Laowai

Brian and the girls took me for a nice spring walk for Mother’s Day.

Bea made a crown of dandelions for me.

The frogs were singing.

Everywhere – the green was taking over the brown.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Claire turned six this week. The milestones make me pause and gaze at her. She is growing, growing, growing. She has loved every day of kindergarten. Her hair is pretty multicolor blonde and I love to brush it once all the snarls are out. She makes friends easily. I smile to myself when the things she says seem so mature. She’s helpful and thoughtful and agreeable. She still holds my hand. I love her. 

We filled her room with balloons to start off her birthday.

Then we had cake and presents that evening. Bea drew ponies to decorate the cake. 

“Happy Birthday Little Sissy Pants”

Claire had a rough cough all week and as I looked at her on her birthday I knew she was not feeling herself. I took her temperature after we had cake and she had a fever. Birthday Bummer! She slept most of the next day and stayed close to the couch and her pillow the day after that – poor thing. I thought I was going to have to cancel her birthday party, but luckily the fever broke and we were able to carry on. She had nine of her little friends over.

Here’s the drawing she did for her party invitation:

The weather cooperated so the girls were able to play outside for a good part of the party. They colored the cardboard castles that I made and then we had vanilla cupcakes.

Six!

Brian is doing some work with Gerber. I’m not trying to promote Gerber or anything, but I thought this video that Brian showed me was so funny and clever. Take a look.

You have to click on the link below and then mover your cursor back and forth.

http://formulaforhappiness.gerber.com

I’m becoming an expert at removing wallpaper. This time it’s our bedroom. Brian has been more bothered than me looking at that busy wallpaper everyday. But I was feeling like I needed a project. So here I go. I took lots of before pictures this morning. Then I got to work. 

There were some extra bits of the wallpaper in our basement so earlier this week I took a piece to be framed. I’d like to remember the wallpaper. I guess I’m drawn to retro and colorful stuff.

Claire made this drawing a long time ago and taped it to the wall. It’s stayed there because it kind of blended in with the wallpaper and it makes me smile. 

I had a long day without the kiddos because Claire went to play with a friend for a couple hours this morning. I was able to get one whole wall done. What a change! Right now I can only think about painting it white, but maybe I’ll come up with a way to add a little color back into the room.

Reminds me of Edith Ann – and that’s the truth.

At the Chicago Botanic Garden

Another ridiculous holiday that we are happy to celebrate. Especially great today because it was chilly and dreary outside. We used Smitten Kitchen’s recipe and they turned out great! We are so pleased with our pretzel making skills. There are some extra steps – like dunking them in water – but really they are pretty easy because they only need rise about an hour.

Here’s the fun printable calendar from (Damask Love) that got us going with the ridiculous holidays. 

Here we are making our pretzels:

While they baked Bea drew a picture – it shows what it would look like if our family ran a pretzel shop.

We ❤ pretzels!

And we have this sweet Eric Carle book about pretzels. We’ll read it tonight.

Cardboard castles.

The cardboard architect in me came out again. I might be making ten little castles for Claire’s birthday party. 

Two loves loaves of bread. I try new recipes now and then but I alway come back to Grandma Dice’s recipe. It’s the best.

A bouquet from my back yard.

The sun was out last weekend and so were the freckles. We had a good walk and a picnic along Lake Michigan.

Yeah! Let the rummage sale season begin. I found these treasures at a church rummage sale just down the road. A set of nine sparkly Culver Ltd. glasses. And a set of Vera Neumann holiday napkins.