Holiday vacation time

Christmas Lego set...a novel open on the table...cookie dough smears...yes, it is that time of year.

UN Day

Juniper marching for South Korea in her school's annual UN Day parade. The UN Day celebration is a wonderful opportunity to highlight one of the International Community School's greatest strengths--its diverse student body.

Do not enter

Juniper, Hazel, Violet, Henry, and Luke were up to some important, no grown-ups allowed business. You may need to zoom in to see it, but one of those boxes is covered with "No" signs.

The walls came down later that evening. I can't remember why we thought it was a good idea for everyone to get ready for bed at our house, but I believe at one point all five kids were in the bath together. Chaos!

Bowling Birthday Party

This is how you want a kid to feel at her 4th birthday party!

After the bowling alley, we came back to the house a dinner of Hazel's choosing: hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, and chocolate cupcakes.

Hazel's 4th Birthday

Hazel began the day with a present from Juniper.

 Henry skipped preschool and spent the morning at Leapin' Lizards with Hazel.

Chocolate ice cream sundaes--Hazel's requested birthday dessert.

Opening presents...

...a light-up morning star!

Hazel loves weapons. I'm so glad it is our second child who has an interest in weapons, warriors, and warfare. If it had been Juniper, I think I would have fretted about What It Means and worried that her interest may suggest some dark tendency toward violence or aggression. Instead, I've been able to watch other parents deal with those worries and realize what it means is that kids like powerful stuff.

Happy birthday, little warrior.


[At the risk of being overly pedantic, I was checking to see whether it's morning star or morningstar, and I learned that this particular weapon is actually a one-handed flail. The morning star is a club-like weapon with no chain.]

Thank you, Farmer Joe

Apparently, the best way to get my children to eat carrots is to serve them still attached to their tops. Juniper and Hazel started devouring these carrots the moment we got them. The carrots were gloriously celebrated as the The Most Delicious Carrots Ever. The few carrots that made it home were eventually cut up into carrot sticks, which the girls dismissed as nothing special.

Fern faces

You wouldn't think such a happy baby would have wide-eyed distress as one of her most common baby-at-rest expressions.


 
She also spends a lot of time with this kind of face.

Double trouble

Two girls, each missing two front teeth, are just too cute together. It's nice of them to hit this particularly photographic milestone at the same time.

Camping!

We recently went on our first camping trip since having kids. We had a fantastic time and are wondering why we waited so long to get the kids into a tent. (Many thanks to Katie for the hand-me-down grown-up tent!)

 

Our campsite was next to Lake Hartwell. We had a lovely view and a great spot for the kids to play.

We were expecting cold weather, but when the day turned out warm and sunny, the lack of bathing suits didn't stop the kids from enjoying the lake.

  

Juniper was excited that some of the other parents on the trip fish. No one caught anything, but Juniper enjoyed learning how to cast.

 

 A gaggle of kids, getting ready for s'mores!

 Happy family by the campfire.

Eli brought glow bracelets, which delighted the kids and made them easy to spot at night. Juniper was especially proud of following the instructions to make the amazing glow ball all by herself.

 Sunrise by the lake...



...documented by two family photographers.



Happy, happy girl. We're looking forward to the next camping trip.

More after the jump if you haven't seen enough photos of smiling girls by the lake. (Click Read more at the bottom of the post.)

Happy Halloween

Little Lamb and Pikachu set off on their Halloween adventures.

They join forces with their friend Blue Lightning, in search of fun and treasure.

 They find lots of both, especially the treasure.

We've heard lots of strategies and ideas for dealing with all the candy kids get on Halloween, and there are things we don't like about all of them. Clearly the only sane thing is not to allow this much candy into your house. That worked the first few years we went trick-or-treating, but the Halloween candy cat is out of the bag.

This year we gave the girls the option of trading in candy for toys. Hazel couldn't decide whether she wanted a flashlight or weapons, so we were delighted to find this "lightsaber dagger" (it glows red when turned on). She also got a pirate sword and accessories (thank you 50% off Halloween toys).

