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.