Reston Mom

backyard dance shows

About a week ago, Hope handed me a handwritten invitation to watch her "dance concert" in our yard at 2 pm the following Saturday.  She also gave a handwritten invitation to her dad and both sisters.  She also invited various neighborhood friends.  

I decided to let her roll with it.  Why discourage her?

So yesterday morning, Hope took the large whiteboard we use for school and wrote an announcement on it and propped it up as a sign against a tree in our front yard.

Then just before 2pm - she put on the dress of her choice and brought me a cd of well know selections of music from various ballets and other dances and told me that she would be using track number 11. 

(note: Hope doesn't take any dance lessons, but apparently she does not lack confidence in her natural abilities :) 

We set up an old boom-box with an extension cord in the front yard and Hope arranged a few folding chairs.  We also allowed for a small table with cups and lemonade. 

Some of our neighbors did come to watch.  Hope introduced herself, thanked everyone for coming and curtsied and then proceeded to improvise a dance to her chosen song.  

She really did a fine job.  It was very cute.  And it was fun to see her make up her mind to do something and then find such enjoyment out of it.  

Our oldest daughter clearly has no problem with attention or being in the spotlight.  She is really quite composed and capable and just eats it up! She should be a public speaker or performer or teacher or something where she gets to impact an audience.  

   
 
 
 
 

Easter and pizza

I have been meaning to post a few pics from Easter.  We had a nice celebration and spent a quiet day with just our immediate family.  I was recalling how last year for Easter dinner we ordered pizza - ha! Ami was a week or two old and I was still recovering from a c-section and feeling pretty wiped out.  

This year, for Easter dinner - pizza again!  We had recently been busy and feeling wiped out for various reasons.  We weren't traveling to see family since we had just seen everyone for Ami's 1st birthday, so after church and naps for all of us, we headed over to California Pizza Kitchen at Fairfax corner.  The weather was perfect and there were tons of people enjoying the day.  Then we headed back to Reston Town Center for some frozen yogurt where even more people were out and about. 

  

this is what happens when you try to get more than two children to all take a picture together

grandma provided cute matching Easter dresses for all the pretty little girls

 

Easter craft

I decided to do a craft with the girls to make something decorative for our table for Easter.  So, I looked through the materials we had and came up with a project to make paper mache eggs.  We just used balloons, white glue, and water to make the egg shape.  Then we cut strips of colorful tissue paper and after the eggs were dry we used brushes to "paint" the tissue onto the eggs using the same glue/water mix. When they dried again, I popped and pulled out the balloons, punched a hole in the bottom and pulled some ribbon through knotting it underneath.  We chose a branch from our yard and filled a vase with paper grass to create our centerpiece.  The eggs aren't perfectly egg shaped, but the color is great and it was a lot of fun to make.  

expectancy

With just a few days left to go in this pregnancy...my main expectancy right now is for holding this little baby in my arms.  I can't wait!

But Spring seems like a great time for having a baby anyway.  There seems to be a natural "expectancy" about things in Spring.  So, I've been pondering all the things I am looking forward to enjoying this season.  Here is what I'm excited about:

• how gorgeous my neighborhood is when all the trees and flowers are in bloom
• seeing more of my neighborhood friends as the weather warms up - and getting back to bookclub 
• visiting the farm to see the spring babies with my girls 
• family trips to D.C. - to the mall and museums 
• family picnics and outings to the parks and playgrounds 
• spring/summer dresses on my girls 
• opening up my windows 
• Easter 
• yummy fresh spring/summer foods and beverages 
• new flip-flops
• brighter colors 
• going on walks 

What is your favorite thing about Spring?  What are you looking forward to? 

six inches of frozen fun

March.  All I can say is that this morning we woke up to snow accumulating to six inches, but the weather report for this coming weekend includes 66 degree weather.  Not surprised at all, this is the Virginia weather I'm used to.  

sometimes you've got to live like it's Spring

I've totally been slacking on blogging lately, but I can't help it - you've got to make the most of Spring while it lasts! I'll be back to blogging tons on more great and helpful stuff soon.  In the meantime, I've just spent a long day watching four amazing children and trying to spend as much time outside with them as possible.  Now I'm headed out to dinner with a bunch of girl friends.  My husband has taken the girls to meet another dad and kids for dinner and playground time and we just managed to swap kisses in the passing.  I'd feel worse about not seeing him all day, except that the weekend is here and we've got great date plans for Monday - I always can't wait to spend some one-on-one with my hubby.  So, I'm in a great mood and the gorgeous weather hasn't hurt a bit.  I hope that whatever is going on in your lives right now, you are managing to feel even a tiny bit as playful and colorful and alive as Spring is. 

