Fun Stuff

 We've been doing fun stuff this past week. 

Saturday I took Elsa shopping at Shoppe 7, our local second hand store. This is the outfit she picked out (Thanks, Oma). She had lots of fun deciding on an outfit, and has worn it almost everyday since Sunday.

The leggins are my favorite!


I had gone the day before to that same shop. I didn't take Meg with me, but I got some really cute clothes for her on the $1 rack. Aeva was with me and asked if I had gone overboard. I kind of laughed  and said that I wonder what I will be like as a grandma buying clothes for my grandkids. Yep, one of my weeknesses.................baby clothes.


I love these little bloomers.

On Tuesday Myles and Elsa helped me make a laundry detergent mix. We are going to see how we like it and how long it lasts. We seem to go through a lot of laundry detergent. So much so, that my food storage laundry detergent has been depleted. I think I may go this route for the laundry department of our food storage. We had a great time putting it together.
 

 
 Myles tried his hand at grating the soap and grated his finger in the process. After grating three bars of soap my arm was tired.

We have had quite a few rainstorms this week. I'm loving it!! We even had a thunder and lightning storm on Saturday. Aeva got this picture of the clouds over our house.

 
 She also found a Wooly Bear Caterpillar while roller blading.

Aeva has started her BYU Independent Study Japanese course. We are hoping she ends up really liking it. I bought her a book in the summer, and she has been pouring over that, plus she loves drawing Manga, and listening to Japanese music. She didn't think she would be able to drop her Spanish until February. Miraculously, she learned last Thursday that She would no longer be in the Spanish class and that they would let her start her Japanese. So, she uses second period at school to work on it. Love miracles like that.

Rhaevyn spent two hours at one of our local hosptials on Monday. She interviewed a nurse in the NICU, got to tour the NICU, and watch a tiny, tiny baby get a bath. Then she was taken out to lunch. It was a great experience for her. She may look into volunteering at the hospital within the coming year.
She has been asked to play with the church choir, so she is working on that to see if it's going to be doable. I hope it is. Nothing like stepping out of your comfort zone to make you grow!


Elsa finally got her second pair of glasses, so now she can wear glasses outside. I didn't want her wearing the other pair outside in case they got broken.

I've been working on some genealogy. It's hard to do with little ones, but I try and squeeze it in here and there. It is so fun and addicting. I think sometimes I am more interested in the stories, pictures, and learning about who these ancestors really were/are.
I found some pictures on the Lindsay side.

I love this picture. I told Rhaevyn that Hannah Elizabeth Sparks looks like a person I could sit down and chat with. Rhaevyn and I were looking over how many children she had and saw that the last one did not have a listed name. Birth and death date were listed as the same day, and Hannah died a few days later. Makes one think about what life was like for our ancestors. It makes them real.

 

I located an autobiography on this little lady..................Julia Parks Lindsay. She may have looked little in stature, but I think she had a giant spirit. I also found her name and her husband's name listed in a journal entry of Zina D. H. Young. That was pretty cool!

 

 And Rhaeyvn and I have "met" a distant cousin (on Chris's side) on ancestry.com.


Yes, so that has been our fun for the week!

Auf wiedersehen from our little gnome.

 

 It was kind of a quiet week and we were glad for the break.

This week we found a dead bird next to our car. We think it flew at a pretty good speed into the car window. Poor thing. It was a beautiful bird. We aren't sure, but think it might be a black headed grosbeak. I'm not very good with my bird detective work. The kids enjoyed yelling to all the neighbor kids that we had a dead bird and to come take a look. We have it under one of our trees and plan on watching the decomposition process. The yellow jackets have already been feasting on it. 
 Meg has become a climber. She loves to try and climb the couch.
She also has started clapping her hands and snapping. Yes, snapping, and you can even hear her do it.
Well, we can hear it. You could if I could actually take a video of it, but she gets too distracted by the camera.

We thoroughly enjoyed General Conference this weekend.
Here is Aeva taking notes, Rhaevyn taking a break from note taking and rocking Meg, and
Myles was lining up his planes on my leg while listening to conference.


Here are some pictures of Elsa dancing. She was dancing to Lindsey Sterlings "Stars Align"
found here in case you'd like to listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKSs41Hv2AM

Aeva has been doing roller- blading for her PE. Myles and Elsa like to run and pull her along.

And here are just a few pictures of our Miss Meg to end on.

This and That

I'm a little behind on blogging. We are in full swing with school, violin, flag football, cub scouts, and Young Women's activities.
Here is a peek into what we've been up to lately.....

Friday the 19th I took the kids (minus Aeva) to Krispy Kreme. It was talk like a pirate day. If you dressed up like a pirate you got a free box of doughnuts. So, we ended up with three boxes. Rhaevyn wanted to drop off a box to the hospital. So we stopped by the Family Birth Center and dropped a box off to the nursing staff. I ran into one of my nurses I had with Meg and got to chat with her briefly.
Then Myles wanted to drop a box by the Battle Ground Fire Department. He and Elsa go their very own tour of the fire engine and the station. It was pretty neat. Yes, we ate the other box :)
The cashier at Krispy Kreme said that Meg was the youngest pirate she'd seen that day.
 

Who needs a doughnut when you have a remote to bite on?


Tuesday on our walk back from dropping Aeva off at school, Myles found this little guy on the sidewalk. He must have been dazed. His eyes were closed and he was breathing heavily, but didn't budge when I got near him. We hurried home to grab a shovel and a shoebox. We made him a nice little home so he could rest. He ended up hopping out of the box and almost ended up down the outside vent well. His wings weren't working too well. After about an hour he flew up on our neighbors roof, sunned himself briefly, and then he was gone. We think he was a bushtit.


This was Myles's art project. He scavenged for leaves, painted them, and then pressed them onto burlap.

Today it was raining intermittently. After they finished up their school work, Myles and Elsa went out to play. They played stick people and made house out of leaves.

On the walk home from Aeva's school, Myles found Elsa and himself some huge leaves. They sang the "Totoro song" all the way home while covering their heads with their leaves, pretending to shelter their heads from the rain.

Aeva is enjoying CAM. Last Friday she went on a school field trip to a family fun center. They did a scavenger hunt and some rock climbing, etc. Her group was the only group that entered their stuff to the scavenger hunt and consequently won a prize (candy).
Many a night I can hear my songbird singing.......................in Japanese. She is teaching herself Japanese...........to write it, read it, and sing it. Ever heard "Let it Go" in Japanese???
She also loves vocaloid music. Not sure what that is? Well I hadn't a clue until recently. She has made a cd, and we often listen to it in the car. I skip most of the songs and listen to the only two I really like.

Here are some cute pictures of Myles. He was trying to help Meg get dressed.

Elsa playing dress up.

 

 We think Meg is getting some curls. She is waving hello and goodbye now, and it almost sounds like she verbalizes the word "hi". She is up to 17 pounds and is 28 inches long. She is growing up and getting big so fast.

Rhaevyn has been advertising on Facebook that she is teaching violin. Her teacher said she felt she was ready to do it. So fingers crossed, she gets a student or two. She also has been trying her hand at Japanese food for Aeva. She made Aeva her lunch for today............grilled rice balls (in the shape of  hearts) and chicken dumplings.

And I think that wraps it up for now!


Bye-bye :)