Sunday Afternoon Discovery

I love Russian Nesting Dolls. My fascination with them began when I inherited one from my Great-grandma Ruby after she passed away. So now I've been collecting them for a few years.

Lauren loves them too. She likes to open them all up and collect all the tiny ones.

One Sunday afternoon, it was a little too quiet. I went upstairs to investigate and found this:

Eek. We had some sorting to do. My paranoia of losing all the tiny, innermost dolls led me to put the dolls away - out of sight, out of mind - for awhile. I want to keep these treasures around for many years to come!

Chickens are Cool

Summer is off to a good start.

Lauren gets to pick dandelions and dig up worms for hand-feeding the chickens. She gets to run around and chase them.
And she gets to sit by her daddy and hold them.

This yard has been A LOT of work, and is still a work in progress, but I am so grateful for the space. It is so gratifying to see Lauren exploring the outside world of dirt, grass and bugs.......and chickens :) They're pretty much part of the family now.

Now, a change of subject.......something funny..................................................

This just makes me laugh. It's the latest of Dave's inventions. He constructed a sunshade for our junky little riding lawn mower. He even utilized my sewing machine to make a casing so he could just slip it onto the pipe. So resourceful and creative!

Easter

What a fun weekend! I love seeing things through the eyes of a two-year-old.

Enjoying Easter Eggs at Dave's parent's house.

Ready, Set, Go!

I think this is my first official pregnancy shot.....heh heh. Amazing, the difference b/n the first pregnancy and the next. I'm about 4 months along here.

One of the treasures from the hunt.

With 10 grandkids, age 8 and under, it was a crazy fun Easter Egg hunt at Grandma's. I love the life and excitement little kids bring to any experience. What would we do without them?!

Luckily, we had some decent weather!

I'm not a fawning, cutsie mom to my daughter. Sometimes she looks like a little orphan girl, but I did manage to make her a skirt and matching headband for Easter. It was a project that consumed me! It was fun to see it unfold. I've had the fabric for probably a year and saved the online pattern in my "favorites" ......about a year ago. The realization that Easter was quickly approaching was my motivation to get to work!

This is Lauren with her cute little cousin, Zoie

Daddy, Lauren, and a pregnant Mommy (about 4mo.)

I love Spring

This winter has been HARD and BORING and LONG. Being in the first trimester of pregnancy during the worst month of the year (January) didn't help. That was a rough time. But now my spirits and energy are lifted as green things start to pop out of the ground and trees come back to life! I feel so much more motivated and interested in life when I wake up to sunshine! I can't wait until summer!!! My stomach is getting too big to zip jackets over it. I don't want to wear jackets anymore! I want Lauren to be able to play outside! I can't wait for warm weather!!!

Since we do spend a lot of time inside, these are the things our little cutie loves right now:

• Imagining and pretending with her dolls, her Little People, her Winnie the Pooh characters, her binkies (yes, there have been dialogues between her binkies - and don't ask why she's still using them), her shoes (yes, dialogues b/n her shoes), sticks, and Dave and I.


• Dave is pretty much a monster 99% of the time. She addresses him as "monster".


• She loves turning us into dragons with her magic fairy wand.


• Almost everytime she goes up the stairs, she goes as a puppy.


• Often, she'll stop during her journey upstairs to get a drink from the drinking fountain (the molding and stair skirt - how that transformed to a drinking fountain, I will never know! :)


• And lately, for some reason at bedtime, she becomes Wilbur, from Charlotte's Web and I am Charlotte. For the last 3 nights as I leave her room, she protests by oinking. (I am laughing out loud as I write this!)

Lauren is hilarious! Her imagination is incredible. Today, she was pretending we were at the store and I told her I needed to change her pants. She said, "don't change my pants in the store, Mommy!" I had to pretend we were going into the bathroom - then she consented.

There is a little hole in the wood in one of our stairs leading to the garage and she loves to crouch there and play with the attachments to the air compressor, placing one into the hole after another. "I'm workin' Mommy. I'm fixin' this hole".

She is becoming willful and tests my patience, but I still can't get enough of her. I want to hug and kiss and cuddle her all the time! It probably bugs her that I interrupt her work and play time, but I can't help it! She's not very cuddly - very creative and independent.

Chickens

.....just now, as I was vacuuming wood chips from my family room floor, I thought to myself, "I have chickens in my house. In my family room. Who has chickens in their family room?! What am I thinking?!"
I've been known to be a little uptight, cautious and conservative. So I'm pretty proud of myself for allowing chickens inside.
That's quite flexible.....right?

Gettin' in the Easter Spirit.......or Farm mode.

Those who know me are aware that I love "Little House on the Prairie" and that I often pine for the simpler lifestyle they enjoyed back then.

Well, last weekend, we took a step closer to that lifestyle :)

We picked up 6 little chicks from the local IFA farm store and made them at home right in our family room. They have a heat lamp, but it's pretty cold outside, even in the garage, and we want them to be around us all the time so they'll get used to us.

I started this post like two days ago and it's been just sitting here on my computer. I'm going to go ahead and post it...............more to come......................

Photos

Here are some random pictures I have taken for assignments in my photography class:

Someone in our family is a Glenn Beck fan.

Sun peeking through a snow-laden tree in our front yard.


Experimenting w/black&white. (Though this shot is way prettier in color)


Thread

Fascination with Snow