Helping out

Long time, no post!

There’s a lot to catch up on.  The last few weeks didn’t lend themselves to a lot of time on the computer, so I haven’t been keeping up here…as you could tell. 

Which doesn’t mean that we haven’t been busy, of course.  One day in that time, I set out to dig out one of our window wells.  We have several, because the basement has some windows.  This particular window well had gotten more full of dirt and stones than was good for it…or really, more than was good for the basement.  When it rained, water was able to go over the sill and down the basement wall.  This is not a good situation, so I planned to dig it out. 

I encouraged the kids to come outside, of course.  It wasn’t raining – good time to go outside.  As soon as the tools came out, though, I had LOTS of interest.  I thought they might be interested, but I didn’t realize just HOW interested they’d be.

In fact, after the first two shovelsfull, I didn’t shovel at all.

The girls took turns pushing Tess around in the stroller when it wasn’t their turn to dig.

I did some other yard work – weeding, pruning, etc., occasionally taking a break to use the big shovel to loosen up the dirt and rocks so they could dig more.

The kids had a great time!  They counted the shovels each got so as not to have one get an unfair extra turn.  And the other day, as we were pulling into the driveway on our way home, they asked, “Mom, when are we going to get to dig out the other window wells?”

Recent family photos

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here we’re thankful from everything from raisins to life.  I hope you have a good celebration!

Tess the techie

Tess discovered the eject button on the DVD-ROM drive on the computer, and wanted to make sure she got enough practice using it.  Check it out:

Lightbulb moments

are so great to witness. 

Hannah and Naomi are both in choir, and they both are taking piano lessons.  One of the things that the girls learn in Naomi’s age group in choir is a hand signal set for the notes – Do Re Mi, etc., each have different hand signals, and they move up and down, depending on whether the note is going higher or lower.  Hannah knows the hand signals, too, since she learned them when she was in the younger choir.

Tonight at dinner, Naomi was regaling us with a song she’d learned at choir – a short, amusing, Halloween song.  Hannah was watching her do the hand signals and suddenly said, “Wait, Naomi!  I think I can play that on the piano!  Come here!”  Usually I discourage jumping up from the dinner table and running into the other room, but Hannah asked if she could have just a minute at the keyboard. 

Sure enough, she had Naomi do the song with the hand signals and she played it.  Then Naomi played it.  Then they came back to the table, both quite happy with their accomplishment. 

And it really was an accomplishment, since Hannah made the leap from Do Re Mi to C D E, something that I’m not sure she’d had explained to her yet. 

I just love the lightbulb moments. 

Lesson learned

Keep hair away from the wax that’s used to make fake warts.

Yeah.

Halloween!

Facepaint credit: Aunt Pammer

Costumes credit: Grandma Ellie

Piglet wouldn’t leave up her hood for love or money.

But Piglet happily wore a wig for several minutes.  Next time we’ll know the secret is to give her pieces of candy to investigate.  She didn’t ever get them open, so it was a safe bribe.  This time.