My Life

I am a mother of three precious girls, an avid crafter and have recently returned to California after eight years in other states

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Daffodils


On Saturday we loaded the girls into the car after their nap and headed over to Wye, where the Wye United Methodist Church has its annual Wye Mountain Daffodil Festival.  It was a beautiful spring day.  The sun shined most of the time and it was warm.  Warm enough that most of the kids were wearing their short sleeve spring dresses. 



The girls, however, I dressed in one of their warmer dresses with leggings because I was worried there would be a cold wind like the day before.  So, no cute spring dress shots yet.  They still looked cute though and it was a little chilly when the breeze gusted (of course it was also a little hot when the sun came from behind the clouds, but we'll just ignore that fact for now). 


The field had lots of flowers but also lots of patches where the daffodils were thin.  It did not seem like there were that many people but it was really hard to get shots with nice views of all the background flowers without getting fellow festival goers in the shot too.


The festival is very small: just the field itself, a food stand and a craft barn.  We had hot dogs and the girls got to pick their very own balloons from the balloon stand.  They both picked pink.  I wonder if T would have picked another color on her own, but D knew exactly what she wanted.  Once D started shouting 'pink' and pointing at the pink balloon, T went for it too. 


If I feel it is worth it, I may just drive out during the week, just the girls and me, and see if we can get better shots with more flowers and fewer people.  Plus I could try out the spring dresses.  However, it is a 40 minute drive and getting the girls to cooperate for photos by myself might not work well.  We do plan to go to the Garvan Gardens in Hot Springs to see the tulips soon.  I will just wait for the next flower photos until then.  And there is always next year for the daffodils.




Friday, March 8, 2013

Keeping Busy

So Wednesday morning came along and between the girls waking up early and having nothing outside the house planned, the hours seemed to stretch on til lunch time.  So I decided to try out something I saw on Pinterest to keep the girls entertained.



I took two of the girls' play buckets upstairs to our office filled them with shredded paper.  Then I added a few toys in as surprises for the girls to find. Miss D has been spending a lot of time tearing up paper anyway so this just expanded the possibilities for her.


They spent a good half an hour playing around with the paper and then the toys they found mixed in.  The dining room looked a bit like disaster area.  But seeing as it took them awhile to pick up the paper and put it away (along with dumping it back out again and picking it up again), the mess turned out to be a good thing.  A good chunk of the morning was spent happily.


Afterward they colored and played with stickers for a little while.  Coloring doesn't hold their attention for too long and usually leads to random surfaces getting covered with crayon marks but it is a little break and they do enjoy it while it holds their attention. 

 

 
They love stickers.  I end up rationing them out because they go through them so fast.  Dora, peace signs and rainbows now cover their papers and the table.  We made it to lunch time (and after that nap time!) all in happy moods.  Hurray!