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Life is always more fun when you turn it into a game.  For Kayla, that means she spends much of her life pretending to be Laura Ingalls.  It’s especially fun when we play school.  Laura is an excellent student and will do anything the teacher says—for hours on end!

We’ve almost completed the Little House series.  We read all the “Laura” books, and we’re now reading “Farmer Boy,” the book Laura wrote about her husband Almanzo’s childhood.  Tonight Kayla wanted to be Eliza Jane, one of Almanzo’s sisters.  I was their mother, and the two of us washed dishes together while Madeline and Savannah played.

Madeline and Savannah were playing so nicely; I was pretty impressed.  I always use my ears as a guide to know if I should check on them.  Madeline was giggling constantly, so I knew she was doing fine.  But I couldn’t hear Savannah.  At first I tried to push it out of my mind, but then I realized I really should check on her.  When I opened the door to her room, Savannah had climbed to the top of the changing table and was just hanging out!  I didn’t know she could to that!  I had the “don’t ever do that again” talk with her, which I hope she understood.  Silly girl!

Aren’t they sweet?

And here’s a picture of the sisters before class.

For school Wednesday afternoon, the activity was pumpkin carving.  The subjects?  Science (we were dealing with a pumpkin after all; there has to be some science to that), art (we were expressing our creativity), math (we counted the seeds by fives and tens), and home economics (we roasted the seeds).  Did I miss anything?

Our babysitter, Kim, didn’t have school that day and was able to join us.

Based on a book we read about pumpkins, we guessed that Miss Kim’s pumpkin had more seeds.  (It was darker and had more lines, therefore we suspected it had spent more time on the vine.)  The result?

Our pumpkin:  578 seeds

Miss Kim’s pumpkin:  398 seeds

I guess we were wrong.  That was certainly a lot of practice counting!

The princesses are starting to feel better after another round of the rotavirus.  Thankfully Madeline seemed to miss it again but caught a bad cold or something.  Both Kayla and Madeline had temperatures of 104 on Madeline’s birthday.

Here are a couple pictures of the princesses in their new dress-up gear:

Princess Kayla spent the morning with Aaron for “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.”  Though I had two sick girls at home, it was pretty quiet around here and things certainly felt a touch easier than having all three.  But it was good to have Kayla back at lunchtime!  She is a blessing and a joy.

Princess Madeline and I baked “Masterpiece Muffins” during our special time together. 

Madeline turned three today!  And it seems like birthday celebrations in 2009 haven’t gone quite as planned yet.

To recap, we planned to celebrate Savannah’s birthday (along with Aaron’s and Aunt Rachel’s birthdays) on February 28.  The night before Kayla started throwing up, so we cancelled that celebration.

We missed a birthday party for a friend on March 2 because Kayla had been in the ER that night.

Kayla was in the hospital on Aaron’s birthday, March 3.

Yesterday we celebrated Madeline’s birthday with cake (made by my mom), presents and a trip to the Butterfly exhibit at the Dow Gardens.  Here are a few pictures:

On the way home from the Dow Gardens, Savannah started throwing up.  I was next, and then Kayla.  

We cancelled our plans to celebrate Madeline’s birthday with Aaron’s side of the family today.  Hopefully this will pass quickly and we’ll all be back on our feet again soon.

Here is a day in our life.

Madeline is proud of the picture she drew.

Here is Savannah using sign language to say she wants to nurse.

Savannah fell asleep on the way home from her 12-month check up.  She’s a big girl!  Almost 22 pounds and 30 inches long!  

Savannah received her first birthday card in the mail.  The big girls were excited about it too, and soon all the sisters were having fun together.

If you know how much we love to play outside, then you know that we certainly took advantage of yesterday’s gorgeous weather.  Here’s how the day went:

We kept our usual Tuesday morning routine of going to Meijer.  I always see Meijer as a classroom and take advantage of the many teaching opportunities there—weighing bananas, counting lobsters, reading ingredient labels.  And the beauty of homeschooling is that we could take the rest of the day off “school” as we played outside in the sunshine!  (Since we do “school” five days a week, taking a day off here or there is no big deal.  It’s nice to have that flexibility.)  

Around 2:30 in the afternoon, after we had finished most of the indoor chores and started the pizza dough in the bread machine, we headed out to muddy backyard.  The girls had a blast playing on the swingset and digging around in the sandbox.  While they played, I organized the mud room.  Back in January we had spent some time getting the entire house organized (maybe I’ll write more about that another time).  However, it had been too cold to organize the mud room, so I told myself that I would tackle it on the first warm day.  So now our entire house and the mud room are neat, tidy and organized; the only thing left is the garage.  We’ll get to that later this spring.

While I worked, the girls made me treats from the sandbox.  Kayla said, “here’s a treat for you for working so hard!”  They made lots and lots of treats!  Meanwhile, Savannah took a 3+ hour nap.  I was sorry she couldn’t get out to play, but it sure was nice having such a long stretch of time to work.  

Here are some pictures of the girls making treats:

We came inside for a while to make and eat homemade pizza, and then we all (including Aaron and Savannah) took a walk to Dairy Queen for ice cream!  We’ve never done that in February before!  What a wonderful day.  :)

When the new year comes, I usually like to set some sort of goal or two—though I prefer not to call them resolutions.  This year one of my goals was to spend more time playing with my kids!  With all the time that goes into feeding them, teaching them and caring for their basic needs, sometimes it’s hard to put all distractions aside and just play!  So last Monday, before the brutal cold weather came, Kayla, Madeline and I spent the afternoon goofing around outdoors.  The highlights (in my opinion) were playing tag and making snow angels.  Here are a couple pics:

I’m not big on letting my kids watch movies.  When we go on car trips, however, we never leave home without Dora movies.  Aaron drives and listens to a book on his iPod, I read, and Kayla and Madeline watch endless episodes of Dora the Explorer.  (Savannah chills out, rarely sleeps and occasionally vocalizes her discontentment!)  

This morning, Madeline (who is always pretending to be someone else) was Dora.  I’m not sure how much of this is from her own head and how much is from actual Dora episodes, but I sure thought it was cute nonetheless!

Madeline:  I’m Dora.

Mommy:  Oh, hi, Dora.  What are you going to do today?  Are you going to go on an adventure?

Madeline:  Yeah.

Mommy:  Are you going to help somebody?

Madeline:  Yeah.  Boots.

Mommy:  Oh, did Boots lose something?

Madeline:  His boots!

Mommy:  Oh boy!  Boots lost his boots.  Where will you go to find them?

Madeline:  To the nut forest!  Boots and I will go there, and Tico will take us there in his car.  And then the nuts will follow us there, and they’ll go back up in the trees.

Mommy:  Wow!  The nuts will go back up in the trees?

Madeline:  Yeah, and then we’ll go to Crocodile Lake.  Benny will help Boots when he falls out of the boat.  Yeah, he falls out of the boat when he’s getting Dora’s backpack.

Mommy:  Oh did Backpack fall in Crocodile Lake?

Madeline:  Yeah.  And then I’ll go play with the Fiesta Trio!  And I’ll sing a song with them.  I’ll sing “My God is So Big!”

I couldn’t decide which picture I like best.