Fun Things We've Been Up to the Last Two Weeks of April

The  last two weeks in April have been fun, busy weeks. I fogot to post that on the 17th we went to Steve's brother's house for a party celebrating his new job. The picture above is from a Curious George game I playe with the little kids.

There was a family there with four boys and a baby girl, besides the four cousins, and their cousin who lives next door, so there were many kids. Jared especially loved so many older boys to wrestle with. The cousins have a huge trampline in the back, and the kids must have spent several hours on that throughout the day.

Jared also loved sneaking up to his cousin's room to play on his drum set.

My sister-in-law baked a fabulous cake.

I've included yet some more hard-boiled egg pictures. If your kids are like mine, it will buy you at least a good 15 to 20 minutes time if you give them hard-boiled eggs to peel and eat. (They're trying to cool their eggs down so they can eat them faster!)

Here's a picture of one of Jared's building creations. He's super into Batman now, so everything he builds becomes Gotham City.

A few days were pretty warm outside, and after I had used the hose to water the grass seed, the kids asked to use it to fill up their sand buckets.

Of course this led to wanting to dump all the water into the sandbox (which really didn't have much sand left in it anymore).

And that lead to this....

The farm program that we go to every Tuesday morning has been such a wonderful way for the kids to see how fast baby animals grow up. It's fine to visit a farm on your own on the weekend once in a while, but when you come to the same place every week over a period of a few months, you really get to notice things that you might not have otherwise. The kids get to see the same ducklings and chicks and watch them change from week to week. These past few weeks we've been able take out the adorable baby bunnies and watch them learn to eat grass on their own.

We've also watched the piglets and lambs grow bigger every week.

Almost every week the kids get to hold the baby chicks and carry them to their outside pen  for some sun.

Alexa has really started to impress me with her drawing. She goes days without wanting to draw anything at all, and then suddenly she'll get inspired to draw. Her drawings are becoming much more realistic. I'm most impressed because she has never once had anyone show her how to draw things. I've always wanted their approach to art to be as natural as possible. She told me the drawing below was called The Girl and The Ant.

On the 24th, we headed out once again to Steve's brother's house for the cousin's birthday party. All of his kids have birthdays within six weeks of each other, so we celebrate them all on one day. The family with all the boys were there, too, and Jared was so excited. I think he thinks they are his cousins, too. I don't have many pictures of that day, mainly because Steve and I kept an eye on the kid's outside and just tried to get adult conversation here and there when we could.

The last really exciting thing which happened the last week of April, besides their birthday which I'll write about in a separate post, was getting our caterpillars in the mail. We ordered them from Insect Lore, and so far all ten caterpillars are alive and crawling around. Actually, as of this morning writing this post, most of them are in a crysalis state. They grow ten times their size in seven days. It's been so much fun for the kids (and me, too!) to watch them grow and eat.

 It's been pointed out to me by several people that, yes, many school kids get this opportunity to do this, too, True, but they have to contend with twenty-five other kids crowding in to look, and of course once you've had your turn, you need to sit down. No popping out of your chair anytime you want to look at them.  I guess you could argue that you could do this at home on your own, too. Yes, but with being gone most the day, after school obligations, and then homework, you don't get much quality time, there too. Once, again, I'm reminded of how blessed a life we lead.