Life At The Circus

My girls, especially my youngest, love to change clothes.  And often.  It borders on ridiculous.  I knew if I didn’t document it, no one would believe me. So, take a look at Thursdays attire here at the circus. (I will mention that we never left the house today).  The day started at 7:00am , didn’t have the camera ready then, but here she is at 8:30am .  (wearing the clothes she wore last night plus a coat) 11 minutes later at 8:41am she is sporting her “bubble bathing suit” (so named b/c of the polka dots on the ruffles) This lasted all of 18 minutes because by 8:59am she traded swim suits with her big sister By 10:57 am , she added her winter boots, hat, and mittens.  She was determined to go outside, but didn’t make it past the door.  (hmmm… wonder why) At 11:17am (20  minutes later) she discovered the too short Winnie the Pooh sailor dress from last summer that I keep trying to hide and she keeps discovering.  ...

I love Christmas.  One of the things I love most is that it is celebrated for an entire month.  I love the time of preparation and the focus on Christ’s birth. But without Easter, Christmas truly is meaningless.  As awesome as it is that God sent his only Son to earth, it is only the first part of the story.  His death on the cross for our sins and the fact that he rose from the dead 3 days later is what gives not just this story, but every life story purpose and meaning.  And yet it seems Easter gets so little of our focus.  Sure there are Easter baskets and egg hunts, and egg dying and beautiful spring dresses (none of which have anything to do with the true meaning of Easter) but all of that takes place pretty much on Easter.  I don’t see much preparation and focus for Easter like I do for Christmas. This year I am going to try to be intentional and spend focused time as a family preparing our hearts for Easter.   I want to carve o...

I know that many think Valentine’s day is just a day created by Hallmark.  Others think it’s a cheesy holiday for saps.   Say what you will, I’ll jump at a chance for a date night with my hubby.  And I don’t mind a sweet card and some cinnamon heart candy either. But, after having kids, Scott and I found it rather difficult to go out for Valentine’s day.  Since we don’t hire babysitters, we typically rely on friends or grandparents for babysitting and you can’t ask another couple to babysit for you on Valentine’s Day.  So, for a few years we just did an in home date night after putting the little one (and then ones) to bed.  But, then one year we got an idea that we both LOVED and a tradition was born.  We decided to celebrate Valentine’s day on the 7th instead of the 14th.   This way, we weren’t asking anyone to skip out on their own Valentine’s plans.  And the best part is, it also frees us up to babysit for a friend so that...

When I came out to the kitchen to make breakfast this morning, I felt a cold draft.  I then noticed my son sitting in the sliding glass door.  He told me he was listening to the birds in the backyard.  They were offering up a beautiful melody.  One thing I love about life with small children is that they help you to stop and take notice of the everyday miracles in the world around you.  How often do we just sit and listen to the birds?  After awhile though, I was cold so I told him to put a coat on and sit outside to listen.  He made some toast and took his breakfast outside on this cold February morning to spend some more time with his beloved birds.  As is often the case, it didn’t take long for his younger sisters to follow his lead.  Check out their bird watching attire.  On mornings like this, I love the flexibility of home schooling.  I love that we can just start our day a little later and let them follow...

Thought I’d share a glimpse of our dishwasher with you all.  Because it cracks me up.  Last week I called Scott at work to tell him the dishwasher was gushing water out the sides.  One thing I love about Scott, is that when something appears broken, he almost always finds a way to make it work.  Seriously, he is not afraid to tear anything apart and “ macgyver ” it.  Which has saved us tons of money over the years… He’s torn apart computers, the washing machine, the dishwasher, our oven, the toilet… He has managed to baby our dishwasher for quite awhile now.  I have thought for sure it was a goner (and sometimes even secretly wished it was b/c I would love a new one with a timer) many times as it’s leaked water all over our kitchen.  But Scott would just grab a screw driver pull it out and find a way to make it work.  This time the gasket was broken, which keeps the seal at the top closed, thus preventing water from gushing out the sides dur...

We’ve  been recording the Olympics and then watching portions of it the following evening with our kids.  I have loved their enthusiasm for the events.  They wave their American flags and pound their fists in their air chanting, “Go USA, GO USA, GO USA!”  My son has had lots o f questions about the countries and flags and which ones are our friends.  We’ve had many teachable moments to discuss hard work, practice, and never giving up.  And I couldn’t help myself, I teared up when Alexandre Bilodeau became the first Canadian to win Olympic gold on home soil and got chills when China’s Shen and Zhao won a gold after 18 years of skating together.   But my favorite Olympic moment thus far this year was watching my girls imitate the figure skaters.  

