Outside in the Springtime

Spring is in full force here.  The trees are leafy green, weeds and grass are growing like crazy and flowers are blooming everywhere.  We have been spending time outside in the nicer weather.  We bought a family pass for the zoo.  The girls have had fun watching the animals and hearing the lions roar and the seeing the monkeys play.  We walk often to the little playground in our neighborhood.  Slides and swings and a merry-go-round keep them busy and demanding the visits anytime they think of it, especially Tess.

We also spend more time in our backyard.  I keep them penned in the middle level of the yard with one of those six panel super yards so they don't fall over the ledge (its about a 3 foot drop).   And they are good about not trying to escape, except every once in awhile T will try to squeeze around one of the sides.  That girl has a little naughty streak.   To keep them busy, I have little brooms with dust pans for sweeping the patio and trowels for digging up the soil in pots. They have their own pots so they leave my little container garden of tomatoes, peppers and green onions alone.   They also have a collection of rocks and sticks they can play with.  I picked up a little slide for them at a consignment sale a few weeks ago.  They have a lot of fun with it and it is a great size for working on their balance and climbing skills.  They have taken tumbles off the top but landing on the grass, they recover pretty quickly.  They also have their little coupe to push each other around in.  A huge part of the enjoyment of the car is actually getting to clean all the rainwater/dirt/oak pollen off of it with a washcloth before they ride it.  Funny girls

 

 

As it really heats up for summer I plan to get them swimming in the kiddie pool and set up a water table for them.  The patio faces full south though.  It gets pretty blazing out there.  So we'll have to restrict our time out back even with help from a canopy.  Unfortunately, this evening our time outside was cut short because, as D learned to say, "Bug eat you."  Mosquitoes are back in the evenings and I am not sure where I put the bug spray last fall.  We really have to do something about our mosquito problem this year since I do want the girls to learn to love being outside.

Garvan Gardens

Last Friday we went for the first time to Garvan Woodland and Gardens a little south of Hot Springs.  It was a beautiful afternoon and the gardens were gorgeous.  It was a little late for the tulip extravaganza but there were still many beautiful tulip blooms.  There were so many different types and colors. 

 

We strolled down to the koi pond and the girls got to watch the fish swimming around and the water flowing down from the rocks above.  It was such a lovely afternoon and the gardens were not crowded. 

Besides seeing the beautiful flowers and water features, I think the girls enjoyed climbing up on the big rocks the most. Most of the time we let the girls out of the stroller and they walked farther and for longer than I expected they would.  My little girls are growing up! 

 



Tulle Skirts

I've been wanting to make these tulle skirts for the girls all winter long.  Compared to this summer, when they had a million cute dresses to wear, it was all pants for winter.  I figured it would be nice and easy to toss a little tulle skirt on over their pants for a more feminine outfit.  I finally finished sewing them (although I have to fix one because I was sloppy with my stitches). 

 

They were relatively easy to make.  I used 1 inch elastic, material for the waist band to cover the elastic and 1/2 a yard of tulle.  I folded the tulle in half and gathered it along the fold.  I cut a rectangle for a waistband, folded it in half and tucked the elastic inside before sewing the gathered tulle to it.  After it was all sewn I trimmed the tulle skirts a bit making the edge scalloped so it looked more like petals. 

Now of course, it is warm and the girls are in cute summer dresses again.  But hopefully they will still fit in them next year and if not I can always pull them apart a bit and fix them again.

Easter

I had big plans for March's posts but my momentum was derailed by a stomach bug that attacked the whole family.  Man, was it miserable.  On a brighter note though, the girls now know when they feel like throwing up, they need to do it in the potty or a bowl or a bucket.  There are other life skills I would have preferred they learn instead but still, got to look for those silver linings.

So now hopefully April will be a better month for this blog.  We got rained out on Easter, so on April Fools' Day we had a mini Easter egg hunt on our back patio.  I would have liked to have hidden eggs in the grass as well, but it is still so muddy and soggy from all the rain.  The afternoon was warm and sunny though and the girls enjoyed it.

It looks like our little neighborhood park has rescheduled its Easter egg hunt for Saturday so the girls will get another chance to hunt for eggs and I'll have another chance to take photos of them in cute dresses.

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.

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!

Be Mine, Valentine

The girls have colds yet again. So Valentine's Day was full of tired, cranky fussing this year. Miss D had a fever and both girls' noses were running like crazy. But I did manage to get some cute shots of them dressed up for Valentine's Day and even got a smile or two out of poor D.

I did not have an outfit picked out, but when I looked in their closet for something with hearts for them to wear, I found these adorable dresses. They had been a birthday gift from a friend of my mother in law and I had completely forgotten that they were bedecked with hearts. You can't see the pink hearts on D's dress but they are there and look adorable. A friend of mine crocheted the heart headbands for them last year. They fit them better now and look so cute.

The day before Valentine's we painted cards for Daddy and the grandparents. The girls and I made thumbprint hearts.  Miss T was not a fan. She still needs to take her time getting used to having paint on her hands and I wasn't about to let her play with acrylic paint. D loved it but was so eager to paint that trying to position her thumb to make the heart before she slammed her thumb down was hard. After making a few thumbprints, we moved on to heart stamps. I taped a toilet paper tube in the shape of a heart and dipped it in paint for them to stamp. I held on to it too and guided them, mainly because I was afraid of the paint ending up all over.

I had the oven going for awhile in the afternoon. The first thing was roasting a whole chicken. I saw the idea of putting on a bundt pan on Pinterest and wanted to try it out. I cut potatoes and sweet potatoes to place along the bottom of the pan and then stood the chicken on up over the hole. I had foil underneath just in case but nothing leaked.

I was afraid the skin would burn so after letting it brown for 20-30 minutes, I placed aluminium foil over the top like I do with the turkey every year. That worked fine. The chicken turned out fine but there really wasn't much of a difference between baking it flat on the cookie sheet and doing it this way. Some of the potatoes on the top ended up really dry because I didn't bother to oil them since I thought they would soak up all the chicken juices. The ones on the bottom were delicious so I would recommend a few less potatoes/sweet potatoes or oiling them first. All in all the vertical roasted chicken is not a Pinterest fail, but I am feeling rather meh about it.

Then on to the cookies. I have made these chocolate chip cookies once before and they were so delicious. So I decided to try to give them a Valentine's look but that was basically a fail. I did have the expectation that they would not keep their shape that well but I was really hoping that I would be wrong. The problem was the cookies are so thick -- each cookie takes a third of a cup of dough.

They looked like cute hearts when I cut them out but spread out into a not quite heart shape while baking.

Some look pretty close to a heart but hassling with the cookie cutter was not worth the final shape. I also unfortunately got distracted by fussy, sick babies and let them bake a little too long so they are not to die for like last time. Disappointing but still not a bad cookie. Next time I will have to be more careful.

My husband has been really busy with work the past few weeks with long hours and no weekends off. So I gave him a break and bought myself tulips from him. They are so pretty. I always prefer tulips on Valentine's to roses. Something about having the bulbs to replant and renew versus cut roses that just die seems a better symbol of love to me.

Hope everyone had a happy Valentine's Day!