February

Shad and the big 3 kids had a few football parties at our friend Tim's house. Dancy entertained herself.

Taking pictures of kids in bed will never get old.

Katie likes creating new things out of Amazon and diaper boxes that arrive on our doorstep monthly. This is her school bus.

I read Peter Pan aloud to the kids. Tommy drew a map of Neverland. There is a mountain with a slide for the Lost Boys and a path to their cave. Banana trees, Skull Rock, Indian camp with marching Indians, Mermaid Lagoon, pirates and Captain Hook's ship.

Reading A, You're Adorable with Thora

Happy mornings with my almost-one-year-old.

Making valentines, I suggested that the kids make some for Tabitha, Dan's girlfriend, because Dan was going to propose to her. We had had lunch with her on a Colorado visit in January, so the kids knew her and they validated my request. I also mentioned that they might have kids (new cousins) after they get married. Katie got all excited and exclaimed that she wanted girl cousins. She only has one and we've never met her. When Katie said she'd ask Tabitha to please make girl cousins, I made the offhand remark that she'd have to tell Dan, not Tabitha. The quizzical look on Katie's face required an explanation, so I gave it. Luckily it was a short one, because we've already explained sperm and eggs to our kids, as well as DNA. All I had to do was explain the X and Y chromosomes. 

And so we get to Katie's valentines. She drew a wedding scene for Tabitha's card, and sperm with x's for Dan's card. I wrote for her while she dictated the wording: "Dan, please make x sperms. I want a girl cousin. Love, Katie." The most hilarious pair of valentines I've ever seen!

Shad and I were in a good habit of exercising every night until we got sick and went out of town. The kids joined Shad one night.

We went to Colorado to see Ruth arriving home from her mission in Brazil. We enjoyed all our time with her and didn't take any pictures, but Shad took a few when we were playing in the Nickle-a-Play arcade without her.

{Dan, Dancy, Katie, Thora, Samson, Megan}

{Tommy and Levi}

Lego Batman came to our theater, and the kids wanted to dress up for the occasion.

Katie wore her Batman pajamas and Dancy sported her hot pink cape and mask.

Thora singing Katy Perry's "Roar," aka, "I Got the Eye of the Tiger."

Samson turned one! We celebrated by decorating with streamers, blowing up balloons and setting up piles of bricks for him to knock down. Katie drew him a picture and filled a ziplock bag with veggie straws, his favorite snack. He loved his day and all the singing for him!

{Katie, Samson, Thora}

Samson discovered that foam lightsabers are fun!

All 5 of our kids

{Samson, Thora, Dancy, Katie, Tommy}

After-bath mohawk!

I've been working on taking headstone pictures in our town cemetery, uploading them to findagrave.com for people to do their genealogy. This one touched me. The inscription says, "We loved her."

For almost a whole month, this was Samson's routine basement activity. Pull Magic Tree House off the shelf.

Samson in Videos

These videos range in time from about January to present.

Samson is always a bundle of excitement when he swings!

This boy loves music and dancing! Barely stable on his feet and look at him go!

When he finally learned to walk at 13 months, the park suddenly had all new meaning to him!

Testing out his new shoes.

Here is a small example of baby sign language, but I'll try to catch a video with Samson's full sign vocabulary.

Tommy took this video to catch Samson woofing.

...And while he had the camera out, he decided to go ahead with this little piece.

My little man-cub, my Pan-child!

Sometimes I'll say something like, "yo!" in a deep voice to get his attention or distract him from crying. And then it becomes a lifelong game that he asks me to play. Same thing with fake sneezing.

Now that he's more stable on his feet, he can dance a bit better!

A week ago I noticed Samson saying, "roar," in a very specific rhythmic pattern. I realized that he was singing Katy Perry's "Roar," aka, "I Got the Eye of the Tiger," that Thora and Dancy sing all the time! And he even knows the song by name and will sing it upon request. I love this kid!

Home on the Range

Knowing that it would be a while before we'd have time to send me on a getaway, Shad told me to take a vacation in January. Surprisingly, it actually took some convincing because I still have such anxiety about leaving Samson in someone else's care when I don't know what to tell them to do about his skin or what to feed him. But somehow Shad got me out the door.

I went to Kearney for a weekend. I found a hotel with a pool and hot tub (I swear I brought my swimsuit home with me, but I haven't seen it since!) and went on my way, stopping in Smith Center first to buy honey from the beekeeper there. From there, the road north to Kearney has a historical stop on it--the cabin where "Home on the Range" was written.

The attic

Out the attic window

Stairs leading up to the attic, but you can't go all the way up.

Bed under the stairs

The open cabin room with table and benches and a wood burning stove

And a wash basin

Out the front door

Okay, is anyone else thinking about Emily Gilmore and laughing?

The deer and the antelope play!

There's the range.

Here are the lyrics I grew up singing:

Home, home on the range

Where the deer and the antelope play

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day

And here is the original poem:

The Western Home

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,

  Where the deer and the antelope play;

  Where never is heard a discouraging word

     And the sky is not clouded all day.

Oh, give me the gale of the Solomon vale

  Where life streams with buoyancy flow,

  On the banks of the Beaver, where seldom if ever

     Any poisonous herbage doth grow.

Oh, give me the land where the bright diamond sand

   Throws light from the glittering stream;

   Where glideth along the graceful white swan,

      Like a maid in her heavenly dreams.

I love these wild flowers in this bright land of our;

   I love, too, the curlew's wild scream.

   The bluffs of white rocks and antelope flocks

     That graze on the hillsides so green.

