Spiderwebs and Sweeties

It's been a busy week. The concert Hub and I went to was so good, and I'm sad it's over. Our house is still kind of disaster, but better now that they came to pick up the temporary furniture and we've got some of our boxes unpacked. I've also been going through our pictures from the last month or so, trying to get our family blog updated, and I couldn't help but notice a couple of beautiful things that I had in my photo collection...

The kids noticed these spiderwebs on the swing set one morning. The morning dew and the sun made them easy to see. Spiders creep me out, but that's some beautiful work there.

My girl wanted me to take a picture of her with her baby doll. What a couple of sweeties. She's had this doll since she was a brand-new baby.

ps - the story on those bangs... I totally messed up when I cut them. I cut them way too short, and as if that wasn't bad enough, they were also really crooked. But I didn't want to try to fix them because they'd just get shorter and shorter. Poor girl... her mother is totally incompetent sometimes. :) I told her she's beautiful no matter what her bangs look like, because she is. 

I'm thankful that hair grows.

The Dainty Petal is my Hair-Do Hero

I am blessed to have a wonderful little girl. This little girl was born with a lot of hair, and by the time she was about two and a half, she really had a lot of hair.

Just look at those long, gorgeous locks. This was when she was almost three.

However she has always been what I like to call a 'free spirit', and never liked to be tied down with things such as clothing or hair-ties, clips, bows, etc. She also is not a big fan of sitting still long enough for me to do her hair. 

One of the problems is I'm not really skilled in the area of doing hair, so it always takes me longer that it should. 

So when she was almost three, I decided it would be nice to see a little more of her face more often and we went to get her first haircut. It was cute, but...

...I kind of got a little sad every time I thought of those long, baby-fine, beautiful locks.

But then I would think of times like this and and the way she wouldn't leave a ponytail in her hair, and remember why it was probably better that her hair had been cut.

My little wild child is five now and her sitting-still skills have come a long way from when she was two or three. I figure it's about time that I improve my hair-doing skills as well. 

Fortunately, I have some help.

Hairstyles

My friend sent me a link to this website the other day, and it has already proven to be very useful to somebody like me. It's also helping my girl get more excited about having her hair done because she can look at the pictures or videos of the hair-do's and pick one that she wants me to try.

But I'm even more excited about another hair-do help I found out about recently.

 My cousin Stefanie opened a shop called The Dainty Petal. She creates and sells the cutest hair-clips, headbands, and earrings. All of her items are handmade by her. I showed her website to my girl, and she was so happy. She had the cutest little smile on her face while we browsed through all of Stefanie's creations. I told her she could pick some out to buy. I believe that The Dainty Petal will be my hair-do hero. Not only has the shop already helped my girl become more excited about having her hair tamed by some cute hair accessories, but those accessories will also help my sometimes successful and sometimes not-so-successful attempts at doing hair look cute no matter what.

Now I'm pretty sure only about two or three people read this blog, and I think you already know about The Dainty Petal, but if anyone else happens to read this post, make sure you go visit The Dainty Petal and share it with your friends.

And when you visit, you'll notice the website's cute design which was created by Stefanie's sister Hilary at Simply Yours. She creates the BEST custom blog designs, so make sure you check her site out too.

I was thinking it was time to go do some hair now, but I just asked my girl if she wanted to pick out a hairstyle, and she reminded me that we did her hair yesterday, and she is just going to have a hairstyle every other day... so not today, but tomorrow. Oh well... baby steps.  She's adorable with crazy hair too.

The Big PCS Part 3 - Two Months in Pictures

Well, we are now nearing the end of this phase of our big PCS. I guess you could say the last couple of months have been Part 3. You can read about Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

The beginning of Part 3 was full of excitement and travel, but the majority has been spent here at my parents' house, while the Man has been TDY. And since arriving here, things have been relatively calm and laid back. We've just been kinda hangin' around, waiting for the next phase of this big move to arrive. But it's been so great to see so many relatives while we've been here. My parents have had jobs out of town, so we've mostly just been able to see them on the weekends when they are in town, but that's more than we'd have been able to see them if we weren't here at all, so I'm not complaining. So even though I wish the Man was with us, I'm thankful for this time that we've had to catch up with everyone.

The Man comes home tomorrow (yippee!!!), so I thought I'd give a little run-down of Part 3 of the big PCS so far:

One of the first things we did after leaving Korea was share a plate of noodles in Tokyo.

Since then, we...

Spent a few days in Hawaii.

Spent some wonderful time with family and friends (including 99 year-old Great-Grandma).

Celebrated Easter.

Learned to walk.

Had some Texas Bar-B-Q (I got to go visit the Man for a couple of days).

