Fun and Productive Saturday

Today we accomplished so much, and had a great time doing it! Usually those things don't go together: finishing adult tasks and happy children.


I rearranged the playroom - pics to come of that!

The girls and I sat down and shelled a big bag of butter peas. Yum! We'll be having those tomorrow. We also made bead and shell necklaces - all three girls threaded them on their own. Lela and Liv are wearing theirs in this picture. Laurel decided it would be more fun to cut hers with the scissors. So it goes.



Mike cleaned the backyard up and his shed. He got all the junk off the patio - he's turning it into a skate park back there. There are big plans, I tell you. Handrails and a quarter pipe that drops in from the screen porch. I'm sure this add tons of value to our home. Haha!

But wait! He's not done! Together with the girls, Mike ripped out the plastic edging around the girls' garden and replaced it with rocks from the woods. It looks so much better! We're going to get some flowers for them tomorrow.


I reapplied cayenne pepper to the tomatoes. The squirrels ate all of them, even the green ones, last week. We came home from the bluegrass concert to no tomatoes at all! How sad! I'm hoping this remedy will keep the squirrels away. Mike told me it was payback for feeding Girlfriend.

Birthday Party/Cookout

Friday we had a cookout and birthday party for one of our neighborhood friends. There were three families there, including ours, with a total of 9 daughters! Our Waldorf co-op only has one girl besides ours, so time spent with the same sex is welcome for us.

We decided to make a treasure pouch for our friend. Lela chose the fabric and thread, cut out two squares (which needed very minimal trimming by me) and with my help, pinned three sides together. Then she stitched the three sides closed - I turned the opening under and stitched it down to create the casing. Together we threaded the drawstring through the casing and attached two beads of Laurel and Liv's choosing. Lela really did most of the work - I was very impressed!



Laurel and Liv enjoyed some embroidery while Lela and I were sewing.

Add carefully selected treasues: crytals, beads, fossil coral, glass stones, shell and fossil shark's tooth - and you have a lovely handcrafted birthday gift.

Liv and Laurel chow down on hotdogs. I wish I had more pictures of the party, but all the rest have the other kids in them. It was a lot of fun though - it was after 10pm before we got home! We're hoping to make cookouts a regular event now.

Laurel's First Haircut

I'm always reluctant to cut my babies' hair, especially for the first time. All three of them were 2 1/2 when they had their first haircut. I think about cutting off those first little hairs that sprouted out of their head when they were born - and also how a haircut makes them look less like babies and more like little girls.

So it goes - we decided Laurel was ready for her first haircut, and had it done yesterday afternoon.

Waiting patiently for her stylist (haha!) Marina to take a before picture for posterity. The first snip is taken off!

A quick blow-dry - another first for Laurel. They have such quiet equipment at this place!

Are you ready??? Here is the "new" Laurel!

When I cut Lela and Liv's hair short, I loved it from the first minute. But with Laurel, it's having to grow on me. It DOES look better and very cute, but I think it might have been a bit too short (even though it needed that much to even things out).