Spring is here!

The weather is warming up, the flowers are in bloom, and the sun is coming out (every once in a while).  Spring is here!

 

We have daffodils growing in the backyard and Eliana enjoys bringing them in to the house for display.  We were able to get two big bouquets in.

And here's a bouquet of tulips that Eliana harvested.  It's a gift for our neighbors, an older couple that Eliana is really fond of.  She loves poking her head above our waist high fence and yelling: "MISTER MAAAAAARK!  Are you THERE???" into their yard.  If he is, she will talk his ear off for about 15 minutes straight until her attention span runs out.

 

With spring, we have started seeds in little peat pots.  The girls planted a bunch of petunia flower seeds.  We'll see what happens.

 

With the weather improving, the girls are spending more time outside.  Time to put on sun hats, to take the baby dolls out on a stroll.

Gabriel also enjoys the outdoors.  But you need to keep the stroller moving!  If it stops even for one minute, he gets fidgety and starts squawking.

Karina also decided to get onto a bicycle that Eliana used to ride, but has outgrown.  Eliana, the good big sister that she is, is trying to help Karina figure things out.  

In addition to playing outside, they are continually finding new things to do indoors, too.  Here, they are having what looks like a birthday party.  Karina seems to be the birthday girl.  Their stuffed animal cats and a baby doll are participating too.

Here, the girls are playing house.  Karina is pretending to be a baby and Eliana is Mommy.  After putting the "baby" to bed, Eliana is spending some alone time sewing. (As a side note, Emily has not done any sewing for fun in about five years...not sure where Eliana picked this idea up)

Another favorite pastime is playing with bubbles in the sink.  Eliana knows how to plug the sink, and 20 squirts of soap later, voila!  Bubbles!  And don't worry, Emily didn't drop Gabriel, even though it looks like he is going to fall. 

 

And if you run out of things to do, it's fun to just wrestle!  There's tickling involved in the wrestling below.

 

 

We put Gabriel into the mix, to try to take a picture with his siblings.  He wouldn't cooperate, though, and wanted to crawl away.

Eliana, every once in a while, gets inspired to do homework and schoolwork.  In getting prepared for homeschooling next year, Emily posted a numbers poster.  Eliana then took it upon herself to learn how to count to one hundred.

It took a few times, but she got the hang of it!  (And notice that Karina likes to help out too!)





The girls also enjoy painting.  These sheets of paper come with their own watercolor inkpad.  Karina likes to join in and can get really creative sometimes.  As in the picture below, she decided that she wants to paint by holding the brush with her mouth.

Emily got a cool paint set for the kids.  The cups that holds the paint have lids.  They also have a small opening that the brush will fit into, which make them semi-spill proof.  Karina enjoys using them.

 And Eliana also likes to express herself artistically using them.

And one day, Eliana tried, again, to see if she could wink.  Not quite yet...

Karina had a hard time, too.

 

And of course, the girls are capable of sitting in front of the boob tube watching TV for hours, if we let them.  For a couple of weeks, they were addicted to Mulan.  We have both the first and second movie, and they watched both several times.

 

There is a scene where Mu-lan and the rest of the Chinese army train to use fighting sticks.  Apparently, this made quite an impressions with the girls, because they decided that they needed fighting sticks, so Elvin made them some from branches from our apple tree.

And they love to reinact the scene over and over in the backyard. Enjoy.