January

We began the first month of the year by creating vision boards for 2015.  We spent several days flipping through magazines and cutting out any words or images that fit with our hopes and goals for this coming year.  I was surprised with how much everyone enjoyed this family project.  Our vision board turned out great - with each of us taking a triangle segment of the board, pasting things from candy, sprinkles, Disney World, books to read, health to obtain and life to live.  Right now it is propped up on our piano, and looking at it several times throughout my day is definitely a great reminder to make sure we are living the life we consciously are choosing.

We have spent a lot of time indoors this past month due to the freezing cold weather.  The girls don't seem to mind though, and have had fun in various creative endeavors, from putting on shows, planning a birthday party for one of Lucy's dolls complete with a homemade piñata (bottom left picture), creating a craft class (bottom middle picture) and playing many variations on the theme of "store".

 As I've mentioned before, I am constantly balancing the fine line of allowing creative freedom while keeping the house from being destroyed.  I was okay with the girls painting objects, baby sister and even myself with water on paint brushes but I must admit I lost my cool when I found hair of varying colors all over their beds and the carpet in their room.  Lucy was surprised by my reaction, and took me by the hand and showed me how she cleaned up and put all of the hair she had trimmed from her Barbies in the garbage can.  See bottom right hand picture below.

The girls have been making rubber band bracelets all month.  Lucy taught Emma how to make them, and the rest is history.  Besides worrying about the tiny rubber bands falling on the ground and being found by Violet, this is a relatively harmless creative outlet for them.

We have been busy with schoolwork.  This past month the girls learned about the human body, did various science experiments with Lucy's new science kit from Christmas and we had a ton of fun making paper snowflakes and decorating cakes for their play kitchen complete with faux icing and cake toppers compliments of Kiwi Crate.

During the week we get out of the house for socialization and exercise with the girls science class at the library, yoga class and dance class.  If it wasn't for the fact that I am paying for two of these classes you would have to pay me to leave the house with three kids and all of the winter accessories that must be put on to brave the cold.

Thank goodness for my grocery delivery service that I continue to LOVE.  Words cannot express how happy I am each week when they knock on my door with my fresh groceries.  Below are all of the fun things we cooked up in the kitchen - in clockwise order - water kefir cherry soda, chocolate chip cookie bars, frozen chocolate peanut butter banana bites, and fermented garlic and dill flavored carrot sticks. The center picture is of a creamy chicken dish I made with fresh garlic, spinach and mushrooms.  The girls love helping in the kitchen, and Emma loves sampling anything chocolate.

We had an eye doctor appointment for Lucy this past month which she was pretty nervous for, even though she was secretly hoping to get glasses.  She was bummed when her eyes checked out perfect while Will and I did a happy dance for all of the money we would save.  In the bottom left hand picture, I gave Lucy a pair of my old reading glasses from when I used to work as an editor.  I thought that the prescription was mild enough that she can use them for fashion glasses when she plays.  Will tried on the glasses when he got home from work and nixed the play glasses idea as he said looking through them gave him an instant headache.  Both girls had a dentist appointment too.

We also made it out of the house for time with friends at play dates, birthday parties, and covert lunches in the library.

We visited with Will's grandma this past month and had a really nice time.  Emma "secretly" raided the proverbial candy bowl and all of the girls enjoyed playing hide and go seek and making Great Grandma J. smile.

Winter is a difficult time of year with small kids in my opinion and there were several days this past month where I thought our house was just too small for the many emotions our three girls bring - until someone pointed out that if I had boys, it would probably be too small for all of the energy they would bring.  I guess it is safe to say that the winter days are long when you can't get outside as much as I would like.  Here are the sisters below, including me with one of my sisters!

Will is proud of his girls (I'm pretty sure I'm included in this) and is the first to speak up that he loves us if someone says they feel bad for him with all of those girls at his house.  He has finally found a downside to having four girls in the house though - clogged drains.  Here he is below, snaking the bathtub drain.  Yes, that is a giant hair clog that he caught, and it was heavier than my pony tail.  

I like to point out to Will that he isn't the only boy in our family on earth - he has Charlie after all.  Will gets annoyed when I tell him this (which is why I love to point it out as often as possible) and claims that the only reason that we have Charlie is because the rest of us love our cat so much and Will loves us.  Here Will is below, bringing Charlie in for some cuddles on a cold winter day.  Charlie enjoys our cuddles for a bit, but then wants back outside.  In Charlie's ideal world, we would live outside with him.  He really has no interest in being in the house.  We are looking forward to warmer days when we can at least spend our days outside with him!

In the meantime, we make it a point to get outside whenever the wind chill is above twenty degrees.  Here we are below on winter hikes with friends, sledding and snowman building.

Next month is traditionally the most difficult month for our family as we remember Luke's birthday.  Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we brave significant emotions and impatience for spring.