Sunday

It is a beautiful day outside (currently 60 degrees) and the boys are outside playing with a friend they brought home from church.  He is a very polite friend who plays very well with the boys and who compliments my food, and so I have decided that he is permanently welcome. ;) Caroline is taking a nap and Layla is busily opening junk mail with great enthusiasm.  She declared at length over the AARP materials that came in a nice big envelope for my aging ten year old son, Gabe, and showed me the beautiful full page pictures of attractive and flourishing seniors that she wants to "keep".

I am enjoying a day of spring in the middle of my winter, myself, and am whipping up a tasty batch of chocolate chip cookies, the third in 4 days.  (One batch was for something else, though.  But still. We're like cookie-hogs. Oink.)

The boys have been playing laser tag, pogo sticks, rip-stiks, and tree climbing.  All quite proper energetic boy activities.  They also went down to the tennis courts for a while.  Tim took Zion and Layla down too, and the colors of Layla's outfit demanded that I take her picture.

Her coolest ever Chinese jacket is from a neighbor who works at a consignment store.  She saw the jacket and thought of Layla and it looks like the real deal from the tags inside of it.

Layla has recently taken to wearing tights, which she used to be "violently allergic" to the concept of.  We've had quite the clothes battles this winter, as she is currently "violently allergic" to anything "squeezy", including pull-ups, leggings, fitted or cuffed sleeves, and fitted or cuffed pants. Shoes are also an issue.  I had to go get her a separate wardrobe of loose, almost sweatshirt style shirts and loose legged soft pants.  She will also wear most dresses.  But somehow tights seem recently to have bypassed the dreaded "squeezy" label and graduated to nifty-cool.  That's great because I love them.  :)  

Here's the little pink-dressed bare legged sweeter after she woke up from her nap.

She's so ridiculously precious that it's just...ridiculous.  :)  We just have a "hard time" with how adorable she is.  So. stinkin'. cute.  I have recently begun to wonder if everyone in the world should have a one year old in the house at all times because there is so much heart warming reward...but the implications of such a plan are...just more than I PERSONALLY am ready to commit to at this point.  Ahem.  !!!  Lately, as babies do, those ol' babies, she's been changing up the means to get to sleep at night and from nursing to requests to be marched around industriously in the Ergo to gently bounce her way to sleep or be held to sleep by her Daddy.  She's still cutting teeth, and life is always screwy during that process, so I'm ok with these (probably temporary) changes.

Last week we camped out in front of the computer to stream the Superbowl since we don't have cable and can't pick up NBC with our antenna.  Actually, they watched while I cleaned around them, which was my activity of choice.  We also ate Hot Chicken pizza from Pizza King which is approximately one of the best pizzas in the world and made the evening feel very festive and warm.

Thursday was the Fine Arts program at school.  Israel made a birdhouse and Gabe played and sang "How Great Is Our God".  He did pretty good for one week and one day of piano lessons and probably about....3 practices.  I thought that maybe if it were me I might want to practice a little more, but some things are learned from experience.  Honestly, he did way better than I would have done with three practices.  He definitely has an affinity for music.

Friday Gabe had a dentist appointment.  He had no cavities and got three Skylander stickers for coming in.  Good job, Gabe!!  I divide up the kid's dentist's appointments because it becomes a fun time to spend time with them.  We "celebrated" with a Dunkin Donuts breakfast afterwards. :)

I suppose it's time to start funneling tribes of children to bed.