Easter Events with "Gram"

Easter events with Gram (Margaret has decided that "Grandma" is too long a word, so shortened it...) are anticipated for the entire month before Easter. The children like looking for eggs, but more than that, they LOVE decorating eggs with Gram. So... here's the photo essay (with some narration) of this year's events.

Aunt Rachel and her boyfriend, Jamie, scattered all the eggs. Some of them were well hidden so that the older children would have a harder time finding them, but all in all, it looked like the Easter Bunny exploded all over the yard.

All the colored dots are eggs. There were A LOT. and ever so fun to pick up!

Bailey. Intent on gathering eggs. Nothing was breaking her focus.

Not to be outdone, Caroline is seen here taking a break from her hunting.

That basket of LeGrand's was filled to the top!

Still more, but there's time to cheese it.

Here. I'll give you this one, and I'll have the next one. Or two. Or three...

Savannah's eggs were a little harder for her to find, but she found them all!

Margaret was a fast gatherer. She had a well laden basket.

Checking out the loot...

Savannah found the Golden Egg! And Jamie switched  the contents so it was $10!!!

Mom, this is too hot. It's WAY too warm. Can I be done?

A successful hunt! (L-R: Bailey, Caroline, Kyle, LeGrand, Margaret, Kennedy, Savannah)

And then, after all the other festivities, it was time to decorate eggs. Each child has their own dozen to decorate. Some are a little faster than others. (One year, LeGrand took maybe 2 minutes to dye all of his eggs... and they were all the same color.)

  

Waiting for the egg to turn just the right shade of purple...

Really learning from Grandma.

See! They're turning blue!

Some are faster dunkers than others - LeGrand has his two colors, Caroline her little rainbow, Savannah her creative eggs, and Margaret - still waiting for that perfect purple! They ended up making a different purple dye - the other didn't work.

Grandma. Helping with the egg dying process.

Gram did a fantastic job teaching Caroline the finer arts of getting the PERFECT color!

And here's the speed dunking champion! This year, he was still intent on one color... thankfully, Gram sits by him and switches colors.

Bailey didn't participate in the egg dying this year. She was taking a nap. Much love and thanks to Grandma Stahr for putting on a fantastic egg hunt and some wonderful egg dying! The egg salad leftovers are fantastic!

If this were my Journal...

My posts would probably be more spread apart. But that's just being totally honest, and not trying to pretend that I write in my journal. I used to be good at doing that. Then I had kids, and made them my excuse for not writing. I should do better. I'll keep telling myself that.

ANYWAY, this was not started to air my faults. Though there are plenty of those! I thought people wanted, instead, to see what the children have been up to.

Margaret lost her first tooth. And then she had a birthday.

Margaret's birthday: The beginning of February, pictures never posted. Well, here they are. (FYI, I'm even farther behind on my scrapbooking than I am on my journal writing.)

WOW! Look at all the fun stuff you get when you turn 6!!!

Strawberry "TALL" cake... if you eat tall foods, you'll be tall! If you eat short foods, you'll stay short!

Grandma Pierce made this super fun dress. Bloomers and EVERYTHING!

Caroline, a few weeks later, turned 2. Silly girl, she appeared to be afraid of her chocolate brownie sundae...

March came in like a lion. A BIG, White, FLUFFY lion. It snowed for 26 hours - without melting! It was fantastic to wake up to some Alaskan weather... MUCH more snow than we normally see here, so school was - of necessity - cancelled. (When there isn't much snow, you cancel homeschool to play. That's how we chose to roll that day...)

We ended up with about 6 inches this snowfall. Not much, but 6 inches more than we normally get!

I miss it when the trees look like this!

Note the thinning snow on the roof... 

Our Western Pasture...

Andrew stayed home to participate in one of his favorite activities... Shoveling the SNOW!

March continued like a wet dog with lots of rain for most of the remainder of the month. Oregon officially had the RAINIEST MARCH ON RECORD, if that says anything... Not like the snow my Alaska family had, but... The END of the month brought another 8 inches of snow. Public school wasn't cancelled - they used up all their snow days on hoar frost, but we cancelled so the children could play! My pictures from THAT snow are stuck on my phone. I'll post them later.

