January, 2017

 Emeline, dripping wet, after playing outside all day.

  I put make-up on Miriam, for fun, and we took some pictures.  She's getting too grown up!!

 Snow day!  Annabel and Oskar.

 Clover.  Why do babies always manage to take off their gloves???

 Snow Maiden, aka Harriet.

  Snow kids.

 Miriam and Clover.

 Annabel, Oskar, Clover, Miriam.

 Timothy helped the kids build two forts--one on each side of the driveway.  They spent all day building them and planning their epic snow battle the next day.  But this is Utah and by the next day everything had melted into slushy piles.  They had the snow battle anyway, but it was a disappointment.

 Eli.

 Some kids.

 Emeline and Eli.

 Eli.

 Industrious laborers.

 I really can't explain these pictures.  I'm not sure why ballet was on their minds.  I had nothing to do with the epic ballerina costuming but I loved everything about their ballet afternoon.

 Harriet, Emeline, Eli, Clover.  Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.

 This day got a little crazy because the kids were so excited to play with the dyed silks.  First they had to do all they dye work, which took all day.  Fortunately, silks dry really fast, so once the dye is rinsed out you only have to wait 40 minutes or so to be able to play with them.  The kids had missed their beloved silks and spent the evening bonding with the new silks.

 Clover.

 Oskar.

 Cowen dressed up like a Revolutionary War spy/messenger.  It was a much beloved game all winter.

 Annabel was my absolute worst baby around books.  I don't mind babies pulling books off the shelves, but Annabel LOVED ripping pages.  She would laugh in glee each time she tore a page and it made a ripping sound.  I ended up boxing up all the bottom shelves of books, but then my kids played on the empty shelves and caused more damage to my shelves in a three month span then had happened in the ten years prior.  Now we're trying to decide whether or not to replace the whole library shelving system because of the damage and because I want white.  We'll see what happens.  In the meantime, I don't have enough working shelves anymore so I have a few boxes of books in my room (in addition to my actual bookshelves in my rooms where I keep my most precious books--my Lloyd Alexander collection, among others).  What to do, what to do.  I'm pretty sure this entire situation can be blamed on this innocent looking cherub.

 I don't know how it developed that all the kids were on the couch at the same time, but I liked it, so I grabbed my camera.  Then people got weird.  I blame my dad.  Just look at Eli.

 Now look at Eli again.  I'll wait while you laugh.

 I love Miriam and Clover here.  They thought they were hilarious.

See.

And that was January (or, at least, all the pics I took in January).  There was a lot of snow and the kids spent most of the time outside sledding or building forts.   I would love to claim that a lot of schooling took place--but I think we only managed a few hours every morning before the great outdoors claimed their attention.  The kids also made quite a bit of money shoveling.  They would go around the neighborhood knocking on any doors where the driveway wasn't shoveled.  It was a good month.