Delighted

One of the great things about sewing is that it is a gift for both me and for the person I end up giving whatever I've sewn too.  I love the time I get in front of the sewing machine, playing with the fabric that is destined for one certain person, and just smile at the thought of how much they are (hopefully!) going to enjoy their new creation.  For Valentine's Day, I had a bit of camo fabric left for one particular gentleman and while camo and V-day do not necessarily go together, the big fat smile on his face of love and adoration when he got his new robe was definitely in the spirit of the day:

Since Valentine's Day, he has decided it is actually not a robe, but a cloak.  With his iPod tucked into the little camo pocket, he goes outside, grabs the sunflower stalks, and pretends he's Darth Otter.  I would say he is quite delighted with the whole new getup. 

Baby It's Cold Outside

Last week this time, it was -20 outside with the windchill.  Our gardens looked like this:


















While it was freezing outside, Smoosh and I were happily curled up inside doing what we love to do best this time of year; starting to plan out this year's garden.  Smoosh is at the perfect age of enjoying everything there is about gardening - he loves going through the seed catalogs with me, he loves talking about which plants we should grow, and he even loves have a part in helping me clean up the downstairs "grow room" to start planting some of our seeds for the year.  Otter went through this age and now sporadically will jump in and out of the garden conversations.  Beans will get more excited once she actually is able to see flowers and feel the warm air on her little cheekers.  Squeaks just enjoys undoing whatever it is we are doing at the moment, including dumping dirt onto a clean floor, removing seeds from where she thinks we have "hidden them" (in the dirt), etc.  But Smoosh, ahh, Smoosh is right where I am; he can dream it and imagine it and warms up just thinking about it.  One night, he came into the room around 8:30 (an hour past his bedtime!) but I was very happy to let him crawl into bed and look through the pile of seed catalogs I was already purusing.  For 1/2 hour, he quietly thumbed back and forth through the pages, every once in awhile saying "oh, look at dat" or "I didn't know you could grow dat stuff," even an occasional "hmmm, I wonder what dat tastes like."  I don't mind staying up way past a bed time if it includes happily chasing down the dream of this year's garden.

The next day we pulled the catalogs out again and this time actually started the planning.  There are the garden square plots that get printed up and names of plants penciled in, erased, and penciled in again at least 10 times before we can actually plant anything in May.  Smoosh has very definite opinions about what should be planted where and he loves to point at the different boxes and flipping the pages to determine where the plants will be going.  This is a process that will be repeated several times over before the plants are there.

Smoosh and I even pull out the seed packets that have been patiently waiting for us.  We pull out each one, rewrite how many seeds there are, which ones we have, and record the times for seeding, transplanting, and harvesting; as if we do not know by now how long each one will take....we then gently tuck in the container of seeds and tell them we will be back in a few weeks to start planting.

Valentine's Day

Our house makes a big hurrah of Valentine's Day, if for nothing else than it is another reason to create fun things, decorate the table and house in fun ways, and do fun things together.  Everyone had a few Valentine's Day books to read about:









Then there was the preparation of a fun cake and Valentine's Day meal.  The girls were very adamant in having a large role in preparing the food for V-Day meal.  Squeaks helped with baking the cake;

Dark picture, but just needed to show that Ellie had to be a part of the cake making too.

Ooohh yeah, got to make sure the batter taste correct (side note, nice thing about having our own chickens and eggs not even 2 hours old, you don't really worry that much about things like Salmonella....it just doesn't have a chance to grow and makes licking batter such a less death-defying adventure!).

Beans had been planning the meal for Valentine's Day for the past week.  Let me tell you, a lot of thought went into the menu; Macaroni and Cheese and Hot Dogs.  She put a lot of planning into everything for Valentine's Day.  She spent over a week creating bookmarks for her class and just about everyone else she knew.  The night before, she laid out her Valentine's Day outfit complete with matching heart socks.  She reminded Joe and I quite a few times to get all of the ingredients for dinner so she could cook it.  Quite adorable.  

Both girls helped set the table, full of hearts.

One of the cutest things to watch was the excitement Smoosh had over the whole affair.  When we were doing his Valentine's for his class, he would say for each one "I hope so and so likes the card I am giving dem.  I hope I get a card from dem too."  Then, when he came home on Valentine's Day, he was absolutely thrilled with his box of goodies and cards from everyone in the class.  Otter and Beans played into his enthusiasm for him - they are great older siblings....most of the time....

All-in-all, another fun day had by everyone...even Otter who is so quickly outgrowing this type of stuff but thankfully does not mind "pretending" to enjoy it all with the rest of us.

Ice Cream Sandwiches

As part of our snizow dizay, we made some yummylicious ice cream sandwiches.  Yummy.  Squeakers made sure to do everything just as diligently as the others; right down to making sure the utensils were properly "cleaned."

Here Otter, let me show you how to do it.  Obviously there is not enough filling in there.

Ok, where is everyone when it is clean up time?

Snizzzowww Dddiiizzaaayy!

How we spent our snow day:

Cheering on the doggies to plow their way through snow that was higher than them...and to keep trudging so they would get off the deck before they did their business on the snow-buried deck..

...watching "The New Scandanivan Cooking" on Create; which Smoosh in particular enjoyed and wanted to know which dishes we could try right away.  He and Otter both sat there going "ooohhh, that looks good, I wouldn't have thought to add that..." 

...getting our hair did by the littlest one...

...learning the joy of finding a match for a sock from the endless pile of mismatched socks...

...making ice cream sandwiches (more later on these!)...

...creating chair mazes to crawl up, under, and through...

...legoing!! I don't think that is a word, but sounds good to me....

...roasting red peppers for some delicious roasted red pepper soup...

..playing games of "where's dat?"...

...greco-roman wrestling with the boys (well, duh, what else is a 2-year-old supposed to do?  she even went and put on Smoosh's undies because the boys had their shirts off while wrestling and taking the onesie off just left her too bare, good thing the undies took care of that problem)...

...a little cleaning...don't want to get too serious about that venture...

...and, of course, enjoying the snow!  Can you find Otter?

Oh!!  There he is!!!