Winter and Spring in 24 Pictures ...

Let's see if I can make up for several months of blog-neglect....

Silje and Marin and I got to the zoo a few times this winter (unlike our dreary winter last year). Here we are visiting the farm.

With fewer people to compete with, we didn't even have to wait to sit on the elephant statue.
Silje

Marin

Or on the monkey statues.

And we had a glass-front view of the bear.

We continue to find Silje in unusual places in the middle of the night. (I don't get it. I just don't get it....)

Ailey and I went to a Fancy Nancy ballet back in February. We got to meet the illustrator there and had her autograph Ailey's copy of Fancy Nancy!

Easter egg dyeing.

Ailey had a daisy cake for her 7th birthday!

Ailey's actual birthday was on Easter this year. She didn't seem to mind!

Ailey and I spent our first year in Girl Scouts, starting last October. She was a Daisy (Kindergarten/1st grade). She bridged to Brownies in June! As a co-op troop we are both active (I was Cookie Mom!). Our troop leader isn't continuing next year, and since I am now done with SNOMOMS leadership I decided to take it on for the coming year.

Ailey went to a friend's birthday party at a pony farm. She loved it so much we've signed her up for a couple of horse-back riding lessons this summer.

Silje and Marin learned how to play Go Fish!

Marin is still our resident Puzzle Master. They are learning a new, and more difficult, puzzle here.

Ailey truly became a Reader this last school year (with a capital R!). She reads ... everything. (Her current favorite is the new Nancy Clancy Super Sleuth chapter book. She has probably read it 4 or 5 times in the last week.) My favorite thing about Reader Ailey: when she reads to her sisters.

We spent quite a bit of time at the school riding bikes and scooters.
Marin (on her "Marin" bike!)

Ailey

Silje

With so little time actually on her bike, it wasn't until this spring on the new bike she got for her birthday that Ailey rode without training wheels. It was a very exciting day! She was quite proud of herself.

Ailey and Andy went to a father-daughter Girl Scout event that taught them all about camping and hiking. Even in the rain they had a great time!

Ailey and her hotdog bun. (Yes, sans the hotdog.)

Ailey found a caterpillar and adopted it.

It currently resides in the old chalk container with everything he'd ever need. (And then some.)

Marin playing around on the playset.

School didn't get out until June 21st, but we've had a pretty good start to summer (even with Silje's belly-button surgery - more about that later). The nice weather is here and we're planning to enjoy it! Vacation Bible School is next week and all three girls are finally going - so I plan to enjoy some of that summer weather by myself! :)

Spring Hike

We went for a hike today. It's July 1st, yes, but this definitely had the characteristics of a spring hike, not a summer hike.

Our first clue was that we prepared ourselves for rain. (We didn't get any, but still.)

Our second clue was that THIS is what we found on the county road half-way to the trailhead ...

Oops. (Do you notice the double yellow lines? Continuing on the other side of the, um, rapids?)

We ended up driving a little farther down Hwy 2, driving up 7 miles of dirt road (in a minivan, mind you, so you at least know those roads weren't too bad), and hiking halfway around Lake Elizabeth (only halfway because the path was too wet/muddy to get through on the other side).

The girls enjoyed jumping over mud, examining waterfalls, and playing with the snow we found along the way. They want to go back tomorrow. (Of course.) We'll remember to call ahead next time to make sure the roads are where they're supposed to be. :)

In the News...

It's been way too long since I've posted something here. I regret it. But I just haven't been able to "get around to it". Life is busy. No, wait - life is always busy. This spring has been Busy. The busiest yet with kids ... and I attribute spring-business to them and all the activities, events, end-of-year wrap-up and parties. (Afterall, if it weren't for Marin and Silje I would never have been president of SNOMOMS, right?) So ... ugh, does it just keep getting busier the older they get?! Yikes!

I have lots waiting to blog about - pictures, funny stories, anecdotes.... I'll get around to it soon. (Maybe after school, SNOMOMS, Girl Scouts, church council, etc. are all done for the summer - that's THIS WEEK!)

But I do have a half-assed (oops) half-witted attempt here at a blog post. And this is for those of you who aren't on facebook, because I posted this there earlier.

The Everett Herald interviewed and took pictures of SNOMOMS for a feature on local volunteering. Here is the link to the online article. It's pretty exciting to see our red SNOMOMS t-shirts splashing the front of the Local section of the newspaper. :)

The Everett Herald article

Confident Cougar

Ailey is a Columbia Cougar. I really like her school - they have a lot of good things going on. One of them is their Confident Cougar assemblies. Parents and kids can choose something they are confident in and either perform or submit pictures or videos of it. We submitted some pictures for the slide show today. I wasn't able to go to the assembly, so I was glad when she came home with not only a certificate for participating, but a copy of her "page" in the show. So cute!

Heaven or Texas

My sister, who lives in Texas and doesn't necessarily appreciate it there *cough*, would probably beg to differ on this. But my girls apparently, in some innocuous way, equate Texas with Heaven. Their only excuse for insulting those with less-than-love for Texas by comparing Texas with Heaven is: when you're 4 years old, distance is a very ambiguous concept.

To start at the beginning.... We were sitting at the dinner table tonight with two girls with very little appetite, trying to engage them in something other than eating so that we could all stay at the table together peacefully for more than 3 minutes. We started with "What did you do in Sunday School this morning?"

Marin had a story about digging for coins. (I was attending to bring more food to the table so didn't quite get the gist of where that fit into what lesson.)

Ailey then asked to tell about Sunday School with the 1st graders. They had discussed measuring. Measuring what? God's Love. (I'm thinking: Ooooh, good one.) I asked her how they measured it and her response was that no one could determine how God's Love was measured. (Ooooh, even more interesting.)

Apparently someone suggested that God's Love went even farther than Heaven. That was a LONG way. Even farther than "To The Moon And Back" ... TWICE! Marin and Silje really got into the discussion at this point - they were very impressed that God's Love went even farther than Mom and Dad's Love. So impressed, in fact, that Marin was sure that God's Love must go farther than Heaven ... all the way to Texas!

Back to the difficult concept of distance at this age, when the girls ask to go see Aunt Sarah, Uncle Winnie, Luke and Sam, we invariably answer that Texas is too far to go for a quick visit. Really far. SO FAR that it takes a whole day to get there. So given that they don't ask to go anywhere that is farther than Texas, Texas must be about the end of the world in their heads. The end of the Universe, the farthest from everything. (Sarah might agree with that particular description.) And thus, if Texas is as far as they can imagine, then saying that God's Love measures as far Texas is probably a pretty accurate description.

If each of us were to measure God's Love by the farthest we could possibly imagine or conceive of, I'd guess our measurments would all be a little different depending on our concept of distance. So if Texas is the farthest place Marin can imagine, then I'll let her go with that analogy. Besides, it can't be a bad thing to equate God's Love with the love of an Aunt, right?