A tea party and cu'capes

Today we had a tea party with some of our favorite friends. My mom gave Claire a set of 4 matching antique teacups and saucers for her birthday in December. We decided that Valentine's Day would be an excellent time to invite some friends over and share our pretty things. There were cookies, cupcakes, fresh raspberries, cheese and crackers and two different kinds of tea. The big brothers stopped by the table occasionally for snacks, although they declined to sit and giggle with a table full of mostly little girls. :-)

Violet ended up under the table with her "cu'cape" before it was over. I love this age, when they really start communicating well, but still have cute little words that they use for some things.

In which we go for a nature walk and my children all sprout facial hair

Last week I took the kids for a walk at a little state park near our home. I got on the internet searching for a good place to go for a walk or hike near by when I came across this place. Strange thing about it was that it appears on the maps as a state park, but on a quick google search I found absolutely nothing about it, just the name listing it as a state park. Which seemed really weird, I mean google knows everything, right? But apparently not, because google couldn't tell me a thing about this place. And I mean it's not like we live in some really remote village in the darkest interior of Africa. But anyway, I found the name of the place and thought that we would check it out.

We pulled past the little ranger station (which was empty) and drove to the end of the road. There were a couple of trail heads there so I parked and we all piled out of the van. There were no signs saying how long the trails were or where they ended up, so we picked one of them at random. We had not seen another car or human being since pulling into the park, so I texted my husband giving him the exact information of where we were, just in case anything happened to us, he'd know where to start searching when he came home from work. 

As we started walking it became apparent that the park had actually been a very large farm once upon a time. There were the foundations of several large old houses, and a few log cabins, and a large barn, we even found an outhouse.

We had a picnic in the yard of the biggest farm house foundation under a big old chestnut tree. While we were eating we started hearing a very scary noise. I had never heard anything like it before. At first one of the boys thought it was a machine, but the closer it got to us the more obvious it became that it was an animal of some sort. We had already finished eating and were just sitting there playing, but I decided that we really didn't need to hang out in that spot any longer and find out what was making that noise. So we packed up and started walking again! (Once we were home we looked up bear and wild boar noises, and thankfully google did have an answer for this one! Turns out we were listening to wild boar! Yikes! I wasn't sure what to look up, but when we happened across the bear reserve sign mentioning bear and boar hunters on our way out I thought that it might have been one of those, so that's what I searched for.)

The trail we were on went past a large corn field, and Logan went over first and pulled off some of the old corn silk from the mature ears of corn. When I asked him what he planned on doing with it he promptly twisted some up and made a mustache with it. Of course everyone else had to join in the fun! We stood there in the shade next to that corn field laughing at each other and taking pictures of everyone for the longest time.

Epiphany~ The Kings have come to worship Him

I just realized as I was contemplating the taking down of our Christmas decorations that I had forgotten to show you the wooden nativity that I had made for the little ones to play with. I posted a preview when I had cut everything out and sanded it back in September, here. I did decide to both wood burn the details and paint them with a nice watercolor wash after all.

Claire and Emmett both really enjoyed playing with the little wooden figures. We have several beautiful picture books depicting the story of the birth of Jesus. I was asked to read one or several of them almost daily over the past month or two. After  we read the story they would climb down from the sofa and go over to the little table where we had the nativity figures and the would play with them telling each other the story and acting out the parts with the wooden dolls. Claire did request that I make a "bad king" (Herod) for her to use next year. :-) Ours will be the only nativity scene I've ever seen complete with a king Herod!

The stable didn't get made for them this Christmas, I had great intentions, but like so many other things this fall and winter I realized that I simply couldn't do it. I have really enjoyed this Christmas season so much more because of that. It didn't feel like laziness, it felt good and relaxed, like I was keeping my priorities straight and not trying to "do it all". Instead of driving myself mad trying to get everything finished and have all handmade gifts for each of my children, and baking cookies for all of our friends and neighbors, and hosting a party for our homeschool group; I chose to cuddle with my kids and breathe in that sweet new baby smell. We played games and read stories, sang Christmas carols, and watched a few Christmas specials on TV.  I made exactly one batch of homemade cookies and that was it. And you know, my children didn't seem to mind one little bit. There was pretty much zero pinterest worth crafting for or with kids happening, and the meals were (mostly) wholesome and yummy and humble, nothing fancy and time consuming was attempted. And the house, it was not spotless! And I completely enjoyed it all! I rested and recovered and just was "there".

It has truly been a wonderful Christmas season. On Christmas morning my sweet Claire woke up to find her stocking filled and a beautiful present for her under the tree. She was so excited! After about half an hour I mentioned to her that we needed to get out of our pajamas because we were going to Grandma and Grandpa's house to spend Christmas there. She immediately ran to Emmett and told him "Emmett we have to get dressed, we're going to have a birthday party for Jesus with Grandma!" ♥ She had no expectations of anything for herself, she was just happy because we were celebrating Jesus' birthday. My sweet girl, she melts my heart!

In which a doll is born

Our sweet little Claire turned 4 years old this weekend. During the last month of my pregnancy I began working on a special doll for her, a baby doll. I knew I wanted it to look a bit like her new baby sister that was on the way. So with that in mind I set to work. I created a doll with arms and legs that are jointed and can move, to make dressing easier. Plus her new baby would be able to sit up and hug and do all of those fun things you need movable arms and legs for. I embroidered her baby's eyes to match Claire's own eye color as closely as possible. We had a very clear ultrasound picture of Violet at 36 weeks and her face shape was just like Claire's was as a newborn, so I carefully sculpted the new doll's face to have a sweet pointy chin, chubby kissable cheeks and a darling little nose, just like my sweet girls. Her skin is organic cotton, and her hair is a mohair and wool blend. It was a natural white, and we gathered black walnuts from our woods and I dyed her hair with them after I crocheted the little cap to the correct size for her head. She is firmly stuffed with wool. 

Ever since Violet was born 3 weeks ago, Claire has been watching everything I do with the new baby very closely. Doll play in our house has become much more serious business now! Claire has spent the past couple of weeks playing "mommy with a newborn". She mentioned how she wished one of her babies had short soft fuzzy hair, like my newborn. She also told me several times that she would like to have diapers for her baby, so she could change it's diapers. (Lately a very frequent occurrence that she has witnessed about a million times around here!) So I made her new baby a couple of diapers that close with velcro. The diapers turned out to be a very big hit! Claire's baby has had her diapers changed even more frequently than her baby sister's in the past few days. During the time I worked on the doll, Claire had no idea that I was making something for her! She was so surprised to open up her gift on her birthday

With everything that has been happening over the past few weeks I gave myself a break and decided not to make her handmade clothing right now. So she is being dressed in "real preemie baby" sized clothing for the time being. The little pale blue pixie hat with velvet ribbons and the embroidered violets on it was borrowed from my own little Violet Penelope! I made it from the softest cashmere sweater. The pink hat with matching tiny Mary Jane shoes were actually Claire's when she was a newborn! They were made for her by her adoring Grandmother!

Claire and I decided to wrap our new born babies up in their blankets and take pictures of them together. Playing Mommy with my sweet little girl is so much fun. 

Joining in with Nicole at Frontier Dreams today and Linda at Natural Suburbia.