Week Ending

I haven't done a Week Ending post in a while because most of the time we've been inside and my camera doesn't take very good indoor pictures... besides how many pictures of us sitting around reading Little House on the Prairie books and imagining that it's almost spring can there be.

This weekend though, I kept my camera with me and decided to at least try to capture some cuteness during Paul's days off.

The weekend got off to a start with Mae falling asleep inside a cardboard box while we were getting ready to go out of the house for the first time in seven days (for me and the kids, not for Paul):

I love this picture because it just sort of captures her personality... usually when I try to snap a picture I get a cheesy fake smile... this weekend I kept lucking out and getting the real thing:

On Saturday morning therapy was at the therapy center, so we dropped Daddy and Maggie off there and then went to a mall playground to wait for Sadie's ballet class to start.  Patrick did not want to go to the playground.  He kept trying to escape.  Finally Sadie and I followed him to see where he would go and he walked down the mall and tried to go into a sports shoe store...

Surprisingly I actually got a little bit of knitting done this weekend while sitting in the passenger seat of the van while we were doing errands.  I have this crazy idea to try to make something ever week or two (or month, if week is too ambitious), so that I'm all set when Christmas comes around.  We'll see in December if I've actually kept up with it.

Either way, I think Sadie will love this color:

Here the girls are in their matching pajamas.  When Sadie started to change out of hers Mae got upset and so Sadie changed back.  They're so sweet together.

I believe that Sadie is pretending to play the harp...

Here she is with her favorite baby of the moment:

And here's a picture I snapped of the girls at the end of Mass:

She had a pretty fun weekend:

Mae enjoyed wearing her Wonder Woman crown... and my boots.

We were doing a therapy activity in which I was supposed to do something silly and act very obviously as if it was silly.  I tried putting on her shoes.  She looked very serious and then grabbed my shoes and wore them for the next two hours.

It didn't quite turn out the way I'd planned, but it was pretty cute:

Blowing a kiss?

Patrick is just so happy to be playing with his sisters:

And he got one of the much sought after monster squeeze toys:

And then there was me...  Squeezed into a hat meant for Patrick.  But hey, it made them laugh, so...

And I have been such a slacker at my favorite link ups that I hadn't realized that there hadn't been a Week Ending link up in a while.  However, Re-Inventing Mother is my Week Ending inspiration and she has some beautiful pictures of her latest knitting projects (hopefully she posts an update of the second project that's on the page soon, because I've already seen a picture and it is beautiful!).

I hope you all had a great weekend and stayed warm!

Week Ending: The Cold is Here Edition

This wasn't supposed to go live until tomorrow, but I accidentally posted it before it was finished so I think I'll finish it up now and post it again!  I was camera happy this weekend (and so was Sadie).  For the most part we stayed inside because it was just so cold!  And we bundled because even inside it's pretty cold (I believe my thermostat is a liar because there's no way it's anywhere near as warm as it says it is).  Here's the latest:

Here's Patch reaching for Mae's favorite dress.
It may have usurped her boots as her favorite thing of the moment.

Patrick is walking pretty regularly now,
although he still drops down on the floor
and crawls when he wants to get somewhere fast.

She named her Penguin "Wollner"
and walks around the house with it saying things like:
"I'm so lucky to have a pet!"
I think she may be fishing for something...

Here's Maggie reading about homeschooling in the outfit that she
was hoping to wear to Mass.

Sadie and I have similar ideas of what "warm" means.
Mae must take after Daddy.

I still just can't believe how big he is getting.

I keep waiting for his other bottom teeth to arrive (he has four on top).

He figured out how to drink out of a sippie cup today and promptly
drank three cups of almond milk.

Ready to shop.

They danced.  A lot.

They both had a blast!

Is Sadie suddenly looking really tall to anyone else?

Our little ham.

For more Week Ending head over to Re-Inventing Mother!

Week Ending: A Jellyfish, A Unicorn and a Dinosaur

We had a busy weekend!  It began when a box from California arrived at the house filled with Halloween and dance costumes from my childhood.  Suddenly we had a purple unicorn galloping around the living room:

And the child who really doesn't have any interest in costumes beyond boots?  Well.  Suddenly she was interested.  Very interested.  Hug-my-sister-four-times-while-figuring-out-how-to-rip-the-unicorn-costume-off-her interested.

She wore the unicorn hood for all of ten minutes and then realized that it was way better this way:

Patrick wasn't sure what al the fuss was about:

But he had fun playing outside with his sisters (although he stayed in the tower because he is definitely not a fan of mud):

Someone had to sit in timeout after incessantly pulling her sister's tail.  But her sister was sweet enough to come over and stand by her while she as in timeout.