Watched the tulips bloom.

Spent time in the snow.

And the sun.

I'm so excited to see the Man tomorrow, and also so happy that we get to spend a little bit more time here. I'm also really excited for the weeks to come and the next phase of our big PCS...

Kids and Kites

For Joy School one day the kids made these tiny kites out of nothing but paper, string and tape. I know, you don't even have to tell me. A professional kite flyer would be jealous of these little masters of the sky. These babies will fly like eagles, is just what I thought... not.

But...

Guess what happened?

Well, first let me just say that we have had  a few afternoons of unsuccessful attempts to get real kites in the air -- you know, the kind you buy in the store, spend two hours trying to get to stay in the air for more than three seconds, and all you end up having to show for the ten bucks you spent is a broken kite, and a couple of kids wondering why exactly we called that activity 'flying kites' -- yeah, we've been there, done that, and the kids have been disappointed.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when the kids took these kites outside and thought they were the greatest things since peanut butter. They had so much fun with them, and ran around the yard flying/dragging their kites along for quite some time.

Maybe it's because the kites were their own creation.

Maybe it's because they could fly these kites without any help.

Maybe it's because the kites actually did fly (sort of).

Or maybe it's because they looked at the kites, developed extremely low expectations of the kites' potential performance, and were pleasantly surprised like I was to see that they actually did sort of work.

Whatever the reason, the kids and the kites reminded me of something very important that day.

They reminded me that creating something simple is usually better than buying something fancy. I think it's because a lot of joy comes from the creating part, and then being able to actually use it, magnifies that joy.

Oh, and you can never have too much paper, string and tape.

Spontaneous Delight...

... is bubbles.

Lots of them.

And...

Finger-painting without paper.

And if you're going to finger-paint, you'd better do a little toe-painting too.

You just have to.

And it's eating Funfetti frosting straight from the can.

(That one was all me.)

Snail?

This is what the sky has been giving us just about every single day.

What is this stuff, anyway? It looks like hail, but it's soft like snow. All I know is we've been seeing a lot of this 'snail' lately.

Yup, spring takes its time coming to these here parts.

The kids love the snow, but I think they're starting to wonder if the sun is ever going to show its shine again.

Salad People

I had an idea quite awhile ago to make a cookbook for my kids. I wanted it be easy to understand and follow for even non-readers (with help, of course), so my plan was to use photos of the ingredients and steps of each recipe. I actually started making and taking pictures of some of the recipes I wanted to include, but never got much farther. Starting and not finishing projects happens to be one of the things I am really good at. 

Anyway, I'd still like to continue with this little cookbook project, but in the meantime, there are some great cookbooks for kids available. I bought this one awhile ago, and it mostly just sat on the shelf for awhile. But recently, I've decided to start using it for our Family Night snack. We made a Family Night jobs rotation, so each person has a turn to be in charge of one part of our Family Night. For now, the Man and I are taking turns planning the lesson/activity, and the kiddos are rotating through song, prayer, and snack. So each week, before we go shopping, whichever kid is in charge of the snack for the next Family Night chooses a recipe from the cookbook. Then they help make it before Family Night. 

So far, the kids have been excited about it. They love getting to choose whatever they want out of the book. We've tried a few recipes so far (see pics below), and the kids have loved them. The only one that they didn't much care for was the Cool Cucumber Soup that the Girl chose to make this week. I'm not really a fan of cold soups, so it wasn't my favorite either, but I'm glad we made it and the kids tried something new. The Salad People were a big hit. The kiddos actually ate more than one bite of veggies, so I call that a success.

This cookbook even has fun step-by-step illustrations to make it easier for kids to follow the recipe.

The Girl was in charge of the snack for our first Family Night of the year, and she chose the first recipe in the book. All it took was a pear half for everyone, a dollop of yogurt, and a bunch of cut up fruits and veggies, raisins, etc.

You end up with something like this:

She also chose a drink. And let me tell you, she was very determined to juice those lemons. She wanted to squeeze as much juice as she could out of each lemon before she would hand them over to me to squeeze.

A spoonful of partially frozen cranberry juice concentrate added to each cup was supposed to create the "sunrise" effect. Ours wasn't partially frozen, so I'm not sure if it looks the way it would have if we followed the directions perfectly, but it looks sort of sunrisey, don't ya think?

The Boy chose the snack for our next Family Night. It was super yummy, but a bit on the oily side. Next time we make it, I'll try using a little less oil than the recipe calls for.

 I predict that this year we may experience some cooking catastrophes – mixing mishaps, tsunami-ish spills, burned-out blenders, etc., but it's all worth it… I think.