Juniper's current obsession is Pokemon, a collectible card game targeted at children. We offered to trade Pokemon cards one for one for candy. Juniper initially decided to trade 20 pieces of candy for two packs of Pokemon cards (10/pack). Once she got the cards, she was so excited that she decided to trade in even more candy. By the time she was done, Juniper had 51 new Pokemon cards. Then Hazel became jealous and decided to trade some more of her candy for Pokemon cards. All told, the girls wound up trading well over half of their Halloween candy and feeling absolutely delighted with their decisions.

Birthday Girl

Hazel is 4 years old today!

She was excited to visit Leapin' Lizards and to spend the day eating some of her favorite foods (chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, Waffle House lunch, sushi dinner, and ice cream sundaes for dessert).

I think I am most excited about the fact that this birthday's milestone is graduating from a toddler car seat to a booster seat. This means that our family is done with LATCH attachments and 5-point harness seats!

More birthday photos to come soon...and Halloween photos...and pictures from our recent camping trip.

Cousin Laura

We recently had the pleasure of spending a week with my cousin Laura when she came to Atlanta for a course at the Emory School of Nursing. As far as Juniper and Hazel are concerned, Laura is a total rock star. They couldn't get enough of her. (The grown-ups also appreciated the opportunity for some one-on-one time with someone we normally only see at big family reunions.)

Uncle Mark loves science!

Juniper and Hazel are super lucky to have an uncle who will help out at a school science day. Chemical reactions, inflating balloons, awesome! (Since becoming a parent, I have been amazed by just how much mileage you can get out of baking soda + vinegar.)

This is the last of a bunch of photos I recently downloaded from my phone. I think Aaron may want the record to state that all of the mediocre quality photos are mine. We should soon be returning to our regularly scheduled programming of high quality photos.

Christmas Pageant 2013

Friendly beasts getting ready for the pageant.


I suppose it's better to post photos late than never at all...

 ...but 10 months later, I can't actually tell you what Hazel was. A Christmas camel?

Quotable kids

Looking at a telephone pole
Hazel: Why isn't it cooked?
Sally: What? I don't understand.
Hazel: But you can only get splinters from raw wood.


Juniper: Something is pondering me.


On being old enough to go from nursery care to Sunday School classes
Hazel: I'm thinking that there might be some celebrating in the big church because I'm done with the nursery.


Expressing concern about her very first spelling test
Juniper: And there are two four-letter words!
Aaron: Only two words? That doesn't sound bad.
J: No, there's lots of words, but only two of them have four letters.
A: What's one of the four-letter words?
J: Back.
A: How do you spell back?
J: B-A-C-K
A: See, you can spell four-letter words. What do the other words have, three letters?
J: Yeah, and two letters.
A: This sounds easy.
J (indignantly): Easy for you!! You can probably spell proboscis!!


Hazel (getting into a hot car): It smells like the sun!


Talking about some litter she just saw
Hazel: And one time, with Dad, we saw a bunch of those little papers that steal from poor people.
Sally: Lottery tickets?
Hazel: Yeah, that litter. There was a bunch of them. Those people weren't being very respective of the world.
(I think this one may say more about her parents than it does about Hazel.)

Family music time

From the archives

In our shared narrative about the children, Hazel never fell asleep in the car once she was past her youngest baby days. The evidence from my phone says otherwise.

In fact, we may have more photos of Hazel as a toddler sleeping in her car seat than we do of toddler Juniper asleep in the car. With Juniper, this was such an everyday experience that we saw no reason to document it. With Hazel, it's possible that we have photographic evidence of every single instance of toddler car sleeping.

Wizard or scientist?

Both!

Slug!

There are many ways Hazel is like her mama. This is one of them.

The needle went in deep

Last fall, Juniper created some sculpey art inspired by James and the Giant Peach.

The giant peach being speared by the spire of the Empire State Building. She came up with the toothpick idea all on her own.