Our first snow

This season of course. What I have been dreading for a few months now:( It has happened. Please excuse the blurriness, but I had to try and catch the big, fat wet snowdrops. Now let's all hope that Jack's truck doesn't again get stuck down there. And let's also hope that Jack's volvo can make it up the driveway better than his truck was able to.

Way too cold

First this is the reason I chopped my hair off. The girls always need to brush hair. Stephanie has some seriously beautiful hair, I think that the cat brush doesn't feel so good though. Layla is usually pretty good about brushing hair. It does make me sad that I cut it. She used to love brushing it. Oh well, it will grow again, right?

And it looks like the girls are just standing nicely near each other looking out the window. It seems like they just want to see outside, right? No, look under their feet, they were all standing on the heat vent. It is cold, though it would also help if they would put more clothes on.

Autumn fairy

It has been awhile, or so it seems, that I have put up pictures. Sooooo......
Your Autumn fairy:)

Thankful

Random gibberish warning.

It is so nice when Jack has leave. It really really is. I am incredibly thankful for our relationship. I love that we can talk about everything and anything still. That I am not afraid to look stupid in front of him. That even when we don't agree on things we can still hold an intelligent conversation. That he knows when it is alright to bring something up and when he needs to wait a few days because I am pmsing and it would just be better for him to make me a cup of tea so I don't decide to poison dinner.

I am thankful and glad that we are changing our thoughts about not only how to homeschool, but how to raise our children. Again another yahoo for John Holt, seriously read his books. Today, his last day of leave, we just went out and walked around. Yeah, outside would have been best but we were cold we went to the mall and got hot chocolate and walked around. Natalie lead us to the places she wanted to go. She went to the dance store and told me that she does want to take dance. I found this to be a hard decision as Jack tells me that I may have pushed her to this. I loved dance and miss it greatly. In fact, I would love to dance again. But she does sound serious about it, so we will try. She went to a bunch of places and asked questions. And it reminded me that it isn't too often that we go out just for them. Today we were lucky that we had nothing else planned. I plan to do this with them more often. we already try to take our time in the grocery store. It is important to me that they see how we shop, reading ingredients, looking at prices. Jack always used to get on me about just picking the one that looks pretty:) Or the cheaper one, but not looking to see that it is a smaller box. I find it funny that there is a whole class in school, remember home ec?, that is to teach these things that we are too busy to teach them ourselves. There is one good thing about fall and winter is that it is very slow. Since the rain and cold has started we have slowed down a lot. The only thing I don't like, and I am trying to not remember was that in Hawaii we didn't have a slow fast time, everything flowed. We didn't have to get outside as much as we could, because we could at anytime. Time went there and it was all nice. I do miss that. But I am trying to think of good times here. Curling up with the girls and drinking hot chocolate. I realized recently that I am full of crap. I had gotten myself good, NICE, hot chocolate mix. I had told Natalie it was for me because, and I realized I was about to tell her that she wouldn't enjoy it the way I would. I stopped and realized what an assine thing to say. Bullshit that she wouldn't realize that it was a special treat. Why do we try to treat them like children that can't appreciate anything? It is the same thought that bugs me when people say that their kids don't like, for instance indian food, well that would be too weird for them we will get them mac and cheese. Side story, we went to gandhi a few days ago. And were thanked by both the owners over how well our kids behaved and that they always enjoyed seeing us. They actually talk about us:) It made me feel very good. We almost always get complements on how well behaved they are, but it was something else to have them say something. I am very thankful that my children have the chance to try new things, to learn new things. I admit that I have a hard time still trying new things sometimes. I grew up with mac and cheese, meatloaf and spaghetti. But at a party recently Natalie tried shrimp, no hesitation. Jack and I don't care for it, but Natalie liked it. She wanted us to buy her some. And I hate the comments, like I almost made, of she is just a kid, could she really enjoy things like that? Or eww she won't like that! Why are you putting these ideas in my kids head? Can I please duct tape your mouth now?

And another random thought. We went out for Jack's birthday, Silver City I thought just this once, they always get the fish and chips. You know, I did not realize till that day how different my children had been acting. Natalie was completely insane for two days. Seriously, completely insane. I am pretty sure that it was not a color and flavor issue, she did have a half of a cherry, but I can't see that causing two days of insanity. I had read that wheat, like all allergies, can cause a behavior issue. I didn;t really believe it. It isn't worth it to eat wheat again.

Happy Birthday!!!

We had lots of fun today. We went and saw salmon, okay yes, forgot the camera... we looked at more apartments, that is alway fun, right? The girls and Jack finger painted. These are really cool finger paints we got from Kelly, again, www.thegreenkangaroo.org. Layla's are on the left, Natalie's on right, Jack's on bottom. These are his birthday pictures. He got a nice long email birthday song from my family, including the polish birthday song.

And what birthday wouln't be complete without a wheat free, artifical color and flavor free cake? it is chocolate, and I made the icing too, scary. It actually wasn't bad, kinda brownie like. The last cake I made wasn't done all the way. And Jack is a little freaky about things being done, at least I never have to share licking the bowl...So I baked the cake an extra 10 minutes, it could have been longer. But it was alright with him, I guess.

And you know, you also need a zombie baby for your birthday, right? Gwen has thrush. Gentian violet stains, and really when they say a drop and put it in their mouth, yeah A DROP, drop, that is all a drop. It is going to look like we beat our baby for the next three days.

on leave

Ahhh, the lazy days of leave...
We actually have a very simular picture of Natalie on Jacks shoulders, they both enjoyed pulling out his hair.

We have decided that the girls will now work. The odd thing, they LOVE their chores. They like feeding the animals, vacuuming, clearing the table, emptying the dishwasher and helping me with the laundry. BUT aske them to pick up their toys and yeah, that doesn't work. Natalie really wants to do the cat litter. I am trying to decide what age is alright for that.

Gwen has had a few different foods, but very far from regularly. This is broccoli, she does like it, she also likes giving some funky faces.

Damn I am short

As requested a photo of the girls standing next to me to show how insanely tall Natalie is.