Our dear friend Brent gave C these magnets when he visited us a couple of years ago in Portland. He’s always really liked them, but really only started making complex structures with them in the last couple of months. Before, he would just click the magnets together and pull them apart, which is it’s own kind of fun. On this morning, he made a wide structure and said it was a boat (made for Grandpa Randy) and it had a viking-reminiscent prow. He showed me how it went up (“awake”) and down (“asleep”).

Katy(posted on Apr 11, 2007 at 10:43 pm)

My mom sent us a small collection of shells last year some time (and the nice blue trays), and we’ve been doing all kinds of things with them. Right now they are part of a spooning tray, with a nice wooden bowl (made from my childhood climbing tree which met a sad end in 1997), and a little custard pot we got in Spain last summer.

Katy(posted on Apr 14, 2007 at 7:30 pm)

We got a waffle maker a few weeks ago, and we’ve been making up for lost time. On this morning, we were all set to eat together at the kitchen table, but C suddenly jumped up, declared he and Ruby were going to eat at the little table and ran off to set it with a tablecloth and their plates, etc. Incidentally, this tablecloth was made by Great-grandma Weeks. Thanks great-grandma!

Katy(posted on Apr 14, 2007 at 7:26 pm)

This is a group of pictures of Rian I’ve had sitting around for a while. Cleaning out the old corners of the computer… just like my own easter egg hunt!

Katy(posted on May 1, 2010 at 8:30 pm)

He might not really look like it, but we guess that Ander likes being manhandled by the children because he always just sits there and takes it. Either he likes it, or he’s dumb. One or the other.

Katy(posted on May 3, 2007 at 9:59 pm)

A couple of weeks ago, we took our brand new thermos out for a test drive. We packed up a lunch of waffles and brunost. And the thermos provided us with hot chocolate up at Akershus. It was a lovely spring day, bright and sunny (Ruby says “sparkly” in a grumpy voice when it gets in her eyes). It was a tad windy, but the hot chocolate was just right to warm us up.

Katy(posted on Apr 24, 2007 at 5:51 am)

It’s the bee pillow. A pillow with a little plush bee sewn to it. C saw it at a store and absolutely would not leave without it. He kept insisting that he was “just going to buy it for myself.” This was inspired by one of the children’s favorite books, The Story of Ferdinand, which has the following passage:

… instead of sitting on the nice cool grass in the shade, he sat on a bumble bee! Well, if you were a bee and a bull sat on you, what would you do? You would sting him. And that is just what this bee did to Ferdinand.

Katy(posted on May 4, 2007 at 10:05 pm)

Alright, alright. What business do we have celebrating Easter? But it’s pretty big here, and the kids have been interested in the big hollow egg things that they use here instead of Easter baskets. So I bought a couple of them, filled them up with mostly non-candy goodies and let C hide them in the living room. Hiding things is highly exciting for him, but he’s not too good at it yet! He and Ruby searched out the two eggs and delighted in the contents. (It’s exciting for C to find something even if he’s “hidden” it himself.)

Katy(posted on May 12, 2007 at 8:24 am)

April eight, it snowed. That is a poor sad bird outside our window.

Katy(posted on May 4, 2007 at 10:19 pm)

Earlier last month, we went to a friend’s birthday party. Being artsy types, it was arranged that lots of the guests would sing or give a performance of some kind. The birthday boy asked Chris to show off with the juggling clubs. It was a very fun party, even though we didn’t know most of the people there. The hostess is Japanese, so you can guess how stoked we were about the food. The birthday boy and the hostess have two adorable children who are great fun to play with, too.

Katy(posted on May 7, 2007 at 1:02 pm)