From our family to yours! Hope you have a day of peace and love!

Yesterday we got out into the snow we got earlier this week. Snow with the three kids, school, and a baby is making it for a rough winter. Plus our neighbor was out of town this week too. We did find someone to pay to help thankfully too. But for the girls snow is fun still. Today I stood on the porch carrying Ewan on my back in a carrier under a coat to get him to nap while I supervised them playing in the snow. They started with shoveling the sleds full of snow, then climbing up and around all over things. Josie asked to jump out a window, I said no. Later on they played ‘snow rescue’. Celia pretended to fall down and break her leg, and Josie put her in one sled and  then the other to treat and rescue her from it.

Plus one non-traditional snow angel.

Back while I was still pregnant, Josie came up with her own plan for dinner. It took a while to get the timing right but she wanted to make sure to share the recipe with everyone.

Josie’s vegetable cheese burritos

1 zuchinni, chopped

1 summer squash, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

2 tsp oil

8 tortillas

2 cups shredded cheese, we probably used cheddar.

Preheat oven to 350. Saute veggies in oil. evenly split veggies and cheese and wrap up into each tortilla. Place in oven and bake for 10 minutes until the cheese is melted.

Notably they don’t have onions or green peppers, neither of which she is terribly fond of.

I got the kids new shirts for Hanukah. They are cute, and possibly useful to my grandmother with Alzheimers. See for yourself why. They had fun for a while.

And commencing crying in… 3… 2…1…

Now that Josie can read she’s starting to enjoy word searches, and playing a cooperative game of boggle.

Getting out the door takes a while these days now. Here’s us on an attempt to go to Quebrada last weekend. We haven’t felt well enough to go this weekend yet. Still not eating regularly, Celia is barely eating at all. Lots of soup and crackers for us and plain food.

We keep spinning around that sun and lately it seems like it’s going faster and faster. Josie is now five and a half, it even took me a few days to remind her of it. That half is really important to kids this age, even the quarters. Her biggest change since being 5.25 has been starting Kindergarten. She generally likes to go  to school and only occasionally wants to stay home. I do think she’d prefer it didn’t start so early in the morning though. She’s always got some plans for what she’d like to be doing other than getting dressed or eating breakfast before walking to school.

Her favorite things about school are choice time and playing with her friends. Choice time is a free play time when she gets to pick what she does, puzzles, games and art projects. They generally have some every day, but sometimes it’s shorter or longer depending on how well they’ve gotten the rest of their work done. She’s not overly fond of gym or music, but she likes art and library special classes. She does a lot of writing each day in class, usually ‘facts’ as presented by the teacher. Right now they’re reading a book that takes place in Eygpt (the Magic Tree House Series) so they’ve made props and learned about the times of ancient Eygpt. The teacher reads the books to them, but Josie can read the books herself now too at almost full speed out loud. Her reading is just amazing and keeps getting better and better.

At home Josie is a big fan of playing pretend and bossing her sister around for real in that pretend game. We have to work on a lot of negotiation skills for everyone. She loves to coo at Ewan and sing to him still. He absolutely lights up with joy when she pays attention to him. He makes lots of noises to get her attention.

We’ve just started up gymnastics again after a break to let her adjust to school and she’s enjoying that. Had a bit of a back slide in progress from not doing it for a few months but she’s picking it up again quickly.

She regularly picks up the books around and reads and enjoys us reading to her as well. Her favorite is reading things we write on the white board, or signs around town, things that she wouldn’t have been able to pick up before. She also loves to paint at home and make up her own projects. We’ve been very limited in time for that as she’s been in school and it’s hard to make a big mess and still keep Ewan entertained, but she loves to paint each week and does lots of coloring and drawing.

One thing they work on in school is dramatizing stories. They started with fairy tales and now have moved onto the Magic Tree House series. Josie loves to bring the stories home and act them out again with us. We built sets and props out of dolls and magnatiles and acted out the stories with the puppets she made at school.

She is struggling right now with remaining calm and cool when things aren’t going her way. Her patience and self control seem to be used up at school. So we keep trying to help her with that and not get our heads bit off. I love how busy she is now a days though, always has ideas for what to do, even if they perhaps need to be thought through a bit more still. Like today she wanted to make a wallet out of paper for Celia and she asks for tape to ‘make a wallet’ showing me a square on a piece of paper. She struggled to explain her whole idea to me, as I don’t think she had planned beyond the initial cut.

She is still a generous soul at heart, some days she just is in dire need of a nap she won’t take to find that part of herself again. She gives lots of hugs and tugs but is starting to grow up from the idea of sitting in our laps so much or cuddling at bed. So I grab them when I can.

• Size/weight: 6 and 7′s, 50 lbs, 46.25″ tall
• Favorite foods: cheese, pasta, dessert
• Favorite toy: dress up and dolls
• Favorite book: Magic tree house stories
• Favorite activity: playing pretend
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:40; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: going to school!
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20, new ones causing grief
• Literacy: reading over our shoulders and on signs, can read the magic tree house books – chapter books herself

This past weekend, to try to help with our children feeling like they don’t get any alone time, we had ‘date night’, in the afternoon. My parents took Celia and we took Josie (and Ewan stays with me always cause he’s a baby). Celia originally wanted to get ice cream and go to my parents house, but the draw of their toys was just too much and they skipped the ice cream and went to play. They played games, raked leaves and jumped in them, and ate mandarin oranges. Josie had been wanting to see a movie and so we made some snacks (puppy chow and popcorn) and sat down and watched “The Lorax” with her. She wanted us to turn it off multiple times because it was too scary but she got through it. After we did puzzles. And this is now how we roll doing puzzles. He’s not quite coordinated enough yet to really get a piece in his mouth, just move them around a bit.

The air conditioner is out, my favorite picture taking place in the house is back.