Warm Days of January

This is one of the things I love about Boulder, warm days in January. Yes, tomorrow it could be in the single digits (I don't think that's actually predicted for tomorrow, but a 50 degree swing happened just last week). Three little girls are outside enjoying every last ray of warm sunshine they can soak up with their little bodies.

Josie is making chalk paint: scrape chalk to make chalk powder, add water, stir, repeat.

Anna is busy painting with her chalk paint some objects that she found.

They said this is bounce town.

Anna is trying to walk her slack line at bounce town, or mostly she just bounces on her slack line, holding a hiking stick for balance.



Barefoot in January. Well, barefoot and not screaming and running back inside in January.
Who knows what crazy scheme they will come up with in the next 5 minutes!

Graham Cracker Houses!

Nothing compares to classic wintertime fun.

Short days, cold and snow outside, warmth, laughter and fun inside.

Making Graham Cracker houses was a first for our girls this year. I'm not brave enough to try real gingerbread houses, we'll save that endeavour for next year. Maybe we'll make gingerbread cookies today, that's a little less intimidating. (It's a snow day here! Even Mitch gets to stay at home today! Foot and a half of snow on the ground and still falling, the girls think it looks like heaven outside.)

Thanks to my sister's advice, we made our frosting thick and it held even the roof up well, although Josie's snow covered roof wasn't built to code for that kind of load, according to Mitch, and needed some buttresses to hold it together until the frosting dried.Mitch: "You've got some good glue there, Josie!"

Josie: "It's frosting, Dad!!!"

Precision and accuracy, precision and accuracy.

The world is a very literal place to a 4 year old:)

Unique creativity at work:

Ruthie enjoyed just piling more candy on:


THE FINISHED PRODUCTS



Josie's- symmetrical and even (I love the name always written from right to left these days):

Anna's- Flamboyant and expansive, complete with an enclosed backyard and an ice skating rink on the side:

Ruthie's: definitely 3, "Mom, stop helping me! If you want to do some then you can make your own!"

I hope you all are finding ways to make this Christmas season special in your own homes. We are tucking in and enjoying how the cold outside brings us together inside.

Cabin Cooking

What do three little girls do in a cabin with no toys?

This is how they decided to entertain themselves yesterday afternoon after we got home from snowshoeing:

Yummy for me:) Except that anytime I want to eat some of what they are making they get all serious and remind me that it's just pretend, Mommy, just pretend. Sometimes their pretend food really disappears when Mommy eats it, and it worries them.

What Are You Making?

Oh so many things! As Anna told me today: "My favorite things to make are crafts and food!"

Yup, that just about covers it. Anything you can make would fall into one of those categories, right?

Meatballs:The meatball production -first you have to make the mud, in this dry climate. Use a spoon to mix the water and the dirt, collect it in a cup, form the balls, powder them with something white and fancy like crumbled cement, let them dry out of a younger sister's reach:
Sage spoons and acorn top bowls, for a feast in the playhouse:
Brownies, by Anna:

Little acorn people (yes, we collected all the acorns last Fall and made an acorn bag out of them-as opposed to a bean bag- but today the girls requested that the bag be cut open so the real treasure inside could be put to good use):

A surprise for Daddy, energy bars for his bike rides, freezing on plates before being dumped into bags:Anna made them with peanut butter, honey, different chopped nuts and dried, chopped fruit, oats, chocolate chips, and the secret ingredient- ground coffee beans.

Also being made: Squirrel food:

They liked it.

It doesn't count as feeding wild animals if you're just giving them back their food source that you stole for them last Fall, right? Anna wanted to know what the inside of acorns looks like, so she found some rocks and spent a while pounding them open. When she realized that the meat of the acorn is inside, the squirrel's favorite food, she left it out for them. It was amazing how fast they found it. Within half and hour it was all gone, even while we continued to play within 5 feet of the food offering.

Yes, most of these are things Anna made today, as opposed to Josie or Ruthie, although Ruthie helped on some of it. Josie has been sick. We made her a throne to recline on in the kitchen today where she was able to feel like she was an intimate part of all the activity while still getting the rest that her body needs. She seems to be feeling much better this afternoon, and I'm betting she'll be as good as new by tomorrow morning.

Family Art Night

It just happened tonight, and we all loved it. Sitting around the table, drawing, talking, laughing, being together as a family. Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean that all the dishes were done or toys picked up or clean laundry put away or even that all the dirty laundry was washed. But we were able to carve out a space for us tonight and enjoy time drawing as a family, being creative together, loving being in each others presence.

