This 6 Year Old!

 This little lady is the sweetest thing!  Here we are the park, ZB in her slip (or as she calls it "the fanciest dress ever!")

We were at this park so that she could practice her new skill ... riding her bike without training wheels!!

Of course with Bobby there to help if needed...

A friend just gave her a bunch of post-it notes and she had the brilliant idea to make her own photo album.  She even asked all of the family to draw their own "photo" hahah!  Not all participated, but I love that she included not only the chickens, but also our cat and the feral cat that comes by and visits every so often (she's named him Ryan).

She included some vacation pages, too.  One was a trip to the beach.

We just finished up the Spring semester of Homeschool Co-op.  Our preschool class celebrated by making art with shaving cream.  Which of course turned into body painting with shaving cream!

Love this silly, creative kid!

Lots of Love

Before the month is over, I want to make sure to share about Valentine's Day!  Our homeschool co-op had a little exchange - well, actually lots of people showed up and we kind of freaked out the ice cream shop employees (note to self: hold it in a bigger venue next year!).  Reed filled little bags with homemade treats - he melted a Hershey Hug on a square pretzel and then squished an M&M on top.  Sweet and salty yumminess! (not my photo)

Blossom did marble paintings.  If she had her way, she would probably spend a good portion of each day painting.

In a baking pan, she rolled paint-covered marbles over paper until it created really cool designs.

We let the paintings dry and then cut them into heart shapes and glued on little Valentine messages.  They turned out really sweet!  Even though Reed's treats were probably more of a hit with the other kids, I like to fool myself into believing that the kids loved these as well :)

The kids get to share a little more love this month with our new chicks!  These are called Buckeyes (from, you guessed it, Ohio).  We bought them on craigslist.  They are a rare breed and I am excited to add them to the flock!  They will turn a very lovely dark reddish-brown as they get older, and the roosters are supposed to be very docile.  They are good meat birds as well as egg-layers.

We have 5 of them peeping away in the brooding box in our living room.  Never a dull moment!

Iron Reed

At Reed's one-week check-up for his wrist, they removed his cast, took an x-ray, and determined it still needed a cast (well, duh! It had only been a week).  This time he chose plain white.  He had a project in mind.

He wanted to recreate Iron Man ... well, Iron Man's arm to be exact.  I think we did a pretty good job.  Plus, he now has a laser on his palm, so he's a happy camper.

This was done with acrylic paint, a steady hand and a patient 11 year old.

Some New Looks

I got my boys back!!! I'm so happy :)  Though, the teenager is naturally more excited to see his friends, so is spending copious amounts of time with them, which is fine, too - I'm just glad to have them back home!

On one of the last days of their California vacation, their dad took them to Lake Tahoe where Reed broke his wrist.  Not a super bad break, but he had only a splint on until we could get him to a real doctor here in Asheville.  Now, he is sporting this beauty for the next month or so!

ZB has also decided to sport a new look.  The day I spent in Charlotte picking up the boys, I got a call from B semi-freaking out that ZB had spent a long time in the bathroom, and came out saying, "I don't want long hair now!"  I evened it out when I got home, but oh my, it's taking some getting used to!  How I loved those curls!

Here she is at PreK Art Group this weekend doing a woodworking project:

Hopefully we are done with big changes for a while, but knowing this family, I highly doubt it :)

This morning started out with the loud sound of peeping chicks from the living room.  They are too cute to be mad at!  These little guys are all of 4 days old.  They are Dominiques, a breed I have been looking for, and just found a few on Craigslist.  The fellow also gave me 8 fertile eggs, which I squeezed under our broody hen (that means she's trying to hatch out eggs).  Hopefully she'll stick with it and we'll have another batch of chicks in the beginning of October.

Blossom is doing a very good job of holding these little guys gently.  This chick, the kids named "Fatty" (he's the biggest, and probably a rooster).  He got to play in the dollhouse today.

We had our Sunday Art Group this morning.  The attendees have dwindled over the Summer, but we're hoping it will pick up once everyone is back in the rhythm of Fall schedules. 

Blossom and Willow picked lots of flowers and leaves to bring to the table.  The table was so lovely with all the colors!  They made designs of petals and leaves on clear contact paper and then sealed it over with another piece.

I secured that inside a paper plate frame, which they could decorate with crayon.  Then we hung them up in the window to see the sun shine through!

Lovely!

Shaving Cream Mayhem

ZB's favorite activity lately has been body painting.  Maybe inspired by Daddy's tattoos, maybe the paint just feels nice and cool.  I don't know, but at some point in the day, we find paint on her.  Maybe just some on her arms, maybe a full body paint.  It's kinda her thing.  If we are having a day at home, this is typically how ZB may look (here she is getting ready to dash away yelling, "ZOOM!") :

We had some friends over today, and I have been wanting to do some projects with shaving cream, so this seemed a good day to do it.  We dripped liquid watercolors into the shaving cream with eye droppers, marbled it with toothpicks, pressed paper on it and scraped the cream off  of the paper to reveal beautiful marbled colors.

Not all of the kids were so attentive to their project, though... or perhaps had a different project in mind...

I'm glad the older kids each did the marbling, because the scene quickly transformed into shaving cream sculpting!  The assortment of liquid watercolors was a very nice touch.

I think the shaving cream was definitely a hit!  For $1.50 a can, I am a fan as well :)  There are lots of art projects online that use shaving cream, I'm sure we'll trying more soon.  For now, time to clean up!

Sunday Art

ZB has a few friends over on the second Sunday of each month for some arts & crafts time.  It seems so much more justified to pull out all the supplies and make such a mess when there's more than just one child doing the project!  Last Sunday was the first one, and the kids made Salt Dough outside, squeezed, poked and prodded it into interesting creations and then baked it  while the toddlers snacked and played. 

This Sunday they made sun catchers by markering on coffee filters and then painting over that with water.  They didn't turn out as bright as we had hoped, but the kids had so much fun making them!  Even a couple of the big kids joined in...

Clean Sparkly

ZB is still really into dressing herself, or at least being a part of the process.  She may even decide to have a kitchen dance party (so she can watch herself in the oven-door reflection).

Sometimes she gets all dressed up! Yes, she even has a tutu on under the dress for extra poof :)

A lot of times, the dress up involves face tattoos with markers.  As I'm typing, she has black stripes coming from the sides of each eye!  As you may be able to see in the bunny ears photo, she has the remains of a rainbow across the forehead.  That night, I told her, "Tomorrow you can take a shower and get all clean and sparkly".  ZB exclaims, "Green and Sparkly!? Yah!"
She woke up the next morning asking for green and sparkly.  Well, I got her clean, and then went searching for green sparkles.  I thought we could do a sparkle project, but alas, green glitter was not in my craft supplies.  I asked, "Purple and sparkly?"  She set to work with her glue paintbrush:

Learned how to gently sprinkle glitter over the whole picture, and also gently shake it off onto the butcher paper-lined table:

As the project seemed done in my eyes, ZB had other plans.  Another coat of glue was obviously needed to ensure extra-long drying time.

And to finish it off, and make sure we keep seeing glitter stuck under fingernails for a long time, a little bit of finger-painting needed to happen.

Our art class at co-op is over for the semester, and we've started an art group for ZB's toddler buddies here at the house.  Can't wait for that cuteness!