Royalty and Warriors

Nathan is talking about the joy of Individual Confidence & Uniqueness in Joy School this month. They are each making a book "All about me" and talking about how each of them are special and unique. So the mom who was teaching got each of them a crown because they are special. She had an extra one and gave it to Grace when we went to pick Nathan up. They have had so much fun playing with the crowns. Here is King Nathan and Queen Grace. Then they got bored with that and turned their crowns upside down to become warriors!

Nathan is off to conquer the land with his trusty bunny sidekick and a deadly pink ball...

Later Grace was playing peek-a-boo with me! I'm sure this is a yoga pose of some sort.

Kids are so funny! Nathan has me a little worried right now. A couple of weeks ago, out of the blue he said to me "Mom, what's taking this baby so long to get here?" It caught me by surprise because I am definitly not pregnant. But I guess he didn't like that answer too well because a few days ago, again out of the blue, he told me that we needed to name the other one Fred. What?!? I asked him what he meant and he told me that I "am going to go to the hospital and pop out two babies. The first one will be named Thomas and the second one will be named Fred!" Does this mean he wants a brother or two to play with? I guess we will wait and see what the future holds but, in the meantime he will have to make do with playing warriors with Gracie!

Gardening fun!

We are trying something new in our garden this year. Bob got this book all about Square Foot Gardening (www.squarefootgardening.com) and so we have been busy building, filling, dividing and planting some garden boxes in the back yard. This is the first box we made. Two weekends ago we went out and planted peas - in the snow!

Last weekend we got our second box ready and planted strawberries, onions, garlic and celery. I think it's funny how different the weather was in just a week! We went from coats and hats to shorts and t-shirts (at least Bob did) and back again but then I guess that would be early spring in Utah!

I hope the garden works out as well as we are hoping. We are going to put in two more boxes and hopefully have lots of fun things to eat all summer long! I can't wait!

What is the shape of light?

A few weeks ago Maddie's class was talking about flashlights in school and Maddie asked what the shape of the light would be if you changed the shape of the reflector plate behind the light bulb. Her teacher told her that would be an excellent question to explore in her science project so we went and bought some flashlight and took them apart. We tried to make reflector plates but it turns out it was a lot harder than we thought it would be. Then my brother John stopped by for a random visit one weekend and he got drafted into the project too. He helped Maddie build a flashlight in a box with a screen to project the light onto that worked so much better! Thanks John! Anyway, then we were able to make several different shaped reflector plates that worked! Guess what? The light does reflect the shape of the reflector plate! Anyway, Maddie had a lot of fun with her project and even won first prize for her grade at the school science fair. Good job Maddie (and Uncle John)!

Getting all dressed up!

Grace has hit the stage where she wants to do everything herself. She is also developing strong opinions about what she wants to wear and since she is only 20 months old, this scares me to death!! What is she going to be like when she is 3 or worse yet, when she is 16?! Aaaggghh!!

Anyway, one morning after her bath she wanted to get herself dressed. She began by putting on one of Bob's dirty socks that she pulled out of the laundry basket. It went clear up to her hip! Then she put on his shoe and tried to walk around but the shoe kept falling off and the sock kept sliding down so while I was running downstairs for the camera she pulled those off and decided to try one of Nathan's pajama bottoms instead. One leg in, let's try for two!

Two legs in but something doesn't seem quite right. On the bright side, she is ready for the potato sack race!

Notice how she very cleverly ignored the blue clothes (at the bottom of the picture) that I picked out for her! She is at such a fun age right now. I love watching children starting to figure out the world around them.