I’ve seen various posts every now and then linked up to I Heart faces weekly photo contests.  And I’ve thought about entering, but then never did.  When I heard the theme this week was “I Wanna Dance”  I knew I had to link up a picture from our impromptu New Years Eve dance party in our living room.  The hardest part for me, was picking which picture.  Hope I made the right choice.   Click the button below to see more entries!

We knew this day was coming for awhile now.  In fact, it got pushed back at least twice.  But, sadly, the inevitable could not be avoided…after spending 10 weeks on the east coast, aunt Karen and baby Eli headed back to Texas this morning.  We have had a blast having them close for so long.  It’s been so fun to “pretend” they were local and see them casually for dinners, or at church, or for an overnight every now and then.   We’ve truly lived it up during our time together.  We attended the parade of lights in downtown Annapolis, we took a road trip to visit our mutual blogging friend, Happy , (4 kids and 2 moms on a 5 hr road trip…that was a slew of memories in and of itself), we had a girls night out, Scott and Karen relived their children and played numerous games of Dr Mario on her Wii, had an impromptu dance party, and played in the snow.  She taught my son to play solitaire and she downloaded kid friendly apps to her smart phone for all ...

Thought you might enjoy a little simple math to recap the week here at the circus.  Add together the following totals…. 2 major snowstorms 33 inches of snow fallen 1 official blizzard 20 cups of hot chocolate drank 2 types of cookies baked 1 Daddy sized igloo built 1 sledding hill   0 power outages 1 sleepover with our cousin 1 awesome aunt snowed in with us 1 batch of snow cream countless icicles growing =  Memories to last a lifetime!!

Took the kids for a walk to the park.  Nothing exceptional about that, except I realized when looking through pictures that exactly 2 years before I had done the same thing. We were compelled to go because of the exceptional weather. Funny how life repeats itself. Only it doesn’t. 2 years ago, we didn’t wear jackets.      In fact, if you look close… some of us weren’t even wearing shoes.     This time , however, we were all able to walk on our own.  And we thought jackets were a good idea. 2 years ago I was a little more lax about letting them get near the water. The difference between then and now is kind of funny. Same date , same month, same state, same park…very different extremes. (Click to make me bigger)

If your from the midatlantic region (as most of my readers are, b/c I think most of my readers stalk me from facebook) then you have probably seen and read and heard all you want about snow this past week.   Seriously, I have scrolled through and looked at gazillions of pictures of face book friends back decks overflowing with snow and seen kids waste high in it, which is kind of funny since I can look out my own windows and see the very same images.  And if you aren’t from around here, then you may not have a clue what’s going on.  Because I’ll be honest… I don’t know what the weather in FL or Idaho or CA is doing right now.  As I mentioned before, we’ve had a crazy winter.  2 MAJOR snowstorms in one winter… a true anomaly here with another blizzard warning issued for tomorrow. For real?  Another 6-20 (depending on which site you go to) on top of the almost 2 feet I have sitting out in my yard!!!! And I thought rather than share with you mor...

Mary has created a carnival to help us record those funny and precious things our kids say, so we’ll remember them in years to come.  Some weeks I’ve got nothing…this week, however, my kids gave me a few gems I don’t want to forget.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Last week my five year old and I were working on handwriting.  Handwriting is often a battlefield for us.  This particular day I knew he wasn’t giving it his all and I wasn’t seeing his best work.  I told him he needed to do his best and reminded him that his tutor would be looking at it the next time he goes his class.  His response, “What?  I thought this was just a scrimmage!” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I have a thing for those red hot candies at Valentine’s day.  Seriously, could eat em by the handful for hours.  And I was having a hard time waiting till nap time to sneak them so my kids caught me and thus, I ha...

  Most years when I put together our family scrapbooks, our “Fun in the Snow” spread looks something like this.  Notice the grass poking through the snow and the pathetic little snowball snowman my son built? But, this winter has been crazy! We had a record breaking snowfall in December.  Then, last week we got a good 6 inches of snowfall (which in any normal MD winter, would have made us giddy with excitement).  And today we were blasted with another record breaking and historic snowfall.  In a way I feel kind of sorry for our kids, because at this young age they are already seeing the most snow they will probably ever see at one time.  It’s all down here from here.  No worries, though, we’ve documented it well and are fully enjoying some fun in the snow.  I am so glad that this year I snagged some boots on sale on Black Friday.  I def got my money’s worth out of em! (click me and I’ll get bigger)