St. Patrick's Day and potato printing

Our kids look forward every year to the one day that they are allowed to eat a super sugary cereal for breakfast. Its silly- but they love it, so I've let them have Lucky Charms since Asher and Leif were little. Natalie has been checking out the box for the last week or so and when I explained that she could have them on St. Patrick's Day she exclaimed, "I love March!"

This has nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day, but just turned out to be what we were doing for our history/art lesson for the day. We did a project using potato stamps to learn more about the printing press. We talked about how many trials and errors it took before the printing press was possible and the kids learned different techniques for cutting their stamps and stamping them onto the paper. We originally started out just with shapes from mini cookie cutters, but Leif soon wanted to make the letters for his name and Asher and Heidi wanted to try as well. Helpfully, they share quite a few letters, so they could use the same stamps. Heidi's name worked out the best since I helped her make her stamps or she stole from Leif. I guess I never got a picture of Leif printing his name, which is too bad because it was his idea, but they had a lot of fun learning and being creative.

 

River Walk

We went on a little walk along the Poudre River last weekend just to get out in the sunshine and the nice weather. Torben enjoyed running like crazy whenever there was no one else around and we could let him off leash. The kids had a grand time exploring everything, climbing, and collecting sticks.

The trail starts at an archery range where Leif likes to practice his shooting. There were too many other people there when we first arrived, but he was able to find a target to practice at after we finished our walk. This is the first time he has shot since last fall, so he was a little rusty, but he enjoyed getting back to it and we have made plans to go more often now that the weather is warming up.

 

Devil's Backbone

I forgot to post this several weeks ago when we went on a family hike to Devil's Backbone- a local area about 10 minutes away from out old house in Loveland, but now slightly farther away from us. We were warned several times that the hike was muddy because of all the melting snow and ice (we went in February), but thought it couldn't really be that bad. We were wrong- it was extremely muddy in many places, and we came home caked in mud, but we had a lot of fun. I carried Natalie a lot of the way to keep her from getting too muddy, but I let her walk in the spots that weren't too bad. We took Torben with us and because he had to stay on leash the whole time, he was pulling like crazy and was a bit of a bother, but we are glad he got to get out with us.

The top of the hike is a key hole in the rocks that looks out onto the other side. It was very windy there, but the kids thought it was fun and enjoyed having a few little snacks while we rested and got ready to brave the mud on the way back down.

Here are the kids leaning into the wind which was especially strong coming through the keyhole.

 

Natalie is 4!!!

We had a very exciting and fun day celebrating our littlest lady turning four! I usually try to keep birthdays somewhat low-key with no extravagant and huge parties since there are five kids and they have plenty of celebrations and treats anyway. We originally planned to just to dinner and brownies with grandparents over, but when I realized this was the last time I would have a four year old, I wanted to do something more special. The older kids had a lot of fun planning to surprise Natalie on her birthday with pink decorations, more family coming over, pink cake, and a pinata. They helped pick everything out the weekend before while Austin took Natalie to do 1-on-1 time with him, then they decorated on the morning of her birthday while she was still asleep (she is definitely the latest sleeper in our house, usually getting up hours later than her everyone else- but she goes to bed pretty late for a little girl and skips her naps almost every day). They decorated the kitchen and living room first and wanted to do her door too, but she woke up just as they were about to do it, so Trevor and Heidi did it while Asher played with her in her room and told her when to come out. She wanted to open her presents first and she had a quite a pile with all the little things that her siblings made and wrapped up for her. Afterward, we had our traditional chocolate waffles, but since strawberries are hard to find this time of year, we only had a few, plus some blue berries and blackberries that looked a lot better than the one pack of strawberries I bought.  

 

While she was playing with her new toys, Leif and I started work on the pot pies she requested for dinner, the brownies (allergy free for Trevor) and the surprise chocolate cake with pink frosting. He was very eager to help me with all the cooking as he has been for the last few weeks since he wants to learn to cook more. He helped a lot with the cake, made the brownies all on his own and made some progress on the pot pies before he got tired and I got grumpy.

Natalie sure loves her pup and had fun playing with him when everyone else was busy or playing something else.



As you can see, the pinata is Mario themed, which is more interesting to her older siblings than to Natalie, but I didn't think she would want to beat a unicorn or mermaid with a stick, so we just went with the mystery block.




Natalie was very excited when she saw the pink cake and squealed over some of the presents she got- especially the new baby doll her grandparents gave her. She had lots of fun playing with her cousins and eating treats and we had fun celebrating her!

I didn't do a very good job taking pictures of everyone at the party- this is really all I got since most of my pinata pictures turned out blurry.
 

 

Here is Natalie's Birthday Interview:

Who is your favorite person? Mom

What is your favorite color? Pink

What is your favorite thing to watch on TV? Clifford the Big Red Dog or Loony Tunes or Gummy Bears

What is your favorite outfit? Pink fluffy skirt 

What song do you like the best? I Am a Child of God

What is your favorite cereal? Cinnamon Life

Who is your best friend? Heidi and Mom

What do you want to do when your grow up? Be a mommy

What is your favorite book? Clifford Loves

What are you really good at? Swimming

Where do you wish you could go on vacation? Vacation? I don't want to do vacation.

What would you buy if you had a lot of money? Pets, like bunnies

What is your favorite dinner? Macaroni and cheese (for some reason she chose pot pie for her birthday dinner- probably because it's Heidi's favorite)

If you could have a wish, what would it be? Getting Tulip (a little pink stuffed bunny she is earning from us for having no potty accidents)

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Rocky Mountain, I mean Rocky Road (I didn't even know she knew what this is)

Who do you want to be like? Natalie Patricia Wilkins

What do you like to do with your friends? Play

What do you hope you'll get to do before your next birthday? Go sledding (she got the cutest penguin sled from her cousins)

What is your favorite thing to do? Play with my stuffed animals and dolls

What are you proud of? Playing

What are you afraid of? Ghostes

What is Mom's favorite thing to do? Rest

How strong is Dad? A lot strong

What does Dad do best? Fix stuff

What does Mom do best? Cook

What do you like best about Dad? When we go on special time together

What do you like best about Mom? When we go on special time together