Spring Break breaks my heart

I love it, but I hate it. Really, spring break only serves to make me want summer break that much more. And with weather like we're having this week, it's feeling that much more heartbreaking to fathom leaving my amazing children each morning and going back to the drudgery of work on Monday. But summer is coming, summer is coming, summer is coming...

So, despite a bit of a health setback-- and by that I mean the inability to do more than about 25 minutes of anything before I have to sit down, rest and try to gasp for a little air as my lungs still heal from the nasty cold that knocked me on my tush for 8 FULL days-- I'm trying to make the most of this all too short stay-at-home-mommy time.

Today, inspired by Hannah and Noah's Monday night dinner conversation, we had (The First) Tie-Die Taco Tuesday. That's right. It's exactly what it sounds like. Uncle Kyle, Aunt Hope, cousins Reid and Jude and Papa and Grandma Reynolds joined in the festivities and it was so fun to hang out and eat a family meal now that the Reynolds side of the family is taking over Maywood Park.

I'm already brainstorming a whole list of themed family dinner nights for the whole summer and more fun excursions with the cousins. Job #1: Make the cousins some tie-dyed shirts for future spur-of-moment-Tuesday fun. Luckily, their mama was clever enough to put them in awesome, colorful Hawaiian shirts . Now that's una fiesta!

Making cookies!

Last year, Hannah and I baked and decorated Christmas cookies together for the first time. This year, Noah was big enough to join in and Grandma came down to help too. Here's how it went:

Of course, Grandma made them special Christmas cookie aprons. (Those are some cute kids!)

The rolling out and cutting was surprisingly not that messy.

Grandma helped Hannah with the decorations and I helped Noah. The kids were amazingly good at not tasting everything as they worked.

The finished product!
Hannah savored her hard work, one little nibble at a time.
Of course, Noah had already devoured his cookie by the time I grabbed the camera! Thanks for all the help, Grandma!

Our developing traditions...

I love that the kids are now old enough to begin developing our own Peterson family traditions, and I have been spending much time thinking about what I'd like these to be. Well, on Saturday we embarked on one, begun last year in earnest, that is wonderful and bittersweet at the same time.

We packed up and headed down to my grandma and grandpa's house in Gladstone so that Hannah and Noah could help decorate their tree. We did the same last year at my grandma's request, and it was great fun. This year was extra special because Kyle, Hope, Reid and Jude were able to join us. Hannah put the ornaments in just the right spot and set up the nativity characters with great care. Noah kept taking the ornaments off and putting them back on and kept trying to talk me into letting him eat another candy cane. When the festive (and by festive, I mean annoying) singing stuffed animals came out, Reid and Noah had a pretty intense dance party. And Jude watched intently and cooed at the whole affair.


Great family fun, right? Without a doubt. But the bittersweet part, for me, is the realization that this will be a relatively short-lived tradition. My grandma and grandpa are nearing 90 years old. Neither are in the best of health. In fact, each time we visit, my grandpa seems noticeably more tired and frail. They've both lived long, full lives full of generosity, faith and love-- and when it is their time, will be called home with joy to join their Creator and Savior.

So while I treasure these moments and experiences we still have the opportunity to share, and try to commit them to memory and photographs, I also find myself preemptively missing the fun times my kids will be unable to share with them as they grow. Since our physical bodies are transitory and age will always give way to youth, it creates this irony of brief tradition.

Hayes' Art Show-- 12/18/09

After several delays on the part of others and much hard work on his part, Hayes finally was able to put together his first solo art show in the gallery space at Cal's Pharmacy. It was awesome to see so many people come out to support his talent, not just by checking out his work, but by purchasing quite a few of his pieces too. Hopefully, this show will not be the first and only, but the first of many.


There are some more photos on Hayes' blog too.

Funny or concerning?

Some days weird things just unfold as you're watching kids play and imagine and interact that you just don't know how to categorize. Take this video from yesterday for example:

Hannah is dressed as a Native American and a ballerina, she is goose stepping and counting as if leading a regiment into battle and swinging two puppies tied by their necks to the ends of a shoelace. She did this for at least 20 minutes, cracking herself and Noah up the whole time. What an odd conglomeration of potentially offensive things, that just end up being funny and cute when a little kid is the one doing them.


(According to her, she is "marching in an Indian parade." And yes, that is Noah swinging puppies around by their necks, too. "It's a puppy helicopter, mom." Ah, of course. That's what they are doing.)

Noah's manners

Overall the kids are pretty good at using their manners. Of course, sometimes they need to be reminded-- but then again, so do many adults these days. Noah is so good at it though, that he has taken to covering all of his bases for proper polite questioning structure. As you can see in this video, a standard Noah request is, "Please may could I have..." And he reeeeeaaaaallly wanted one of the muffins I had just taken out of the oven.

Cheese.

You can tell quite a bit about the kids from their random candid pictures. Pull out the camera these days and Hannah strikes a pose with a toothy grin and a funny arm gesture. When Noah sees the camera, though, he does something like this (his "scary face") or says "cheese" so intently that his eyes are squinched closed and he looks like he's in some kind of pain.