On Saturday we went to the zoo. Mae was going to be a super hero but she loved the unicorn costume so much we let her wear that instead... for the record... that costume was my pride and joy when I was six when I wore it and won a costume contest...  It looks like capris when Sadie wears it and fits three year old Mae perfectly.

Sadie got her face painted for the first time.  She was a jellyfish.  And her skirt and hat were wired with flashing lights:

And the girls and I rode the train:

I'm not sure if you can tell, but Mae sat as far away as she possibly could from me and Sadie:

We paused for a picture in which none of the kids cracked a smile.  

Then went in the reptile house so they could visit the gold fish that are in with the turtles (okay, so it's more of a reptile, amphibian, bird, monkey house):

The Patch-o-saurus Rex was a little bit sleepy as we got in line for the hay ride:

We were the last one to squeeze up onto the trailer!  There was just enough room on the hay bales for us.

Then we made the mistake of driving through East Lansing... just as the State vs Purdue game was getting out...  However, during the hour that it took to go three miles I experimented with my cameras many settings and snapped pictures of the fall colors:

This morning the girls and I walked to Mass.  Mae loves sweaters with zippers and I was thrilled to find this one while we were out doing errands on Friday at a second hand store.  She even picked out the matching hat to wear with it:

And here she is when she paused while playing before we made the walk home.

It was quite the weekend.

For more Week Ending head over to Re-inventing Mother!

Week Ending: Autumn! And Introducing the Newest Members of Our Family...

I have been struggling alone with the flu for about a week now.  It seems to be letting up and thankfully the kids weren't hit hard.  I definitely know who the weakest link in the immunity department in our house is... if everyone else gets sick for twenty four hours I'm looking at a week... If they get sick for three days I'm looking at a month...  And I'll admit this weekend, when I was at the lowest point I kept thinking:  Oh look! I'm sick just in time to celebrate the anniversary of those five days and four nights with infectious disease in the hospital last year!

That meant this weekend I was torn between wanting to stay inside and curl up under a blanket on the couch, and wanting to get outside because curling up under a blanket isn't all that restful when there are three little people climbing on you, one of whom is clamoring to nurse every ten minutes or so.  

So we went out and did outdoor things away from other people... And I relied heavily on my inhaler. 

But that wasn't the very beginning of our weekend.  Sadie and I actually kicked the weekend off by waiting until everyone had gone to bed and ordering cheese free pizza.  I even let her stay up until nine and we watched about a half dozen episodes of My Little Pony curled up on the couch together.  

This is our "goodnight-babies-go-to-bed" secret.  And that girl?  She can put away a medium pizza by herself.  I'm pretty sure she has a hollow leg since she's pretty such a little string bean:

Saturday morning Sadie had her last swim lesson class and then we headed over to ballet.  Then we let Daddy sleep for a couple hours since he'd worked until morning again, before we all headed to the park so that the kids could get their wiggles out:

I love autumn.  I just keep saying it over and over again in my head.  It is my favorite of all the seasons.

The kids had the playground to themselves for most of the time:

Patrick's looking less and less like a baby and more and more like a little boy every single day.  Can you believe it's less than a month until his birthday?  

This was during a debate about the appropriateness of wearing that shirt around Michigan at this moment that began after another Dad who was arriving at the playground when we were leaving gave him the stink eye and I then realized that the series with the Tiger's was beginning that very night:

On Saturday we swung by a local corn maze and proceeded to get very, very lost.

The kids thought it was awesome:

Thankfully there were occasionally signs like this... or we would have never gotten out:

Finally we stumbled out of the corn to freedom... and the girls picked out their pumpkins (moments after my camera went dead!).

In other news I'd like to introduce the newest members of our family...

Finny and Goldie (named by Sadie).  

Before Paul and I got married I worked in an aquarium warehouse for a few years (I think four altogether).  I've had seahorses, propagated hard corals, had the ugliest little tank with box fish and a horse shoe crab in college and have had many other tanks set up over the years.  

The girls wanted a pet.  Maggie loves gold fish with a passion and can sit and stare at them for hours...

And so I made the thirty cent investment yesterday afternoon (the price of teeny feeder fish have risen over the past decade) and brought home two new fish.  The girls are thrilled.  And the feeder fish have a pretty nice setup (for feeder fish... I guess I need to stop calling them that soon..):

I'm sure we'll be having all sorts of imaginary adventures with Goldie and Finny... because, you know, it's Sadie.

For more Week Ending head over to Re-inventing Mother!