April Fools

We continued out tradition of silly and non-harmful pranks on April Fools this year. Parker wanted to repeat some from last year, including putting cold coins in daddies shoe, and serving a breakfast for daddy using play food.

One new 'trick' from this year was so silly, but here it is:

Parker and I painted mustaches on ourselves.

And a quick video

April Fools 2013

Easter Eggs

Before Easter we dyed some eggs

The kids at work:

At the time Aria was going through a thing where she didn't just like pink- she was a bit obsessed. SO our eggs seemed to have a bit of a theme: 

No Pants? No Problem

Aria was 'helping' do dishes. And you may be able to see by the wet hair that this is quite an intense process.

So intense, that she didn't seem to notice/care that her skirt fell down.

Aria is tall and skinny, so we have to choose between bottoms that are too short or bottoms that are too big around and fall down a lot. 

At this point we were going for 'fall down a lot'

Beautiful

Somebody found the lipstick

Hair!

I'm not much of an artist, so don't judge my poorly executed drawings- they were good enough for my three year old.

Anyway, Aria went through this faze where she would have me draw a girl in a dress and I was supposed to leave the hair off so she could do it. 

And when she colored the hair she didn't mess around.

ALL of the purple stuff is hair

SO much hair!

 One more:

This girl is just hilarious!

Because of course you should climb all the way into the cabinet

Homeschool Dinosaurs

After learning about the earth we learned about dinosaurs.

We LOVED having an annual pass to the Arizona Science Center and we were lucky enough to have a dinosaur exhibit there while we were learning about them.

Parker posing with a dinosaur bone.

They had this big sandbox type thing where the kids could dig up fossils:

The two big kids standing by a skeleton

We also checked out dozens of dinosaur books from the library. 

And several times we dug for dinosaurs at home. We froze toy plastic dinosaurs into layers of ice and the kids then use hammers, nails, screwdrivers, and a saw to break them free. (they were closely supervised) They loved that and asked to do it several times, though it worked best in the summer since the heat melted the ice so it went a little faster

Piano Player

Just cute Terra trying to play the piano like her big brother.

Homeschool: The Earth

So I was going to post stuff about each unit we learned about for school. The last one I posted was about space. Next we learned about the Earth. The kids didn't get obsessed over this like they did with space, but we still learned a lot.

A lot of school involved going to the science center. There they learned about erosion, weather, rocks, etc.

Here's one picture I have of learning about the earth

We put sand in cups and squeezed a tube of toothpaste through the bottom to be the magma, pushing through the earths crust, we got to see mini earthquakes and volcanoes in the sand cups.

Learning about the earth also involved learning a bit about weather.

Making 'rain with shaving cream and food dye, which turned into a sensorial activity

And then learning about condensation by making rain in a jar: 

Little Chefs

I started teaching some piano lessons again, and it didn't take long for the girls to realize they were not being watched very closely during lessons. so they would go into the kitchen and 'cook'.

One week Aria got out the pots, and bottle of maple syrup and a can of cocoa powder; she poured and stirred and just made a big mess, but she just thought she was making lunch.

Here's one involving bananas

And once they were hungry for chocolate. Aria cut open the bag of chips and poured them all onto those two plates. 

I guess I should be grateful she was trying to share?

While the messes were frustrating it was hard to actually be mad. She was not 'trying' to make a mess or do anything bad, she was just trying to feed herself and her little sister. Fortunately she has grown out of this, though!

Dressing up

Just some pictures of my kids wearing silly clothes. For a while they really loved to play with their 'disguises'