Easter Afternoon

We spent Easter afternoon and evening at my Mom and Dad's home, and it was lovely, so relaxed. My sister Lena was there, and my cousin Elijah, and our friends Tom and Katherine with their darling little people.

Food prep:

Tom masters the pineapple.

Meg is crazy about babies... reminds me of me!

My beautiful sissy!

Elijah is quite the character and so much fun.

Dave and Peter playing:

"Take a picture of the horsey, Mommy!"

I felt compelled to take a picture of my mother's Oriental rug. Isn't it gorgeous?

Meanwhile, out of doors...

And back inside...

Sitting down to eat:

The whole time was a balm to my heart!

Recent Round-Up

A few miscellaneous photos from the last couple of weeks...

At the end of our cherished annual visit from Aunt Shanny. (Praying for you, Shan!)

(That was also the day Esme had her awful muscle spasm. Note the pillow on the couch. She was only recently sitting up when we took this shot.)

Meg asked me to take this picture of the waterfowl and post it. The drab, wintery water's not much to look at, but our shadows are kind of cool!

Meg after a leftover (non dairy!) smoothie popsicle:

And me with my post-nap sleepyhead:

On days when Graham wakes up tired, sometimes I get some treasured cuddle time with him when all he wants is to be as close and as warm and as still as possible. I wonder if I will remember in three, four, ten, twenty years what it feels like to have a drowsy bundle of boy burrowing into my shoulder. I do hope so. Perhaps this picture will help.

And a Field Trip Pic From Back in February

Early in February, Dave took Meg, Matthew, and Esme for his first ever solo field trip. They hopped on the Metro and whisked off to the American Art Museum with some of our fellow home schooling families. My friend Christine took this picture while they were there:

This shot was not only cute but significant, because we had just finished studying Georgia O'Keefe in our co-op art class. That day everyone got to see not one, but two of O'Keefe's works live and in person! The kids were excited to recognize her style and subject matter, and we moms (even those of us who weren't there) were all geeked out. It's just too cool when God lines life up like that.

Overheard

At our small-group family Christmas party last night, a dark-haired cutie armed with a plastic weapon hollered to my son:

"Matthew, come on! Our next mission is to kill the 'popolypse! No! The zomblies!"

Dolls and Books Party

For Meg's party we chose the theme of "dolls and books." These are a few of her favorite things...

For our first game, we got out all of Nana's elegant dress-ups, and all of Grandma's beautiful handmade doll clothes, and we had a girls-and-dolls dress-up parade. Here are all of our lovely young ladies in their finery...

Daddy and Matthew served as judges and awarded prizes for the ladies with the most creative ensembles.

Our book-themed game required two teams to take sets of quotes from 10 familiar books and match them up to their titles. The team to match all the quotes first and correctly won. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from this game, but it came off really well, and--bibliophile that I am--it warmed my heart to see everyone busy with such literary scurrying.

I also don't have pictures of the pretty pink rosette cake I made for Meg (it looked a lot like this), or of Meg blowing out the candles. But you can rest assured that Meg did successfully extinguish all nine candles, and that the cake and ice cream were devoured.

All in all, it was a lovely celebration, and we are thankful to all of our sweet guests for helping to make Meg's birthday so special!

First Co-Op

Last week our co-op gathered for our first lessons of the school year. It's our third year with the same three other families (fourth year with one!). We love, love, love these folks and are so grateful to share school life with them. Look at all these great kiddos!

It was lovely to do show-and-tell with the students and hear them enthusiastically share some of their summer memories. They have all grown up and learned so much. When we did our first show-and-tell together two autumns ago, some were so shy they couldn't fully participate, and some (like Esme) were barely old enough to speak in complete sentences.

My friend Christine, who took the group shot above, also snapped this one of all the girlies with our latest addition: Baby E!

They were all quite smitten and spent the first few minutes after her arrival sitting quietly around her car seat, staring and cooing and asking questions of the lucky big sister. (This was a pretty big deal--normally most of these girls tend toward the rowdy side.) In just a few months, it'll be deja vu all over again when Baby C arrives to help the boys fight back against the overwhelming current of femininity.

We're using our twice-monthly meetings to study art and science together, as we did last year. It's so much less daunting to approach projects and experiments as a big group, with more mama hands to make the work lighter! The kids are already excited about tackling physics, and we moms were very happy to find Meet the Masters art curriculum.

All aboard for another year of learning, fun and fellowship! Here we go...

Matthew's Seventh Birthday: Lego Party

Matthew's and Esme's birthdays are just six days apart. That's why yesterday we found ourselves throwing a party for the second Sunday afternoon in a row. This one was an at-home affair, and the theme was Legos.

We set up a projector in the school room so everyone could watch The Lego Movie big screen style. We watched the first half...

...then we gathered in the living room to split into teams for our competitive Lego building game.

Dave explains the rules. (He talks with his hands.)

And they're off!

On the left, Team 1, with Matthew at the helm.

And on the right, the worthy competitors of Team 2.

The two teams worked together to build identical Lego Creator sets. Each person had 90 seconds to build as much of the set as he could, then the next person took his turn. The team to complete the set first won the round. Since the set could be built three different ways, we were able to do multiple rounds... Team 1 took the first round, and everyone was eager for more. Team 2 won the second round, by which time it was clear that the attention-span window was closing fast. So Dave declared a tie and distributed prizes to all. There were no arguments there!

Cake time! For Matthew's Lego cake, I took the plunge into the world of fondant for the first time. I didn't have the guts to cover the whole cake in fondant (and buttercream is so much tastier, honestly), but I used it for all of the decorations, and I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

It's a far, far cry from some of the dazzling professional Lego cakes out there, but it's not too bad for a novice, right? Everything was edible except for the mini-figure standing on the pyramid in front. (My hat is off to anyone who does cakes for a living. My, WHAT time-consuming and painstaking work!)

I even found some Lego candles at the grocery store!

"Happy birthday, dear Matthew..."

He conquered the candles so fast we missed the shot.

Happy cake-eating peoples.

Happy jello-eating person. (#allergictoeverything)

Time for presents... Legos!!!

Our big old ugly chair actually kind of lends itself to gift-opening, doesn't it?

A thank-you hug.

Yay, more Legos!

Apparently, this one required closer inspection...

Everyone huddled around as Luke explained what he had drawn in his special birthday picture for Matthew.

I'm not sure what Graham is doing here. Maybe "I'm a Little Teapot"?

After presents, we watched the second half of the movie, and then it was time for goodbyes. Cleaning up the kitchen after everyone departed, I asked Matthew, "Did you like your party?"

"Yes," he said unhesitatingly. "I loved it. But I love Mommy more than my party." The words came unstudied and matter-of-fact, totally sincere.

And, oh my heart, what a good, good way to say hello to your eighth year, speaking those kind and loving words. Our Matthew Ian: how we love you. And don't you ever, ever forget it.