Everyday Adventures

It's been a while since a post.  I think.  Honestly, it feels like I JUST posted.  But then I started to look at the random pictures and videos I have collected since then, and it seems like a lot of life has happened (and this isn't even all of them - because my phone has decided to hold my most recent photos hostage).  Which, I assume, means more time has passed than I thought.  Isn't that the way life is?  You're living the day-to-day and it doesn't feel like time is really moving (or perhaps the rhythm of the daily lulls us into believing no time is passing), and then one day you  pause long enough to look around and realize it's been almost 10 years exactly since you started dating your husband (true story).  A third of my life, yet I feel like I barely blinked. 

Anyway, back to the present...or recent past...an odd assortment of pictures documenting our random everyday adventures:

Taking inspiration from one of her favorite DT characters, Shiny, Allie claimed a random bag of shells from the craft room and took them out to play in the snow.  Of, course, almost all of them disappeared.  But now that the snow has (mostly) melted, she is enjoying re-collecting and arranging her "Shiny shells."

One of the presents the twins got for their birthday was a science kit.  It might sound strange, but if there is one thing I learned from my dad, elementary science teacher, and college chemistry professors, it is that science is incredibly fun!  The twins didn't have to be convinced, they were begging to break into the kit!

This main focus of this kit is to teach kids about color mixing.  I taught them about primary colors, and how other colors come from combinations of them.  Then I set them loose.  They created 24 unique colors and had a blast doing it!

Um...yeah...I basically failed for St. Patrick's Day.  In the past I we have made decorations, special food, activities, or at least documented it better.  This year, I managed to find church clothing that was green (for everyone in the family), and that was my big accomplishment.  While I did think to snap this picture, while they were watching tv, I didn't remember to get them in their official St. Patty's t-shirts :(

The kiddos are currently VERY eager to help in the kitchen.  Tuesday evenings I make easily transportable food since we eat in the van on the way home from swim lessons.  I realized they could easily make the entire meal (taco biscuits) themselves.  Allie pressed the biscuits into the muffin tin, Ryan spooned in the meat mixture (which he had helped me mix earlier), and Allie sprinkled cheese on the top!

Of course, I think part of their eagerness is that they already realize that if you help, you get to sample while you work!

Another story time at our favorite toy store!  This one was The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and they brought a certified American Sign Language instructor to teach the kids basic signs from the book.  

My children had trouble sitting and signing - apparently, if you take the words away, they need their whole body to talk!

Another birthday gift was a Live Butterfly Kit.  I have wanted to do this with my kids ever since I was a substitute teacher for a kindergarten class (the first year Lucas and I were married), and they had one.  I have just been waiting for the twins to be old enough.  We ordered the caterpillars and anxiously awaited their arrival.  Fittingly, they arrived when we got home from the story time of the same theme!

Originally, I took these pictures to take to the post office as evidence.  They put the caterpillars in the mailbox, and I (expecting them to be delivered to my door since they needed to be opened right away) didn't discover them until 4 hours later!  They looked frozen, and I was livid (my children might also have been a tiny bit traumatized by me gasping, "They killed our caterpillars!" which didn't help.  Oops.).  Then I saw one of them move.  We watched in awe as, one-by-one, they started to wiggle and then crawl.  While they might not all make it yet, within an hour ALL 10 of them were moving!  We will keep you posted on the caterpillar to butterfly transformation!

And there they are - the random little adventures of which our days are composed.  So much life lived in such short, but quickly-passing, time.