Food for thought...

The other day, I was chatting with B's preschool teacher, and she was talking about how you can sometimes see aspects of a kid's personality in their art work. She mentioned that, if given paint and a blank peice of paper, kids who are more reserved will keep their work well inside the boudaries of the page, and will tend to keep things a little more structured. On the flip side, kids who are risk-takers tend to paint all the way to, and past, the edges of the paper, and will really fill the paper with paint.

Interesting.

Then, the kids were at Atrium the very next day, and came home with these paintings...

B painted this:




M, on the other hand, painted this:



Um...wow. Please, people, leave me a comment and tell me how this is going to play out in the high school years!!!

Here's what we have been up to...

Instead of a post about ice or snow, I wanted to make sure to show off what we have been spending our free time working on lately!

Much to our excitement and the kids entertainment, we have started gardening at Granny and Grandpa's house:)

I have been working really hard to use more local and/or organic produce these days, and also support some of the local farmer's markets. But growing produce ourselves was also a priority. We were considering joining a community garden, but Granny suggested we just make their yard our own little community garden. It was a brilliant plan!

We have had so much fun watching the kids dig in the dirt. They have both been really interested in picking fruits and vegetable to plant, and also have been pretty helpful in the planting and watering. And Granny has been AMAZING. It is so fun to see them with her, all 3 of them enjoying this wonderful opportunity. Nothing is ready to eat yet, but hopefully we will have some good success stories this summer.

Here are some recent pics:

Ice Skating

One more post left over from winter...we finally took our kiddos ice skating this year. We have been meaning to try it for years. But we just kept pushing it back for no good reason. Well, one weekend while Nana and Papa were down visiting, we just decided to go for it. The kids were not excited about the prospect at first. Both insisted that they didn't want to try and didn't want to learn EVER! We promptly ignored them, and they were honestly pretty interested by the time we got to the ice skating rink in Forest Park.

Here they are with Papa once they had gotten their skates on. Both kids were really excited about balancing on the ice skates right away! They, of course, had NO CLUE that balancing on a thick, rubber mat was 10 Xs easier than balancing on ice.

Miss M showing her balancing skills.
And Mr B showing his awesome balance!
Drumroll please...first step onto the ice!
Same for Mr. B...he's on the ice, smiling, thinking maybe this might be ok after all!
After the first few moments, their excitment about being there and mastering balancing on the rubber mats was tempered by the realization that ice skating isn't quite as easy as it looks on t.v.!

Both kids were pretty good sports, though. They went around quite a few times, either holding on to me, Aaron, Papa, or the fence...or some combination of 2 of these items/people.

The fence got a lot of love that day!



In the end, a pretty good time was had by all. I won't go so far as to call it a "favorite" activity, but there was fun to be had, and I think next year we can build on it and give it a go a little earlier in the season, and a little more often. If we are going to keep dragging these kids to Davenport several times each winter of their lives, the least we can do is equip them with some respectable ice skating skills!

Snow-time!

So it is FINALLY supposed to warm up a bit here. We have been wearing long sleeves and jackets all week...despite the calendar assuring me that it is May.

But in honor of the arrival of warmer weather, I wanted to post some winter pics so we could all remember how far we have come:)

Davenport often gets WONDERFUL snow. Far greater inch counts than in St. Louis. And while I think living there and dealing with it as a daily way of life could get tiresome, visiting and getting to play in deep, deep snow is just awesome. Here are some pics of one of our visits this year.

This first pic was just to show that the snow really was nearly waist-deep for M and B. Thankfully most of the Iowans are hearty and compassionate people who are quick to shovel out pathways on sidewalks, so the kids were able to get around outside just fine. But the snow was literally up to their thighs!


And the rest of the pics are just to remember the fun! Because the Davenport natives are used to the snow, and because school is rarely cancelled due to snow, all of the local school kids have plenty of time to play in the snow while they are waiting for the bus. Nana and Papa have a bus stop on their street, and the school kids made awesome tunnels in the snow that had been piled high by the snow plows. B and M had an awesome time with their Papa, exploring the tunnels and slides created by the school kids. Looks fun, right?!
You can just barely see M peeking out of the snow tunnel in this first pic.