Repurposing

So many definitions of that word float around our society today.

But let me tell you, these creative little girls are unconsciously masters of it. Childhood. The freedom, unconstrained by what is proper and right, to use whatever items you want to create your own little imaginative world, mimicking the world around you.

Cloth napkins and bandannas become beds for dolls.

So proud of what they have made.

Purely for your viewing pleasure, this picture is of Ruthie walking around in Anna's boots, carrying her backpack with her own creative flare and telling me over and over "I'm Grandma Jo! Lookit me! I'm Grandma Jo!" and laughing with delight at her own silliness.

Laundry House

Come visit us in our laundry house! We made it with our friend Nora while Mom was hanging laundry on the line.

We even ate our snack inside:

Doesn't Nora have the most beautiful eyes?!!!

This little Ruthie girl has sooooo much fun with her special Nora.

So does Anna, for that matter.

An addition to the original house:


How many of you can have this much fun swinging from the rafters of your house?

Another later addition, the house just kept growing:

Josie wanted to sing for us in this room of the house. We all sat down and waited. Turns out she actually wanted all of us to sing with her. So we did. We had our own little concert in the 'wedding room' of the house.

I don't think these girls had ever had quite this much fun while mom was hanging the laundry on the line! We love it when Nora comes over!

Peaceful Valley

And truly it was. Our camping site this last weekend was aptly named.

We headed up to the hills with our friends Tom and Eleanor Needy and their daughter Anna, who is the same age as Ruthie, and Doug and Nikki Kennedy, their son Isaac, niece Kendall, nephew Jake, and Auntie Mari, Nikki's sister the gourmet camping chef.

Here are the Needys. How often is the whole family in one picture?!!

These two are fast friends, as long as Ruthie doesn't get too aggressive. Usually Ruthie's just trying to give Little Anna a hug when she puts her in a headlock or bowls her over. Sometimes, though, she's being feisty. But you should see the grin they give each other each time they meet.

Anna and Isaac running. It feels like they run and climb and jump all day long when we are camping. Nice, since it means they conk out as soon as their head hits the pillow at night in the tent.

Doug and little Ruthie, hanging out around the campfire.

Eleanor cooking dinner our second night. Mitch just got back from a bike ride.


This is Jake. It was his first time camping. He built that fire in front of him, gathering the pine needles and twigs and branches for starter, chopping a log into kindling with the hatchet, making it all into a beautiful tepee, and then enjoying the results. A proud moment.

This is how the Clement girls eat their dinner in the woods.



You cute little munchkin!

Or tough girl.

One of my favorite things about camping with kids is the never ending entertainment a rock can be. This rock was a launchpad for hours of jumping and climbing.

With a carload of sleeping pads and bags, pillows and suitcases around it, it became the center of a rough and tumble game of who knows what that the kids enjoyed for hours.

I love the joy they take in simple pleasures. I don't think these kids know what it means to be bored. I don't think I have ever heard them use that word.

Three families, lots of kids, spending time together in a peaceful valley, surrounded by the incredible, undiluted beauty of the created world. The same joys humans have shared with each other for all of history.

Courtyard Fun

Living in Family Housing with a courtyard full of kids creates quite the communal living experience for us. There are always people around to play with, talk with, fight with, eat with, share all the ups and downs of life with. No one is perfect. We are all faced with our differences and similarities daily and learn to give each other and ourselves a lot of grace.

I love that our girls are growing up in this environment. They have friends from Chile, Vietnam, Belarus, Korea, China, Canada, Libya, Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and of course, the US. They learn to share, they learn to problem solve, they are color blind and oblivious to many of the differences in the people around them. They just love their friends and love all the fun they get to have with them. They are inclusive and accepting, kind, generous and full of laughter. What an example to all of us adults who often have such a hard time with the differences between us.

Yesterday we had a spontaneous painting party on our front porch:

So much joyful creativity, sharing of paints and brushes and personal space, complimenting each others pictures, enjoying each others company. I think there was as much paint on most of their bodies by the end as there was on their papers. Especially as they were reaching around each other to dip their brushes in the paint and then carrying a dripping paintbrush back to their spot, or trying to walk and stepping on each other's pictures. We dipped most of them in the laundry room sink before heading them home!



Today the impromptu fun was a pool party:

When pool space got a little tight they got creative with their real estate.

Fun times on hot days. Community living at its best.