Storm

Tuesday we went to bed with a wet, muddy mess outside our door. I can't say it was overly pretty, but it was making me think spring may be on its way. Wednesday morning, we woke up to this: We've gotten nearly a foot of snow already, and it's still coming down. Heidi loves it and keeps telling me, "It's snowing very loud!" I think the word she wants is "hard", but as usual, she insists that she is correct. I'm still looking forward to spring, but for now I'm being thankful that it's ever so much easier to clean up a little girl after she has been making snow pies than it is to clean the same girl after an afternoon of making those pies out of mud. We've also been without power on and off over the past couple of days and I have discovered a couple of things:
1.)living by candle and lantern light makes Heidi very hyper
2.)that same dim lighting frightens Hannah
3.)this is not a good combination
Other than constantly being at my little one's side, we've been having a good time here. Hannah is quickly working on becoming mobile. She schooched (if that's a word or even how you spell it) a good five feet to capture this prize:

Heidi loves to love on Hannah

Even with all that snow outside, we still can't build snowmen as this silly Manitoba snow doesn't pack properly so we've taken to building some inside.

Hannah's modeling a headband for me that I made as a gift for a friend's newly arrived daughter

Baby Steps

My baby girl is gowing out of these shoes. For some silly reason, I always shed a few tears when I have to put away clothing items my girls have outgrown. It seems to be a tangible reminder of how fleeting time is and how quickly these "little" years go by Another discouraging thing about her being too big for the littlest shoes, is that I really don't have any in the next size up that I like. For Heidi, we just made do with thrift store finds, and it seems that boy shoes are more quickly dicarded in this area than girl. Either that or all the girl moms got there before me. So today I decided to do something about that and set to work designing some femimine little shoes for my Hannah. I thought they turned out okay for a first try, but don't look too close, there's lots of mistakes. I'm so happy God gave me girls to sew for!

Firsts

We had a couple of "firsts" here today. Hannah got to try carrots for the first time, and Heidi got to go ice skating! With the warmer weather the last couple of days, the top layer of ice and snow on the river melted a bit. Since it was colder today, it froze again, and for the first time this winter, it was smooth enough to skate on. (Don't worry about the thickness of the ice, we had some people trying to ice fish by our house this weekend and they drilled all the way through the ice only to find soil at the bottom rather than water - it's frozen!) Not so bad on the first bite, but then she realizes it's not what she's used to. Yuck Mom!

For only having been to two weddings in her life, Heidi sure thinks about them a lot. She's been getting married frequently lately, mostly to Daddy... or Mama. It doesn't really matter, the important thing is having all the proper accessories! Above, she's wearing her "veil". It makes for quite a bit of hillarity when she places it over her face and attempts to act regal while walking into things. Below is her "wedding dress" which, as you can see, is suitable for less formal occasions as well.

I made the girls some new dresses, and tried to snap some pictures after church on Sunday. My subjects weren't the most cooperative, but I got a couple that were okay to post. Hope you enjoy seeing them Grandma!

Walking On Water

The temperature has actually been above freezing the past couple of days, so we have been doing our best to take advantage of the warmth. We went for walks both yesterday and today - today's walk was on the river - thankfully it's still frozen solid! What a joyous way to celebrate God's beautiful creation! Heidi's ready to go!

Heidi did a good job of helping Hannah sit up for the ride

On the river

The river is big draw for snowmobilers in the area, you con see their tracks in this picture taken in front of our house.

Heidi got out to walk and Hannah got tuckered and took a short nap.

Walking back along a trail in the woods

Want to come join us for a walk?

Where We Live

For those of you who have never been here, I thought I'd give you a little visual on our home, and maybe encourage some of you friends to come for a visit. As the world is white outside my window at the moment, I had to search through the archives a bit for some warmer weather photos. These don't really do the property justice, so I'll have to find more later. Heidi and Karl in our field - Oat harvest 2007

Mama Bear and two cubs - pictures taken from my kitchen window, they were regular visitors for a couple of weeks that fall.

Our driveway

Our driveway sideways - I think I've got this picture thing figured out, and keep discovering I'm wrong!

Our house

An Extensive Vocabulary

Heidi loves words. She loves to discover new words. She likes to listen to the sound of them. Likes to feel the way they roll off her tongue. Likes to ask Mama again and again what they mean. Likes to surprise me every so often by using properly a word she's only heard once in conversation, or one she heard a few weeks previous. I admit that we encourage this love of language. Daddy especially likes to help her expound her vocabulary. But even we are quite amazed at times by what comes out of her mouth.
A couple of months ago, Heidi started rhyming. It took me by surprise the day I told her I needed a little cooperation from her. She looked at me, tilted her head, and repeated the word a few times, getting a feel for it on her tongue. A light of recognition appeared on her face, "co-op-er-ation" she said, "e-vap-er-ation, pre-cip-i-tation!" she understood that they all sounded the same! Next thing I knew, she was making up songs that rhymed. I often hear her singing about the cooperation of evaperation and precipitation or about two little mouses who built little houses and so on. I'm thinking this little girl of mine will be a delight to homeschool. My only concern is how I'm going to keep ahead of her!

Forgiven

Heidi -"Mama, my balloon popped"
Me - "Why did it pop?"
Heidi - "I bit it"
Me - "You're not supposed to bite balloons, are you?"
Heidi - "No. I just supposed to bite supper"

And yet, the balloon was bitten. It reminds me of myself a bit. I know what
I'm supposed to do, and not do, and yet so often I do the opposite. I'm so thankful my Lord is full of grace and chooses to forgive me in spite of myself!

A Plethera of Pictures - Or - Bowl and Beads

Last week was full of fun art projects. First we made a newspaper bowl because Heidi had heard Daddy and I talking about them and wanted to try it. She liked ripping the newspaper, but the blender was a bit noisy.

The really fun part was squishing the wet, blended newspaper into the bowl. The hard part was waiting a few days for it to dry.

Next, we made dough art beads. First, you mix 1 cup salt and 1 cup flour.

Then, add 1 TBSP oil and mix. Then add about 1/2 cup warm water bit by bit until it's a nice workable dough. Make sure to do lots of squishing through the fingers at this point!

Now you can form into beads. We did hearts, balls and disks, laid them on a cookie sheet and poked holes in them with a skewer.

Hmm... not quite right.

When they were all to our liking, we baked them at 225 until they were dry (about 3 hours)

Next day, we got try try out some new paints.

And that afternoon, when they were dry, we got to the best part of it all, making necklaces! We used pipe cleaners to string them on, and she was able to do it all by herself.

Our finished products. What fun we have together!