Wordless Wednesday - A girl, her potty, and a nap.

Lily

Post with Plentiful Pictures Packed with Princesses [and miscellanea]

It's been a long time since I did a big update, and I had a ton of pics to share. Without further ado, here they are...

This would be Elise graduating to a four-bean haystack. (A haystack is a layered taco salad, for those of you who didn't know.) For the last couple of years Elise has been saying she doesn't like beans, even though we're pretty sure she actually does like them....or at least doesn't mind eating them as much as she pretends. Most recently, she's become a fan of baked beans (and I'm not complaining!).

Leah and Grandpa at the conservatory.

Dying Easter eggs - this was the first year the girls have dyed eggs. Because Mark is the only one who eats them, we really haven't done this before (it always seemed like kind of a waste to me). However, the girls were SO excited! We only did a dozen (and Mark was getting really sick of hard boiled eggs there at the end). They had a blast though. We got up early Easter Sunday morning and dyed them.

The lighting in my dining room stinks sometimes!

...As you can see from all of these washed out pictures.

Well, the pictures aren't great, but the girls had fun, which is really the most important thing anyway.

Our lovely marbled eggs

We also did an egg hunt in the backyard. The girls were SO excited! They'd hunted for candy first thing when they came down in the morning. We don't get much, but we do get a small amount of candy that we hide around the living room for them to find. Then Elise got a new Fancy Nancy book and the twins got the Mermaid Dora movie, which they were thrilled about!

I never tire of watching Lily run! Never!

YAY for Spring!!

Leah took this picture with our camera. She told Elise to play dead, which is just *lovely... on...so many levels. *[Note the sarcasm]

Oh, and I can't forget some of our more exciting Spring news. We found a bunny nest in the backyard a couple of weeks ago! (At first Mark thought it was a mouse nest, and thank goodness he was wrong.) Those little cottontails were so tiny and cute! It reminds me of one of my favorite stories from when I was little "The Little Cottontail." (It was a Little Golden Book.) Anyway, I checked on them yesterday, and they'd left the nest. Good luck out there in the big, wide world, cute little bunnies!

Making Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chip vegan cookies...YUMM-O!

Math Question

What do you get when you add:

1 warm, sunny day

+1 fenced-in backyard

+3 little princesses

+3 active imaginations

+ 1 bin of animal toys

+ 1 box of alphabet blocks

+1 bin of "Cars"

___________________

Isn't it obvious?

You can make one zoo, complete with parking lot of "Cars"

OR 1 animal restaurant, complete with a giraffe for a server and a parking lot of "Cars"

Which makes for one very fun afternoon!! (And, I am loving it that the girls will finally play in the backyard by themselves without me needing to be out there every second!)

Orange for Stellan

We are all wearing orange for Stellan today in support of him and his family while he has his ablation to hopefully correct whatever pathways are causing the SVT (supra ventricular tachycardia or very high heart rate) in his little heart. Stellan has been hospitalized for the past 4 weeks and counting, for awhile at our local Children's hospital (where Lily has spent quite a chunk of her life) and now in Boston. Please keep him and his family in your prayers today. Click here for updates or to find out more information.

Please excuse the picture quality today. That's what happens when your husband needs the camera for work, and you have to take pictures on your laptop.

My toenails after the pedicures Romana and I enjoyed while I was in Lincoln last month. Would you believe that the polish is still mostly in tact (and it's been over a month already)?!

Camping...princess style

A few weeks back the girls pulled an overnighter in the princess tent in the living room. We had no idea if they would actually stay down there all night, despite their excitement about the idea, but they did. And, they woke up happy in the morning, which is the best part.

An Apple a Day...

We've all heard the old saying, "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day." I do believe that to be true. I also know that cold cereal is just not sufficient for my girls. They could eat an entire box in one sitting, with fruit and toast, and still be hungry an hour later. This is why I make hot cereal, granola, pancakes, or scrambled tofu burritos on a regular basis. I also love quinoa for breakfast. Not only is it extremely delicious all spiced up and tossed with dried cranberries and toasted walnuts, but it's full of protein too!

About 3 weeks ago, I added a new dish to our breakfast repertoire. MckMama would probably refer to it as "woodland creature food at its finest!"

I call it Fruit and Nut Cereal. This is one of those recipes I saw somewhere once, and it has taken on a life of it's own through adaptations and adjustments. This is how I made it today:

2 pink lady apples (unpeeled), cored and chopped into small, relatively thin pieces

2 large bananas, slices cut into little half moons

1/2-1 cup dried fruit of choice (today I used raisins, but dried cranberries are lovely too)

a couple of handfuls of unsweetened shredded coconut

1 cup of nuts, un-toasted, chopped into bits in a mini food processor (today I used raw almonds and cashews) You will want the nuts to be in very small pieces, but not necessarily powdery, if that makes sense.

