Aunt L!

Fantastic visit with Aunt L.!  It was hard to let her go.  I had forgotten how those who are not constantly engaged with young children seem to have endless energy for engaging with them!  What a lovely time we all had with her.  When Eden asks a house guest to read her books at bedtime and help get her ready for bed, the houseguest has officially made a positive connection :)  We also had a wonderful evening with the Lists and Eden was flying high after an evening with the man of the house...he was doting on her and carrying her around like the Queen of Sheba and she quite enjoyed this :)  The boys had fun visiting a house big enough to run around in!

Lego afternoon with Aunt L.

We've been boiling down maple sap from our backyard taps.  Yum!  (As long as you don't forget about it...yikes.)

And we have acquired the perfect lazy man's pet:  the neighbor's dog.  We take a walk down the street, the dog runs up to meet us, follows us home, plays fetch with the boys for an hour (and is super sweet and well-trained) and then I urge her to run home, which she does.  Best pet ever!

It snowed today.  T minus 6 to Easter.  Sigh! (Granted, it isn't sticking at this point, but still!)

Life with brothers, princess-style

Eden mostly gets the prized position of being fought over these days...by her two brothers.  The famous 2 vs. 1 situation that can develop in a 3-child family sometimes rears its ugly head, and interestingly, Eden is never the '1'.  Who can woo Eden's attention the most?  This is the name of the game.  Here is one of Owen's latest attempts with a laundry basket:

Judging by that smile, he was quite successful...for today :}

Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter

We are listening to Pollyanna by Eleanor Hodges, on CD in the car as we go here and there for classes and activities.  This passage went by today and captured so well a part of my thought process in doing school at home this year, and also relates to the tension I persistently feel between getting in what seems a good amount of formal learning, while respecting the learning that happens during non-programmed time, too.  Had to write it down.  I know the boys agree with Pollyanna!  (Though, cooking and sewing lessons constituting formal learning would be quite palatable to them compared to math and writing!  Which reminds me of a story we read this year of a man who went to a school where the skill set he was trained in included boat-building, fire-starting, basic house construction, gardening and other survival skills.  The boys said, "Why don't we have schools like that???!")

"At nine o'clock every morning you will read aloud one half-hour to me.  Before that you will use the time to put this room in order.  Wednesday and Saturday forenoons, after half-past nine, you will spend with Nancy in the kitchen, learning to cook.  Other mornings you will sew with me.  That will leave the afternoons for your music.  I shall, of course, procure a teacher at once for you, " she finished decisively, as she arose from her chair.

Pollyanna cried out in dismay.

"Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven't left me any time at all just to -- to live."

"To live, child!  What do you mean?  As if you weren't living all the time!"

"Oh, of course I'd be breathing all the time I was doing those things, Aunt Polly, but I wouldn't be living.  You breathe all the time you're asleep, but you aren't living.  I mean living -- doing the things you want to do:  playing outdoors, read (to myself, of course), climbing hills, talking to Mr. Tom in the garden, and Nancy, and finding out about the houses and the people and everything everywhere all through the perfectly lovely streets I came through yesterday.  That's what I call living, Aunt Polly.  Just breathing isn't living!"

Vermont

What's the only logical thing to do for Spring Break when you've been getting 100" of snow in a month?  Why, go to Vermont, of course!

Reuel's cousin and her family have an absolutely quaint, just-what-you'd-imagine-in-Vermont, home near Craftsbury, and they invited us to join them for a visit over the recent break.  What fun we had!  (Well, except for having a child with a stomach bug the day we were supposed to leave.  And that minor problem of our radiator cracking on the way up and getting stranded and needing overnight car repairs.  And a rather severe, persistent headache on my part that didn't let up much on the trip.  But still, even with all that, we had so much fun!)

On the way up we stopped at the Ice Castles in Lincoln, NH.  VERY cold day.  But super fun :)  Eden had enough after about 5 minutes and informed us, "I am too fweezing."  It might have been about 4-6 degrees while we were there?  Something like that.

Then after stopping to check directions, smelling a strange engine odor (Amy) and deciding to carry on along a road called something-something-MOUNTAIN Rd. (Reuel), we were forced to pull over in a random rural driveway with something volatile pouring out of the engine.  (I wouldn't want to point fingers or anything.)  We just so happened to pull over in the driveway of a GM mechanic, who diagnosed leaking antifreeze and gave us a gallon of water and a gallon of antifreeze to get back down the mountain to the mechanic he recommended in town.  A blessing in a trial!  We got down, the mechanic took us right away, and we learned that the oil cap that had been lost during a routine oil change over a year ago had found its way to a fan, which kicked it into the radiator and cracked the radiator...he found the chewed up oil cap and everything.  So...if a mechanic returns your car to you without the oil cap screwed on, well, now you know what could happen!  Reuel's cousin mercifully came the hour's drive to pick us up and take us back to their home.  Then, we had all this fun!  The mornings were 20 below, but once the sun really came out and warmed things up it was at least a balmy 2 or 3!

Somebody is luuuucky to have a doting older brother.

Laura and Porter?  Pebbles?

Oh boy, do we hear the request for a dog even MORE often that previously :)

Swinging and warming in the barn.

Eden was pleased as punch in her cross-country polk.

So soothing, she fell asleep!  One of about 3 naps since the day she turned 2!

The boys say, "We hate cross-country skiing.  It is too much work.  And not very exciting compared to downhill."

Took a nice long nap out in the cold!

Tandem skiiers :)

Reuel, Nancy and Steve took the long way home (I drove the kids).  Reuel was a sweat ball by the time he got back, quite a workout!

And the highlight for Owen...