Mater Teeth

 The five year old told me he has Mater teeth ;)

 Umm, maybe he's destined to be a dentist - ha.

 He also calls this "standing on one foot."  Looks like yoga to me.

 He's been very obsessed with wearing his facemask lately.  He thinks it makes him look like spiderman.  He's never seen a spiderman movie or show, or read any of the comics.  But it's everywhere these days and one of the kids I used to keep in my daycare was obsessed with him, so now he's hooked.

The two year old couldn't be left out either, but he was quick to take it off.

Okay, So It's NOT Clearing Out

 It was a dark and stormy ... day.  In fact this was first thing this morning, before it even got bad.  At one point it was snowing hard enough we couldn't see the willows.

And the wind was crazy too.  It was so bad that I didn't even take the five year old in to preschool today.  We did go to town later for the nine year old's archery (4H club). It had stopped snowing by then, but the wind was blowing snow over the highway so it was very icy.  Crazy weather.  This is really like typical spring storms we would normally get in late March through May.  Very wet, heavy snow.  And yesterday was really warm - so warm that I washed our Excursion.  I've given up on trying to follow the forecast.

Finally Clearing Off

 Yesterday we were finally able to get a glimpse of the mountains.  We've had stormy weather for a week and a half and a lot of snow in that time.  But until yesterday the clouds were banked up against the mountains so we couldn't see the peaks.

 Yesterday began with a beautiful sunrise.  These pictures at the beginning of this post are all from yesterday.

It may not look like there is much snow up there, but that just shows you how steep these mountains are.  Winter camps are in full swing at Red Cliff Bible Camp up in these mountains, and they had 40 inches of new snow just in the past half week.  Another friend said they had 6 days of over a foot of snow a day up that direction, so you can imagine how much snow that adds up to.
 

Our yard is pretty deep too.  That bump at the end is a hay bale.  I've been enjoying seeing all the animal tracks in the yard.
 

Not sure what kind of animal did this digging.  Tracks were pretty small (far enough from the house that I am not going to wade out there to find out what kind of tracks).  And the tracks end where the digging begins, so I'm guessing there's a hole there or else whatever it is is living under the snow.

Can you make out the row of cows in this picture?

The ranchers are feeding them now as it's too deep to graze.

As near as I can count, there are close to 100 head in this group (not all in this picture).

Pretty setting to raise cattle, don't you think?

More pictures from the yard.  The rabbits like our play equipment.  I'm sure it shelters them from the wind and there is still some bare grass under some of it.

This is what I woke to this morning... another bank of clouds.  I took this picture around  7 this morning, and it's still cloudy up against the mountains now at 10.  Good thing I looked at the mountains yesterday.  Might not see them today.

 Lately I've been working on hand sewing during chapel.  I listen to live streaming of chapel from Ambassador Baptist College.  The original plan was to listen while on the treadmill...

But little people keep coming to my room overnight, and I'm not overly anxious to wake them up in the morning.

So I had to find something quieter to work on.  It's slow going.  I did the blue one day and the red today.  I don't remember how many of these units I need, but it's a bunch.  I think I'm going to switch methods.  I've been using the English paper piecing method, but I think once I get this set sewn together I'm going to mark my fabric by tracing around the hexagons and just hand stitch them together.  Another blogger I follow, Karen, is putting one of these together using the Inklingo method, printing the hexagon designs out with her computer.  I think that method wastes quite a bit of fabric, but I can accomplish the same thing by tracing.  Plus, I already have my pieces cut into rectangles I was using for the paper piecing, so printing with a computer would not be possible.  Anyway, without the papers, she is going much faster than I am (not to mention she's an old pro at hand sewing).  I would like to get this project done fairly soon though (as in within a year or two) so I'm going to have to switch methods.

New Preschool Supplies!!

 Our local toy store is going out of business, so they have some great sale deals.  I picked up several things I thought would help our preschoolers learn better.  This first toy is a magnetic board with colored disks. You use the magnet wand to move them into place and create a picture.  Great for fine motor skills - and it's all contained, so it will be a great travel toy too.  (By the way these are all Melissa and Doug toys, and they were 40% off!)

I also found this board. It's a magnetic chalk board, which came with letters and numbers, and the other side is a white board.

This was definitely the most popular thing he got.  

I think his favorite part was erasing!

We haven't played with this magnetic calendar yet.  I have other calender items for him, but most of them require writing.  He doesn't do that well, but I thought the magnets might be easier to get him interested in trying.

I also bought this white board place mat for practice writing numbers and letters.  The other side has cursive letters.

The thrift store was also good to me today.  Mostly.  I didn't find what I actually went in looking for, but I did come away with several learning tools.

All of these thrift store items (I've only showed about half) were just a total of $1 ... for everything, not $1 each.  We have an awesome thrift store.

We also have a facebook page where local people post things for sale (no Craigslist here). Anyway, I snagged this set of 20 Bobbsey Twins books for $10 - making the books 50 cents each. 

Today the five year old had his valentine's party at preschool (they don't go to school on Fridays).  I forgot to take a picture of him making them, so we had to make an extra one to take a picture of.  The originals had the white part printed on the computer.  But they're pretty much the same.  He had fun with the stickers, and now he's stuck on the robots and planets theme.  We'll be hearing about that for awhile!  The actual party at school was too overwhelming for him though and he pretty much shut down.  Poor guy.  He doesn't like candy - almost has a dread of it for some reason, so when the kids were trying to pass out the valentines, he didn't want them and had a complete meltdown.  They had to move his container far away from him so the kids could still deliver their valentines without hurt feelings.  He was pretty happy to hand his out though, and he managed to cope with all the stress by cutting more hearts out (I cut the ones for the valentines).

Professor Ambidextrous

 Ambidextrous?  Maybe!  He sure was going to town with both hands in his coloring book today!

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.  Horses, on the other hand...

YEAH!  We call this "fine motor skills" in homeschooling ;)

Like the outfit?  Thanks big bro ;)

Are You Sick of Sun Dogs Yet?

 Yesterday we had more sun dogs.  It amazes me that we've had so many.  Maybe it's just that I'm more aware of looking at them?  I don't think so though.  I'm pretty aware of the sky and the view most days.

Yesterday morning I could see the ice crystals in the sky - glittery and beautiful.  If you look on the deck you can kind of see what I'm talking about - but I could see them in the sky, falling onto the deck.  It was very pretty.  See our row of hay bales (over our septic line in the yard)?  They're almost completely covered now.

The rainbow parts of the sun dogs are so pretty.  It is impossible to zoom in on a rainbow, but I tried anyway.

Do you like my little Minion's goggles?

I don't know how they were even staying on his head - haha.

 The two year old and I hung out at swim practice today again.  The nine year old was doing his best impression of Tarzan.  Looks like fun!

 They're very smart at the pool.  They normally keep the rope swing tied way up high where the kids can't get to it. ;)  It was the day of this session of swim lessons, so they got to have some fun.

They also "climbed" to the bottom of the pool using the rescue hook.  That's my nine year old at the bottom of the 12 foot section.

Meanwhile, the two year old kept both of us entertained.  He ran clear to the other end of the stands and back repeatedly, then slipped into the bathroom to put some toilet paper in one of the toilets.  I really was watching him ... but I got an important phone call and thought he was just running the length of the bleachers like he had been all day.  We're closed in alone in this area, with no way to get to the water, so he's pretty free to run and play ... well, clearly, not as free as I thought.