1-2 tbs ground flax seed

1-2 tbs pure (or homemade) maple syrup

Drizzle of lemon juice or orange juice to prevent the fruit from browning and add Vit. C for increased iron absorption

(Wheat germ, toasted or un-toasted, would be really good too, but I'm currently out.)

Mix everything together, serve in a cereal bowl topped with milk of choice.

The girls adore this cereal. It's delicious, nutritious, and keeps them satisfied for hours! This amount easily filled up the four of us, with a little leftover. It's amazing how one bowl of something like this will satisfy their tummies far better than, say, four bowls of Cheerios or Puffins!

I wish...

I wish that way back when I was pregnant with the twins, way back when I was in the hospital on bedrest before Thanksgiving, way back when I was on Mag Sulfate, and unable to breathe out of either side of my nose due to a cold, coupled with hospital dry air, and Mag Sulfate....I wish that way back then, someone would have told me about a neti pot because I was, without a doubt, desperate enough to have used one. Plus, it would have saved me many a nasty cold throughout the years! Oh yes, I am now singing its praises....from the highest mountaintop....except we have no mountains here....so I guess maybe I'll sing my praises from the dining room table before I get back to Grecian History with Elise.

Dot theHusband

I love sitting around talking with my girls, hearing their thoughts, spending time with them, and giggling like crazy. I love this time.

Today our conversation centered around Pixar movies. First came Remy (from Ratatouille).

Leah: "Mommy, is Remy a real person?"

Me: "Well, Remy is a character in a movie, but he's not real."

Leah: "So, he's not in our world?"

Me: "No, sweetie, Remy isn't in our world."

The conversation moved on to Cars.

Elise: "Mommy, why is Sally so bossy?"

Me: "Why do you think Sally was bossy?"

Elise: "Because she wanted people to come to the town?"

Me: "Yes, that's right. If no one came to the town, then no one would buy gas or tires, or stay at her car hotel. If no one was buying those things, then the town would run out of money, and everyone would have to move away."

Elise: "But Lightning McQueen helped. He bought tires and got his car painted."

Me: "Yes, he did."

Leah: "And, why was that green car so mean?"

Me: "You mean Chick Hendrix?" Well, he was selfish. He wanted to win the race, no matter who he hurt, and it's not okay to be mean to others so you can get ahead."

Now, I'd heard her refer to this person (I use that term very loosely) a couple of times. However, in my defense, we were eating at the time, and I was answering quite a lot of questions, so it took me a minute to catch on.

Leah: "Dot theHusband helped Lighting McQueen learn how to drive, didn't he, Mommy?"

Me: [Trying hard to squelch my laughter as I finally caught on to the fact that she was talking about Doc Hudson!] "Um, yeah, Leah. Dot theHusband helped Lightning McQueen learn how to take a sharp corner on gravel. Yes, he did."

Oh, yes, conversations with my children are always interesting, surprisingly poignant at times, and usually hysterical in certain points! This is, of course, when they're not talking back.

Isn't it amazing how quickly a bad habit develops? One time, you ask them to do something, and they jokingly respond with a "No!" You raise an eyebrow or warningly say their name to let them know that won't be acceptable. Yet, somehow, they test their limits again and again and again! After numerous warnings and time outs, I finally had to do it. It's been awhile, but I pulled the "free labor" card.

You may be wondering, "What the heck on earth is 'free labor?'" Well, "free labor" was a term we used back in my boarding school days to refer to some sort of job you had to do as a punishment for some infraction. It might be peeling tape off walls, washing walls, or some other unpleasant chore.

Today, Elise washed the walls in my dining room. Then she continued with her snotty back talk, so I sent her to her room for the remainder of the night (it was 5:30, and their bedtime is 7:30, so it's not like she was in there a ridiculous amount of time before bed). I've only done that one other time, but it was very effective. I'm pretty sure it's working again because after several tearful apologies, she also made me a little heart and wrote "I love you Mom" on it.

Oh yes, I love my sweet girls. Even when they're snotty talking back, even when they ask an incessant number of questions, even when I catch them dumping their bath water all over my bathroom floor. I love them even then! And, I'm so thankful each one of them is part of our family. I cannot even imagine what our home would be like without any one of them.

I'll leave you with a few pictures I took a couple of weeks ago, on a very warm Saturday afternoon (well, it was warm for up North, anyway).