Seeing Purple

People just don't know what to think.

Is it purple jelly beans?

Did I feed him blueberries?

Did he get into the markers?

NOPE.

It's Gentian Violet.

What is that, you might ask?

It is a way to treat thrush.

You can read more about both of them here.

Random

I'm not even going to try to update this blog in chronological order of events.  However, there are a couple cute things that I wanted to share.

First, Olivia was having a friend sleep over (her BFF) on Friday, April 1st.  Well, that just demanded that we should make some fun "vegetable" cupcakes I saw on a blog called Our Best Bites.  So we made a batch and the girls decorated them to deliver to some friends.

They turned out super cute.  Here we have "peas and carrots" and "mashed potatoes".  The peas are green runts, the carrots are orange Starburst cut into fourths.  And the butter on the mashed potatoes?  Flattened lemon Starbursts of course.  Eating our veggies was never so fun!

One of my favorite times is when Connor and Maddox are up around 7 or so in the morning (and in a good mood) and the girls are sleeping in.  It's not that I don't love the girls, but I sure do love playing with my boys uninterrupted.  This one particular morning, Connor insisted on having Maddox lay next to him on the loveseat while I fixed him a cup of juice so he could "take care of Maddox".  He's so sweet the way he loves on his brother.  Anyhow, once I brought the cup back and gave it to Connor, Maddox couldn't take his eyes off of it and wanted nothing more than to get his hands on it.  So, I shot a video to share the cuteness.

Also, another picture from a field trip we took to Martin Park Nature Reserve.  Their nature center has a bin of walking sticks that visitors can borrow for walking the trails.  The kids all needed their very own, of course.  And since this happened to be the same day as the sleepover Olivia was having (April 1st) we had Olivia's friend K with us.

I love how all the girls are using them as walking sticks, but Connor, on the other hand, is using his as a weapon. That about sums up his life right now.  He's a violent little bugger. But at least he's usually trying to kill the "huma" (aka "puma") and not us.

Our Little Thespian

This past year Olivia was in a homeschool drama class taught by a FABULOUS woman named Linda.  The first thing the class did was collaborate on writing and illustrating a book to submit to Scholastic Books.  Olivia, of course, was one of the illustrators (among other things).  They wrote a book entitled Yesterday's Tomorrow about a group of girls from the future that end up in 1890.  It was very cute!

Then, Linda took their book and made it into a play.  Cool, right?  Not nearly as cool as the actual performance!  It was only about 30 minutes long, but Ben and I are "right proud of our young'un".  Olivia is usually very shy about getting up in front of a group of people, so this was a big deal for her and us!  She had a little stage fright as curtain time got closer, but I couldn't tell a bit when she was actually on stage.

Since I was the "play photographer", I got a lot of pictures during the performance...

I'll spare you the bulk of them, but here are a few:

Olivia's character in the play was named Sarah.  She was a 19-year old big sister to the girls on the left.  The "Ma and Pa" were away and she was in charge.  At one point Ben leaned over to me and said, "Was she really cast as the bossy big sister in this play?"  Yes, yes... it was typecasting for sure!

In this scene, she's caring for the house and taking care of the youngest sister while the two other sisters are gathering eggs and complaining that Sarah (Olivia) shouldn't make them do so many chores since she has nothing better to do than sit around all day and take care of their sister.  Ha!

"Sarah" protecting younger sis from the strange future people.

The full cast and director taking a bow together.  It's SO obvious we're anti-social homeschoolers :-)

Olivia after the play.

Another cast photo.  Olivia's BFF is the girl standing on her right (our left).  Her younger sister at the end is also a good friend of Olivia's.  Kelsey adores these girls, too, and they often include her in their invitations.  They are so sweet!

And... as a bonus picture... there was one school house scene on the floor close to the audience that Connor decided he had to be part of.  See him there on the left?  Little stinker.

We're so proud of you, Olivia!  You were great!!

Laundry Issues

For some time now, my girls have been taking care of their own clothes - hanging up pants and shirts, putting away pj's and socks, etc.  When we started this, Kelsey was young enough that she had a hard time opening the pants hangers, so she just had to hang up her shirts and either Ben or I would do her pants. 

Several months ago Kelsey started hanging up her pants, too.  She surprised us the first time, and then we discussed that if she could get her hangers open, she needed to hang them up herself.  She's been doing great until about 2 weeks ago - she started leaving pants for me to hang up again.  Huh?  So our conversation went something like this:

Mommy: Kelsey, I don't understand why you're leaving the pants for me to do.  If you can open the hangers, you need to hang them up yourself.  You've been doing a great job with that lately.

Kelsey: But Mommy, it hurts my gums now.

Apparently, our little monkey has been opening the hangers with her mouth.  Since she lost her front teeth a couple of weeks ago... well, you get the picture.

Zip Ties

I just did a temporary repair on our washing machine with the aid of Google and a ziptie (with Ben's help, of course). 

I think that makes me a special kind of hi-tech redneck...

Waaayyy Behind

I seem to have only two choices when it comes to posting on this blog:
   *Stay up late at night to get it done
   *Blogging in fits and starts

I can't seem to work it into my daily routine at the moment.

It's a shame, too, because I have so much going on!  I guess this is where I say that I'm too busy living my life to blog about it?

Anyhow, I'll hopefully get some catch-up blogging done this weekend.

To hold you over, however... here's some breaking news:

Yup.  We have another toothless wonder in the family.  Kelsey lost the first one yesterday, and the second one this morning.  The funny thing is, the second one was barely loose when she woke up this morning.  I guess it's an April fool's on us!

P.S.  Ever since she lost her tooth she's been bleeding lightly from her gums.  She came in a few minutes ago telling me she'd cut her finger.  I asked her what happened and she yelled "April Fools!".  She'd put the blood from her gums on her finger.  Little stinker.