What happens when mom looks away

Life is always crazy in this house. It is to be expected when there are four spirited kids running around. Nothing is more crazy than first thing in the morning. Even when I get up before the sun I still find myself scrambling to get everyone ready, fed, and out the door to school, down for a nap, or off on morning activities. 

When nine finally rolls around it usually finds me still in my pajamas scarfing down a yogurt and feeling like I just ran a marathon. Some mornings though I am able to find a minute or two. A blessed moment when children's hair is done, they are fed, and at least those leaving to school are dressed. I take these moments to indulge in something wonderful like making the bed or doing the breakfast dishes before lunch.   

Of course in these moments the kids are left unsupervised and it is when I walk into these moments a few minutes later that I just grab the camera and smile and then wonder how they can make such a mess in the five minutes I wasn't in the room with them. 

Here is what I walked into about a week ago...

The kids decided to pull all of James'  stuffed animals and blankets down and created a "King Squidgy" throne.  Matty seemed enamored of the hat.

Then just yesterday I ran into the other room as a crashed echoed through the house. Sure enough a basket of plastic eggs were not put away after dinner the night before and Matthew had found the their colorful allure to enticing and decided that he must have them all. He was quite pleased with himself.

The other kids later began grouping these eggs by color and size.

I love these mornings. They may cause more work and more headaches I still love that I have four lovely, brilliant children who love playing with each other...plus I do have time to make the bed. 

March Outing- Planets and Kites

James has been waiting and waiting for his turn to pick the family outing. He has been talking about what he was going to pick and where we were going for weeks. Due to scheduling though we had to keep pushing his outing back. Finally we found a Friday that the girls had off and that Christian was able to only work a half day. So we packed everyone up and headed out to the Planetarium. 

I remember going to the Hansen Planetarium as a girl. For one of my birthdays I got a pass and I made very good use of it. I remember going to the star shows and then looking at the displays. I miss the old planetarium and the displays but the kids love the interactive displays. 

We learned about....

Clouds

 Telescopes

 Matthew was just happy we figured out how to make his stroller sit up so he didn't have to lay down the whole time.

 We also learned about the Mars Space Rover

 And Mars itself. I am pretty sure the kids were channeling aliens then.

We were having so much fun we didn't want the outing to end. Off it was to kite flying. We stopped at a local store and found kites on sale for 50% off. I ended up getting the kites for $2.00 each- what a bargain!!

It was a lovely windy day and perfect for kite flying.

James was a pro flier with his Spiderman kite.

 He was such a good little flier but then his kite got eaten by the building and once rescued decided to go and get caught in the trees. We had some tears but then it was better.

Poor Eve lost her kite first. She decided to drag it on the ground and two dollar kites don't last too well when that happens. Pretty soon there was a tear up the middle and it was declared unflyable. She had fun though helping everyone else fly the kites and playing on the play ground.

Laine's was the one that had a hard time getting the kite up. She has a really long tail that kept wrapping around the string. Once she got it up we gave her some tips on kite flying. She was keeping up with the best of them. 

I know people throw about the phrase "perfect afternoon" often but this truly was a perfect afternoon. The sun was shining, the kids were laughing, and it was just relaxing. I wouldn't mind repeating it again and again and again. 

Matthew-Eight months

Our little Matty boy has gone through a lot of changes this month. If I hadn't noticed before it was shown while I was trying to take some pictures this morning. See we started against the pillows, where we always take the pictures, and then he was off.

Look mom I want the camera!
If you haven't noticed we have a very mobile boy now. He has taking to crawling like a fish to water, that is, of course, unless he is mad. When he is mad he just will cry while crawling to his objective.

His other new trick...

This standing thing worked out when I actually wanted him to hold still for a picture.

He is such a good boy. He has a smile that just lights up his whole face. And boy can this boy pack away food. He eats two tubs of food for each meal and then packs away some gerber puffs and rice rusks. He also likes it when mom, dad, or poppa will slip him a little treat like tastes of Aunt Amy's cup cakes or mom's zucchini bread. He also likes hanging around his cousin Ezra who likes to share his food. I think he would attack even more food but the poor boy has no teeth.

It is funny. I feel that the first six months of this little boys life were so long but the last two have just flown by. Christian thinks that has something to do that I am finally getting a good night's sleep...most nights at least.

Matty is adored by his older brother and sisters. They love that they can play with him now and he is responsive to what they say or do.

So welcome new crawling boy...just don't walk to soon.