This has been a hefty winter for us!  LOTS and LOTS of rain.

And even SNOW!

We kind of like the rain.  And we definitely loved the snow (still hope to make it to a snow park before it all melts away).

All of a sudden, though, we can see signs that winter is giving way to spring.

The days are warmer and longer.

We're enjoying a wee bit of sunshine at the park, and around town. Not to mention the extra outdoor time we're getting around the house.  The boys are having fun just being boys.



Our tulips are peaking out of the garden beds in front of the shop.


And we're talking chicks!  They arrive in the local feed store in February.  So we bes' be building a coop soon!  I've been stalking Pinterest for coop ideas.  My problem is that I like too many of them!!! Pinterest can be so cruel!

The boys haven't been so gung ho about feeding the animals lately (can't really blame them...its super cold, but the animals gotta be fed!), so in order to earn the chicks, the boys have to complete the 'Chicks!! Chart' below by recording their name in a space for each time they help feed. When they complete the chart, we can head to the feed store for some baby chickens!


Rowan decided to make the barn on the chart a Haunted Barn.  The horse and chicks are vampires (note the teeth)....


~Sarah

I was recently telling Rogér how I feel that Rowan has an exceptionally good memory.  Many children do, but his is....well, it's crazy good.  It's amazing. And it's also a challenge.  It can cause him a lot of frustration but I'm not going to get into that right now.

To give an example, after Halloween, Rowan dumped his huge hoard of candy out on top of a dark gray egg crate style piece of foam.  The foam has lots of crevices, so the candy was really scattered and some pieces sort of hidden in the troughs.  And let me reiterate, there was a TON of it.  More than I ever got in any of my trick-or-treating years. Anyway, one day I was craving something sweet and I started peering through his stash for a very unnoticeable candy that I could "borrow" from Rowan's (I blame pregnancy, but Rogér might tell you that I have a bad habit of taking the kids food even when I'm not preggo).  I noticed an Almond Joy barely peaking out from underneath a a mountain of other colorful candy items.  I thought, "He'll never notice this one missing."

My biggest mistake was that he saw me eating it and smelled the coconut.  That triggered him.

"Are you eating a candy mom?"

"Yes"

"Is it a coconut one?"

"Yes"

"Hey! I have a coconut one, too! Riiiiigght........HEY!!!  I had a coconut type candy bar right here! It was RIGHT HERE!"

"You did?"

"MOOOOOM! I had a coconut candy bar right HERE!  Right on this side, next to THIS candy.  Who took my candy, Moommmm?"

*shit*

I couldn't lie, so I fessed up.  He was pissed, but he handled it well and ultimately forgave me.  But I realized that my days of getting away with ANY kind of behind-his-back activities are done.  No more slyly stashing cast aside toys for donation (of which toys he still questions me about..."Where are they, Mom? I hope they are in storage somewhere."), no more swiping a slight Halloween candy, or stealthily tossing one of those *precious* preschool art masterpieces.  I've been busted at every attempt.

So about two days after I told Rogér all of my recent debacles with Rowan's recollections, I was tucking the little guy in and he says to me "Mom, know that, as soon as I'm awake, I turn on my video camera, like *dink* (tapping his head with his finger), and I record everything so that I can remember what I see.  I just replay the video."

*mind blown*

I'm now anxiously waiting for the day he decides to tell me all about his Mind Palace

We're off to a crawl on the home lessons, but I finally mustered up the energy to pull together a couple learning activities for the boys.

Lower Case Alphabet Printable

Solid Letters A for cutting out Printable

Letter A Trace and Dot-to-Dot Printable

It was bittersweet planning Rowan's birthday party this year, since all of the familiar birthday party faces are far away.  It really hit me that his birthday bunch wasn't  here, and made me think of all our friends back in California and miss them greatly.