April is working on redeeming itself with better weather. So far, it's doing better. I'll be satisfied when we have the SUNNIEST SUMMER on record. Probably won't happen, but hey... I can dream.

April started with me vacuuming water out of the basement. Again. I wasn't super thrilled to be on flood watch - still. Nevertheless, Conference was fantastic, and I'm looking forward to re-reading the talks I missed while vacuuming water.

Then came the annual decorating of the Egg! This year, both Aunt Rachel and Aunt Laurel joined our tradition at Grandma Stahr's house. (Grandpa lives there to, but he didn't decorate eggs this year.) LeGrand still is a dipper - all one color, 1 second per egg. He's done with is dozen in 12 seconds flat. No time wasted here! This year, we asked him to do them all over again, and to use different colors. Not his most favorite idea. Caroline spilled green dye all over Grandma (it comes out with hot water if you catch it right away) and herself, but had fun. Margaret was a champion dyer with the patience of Job waiting for just the perfect color. Savannah experimented this year with different styles of decorating. All in all, we completed 8 dozen eggs - and taught Savannah how to tell the difference between a raw egg and a hard boiled one; without breaking the egg.

Our Easter egg hunt happened, this year, on Easter. LeGrand and Savannah were the big egg winners - each getting the prized $1 egg; Margaret was the hostess with the mostess! She picked the eggs one by one off the trees, and filled her basket to the top. Doesn't hurt that Grandma has about 200 eggs that she hides!

This was Caroline's second year of hunting, but her first year of realizing the the eggs are filled with candy...

She was fascinated. Note the basket of eggs... they're all hers. This year, LeGrand got to hunt eggs from the BIG yard, and he managed to escape Caroline helping herself to his eggs. He was pleased as punch to get each egg.

Other noteworthy news: Bailey FINALLY has a tooth! And another on the way. She isn't ready to share yet, but I'll get a photo soon!

 Because she didn't dye eggs and slept through the hunt, HERE SHE IS!

Bailey is constantly on the go. She's faster than a blink at moving from one place to another, and her favorite destination is the stairs. She can be quieted simply by someone saying my name - but that's a temporary fix. she'd much rather have Mom.

If you've read through all of this, you are now officially caught up. Until tomorrow.

Fractions and Hearts

Who knew that a nine year old would try to make a PRIME number not Prime? She's trying to figure out how to make 11 divide equally. Or 19. And she's suggested other numbers that she things OUGHT to be Prime... 21 is NOT a prime number. Nor is 18. We're learning that.

I LOVE the learning process.

In other news, Andrew and I suffered a "Heart Attack" last night. With help from the babysitter. We had such notes as, "I'll help you clean this up." and "I love you. Apparently." Those were the ones that the girls told Taylor to write. She's such a good sport! The hearts led up the stairs, and ended up in a large pile on the floor outside our bedroom door. The girls were trying to help Andrew get in the Valentine's mood. I gave Taylor a box of Chocolates. She deserved it after a last minute "Andrew wants to take me to his Basketball Meeting and I need a babysitter can you come?" phone call. I may not let her leave to college this fall. Salt Lake is TOO far to commute for emergency sitting...

Christmas 2010 Highlights

I was going to do this two weeks ago, but I'll have to make do with only being 5 days late... If you're celebrating OLD Christmas. (It's on the Old calendar. Ask any Russian.) I should have a New New Year's Party... just for laughs. I don't have that much energy though.

Christmas was, for the most part, uneventful. I forgot to take pictures of the children with their presents... you'll have to wait for the tree pictures. They're not on the computer yet.

Savannah is completely and totally enthralled with "Little House on the Prairie". She wanted a bonnet for Christmas. Grandma Stahr made her one. (It didn't make it to the list until three days before Christmas...) She loves is, and is currently disappointed in herself for leaving it at someone's house the other day. I finished her skirt on New Year's Eve - she's worn it no less than 7 times since then. She was thrilled with the oatmeal under the tree... She loves Instant Oatmeal, so it's a treat to have it. It was gone two days later.