Leftover plastic Easter eggs, part 2

With a touch of creativity, plastic Easter eggs can become great inspiration and starter material for fun crafts with your kids.  Here are just a few ideas:

• make little Easter egg people or animals using markers, construction paper, glitter, ribbon, stickers and other glue-ons
• make nesting dolls with different size eggs - your children will have fun making their own characters and you can discuss concepts of size
• grow a garden of daffodils using some wire and felt (some eggs come with tiny holes in the bottoms, those are good for this craft) - you can fill the cups with little messages or candies and give them away to a friend
• the eggs with the little holes are great for stringing together as well for garlands and necklaces.  One egg can instantly be transformed into a locket to carry a favorite little treasure.
• nail halves of the eggs (cup upward) to a flat piece of wood.  Fill the cups with favorite bird treats and place on a window ledge or in a garden as is or drill two holes at either end and suspend with rope like a swing.
• create a fun wreath for next year

wreath pictured comes from thriftyfun.com_

leftover plastic Easter eggs, part 1

Now that Easter is over, you may be wondering what to do with all the left-over plastic eggs!  I just can't bear to throw them away - it seems sad and bad for the environment.  Last year, I stowed them away for re-use this year...but thanks to grandma, we ended up with twice as many.  Here are some things you can do with your kids to put those colorful plastic eggs to use and keep the fun going.....

• make egg shakers by filling them with buttons, beans, beads, whatever and taping closed
• fill each egg with a puzzle piece and re-hide them.  Let the kids search and put the puzzle together
• use a glue gun and a foam wreath form or a plain grape-vine wreath to create a festive decoration for next year
• empty eggs make great bathtub toys for scooping and pouring - will they float or sink? how can you make them sink?
• empty eggs make great sandbox toys for scooping and pouring.  Bury them and dig up your treasure.
• use them to cut circle-shaped cookies or biscuits
• create a matching game by mixing up halves and letting a young child put them back together
• create patterns with your kids by lining up halves with alternating colors and sizes.  You can make a pattern and ask them to guess what would come next.  Have them create their own.
• use three halves flat on a table, place an object under one and shuffle them around. Can your child guess where the object is?
• plastic eggs are just the right size for snack containers for lunch boxes or in mom's purse - they make good serving sizes for little kids.
• play scavenger hunt - fill the eggs with clues and hide them leading to something fun
• use them for seed starters - place halves in the cups of an empty egg-carton, fill with soil and plant seeds, keep moist and set in a sunny place until seeds sprout
• smaller eggs can sometimes fit into board game boxes to hold small pieces such as dice or pawns to keep them from getting lost
• if the egg doesn't have small holes in the bottoms, you can place a small amount of play-doh or clay inside and stash it in your purse for entertaining your kids while waiting at a restaurant or at the doctor's office, etc....  or fill it with stickers or beads and a shoelace.
• use one in your purse or make-up bag for storing cotton balls, earrings, or other small items
• play your own version of Jenga - have each child take a turn stacking one egg half over top of another, see how high the tower will grow until it falls over

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Easter pictures

After a short Easter-induced blogging hiatus, I'm finally back into the swing of things once again.  Here are a few pictures from our family's celebration.

flip n' flop

Here's a novel idea for the coming warmer months.....flip n' flop flip-flops for ages 4 - 8 feature a book hidden inside the secret compartment of each sole.  The books are designed to teach compassion and empathy "put yourself in my shoes."  The books are tear resistant and water resistant and kids will love keeping the books or other small treasures tucked away in their secret compartments.  You can also buy pairs of stories separately to keep the fun coming. The flip-flops come in four kid-friendly colors.  I'm a sucker for creative ideas like this!

Oh what a lovely day!

We were so grateful for the gorgeous weather today (perfect timing for my husband's day off) and celebrated it by packing up a picnic lunch and spending the afternoon at Clemyjontri Park (which if you are in the area and you haven't been there - you must go!).  It revived us so much and totally revved up our spring fever so that we decided to cap off this lovely day with a cook-out featuring hamburgers on the grill, fresh green beans, caprice salad, and strawberries.  These are the best kinds of days.

spring fling!

Just in front of our house grow a couple of trees - some variety of the cherry family, though I don't know which to be exact. All I know is that they are amazing when they bloom in the spring - fluffy pink blossoms enshroud every limb. But, like so many spring flowers, there isn't much time to enjoy them before all the petals make their way to the ground below.

