Iveyrock

Ian wanted to make his own super hero cape. He wanted to paint on some of our playsilks, but I offered to get him some new ones instead. I’ve been secretly waiting for a reason to order something from The Dharma Trading Company. I love the idea of dying my own silks, but painting on them with watercolors feels like more our speed right about now. I also ordered a lot of glitter because…well, because it was pretty. And shiny.

The kids, of course, wanted to put the glitter on the capes. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but we gave it a go. I watered down some glue, because I didn’t want the glue to make hard lines on their capes when it dried. We spread out on the kitchen floor (the capes were too big for the table.)

For some reason it didn’t occur to me that the glue would leak through the capes, but it certainly did. It wasn’t hard to clean up, though. In the end I still didn’t love the hard glue on the capes, but the kids were happy. I’d like to try it again with water colors.

The new favorite game to play when the neighbor girl comes over is ‘putting on a play’. I have to say, it’s my absolute favorite game they all play together. I love every minute of it. The kids use our garage as the backstage, and I get to sit in the grass and be the audience. I can’t post my best pictures because the neighbor girl is in them, but the overall experience is worth sharing with the world. This is a retelling of the princess and the frog, complete with fairy godmother (Chava), and baby doing his best to join in (Micah).

I’m still not entirely clear on the story line, but the whole thing was just brilliant. (And Chava revivies in the end, in case there was any concern.)

When we were at the Pumpkin Patch, we picked up some little pumpkins and gourds for our nature table. Ian wanted to bring some home to paint.

I don’t have any good pictures of Chava’s pumpkin, because she spent a lot of time painting it, wiping the paint off, and painting it again. In the end, it looked like a pumpkin, tinted red. While Ian is starting to care more about the finished product, Chava is still very much into the process.

Ian was working on a clay house, Chava was working on an airplane, and Micah was apparently painting his hand, judging by this picture.

Ian’s House

Chava’s Airplane.

I really liked the colors the kids chose for their projects, but I just loved the moment when the whole thing shifted seamlessly into a collaboration between all three of them.

Micah helping Ian with his house

Ian painting “a sky” for Chava’s plane to fly in.

First the kids drew faces on their pumpkins

My favorite part was scooping out the seeds. Ian worked hard and came up with several methods to get his pumpkin cleared out.

Chava decided that her seeds were bats hanging in a cave, and didn’t want to scoop them out of their home

And Micah, in typical Micah fashion, had no idea why we were doing all this weird stuff, but was determined to do it well. He worked hard to clear out his pumpkin…

… and when he was done, he worked hard to fill it back up again.

Ray is the official carver

And the finished product!

I’ve always wanted a stained glass window.

Ian has recently discovered the video game, Lego Star Wars. He wanted to play, and it wasn’t a good time, so I suggested we make our own version.

We just used an old sheet and washable markers. I had envisioned something like a backdrop, but Ian was thinking something we would actually walk on – so that’s the direction it went.

(you’ll notice that Ian has Clean Hands. We are very proud of him.)

Ian drew lots of platforms to jump on, and some bad guys.

MIcah and Chava did the general decorating.

The bad guys are all kind of cute and fuzzy looking, and if you look closely you can see the red glow around the platform, which means that you can ‘force’ it. I drew in a lot of coins, although Ian wasn’t really excited about those.

We took turns doing the controls and being the characters.

Not entirely sure what’s going on in this picture, but it doesn’t look good for Micah.

Here I am as Han Solo

And I’m pretty sure I’m Luke, here. It all got a little confusing, since my children were the ones handling the controls, and they liked watching mommy scramble. (last two pictures by Ian.)

For most of our trip to Ohio, we stayed in a great duplex right in the area where I grew up. It was perfect for our time there, and a lot of people worked hard to make sure we had the basic things we would need. We borrowed furniture and basic supplies, and some of the toys that I played with growing up. I felt so loved, that my family would work so hard to make sure we were taken care of.

However, we still had a good amount of room left over, since we were doing some pretty bare bones living. So I wandered over to the appliance store across the street, and asked if they ever got any big boxes in. A couple of days later they called and said they had a couple for me – so Micah and I went across the street and dragged them home.

This was a lot of fun for the kids (and for me), and kept us busy for a couple of days. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the
finished project. In the end we had a mail box, an address, a welcome mat, shelving inside, and some lovely hand painted art on the walls.

Ian decided that for our Fourth of July celebration, Daddy and Mommy should have a friendly competition. A pie baking contest, to be judged by Ian, with a prize for the winner. After some discussion about the guidelines (and available ingredients), we got down to business.

Ray went the more traditional route, with a lovely peach pie. I made a mocha silk pie, partially so we didn’t use all the fresh fruit in the house, and partially because – well, frankly, I wanted an excuse to make it again.

It was a close contest. Chava preferred the peach pie, and Ian voted for the mocha. Since Ian was the official judge, I won the prize for the best pie. This is my prize, which I am displaying proudly alongside Ray’s prize from a previous (and more rigorous) cooking contest.

This morning, Ian explained that he was evaporating water to make hail, which would ’scare away the enemies.’

This afternoon, as we were outside playing, the sky began to get dark. Ian immediately realized that the water he had evaporated had made a storm. He explained to us that he had evaporated a lot of water, and was preparing for a really big storm. With hail. And thunder and lightening. It was going to be so big, it might even break the windows, so we would need to stay back.

All of this scared Chava, who is nervous about thunderstorms anyway. I had a talk with Ian about how it probably wasn’t really going to be a big storm, and told him that we didn’t even know that it was going to rain. Ian did, in fact, know that it was going to rain, because he had evaporated water and made the storm.

Chava was still scared, so I suggested that she draw some pictures of the rain. She wasn’t interested, but Ian thought it was a great idea. He decided to take it a step further, and make himself into a thunderstorm.

He tried to rain down on people, which wasn’t working out very well. So we had a little talk about the other things rain does – falling into ponds, making plants grow, falling into rivers and running to the ocean. That led to some talk about the biggest lakes and rivers in the world.

(here he is raining down)

Sure enough, it started pouring down rain. Ian was thrilled. I am pretty sure that out of all that talk about geography and science, what Ian is going to take from this afternoon is that HE HAS THE POWER TO CREATE STORMS.