Margaret's skirt was under the tree... if it wasn't in the wash, she'd still be wearing it. She also got a bonnet for Christmas. She wasn't thrilled with the pajama bottoms I made her... they didn't have a shirt to go with them.

LeGrand got a toy gun for Christmas - He and Andrew went outside to shoot "nuns", and I'm really glad that it didn't take the batteries long to die. His other favorite toy was his "Ractor" that has really fun bouncy tires. He's only taken the tires off more times than he's actually played with the tractor, but it's been an adventure finding them. He loves to play with the Little People Nativity - they fit nicely into the LP bus that he has... he takes them to "Basketball games" and the Wise Men make super bus drivers. Sometimes, all the shepherds have a party on the roof of the stable with the angels. It's fun to watch LeGrand play pretend with the Little People.

Caroline wasn't all that interested in much this Christmas - except for the paper. She loves the little bug puzzle from Aunt Sheila - it's been a big hit around the house.

I took back all of the presents I got for Andrew and exchanged them for the right sizes and types... teach me to shop with a cold! And Andrew gave me some amazing Cast Iron. I find it funny that I'm thrilled by the thought of Kitchen Ware - but the bread pan makes pretty great meatloaf!

Perhaps one of the greatest things of this season was seeing the Radio City Rockettes and their beautiful interpretation of the Christmas Story. Read from the Bible. In Oregon. In a Public Performance. I was moved to tears, and very touched to have such a simple reminder. (The box seats weren't bad either! I may never attend another performance in any event without wanting that treatment... the free popcorn and sodas were a hit with Margaret and Savannah... as was the "free closet" that we had to hang our coats in.)

Christmas Eve was at our house this year, and dinner was a spectacular success. We had marvelous appetizers and home made napoleons for dessert. And I will freely admit that I broke the cardinal rule of entertaining and tried out at least three new recipes on my guests. And then thanked my lucky stars that none of them turned out like "Skurvy Pie" (that's a different story for a different day... Someday I'll post the recipe and reasons NOT to make it.)

And now... I'll close. I have dishes to do, laundry to wash fold and put away, a Christmas Tree to take down, two bedrooms to clean, Savannah to motivate in the scholastic direction, LeGrand's hair to cut, and photos to pick up before my client arrives. And sometime today, I hope to have time to breathe.

Almost Forgot... The Pumpkins.

Savannah's Pumpkin, LeGrand's Pumpkin and Margaret's Pumpkin. After finding giant slugs in the pumpkins that were on the porch overnight, the girls and LeGrand stuffed them with sawdust and put them on the burn pile. As far as I know, they're now entombed in sawdust and we'll have pumpkin mash when the pile degrades.

It's PUMPKIN time!!!

Every year the children and I take a 20 minute drive south to Jefferson and purchase pumpkins. We pull our favorites off the pile, load them in the wagons, drag the wagons across the parking lot, pay for our pumpkins, drag them BACK across the parking lot and load them in the trunk of the car.

This year, we had two wagons and a wheelbarrow... fondly labeled "Pumpkin Barrow". Why do I make this drive to the Pumpkin Pile instead of going to the grocery store?

Economics.

Pumpkins at the grocery store are 18 cents per pound. Some of you are probably saying, "I wish I could get my pumpkins that cheaply!!!" On average, the pumpkins we purchase are a lot bigger than 1 pound. (We bought 13 pumpkins this year...) The rule at our house is that you have to be able to carry your own pumpkin across the parking lot (since that's usually the distance from the car to the carving location...). Margaret ALWAYS chooses a small one. Savannah ALWAYS chooses a large one that she ends up grumbling about because it gets heavier the farther she carries it...

LeGrand chose his pumpkin based on how heavy it was, Caroline is too small for a pumpkin.

Pumpkins at the Pumpkin Pile are $1.00 EACH. The big ones. The little ones. The medium sized ones. All $1.00 each. If figure that I average out to what I would pay for one big one at the grocery store.

And then... the pumpkins turn into Jack-O-Lanterns. I'll post those photos after we're done. These are destined to be carved this weekend. And if ALL of them get carved and there's not one left for pie, it's only $1.00 (plus fuel) to get another. I think I can handle that...