Every year, the ground surrounding our home becomes a thick carpet of pink... lakes of pink, pink streaming down every walkway, pink petals in the wind creating a soft pink rainfall all around... it's funny, but the petals off the tree are just as breathtaking as the initial display.  And, it makes a sort of fairytale landscape of princess pink fun for any little girl (or adult girl) who would enjoy such things.

Needless to say, it has become a kind of ritual to go romp in the abundance of velvety pink, and Hope especially loves to grab handfuls of the stuff tossing it over head to watch them float down all around. Even the boys (namely her dad) can get into throwing and kicking around in some flora. Seeing Hope play in the petals dressed in her own pink dress was picture perfect.

Easter pics and baby chicks

Here are some snapshots from our Easter this year. All in all it was very nice, despite the disagreeably cold weather. After a morning of worshipping with the church we love, we headed home to an amazing and calorific meal with my husband's family. The girls loved hosting baby chicks at our house this year. The chicks were special guests for the preschoolers at RCC on Sunday. I hope that all of you had a wonderful Easter too!    

   

 

Here are some snapshots from our Easter this year. All in all it was very nice, despite the disagreeably cold weather. After a morning of worshipping with the church we love, we headed home to an amazing and calorific meal with my husband's family. The girls loved hosting baby chicks at our house this year. The chicks were special guests for the preschoolers at RCC on Sunday. I hope that all of you had a wonderful Easter too!    

wahooo!

Gorgeous day yesterday, high of 81 - even slightly warm for Spring. Of course we could not stay inside, so I loaded up the girls in the morning for a romp at a playground. We went to the one located right behind Home Depot - a favorite of Hope's. Enjoyed some serious play, rolling in the grass, and needed water breaks.  Ahhhhhh... welcome Spring! - hang around won't ya?  

spring fever takes hold!

I had a friendly engagement yesterday morning, and when I returned I found that Matt had taken the girls out on errands... so, being a fantastically gorgeous day, I decided to make the most of my free time by staying out of the house. Reston is webbed by an abundance of nice paved trails, which just happen to weave their way through the wooded areas behind my neighborhood.

So I donned my pink sneaks, bared my arms in a tank and savored the feel of the air against my skin. Back in the middle of nowhere there's a little mulched circle that contains one bench and two swings. I hopped on a swing and transported myself back to childhood - singing songs aloud, pumping until I felt the bump of slackness at the pivot of the motion - feeling for a fragment of a second that gravity no longer had hold of me, then leaning all the way back to survey the sky - taking in the tall, tall trees with their still bare branches that don't yet block out the blueness... dragging my feet in the mulch for the fun of it, and then pumping up to speed again just so I could dismount with a youthful jump.

I spent a good time there breathing deeply, listening to the babble of a small stream nearby, letting the back and forth loosen my body and then did exactly what I would have done if I had been ten - I left the trail - an activity which becomes forbidden to me once the poison ivy grows in. I observed purple flowers unfurling among newly green vines, balanced my way across some large fallen trees, and found the perfect place to skip stones in the stream. Then, I jogged home - and I am far from the running type, but I just couldn't help myself. It was a perfect moment of escape and peace... exhilarating. Exhilarating my be just the word I would use to describe spring anyway, and I am so glad to finally see it coming!

   

Posted by Tricia Morgan in Friends & Family | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had a friendly engagement yesterday morning, and when I returned I found that Matt had taken the girls out on errands... so, being a fantastically gorgeous day, I decided to make the most of my free time by staying out of the house. Reston is webbed by an abundance of nice paved trails, which just happen to weave their way through the wooded areas behind my neighborhood.

So I donned my pink sneaks, bared my arms in a tank and savored the feel of the air against my skin. Back in the middle of nowhere there's a little mulched circle that contains one bench and two swings. I hopped on a swing and transported myself back to childhood - singing songs aloud, pumping until I felt the bump of slackness at the pivot of the motion - feeling for a fragment of a second that gravity no longer had hold of me, then leaning all the way back to survey the sky - taking in the tall, tall trees with their still bare branches that don't yet block out the blueness... dragging my feet in the mulch for the fun of it, and then pumping up to speed again just so I could dismount with a youthful jump.

I spent a good time there breathing deeply, listening to the babble of a small stream nearby, letting the back and forth loosen my body and then did exactly what I would have done if I had been ten - I left the trail - an activity which becomes forbidden to me once the poison ivy grows in. I observed purple flowers unfurling among newly green vines, balanced my way across some large fallen trees, and found the perfect place to skip stones in the stream. Then, I jogged home - and I am far from the running type, but I just couldn't help myself. It was a perfect moment of escape and peace... exhilarating. Exhilarating my be just the word I would use to describe spring anyway, and I am so glad to finally see it coming!