Halloween

           There's no place like home.

                  (Made by Aravis)

                     Made by Mommy

Old lady attacking a masked bad guy (although, it looks like a masked man giving an old lady a piggie back here) zombie, Minnie Mouse and a shadow. 

                          The end. 

Playing, Exploring And More Renovating

Dominick and I are ripping out the old countertop and sink and replacing them with new ones. 

I'm helping Tanner register for dual enrollment next semester. I'm helping Aravis with a project about India and to make moon sand out of sawdust and other random ingredients from the torn up kitchen and I'm helping Xury not to kill the kitten. The girls got some old toys out of storage and have been playing out on the patio while we work.

 There are toys strewn everywhere, sawdust tracked throughout the house, kitties chasing each other through a box fort in the play room and the contents of my kitchen counter are piled on the dining room table. It's a little nuts around here. 

In fact, we've been enjoying lots of full days lately. The kids set up a tent on the patio, which soon led to bringing a TV out on the patio, which then led to watching movies from the pool......not a bad way to live, if you ask me. I think the novelty was more exciting than actually watching TV while being in the pool because they were usually out and back up on the patio relatively quickly. Aravis and Xury have been eating, playing and watching TV in the tent all week. 

One day last week, we somehow managed to visit two parks, 

two thrift stores, a river walk, have a picnic lunch, stop for milkshakes, stop at Target and end it all with a trip to the mall. We got an awesome deal on a American Girl backpack that looked like new at a thrift store and great clearance deals on clothes for the kids at the mall. Despite all the stops, the day still managed to feel leisurely and adventurous.

It was fun exploring new playgrounds.

The younger two played, while the older two sat in the shade and enjoyed the breeze.

Xury found a rock wall just her size.

"I did it!"

Aravis and Xury went on an adventure that involved the ocean and a ship and this truck.

Apparently, it was a long ride.

After the playground, we took a walk along the river walk and watched the boats and waves.

Xury, who never looks at the camera, was so proud to be standing posing with the big kids. I was a nervous wreck because, as you can see, there are no railings on this part of the dock.

We took a walk over the water, under the highway and beside the train tracks. We saw trucks, trains, boats and fish. It was an almost perfect day.

At home, we've been working on building a shelf for the kitchen. Our countertops have been stacked on the bedroom floor waiting to be installed. Our old counter had an empty spot underneath and an odd island thing being held up by what I think was a deck rail. 

So, Dominick has been building a shelf to fill the empty spot under the counter.

We had no idea how to do it and we couldn't find anything specific on the internet so we had to figure it out ourselves. We found suitable boards and I did the measuring while Dominick did the cutting and assembling. We were so excited when we put it together and saw that our planning seemed to work. It looks like it's going to be exactly what we were hoping for.

Xury's been helping us measure.

While the baby was napping and Dominick, Tanner and I were watching a zombie apocalypse movie, Aravis occupied herself building this.

Yes, that is a box fort with a second story. She's very proud of that. 

 It even has a window box with flowers. Inside, she made a cardboard kitchen and cardboard couch. It's quite impressive. 

And, while my husband was throwing out some things from the backyard he discovered our latest wildlife encounter, this gopher turtle.

One of our neighbors wandered over and was happy to share his wealth of knowledge about gopher turtles with us. I was in my pajamas and really wishing I was not meeting my neighbor for the first time in my pajamas but was glad for all the interesting facts he shared with us. Gopher turtles are protected so it's against the law to relocate them. They dig tunnels and burrow under ground, hence the name gopher turtle. After a few minutes he wandered back over to our neighbor's yard and so did our neighbor.

So, it has been very busy and productive and fun and just a little nuts around here and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Creative Pursuits

There has been a flurry of activity at our house the past few days. We've had lots of dress up and dances and tea parties. We've been baking and crafting and creating. It's been lots of fun and lots of mess and I've just been trying to keep up with all of it.

Tanner's been doing a lot of cooking and baking lately, for which I am always grateful.

Tanner's pies

(the little one is for the barbies)

Aravis's pie

Xury's play dough pie

   

We made up a batch of homemade play dough and everyone's had a lot of fun playing with it. Dominick and Aravis made some ooblek or quicksand, as they call it, and they enjoyed playing with that as well.

So much for the bowl and placemat.

The kids have been practicing their graffiti skills with chalk on the back fence.

They've been filming movies and music videos. Aravis and Xury have been making up dances. There has been a lot of dress up.

and tea parties

 

and, of course, zombies.

Aravis set up a cash register and check out so she and Xury could play store.

She even made a cash register.

 

There's been quite a bit of Lego-ing and Knex-ing too.

Tanner's haunted house that she designed.

We did an experiment that was supposed to make frost. 

It didn't. But Aravis and Xury loved playing with the "snow" made from the salt and ice. 

We've been slowly introducing the new cats to the other animals. Bella, our dog has always been around cats but I wanted to make sure she recognized the kitten as a cat and didn't mistake it for her arch nemesis, the squirrel. They've had a number of supervised introductions and so far things are going well. Xury on the other hand........

still needs a lot of supervision. Giving the kitten a chance to explore and Xury a chance to practice handling her gently while keeping the kitty safe has been a time consuming balancing act. I'm hoping the kitten will learn to outrun her soon because I don't think Xury's going to outgrow the desire to squish her to death anytime soon.

Dominick has been spending much of his time building his Rubik's Cube collection. He watches videos on how to solve them and create patterns, scans websites for intersting ones to buy, plays with them, takes them apart, modifies them and builds new ones.  Like with most of Dominick's interests, it's been all Rubik's Cube, all the time.

He's been steadily turning his allowance into quite the collection. 

I love periods like this. I love watching my kids create and explore and pursue what interests them. And once again, I'm very grateful for this life we lead.