Backyard photos

It's another strangely warm day for February, and the little girls are playing nicely on their "balance beam" outside:




A few animals joined in,




and another little girl.


Gratuitous chicken shot:

Happy Birthday, Sophia

Here is a birthday post for Sophia, a day late. She had a party and it was a lot of fun, but I was too busy and then too tired to blog about it. Here are a few photos:

The party guests did shrinky-dinks (fun!)


And we had strawberry cupcakes


Yum!


Here's the big 8 year old!

Happy Birthday Anna

Two years ago:

One year ago:

This year:

:)

Thursday Update

Things have been a bit hectic, not much time for blogging. Right now I'm listening to Maggie barking at Margaret outside, Sophia screaming at me from her room, and Anna getting into the knives on the kitchen counter...better make this short!

A few gratuitous pictures:

Crazy Ellie and Anna (Sophie took this one)

Bedhead Anna


Anna just started the dishwasher again, so I'm off...

Anna answers the phone

I just got off of the phone with a very confused and (thankfully) amused woman who was calling our house to talk to Margaret about the homeschool drama group the kids are doing...

I saw Anna walking around with the phone and talking like she was having a conversation with someone, and I just thought she was playing with the phone like she often does. I did notice she seemed to be talking a lot more than usual, and saying things like "Need Fofie? (Sophie)" and "Sure" and "Hello" over and over again. I was commenting to Margaret that it's too bad that she won't actually talk like that when there's someone on the line, and something clicked in my head so I decided to get the phone and see if anyone was there. And there was! Hee hee.

I think Anna heard the phone ringing and picked up and started talking, because it wasn't a number we have programmed in for her to accidently call.

So that's one more thing for me to keep an eye on around here.

Sophia's Squirrel Bag

Here's a crafty project we did this week, I just finished it last night. This is a felt squirrel made (by me) from a picture drawn by Sophia. She insisted it needed to be sewn onto her bag.



We are doing lots of little crafty stuff, typical of this time of year when we're starting to feel the cabin fever. I'll try to post more as things get finished...

edited to add:
Yes, that is the same dress she was wearing on Thursday...;)

Thursday Update, Maggie Update

Today it was unseasonably warm, and the girls played outside a bit. I took some pictures of them on the swings and captured Maggie the dog-bear doing pretty much the only thing she does these days that isn't sleeping or eating, which is barking at the girls while they swing.

This is the primary reason why we aren't able to put her to sleep, even though she stumbles all of the time, she can't hear, she increasingly can't see, and she seems to be in a fair amount of pain from her arthritis. She is a border collie which means that when she was younger she would chase pretty much anything that moved, including the broom and vacuum cleaner, any shovels, the water spray from the hose, cars, balls, frisbees, and of course the kids. Now that she doesn't get around so much (she's 15 years old now) she can't really do any of those things, but she still gets up and goes to the door anytime she's awake enough to notice the kids going out and goes out to bark at them (I think because she can't chase them).

I believe that as long as she feels up to the job of barking at the kids we'll keep trying to make her comfortable and postpone the inevitable. We really do enjoy having her around, even with all of her issues.







I should also add that since Maggie is an honorary chicken, the chickens are going to miss her greatly when she's gone!