Finally, a weekend of spring!

  What do we do when we suddenly get sunshine around here?  Here are a few pictures from our sunny weekend:

   Sean and I got to chaperone a church dance Saturday night.   We drove Noel, Asher and a friend to Madison where we made some new friends.

 Noel has still been experimenting with photography.   Here are a couple of photos from a series of pencil shaving she did this week.  It is always fun to see what she comes up with.

Sylvia's caterpillars are full grown now, and started forming chysalises.  We should have butterflies within another week.

We felt some spring color was desperately need around here, so Sylvia went to work filling up flower pots with a variety of colorful blooms.

Sylvia really got into project.  She loved massging and breaking up the tangle roots, and tucking them in snug to the new soil.  It was a lot of fun.

 We also spent some time watching  Asher play a couple tennis matches.  It is kind of like going of vacation... I sit in a chair, and don't worry about dishes or laundry.   We only had to worry about being blown over backwards by 30 mph wind gusts.  The wind didn't help the tennis players much either.  Asher's team got second overall in this quad-competition.

Finally, Noel spend hours on Saturday outside painting a board to put accross Sylvia's top bunk (to prevent rolling out).  Sylvia picked the color, and Noel came up with the decorations. It is nice to have a couple artists in the family.

Hoping for more sunny days!

Sylvia: Haircuts and Snowmen

    Sylvia has been asking for a couple months now to get her hair cut short.  She keeps pointing out cartoon and TV characters that have the style she wanted. This was obviously not going to just fade away, so we made an appointment at a salon... and now have a new look.

Here is the before picture:

 And here is the after picture:

 She feels beautiful, and smiles anytime somebody comments on her new look.  I guess it was the right choice to go along with a 6 year old's sense of fashion.

This last week, we also had a lot of snow, followed by rain... making it perfect packing snow.

I'm very proud of the snowman Sylvia and I made, but need to remember pregnant people should not be lifting large chunks of snow.  My back was soooo sore afterwards.

After creating the perfect snow lady, I realized Sylvia had never squirted cool-aid from a spray bottle onto snow.  So, off we went to the store to shop for cool-aid and a spray bottle.   Sylvia had a blast giving the snow lady a fancy colored dress.

It was a great day.  Some pregnancy days are really lousy, but I'm having occasional rare ones where I feel almost normal.  I love those days!  They are treasured up in my mind as sparkling days of a perfect life.  The snow man day with Sylv this week is one of those days I'll always treasure as a gift from heaven.

Janurary Birthdays

    Noel turned sweet sixteen this year, and got to go horseback riding at a nearby stable to celebrate.

    During her lesson, she worked on transitioning from walking to trotting smoothly, as well as turning tightly and backing up. The owner, who gave her the lesson, says she has "a natural touch".  She had a good time, but was very sore the next day!

     To go along withe the horseback riding adventure of the day, I attempted a horse cake, but  it ended up looking like a terrified horse.   It still tasted good though.

     Always fun to catch Noel smiling on camera!  She has the best smile and laugh.  Here she is on the verge of setting off smoke alarms from all her candles.

     Mattias turned 13 this month, and had several friends from his scout troop over to play Minecraft all afternoon. We had five laptops hooked up to the same game.     It was a fun party, with lots of loud laughing,  and cries of  "Troll!" , "Fail!"  and, "No Griefing!".   (All phrases common to teenage gamers apparently.)  My job was to just keep the snacks full on the table.

    In honor of the Minecraft party, I made a Minecraft-pig cake.  (You would have to be familiar with this computer game to get the goofiness of it all.)   It was a lot of fun to make, and even the teenage boys thought it was pretty cool.

     Mattias didn't have quite the forest of candles that Noel had... but enough to look impressive.  (Also a funny point about the picture below,  is that Mattias has his trusty Rubik's cube within reach.  We gave it to him for a birthday present, and he is a serious addict.  He has spent hours a day this week trying to memorize the pattern of solving it.  - He is getting pretty good at it.)

   It is fun to see the interesting people my kids are turning into.  We are so lucky to have these two January kids in our home. 

Christmas 2012

  Christmas season around here started out with Lucia Day on Dec 13.  Asher and Mattias were wonderful about getting up early and helping Sylvia get dressed up.  They brought Sean and I hot chocolate and saffron rolls in bed, while singing  "Natten går tunga fjät", in Swedish.  If you don't know that song... it sounds like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu8YgWPrUT4

Sean and I were cracking up though, because Asher's voice has dropped low this year.  It is not often you hear a bass voice chiming in on a Santa Lucia song.

    That night Sean acquired a Christmas tree, and Sylvia and I set about decorating.  Even though we miss going out to the forest to cut our own tree.. as I watched Sean trim branches in the warmth of our own home, I realized that there are some benefits to buying a tree from a parking lot.

Decorating with Sylvia was a party, as always.

 The decorating was a success.  I think we had the prettiest tree this year that we have ever had.

 
     A couple days before Christmas, we got hit with "Blizzard Draco" and received 19 inches of snow.  We were soooo glad to have a White Christmas!  Sylvia and I discovered a new favorite activity - dog sledding!
     We put Maya's harness on her, and hook it up to the sled.  I attach a leash to her, and jog along with as she pulls Sylvia.   Jogging through snow is a major work-out.. but very fun.  We have a beautiful trail just down from our house, along the river, that goes through snow covered trees.  We can almost imagine we are in the Iditarod.   - Someday... 

