Roz is an artist

A chicken:

Emily never looked better:

A more different chicken:

Fluttershy – she painted this all by herself!

I guess all that mad artistry deserves a mad artist haircut.

It was done in a corner, by the mad artist herself.

How she could remove this from her glorious head is beyond me:

But it happened.

Goodbye perfect curl.  We’ve known you for nearly 3 years now.

But at least you left some friends behind.

We’ve finally had our rite of preschooler girl passage. 

But will I ever be able to cut those curls off?

Our Sorts of Forts

I remember when I found out that my twins were going to be boys.  I firmly believe that when you find out the gender of your kid you have to give yourself a moment to mourn the loss of the gender you didn’t have.  It’s just the way it is – even if you’re excited about the gender you are having.  So I said goodbye to butterflies and ruffles and got really excited about forts.

But now that I have kids I realize that boys get pretty excited about butterflies too, and what girl doesn’t love forts?  I mean, I grew up building forts on a near daily basis.  You can ask my mom.

And one of the many things I love about my mom is she was pretty great at letting my forts take over the front room or dining table, or wherever it was for a good while.  She’s the one who taught me to make a sturdy and tight fort.

She had a ready supply of clothes pins and clamps for the process.

It’s a tradition I pass on with relish. 

So, here’s a fort building tip: (if you’re looking for that sort of thing) if you have a stand-on-its-own vacuum, it makes a great tent pole.  (I slipped a pillowcase over mine so the kids wouldn’t attack it constantly.  They would do that.  Buttons can be more interesting than forts sometimes.)

Good times.

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This fort was back in December, but it had an ‘upgrade’:

We hung lights inside. 

Not much beats a little Calvin and Hobbes in a twinkle light fort on a cold day.

Mom, do you have any pictures of our forts? 

Puddle Jumping.

This was my favorite thing to do as a kid. 

Do you remember doing it?

I’m pretty excited to do it with my kids.  Well, I was so excited about it that I’ve been doing it since they were babes!  And now we have a cool camera that can get wet.

Then Nick found a better setting for the camera:  Pet Portrait.  Who knew?

And since the camera can get wet, I can get wet too.

The boys told me they were doing puddle yoga. 

Roz especially liked running back and forth over and over.

This is some baywatch running.  They both have it down to an art, no?

The Spring Chicken’s Scout

So by now you remember that to coax The Spring Chicken to your house you must offer up dyed eggs in good faith of her coming. 

It’s worth it to have The Spring Chicken come.  As we discovered last year, she’s generous with the candy and Cheetos. 

Take notes from our extremely efficient egg dying production line. 

If you looked back at last year, you’ll notice that unlike last year, my kids are clean and clothed.  I’m not going to place value judgments on that, but it is something to notice. 

All the kids enjoyed adding their own dyes and I was kept busy helping them control their enthusiasm. 

But this year, after our offering was made and waiting in the fridge, this creature showed up in the back yard:

We think maybe he’s Her scout or something, we must have passed inspection because a day or two later this came in the mail:

Dear Grandmas, thanks for your contributions.  The kids loved it all.

Some serious strategy was being discussed in this picture.  Egg hunting is a serious sport.

Enjoying the spoils:  But note to The Spring Chicken, Everett does not prefer Cadbury mini eggs or jelly beans.    If you could somehow jam lollypops in those eggs he’d be extremely happy about it. 

The chocolate mazes were well received by all.   And the Spring Chicken must have taken my letter about junk food into consideration, for this year the Cheetos had been replaced with Annie’s organic-or-something bunnies. 

Or maybe it was a subtle jab at the Easter bunny?  Who knows?  Here: eat bunnies, kids.