How often at night, when the heavens are bright

   By the light of the glittering stars,

   Have I stood there amazed  and asked as I gazed

      If their beauty exceeds this of ours.   

The air is so pure, the breezes so light,

   The zephyrs so balmy at night,

   I would not exchange my home here to range

      Forever in azure so bright.

--Dr. Brewster Higley, Smith County, Kansas

January

Okay, so maybe it's not such a bad thing that I'm retro-blogging 5 months behind. It's fun for me to relive these pictures!

Katie, with her Poppy headband and Hug Time bracelet from the movie Trolls, hugging her beloved baby brother.

Why on EARTH are toys like this still being made? Seriously, can't anyone figure out a different place to put the buttons or the blow up valves?

Shad's parents, Vern and Pris, gave us their duplos when they moved to Colorado in September, and we saved them til Christmas to give to the kids. Everyone loves playing with the big Legos!

{Shad, Thora, Samson, Tommy, Dancy, Katie}

I never get tired of after-bath cuddles.

{Samson}

When Thora pouts, it's always easy to perk her up with some selfies! Little Miss Diva.

Samson is such a rascal with this spare pack-n-play that he folds up the bottom board and then sits on the fabric. It finally reached my tolerance limits this month and I shuffled around bed assignments.

Tom and Katie are so excited to be eating functionally with chopsticks!

Sometimes we take pictures of ordinary life for my best friend and pen pal in England. This one is of me walking home at 11 pm from working at the movie theater, popcorn bucket in hand, with a fine mist in the air and just a hint of the pink theater neons in the background. Haydn loved the artistic look of it!

I finally got Katie to the point of letting me teach her to read, even though she still doesn't know all her letters yet. She's been very stubborn and frustrating in that department. But we started reading!

Picasso, Snakes, and Legos

St. Louis, Day 4: Art Museum, World's "Aquarium," and the Lego Store

We started off the morning at the art museum. Katie loves art, and our kids actually do a good job appreciating art if we do it in small doses. Say, an hour at a time.

We started in modern art and enjoyed this cool interactive piece of 4 open cubes.

{Katie, Dancy, Megan, Tommy}

{Shad, Thora, Samson}

I liked sitting there, watching people walk by.

We saw 5 Picassos!

After the art museum, we went to World's "Aquarium." Note, this is NOT an aquarium, but more like a guy with a ton of aquatic and reptilian pets decided to open up shop and let people pay him to see and pet and feed his animals. Something my brother Jake might do! Hahaha!

Regardless, we thoroughly enjoyed it...some more than others. Katie wants a pet snake now and is so excited that I said she can have one when she's old enough to take care of it without parental assistance. I'm not squeamish with snakes but I sure don't want something else to keep alive and clean up after.

Katie the Pirate

That pink thing on the side of the tank is a stingray swimming up to touch my hand! I think maybe it was expecting food, but it was fun, tickly kisses! Touching a stingray was the one expectation I had for myself in going to an aquarium. At least this one still met that!

Just a random walkway built in the basement...

{Dancy, Katie, Thora, Tommy}

I love this expression!

{Samson and Megan}

I think we're holding a bull snake. I can't remember all the ones Valenzina pulled out for us.

Look at that excitement!

{Samson, Megan, Thora}

{Dancy, Tommy, Valenzina, Samson, Katie, Thora, Megan}

I had to rescue Katie from the bull snake she was holding--it was slithering down the top of her shirt!

Dancy got brave for one second.

Mostly she liked the animals from a distance.

Again, with the poses!

Tommy had to be bribed to hold a snake. I told him I'd buy a penny book for him to keep his souvenir pressed pennies. That got him thinking seriously.

{Tommy and bull snake}

And right after the picture he was done.

Katie, Megan and Thora

Kaa!

Katie was a natural with all the creatures. Here she is holding a cockroach, Wall-E's friend!

Spunk, this one.

When everyone else had left the basement and it was just me and Katie, Valenzina let Katie feed the turtles, no charge! Valenzina was very impressed with Katie's love and bravery that she felt Katie deserved this.

Valenzina was surprised that I wanted a picture of HER with Katie, rather than asking her to take a picture of ME with Katie. No, Valenzina, we want to remember you.

{Valenzina and Katie with bull snakes}

Valenzina moved from Belarus several years ago. Her name is the Belarusian form of Valentina.

Feeding tilapia to snapping turtles.

Those big black rock-like things in the center are shark eggs!

"Oh, no! Where's Samson?"

"Peekaboo! There he is!"

{Samson's favorite game}

And then it was noon and we tried to go buy tickets for the ride up the Arch. They were sold out. I had called that morning at 8 to ask if the elevator was fixed because they had been replacing the electrical system. They told me it was up and running, but they didn't say that I should buy my tickets online to make sure we got in. They got 3 large school groups and were sold out by 11 am. Tell me, why don't the school groups have to buy their tickets in advance?

So we went to the Lego Store instead.

Samson had a blast pushing the stroller around.

All five kids. We love Lego!!

{Tommy, Katie, Dancy, Thora, Samson}

Samson probably spent about 10 minutes just walking on the mat behind the registers. Down to one end, turn around, down to the other. The employees said that at Lego, they aren't above hiring kids to work, so it was okay for him to patrol the area.

Samson was very done at this point.

{Thora, Dancy, Katie, Tommy, Samson}

The following morning, we left St. Louis and had a normal roadtrip home: lots of movies on the built in DVD system for the kids, and me reading aloud Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to Shad. That book gets inTENSE when you read a lot at a time! Even when you've read it before.