Spring! Spring Break!

This post covers a lot of activities since the last post.  Yes, spring has sprung, and we just finished Spring Break, so there were lots of fun activities.  Whew, I'm tired!  Time to start school again!

Lukas and Konrad attended another 4H meeting to learn more about chickens.  Tom has made a lot of progress on the chicken coop, but that is another post.

All the kids enjoy playing with the cats.  Here's Dominik leading one to chase him.

Natalie is playing with Leah.

I'm using the bread maker a lot more these days...it's not just for cinnamon rolls!  I made pizza dough with it last night, and set the timer for fresh applesauce bread to be ready for breakfast.

Lukas and Konrad made a swing for Natalie on the same tree that holds their tree fort.  She loves it!  It's a little close to the trunk, but if we are all careful, it works pretty well.

Konrad is practicing the trick of pinching the candles out.  He's done it once!

I went to our local grocery store to ask them to get a Caroline's Cart, and it turns out they already have them!  Natalie likes her big girl seat, and I'm glad to not have to lift her in and out of the cart.

Tom tested out his new pruning chain saw.  We have a lot of trees that haven't been kept up for a while, so it's going to be great.  Good thing Tom loves yard work!

Lukas and Konrad tried out the BMX bike course near our house...so much fun!  Konrad likes the skate part better and Lukas likes the BMX course better, so we can switch off which one they go to and everyone gets to do both.  There's even a place for Dominik to ride his trike at both places.

We went for a hike one day and Natalie enjoyed the ride.

Dominik found more rocks

And it seemed only fitting that we should visit Krispy Kreme again during Spring Break...

...don't you think?

Lukas started working on a scarecrow for the garden.  Here's the Frankenstein face he made!

Tom is teaching the boys how to play Risk.  Does anyone play that anymore?

 

I started a project to put new covers on our dining room chairs.  I'm so happy with how the first one turned out! The vinyl will wipe clean with no evidence of the copious amount of food that falls.

Lukas went to an archery Open House with Rusty.

And we have beautiful sunsets many nights each week!

Swinging

Our second baby swing bit the dust.  The first one eventually broke from hundreds of hours of use.  And the second one also saw hundreds of hours of use, but its end may have been precipitated by Natalie's desire to be in the swing UPSIDE DOWN.  This caused her full weight to pull on the straps and eventually crack the back of the swing.  I thought it was the boys' rough play on the swing that caused the cracking, until she flipped herself upside down in it, a final crack was heard, and one of the straps pulled through...then I realized it was probably Natalie's rough play.

But we don't have babies anymore, so we won't replace it with another baby swing.  Dominik is not riding the big-kid swing yet, but he'll be there soon.  The older boys have been lobbying for a tire swing, and when the swing gave its last gasp and died, we relented and replaced the baby swing with a tire swing.  It's a good choice for us, because two kids can swing on it at the same time (it actually works better with two).  Lukas is slightly over the weight limit, but we're allowing him to swing.

Lots of fun in store!

Superman

Lukas showed a lot of climbing prowess while we were at Joshua Tree last week (which reminds me...Tom still has pictures to blog about from J-Tree...hint, hint).  When he came home, Lukas started tackling climbing the tree in our front yard (I've been lifting him into the tree for the past 6 years, and then he climbs onto the other branch.)

He finally did it!  He climbed the tree by himself!

This was quite an accomplishment!  He climbs up the left side and hooks his leg over the part where he's sitting, then pulls himself around to the top.

And then the other boys wanted in the tree too.  Natalie was happy to just keep spinning on her swing, and there's not really enough room for her until Konrad and Dominik get more adventurous.

The swing

Natalie loves the swing!

So does Dominik!  And Konrad loves to swing his little brother.

Lukas was proud of taking this picture: he said he turned the camera sideways to make it more interesting.

Lukas also took this portrait of Konrad...

...and this picture of our tree.  Not bad!  We might have gotten him a camera for Christmas, if we hadn't already bought all his presents.  But his birthday is in February, so I need to remember this.

Konrad took this picture.  Notice how he artistically captured half of Dominik's face.  Konrad didn't say that, I just made it up.

Water play time

Yeah, Julia (7.5, rts), her youngest sister, Keira, and her mom, Catherine, came over for a play date before school starts.  Since it was a hot day, we pulled out the water slide.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of Julia going down the water slide, but I did capture her sharing her dolls, Bob and Susie, with Natalie.

And we also got a group shot right before they had to leave.  We had such a wonderful time!

But since the slide was up, we made use of it several more times during the day.  Lukas played while Konrad napped (shhh! don't tell Konrad!) and then they both played after Konrad's nap and again after dinner with Tom.

Lukas sliding head first.

Konrad at the bottom.

Once is not enough!

Konrad is not happy because he's having a reflective time out to think about getting out of the slide so the next person can slide.

Now he's happy!

And Tom got in on the fun, with pool squirt guns.  Notice Natalie leaning into the bottom of the slide to play with the water.

Now Natalie's IN the bottom of the slide.

Now she's out.  I dressed her for water play in the morning, but she didn't want to go down the slide...she just wanted to play in a bucket of water.  But she'd tipped the bucket over, and the water slide was where the water was, so...

Dominik will enjoy the slide next summer.  For now, he's just staying dry.

Dominik in the swing!

Swings are such an important part of our life that the swing gets its own label on a blog post.  Click on "swing" at the bottom of this post to see how the kids have grown up with the swing.

Here's Dominik's first swing shot...and Konrad was happy to pose with him...and swing him for the first time!

Wonderful Wednesdays

I love Wednesdays because we have nothing scheduled, and I really try to not go anywhere so we can savor the time at home.  Somehow everything seems to go better: we were ready for school well before 8 a.m., where on normal days, we're scrambling to get out of the house at 8 a.m.  Anyway, after 90 minutes of school we went outside to play.

The first thing Lukas does during morning play time is run laps around our yard.  I started him doing this about a month ago after I realized he was quite winded after the laps that they run for warm up at Taekwondo.  Now he can keep up with the other kids, and the most impressive thing (to me) was that when his breath strength was measured at the allergist's office yesterday, he finally had the expected breath strength for his weight (all other previous visits for the past two or three years, he couldn't blow the thingy hard enough for his weight).  I think this is completely related to him running almost every day!  Lukas is not an athletic kid, so he doesn't naturally want to run and jump to burn off energy.  But he's starting to enjoy more athletic activities this year (and trying to shoot hoops at school and after church!) so that's exciting for me.  The allergies are still an issue though!

Natalie and Konrad took turns on the swing (they're getting the hang of taking turns, and still don't always do it nicely, but we're making progress!) and then Lukas asked if he could do school at the desk in the garage.  The desk is a freebie we got from his school, and we still haven't figured out where or if we can put it in the house, so it's in the garage.  I asked if he wanted to do another math page and he said yes, so school moved to the garage (I'm trying to get ahead of his curriculum before the baby comes, so if we need to skip a few days in April and May, he won't be behind).

Then Konrad wanted to join him, and Natalie too!  The garage is not conducive to school, but it was a fun experiment.