These long cold mornings and getting up early for school are wearing us out. Even Nina agrees with me.
She came and jumped into bed with me tonight. She doesn’t do that a lot, but I think she wanted some quiet time, away from Aaron and Big L’s crazy card game. Me too, Nina, me too.
We went in a little nature center after school today. They have lots of animals.
Gus’s reaction to the tarantula. Lena actually has a tarantula in her class this year, so she doesn’t bat an eye at them. The whole bug room left me feeling a bit creeped out, like one might crawl out and sneak home with me.
They also have some puppets that the kids can play with.
Reed taught Lena the truths of the life cycle of the animal kingdom when his owl ate her opossum.
Big L was there, too. Her favorite was this parrot, who says “hello”. He also shrieks quite loudly, making him definitely not my favorite.
It was a good place to go when it’s too cold to do much else. We’ve pretty much been hibernating, so this was a nice way to get out.
Eight years ago, Reed was born on Christmas Eve. Ukraine follows the Orthodox calendar, so January 7 is Christmas there.
His birthday was pretty laid back. On Sunday, Aaron took him to Science City in Kansas City for the day. Today, he had a friend over after school for about an hour. We most just opened presents and hung out. He got a nerf gun from us and Walkie Talkies from my parents, along with a few other gifts. He loved playing with both of those.
He also got his Olaf hat and a book called Ninja!
Of course, we had cake.
Happy Birthday to my smart, funny and energetic eight year old! Just eight more years until you can get that driver’s license you’re ready for.
It’s been a week for late nights. Big L and I enjoy staying up together– playing card games or practicing language or whatever. But, the past few days, I’ve been busy, so our late nights have been filled with doing. Reed’s birthday is tomorrow, so I need to bake his cake + school cupcakes and make his birthday shirt.
I made Reed and Lena their first birthday shirts before they were even home, because it seemed like a cute, Pinteresty thing to do. Now, the kids love them and still want them each year. Last year, when I did Reed’s birthday shirt, I told myself I’d just start buying birthday shirts off of Etsy. So, it seems like a great idea and that’s what I did for Lena this year, but I couldn’t remember to order one for Reed in the midst of the holiday season.
Cue making a shirt at 8:30 the night before.
I haven’t been screenprinting much lately, so I didn’t have everything set up to do that quickly. Painting by hand it was.
I made my own little DIY lightbox, small enough to fit inside the shirt. I just took a clear plastic storage container and put my phone + another flashlight inside to make this little lightbox, then I put the printout between the box and the shirt. Super easy.
It worked really well!
Big L played cards with Aaron, then came and sat across the able from me, working in an ESL workbook.
This is the almost finished product. It made a final pass over the black outline to get it a bit cleaner looking.
We had a rare, quiet afternoon here. I called my mom and said “everyone is occupied!” That’s not common around here. Well, occupied peacefully, without anyone yelling at anyone else for more than 5 minutes. Reed’s birthday is on Tuesday, so Aaron took him on a special birthday outing to a science museum today. Gus was napping. Lena has strep, so she was hanging out on the couch with the remote and Big L spent her afternoon skyping with her cousin and then joining Lena on the couch.
My mom wanted to make an e-card for Reed and I said “make a video one where you put his face in!” We quickly found jibjab and realized how fun it was to make cute videos with everyone’s faces in them. While we chatted on the phone, I made one to “Happy” with all of the kids” and she made one with the Can-Can for Lena and one with Gangam Style for Big L. I hung up with her and asked the girls if I could show them something, and I played the Happy video.
They could not stop laughing.
We Facetimed by mom for her two videos and the girls just kept on laughing. It was a great time. I even made a few more and we played them all for Aaron, Reed and Gus later.
a moose in moscow 