii. A big treat.

Cherry and Coconut Key Lime pies and

lemon iced rice krispy treat cupcakes.

The Big Snow

The cold and wet make Brian feel awful'

but he was determined to have his Bella

out playing in the snow. She was hilarious in her

heavy coat and too big snow suit and boots. Brian

said that she stayed planted wherever he stood her

when he had to do something else, lol.

sledding down the deck steps

VeggieTales - fun for all ages

I'm betting there is a recurring theme among southern bloggers tonight. We got about 7 inches here. Usually we do well to have a couple of inches that actually last a whole day, once a year. The children enjoyed playing in the snow and with neighbor friends that were out of school, and we all enjoyed Brian being home with us. We haven't gone back to homeschooling yet since Christmas. After a crazy Christmas trip (understatement of the century), I just want to have everything in good order first - even if that means schooling later into the spring than usual for us.

So, back to the snow. Sadie didn't know what to make of it at first, but ended up loving to hop around through it like a rabbit. There were a few wardrobe malfunctions and cold fingers, but ultimately the extra hot chocolate, fun sledding, root beer snow slushies,VeggieTales and lemon snow cream won the day. Their friend even got to sleep over tonight, because school is cancelled tomorrow too.

She needs the exercise!

Rose just informed me that I was interrupting her exercising, and that she needed to exercise so that she could get stronger so that she could pick up Bibles, because, you know, some of those are very big and heavy and they are hard to pick up.