    Christmas eve brought Sylvia (in the role of Mary), riding to Bethlehem  (the couch), on a donkey (Sean).  The older kids were good sports, and filled in as the needed shepherds, wise-men and King Herod.  Maya filled the role of the general population (that the shepherds ran and told about the birth).

Later in the evening we had a visitor...Blind Santa.  Apparently his beard wouldn't stay on unless it was tucked under his hat band, thus covering up his eyes.   He handed out gifts by feel.  It was very funny.  Mattias should try his hand at acting sometime, we all enjoyed the performance.

 Christmas morning brought lots of happy smiles on kids as they opened their gifts.  Sylvia was thrilled, and bouncing up and down as she opened her first Barbie... from my mom.

     Later that morning, Sylvia had a tooth drop out over breakfast.  She had received a set of fairies from Santa... so we put the tooth in the hand of one.. just in case it was the real tooth fairy.

 Sylvia was quite satisfied with her new loot: several my little ponies, fairies, paper dolls, and of course, the pair of Barbies.

   Mattias was excited about a new computer mouse, and a remote contol. He needed the RC controller to continue building his robot.

Asher was pleased to see he got exactly the MTG cards he needed to complete his deck.  He now plans to go up to Madison, enter some tournaments, crush the opposition, and rule the world.

 Noel was happily wrapped in her new sweatshirt, and glad to have a new doggie calender to keep track of her social life with.  She was also the recipient of some very gourmet hot chocolate packets that everybody in the family envies.

After starting with gift opening at 6, we had plenty of time to enjoy them.  We got several new games, and tried them all out by lunchtime.  Here Sean and the boys are trying out Ticket To Ride, a gift from my brother Daniel.

 After a quick lunch, Sean took the kids sledding while Noel and I stayed home to get dinner ready.

   We had a couple friends from church over for a Swedish Christmas dinner.  It was very festive.   The menu included Meatballs, Jannsons Frestele, Ham,  Lingon Sylt, and a wonderful almond cake... yum!  That is the taste of Christmas for us.
    We sang all carols afterwards and heard the boys and Sylvia play some Christmas music on their instruments.  It was a wonderful end to a beautiful day.

Life With Sylvia

    We have called Sylvia our dessert-baby.  She was the child we could really enjoy without all the chaos that comes with having multiple children in diapers at the same time.
      But, on the downside,  were really worried that she would be lonely. The other kids are so much older than her, and they had always had each other to play with.  We prayed for a long time that Sylvia would have a creative mind, to be able to entertain herself.    Obviously our prayers were answered.   Life with Sylvia can be...


                                                                    wacky....                                                                   

 

startling...

creative...

 

                                                                        exuberant...

                                                                      cuddly....

                                                                  surprising...

                                                                       charming...

                                                        .... but always full of smiles.

Our whole family has been richly blessed by this imaginative girl who is always ready with a belly laugh.

Grandma's Fall Visit

 My mom came out to Wisconsin this fall to visit.  One of the places the kids wanted to show her was Aztalan, and old Indian fortress/ city from 400 AD.  We hiked all around the walled perimeter and up and down the temple mounds.

 The best part of the day though, was playing at the river.  The Crawfish River runs along the village, and was used as a way of transporting goods, and keeping in touch with the other Mississippi River indian settelements further south.

 My kids viewd the river as a treasure trove of beautiful mussel shells.  Sylvia had a blast squishing around in the warm water and mud.  It was a perfect fall day, with the autumn color at their peak.

 Noel was at her best, hiking along with a stick, exploring for new freshwater mussel clusters. The river was so low from a summer of drought, that the older kids could walk clear across the river, with the water staying below their knees.

 My mom and I finally decided to join the kids.  We are glad we did!  The water felt great on our hot feet.  We too got caught up in the excitement of searching for the beautiful pearly pink/purple shells.

 On the way out of the river, my showed Sylvia how to make squishy mud worms squirt up from between your toes.  She explained that she had loved to do this when she was a little girl. 

 The next day we visited a the WI Historical Museum in Madison to see artifacts from the indians that had inhabieted the area.  Sylvia thought the maple sugar display was interesting. 

 My mom thought some of the games looked like ones she might need to try out with her 4th graders back in Idaho.

 We also visited Olbrich Botanical Gardens.   The Thai pavillion shone beautifully in the autumn sun.

 If there had been real elephants, we would have taken a ride... but this was all we could find.

      On another day, we visited the Milton House hotel.  It was hotel that has been used as part of the Underground Railroad system.  We were able to walk through the tunnel that lead to a cabin in the back of the property where the runaway slaves were loaded into wagons, and taken to the great lakes, to ships with sympathetic captains.  They shipped them to freedom in Canada.  (Unfortunately, I didn't take photos inside the museum.)

  After the museum, we went to picnic in the park across the street.  Grandma was feeling adventurous, and tried teetertottering with Sylvia and Mattias.

 We ended the day with a visit to our favorite pumpkin patch.  It was just starting to rain, and Sylvia was freezing.  But, the giant pumpkings grown around here are pretty impressive to somebody from back west, so I'm glad we stopped.


     It was a busy few days, but we loved having my mom visit.  We hope to lure her back for more adventures another year.