Today's spring afternoon photos brought to you by...

a very sleepy mom who still has a few pages of work to get through tonight,

but who is a bit distracted by looking at the photos she took today

and wants to share them with you...

I got to go to the park today with Caleb

while Daddy stayed home with a napping Ariana

Attempting to catch a beautiful yellow butterfly with our bare hand...

I knew those butterfly nets would have come in handy!

Though if we bought one, we would still have to remember to take it with us...

Swinging

Would you believe he totally knows his letters?

He placed all of those stickers at the bottom correctly with the words...

all I said was: "Find the word that starts with a W, P, C..."

Playtime

Her hand somehow always ends up in his mouth...

Yes, I'm trying very hard to make them smile
and it's not working out.

Something's not to her liking

Are you watching that show again? Didn't I tell you, I DON'T LIKE THAT?

Finally, the top right front tooth is out...

But we've still got many more to go...

Yup, many MANY more.

A recap of the week

I have some time to write tonight... so I thought I'd recap some of this week and post a few pictures. This was a big week for us - the week began with Ron putting in his two weeks notice at his job, so he has one more week left and he is done with "applework" (as Caleb calls it, haha). What's monumental about it is that he is most likely done with this traditional, working for somebody else type of job for good... We shall see, but it sure looks that way, with the success of my business and Ron's growing ideas of how he can branch out on his own. This has been quite some time coming, and we've been looking for the right timing, but all things seem to point to the conclusion that this is it. We are very excited about having Daddy home all the time and look forward to the next chapter in our lives with anticipation. Thank you, God!

What can I say about my work? It's constant, unrelenting, dependable (as much as freelance work can be), fulfilling, challenging, maddening, amazing all at the same time. I wouldn't change it for the world. This is exactly what I have always wanted to do, and this is how I wanted to do it - (mostly in my pajamas) with my children around me all day. Whether I'm at home, at Disney, at the beach, or in Hungary - I can do my job. I just need a computer and Internet access and I'm in business. This allows me to travel and vacation without leaving my business behind. Which is what I'll be doing this summer when I travel to Hungary for a month... looking forward to that very much. Looking forward to the whole summer, really.

The kids are wonderful. Ariana is a sweetie, she is waving all the time now, crawling with an army crawl and pulling to standing every chance she gets. And Caleb is a little comedian. Let me recount just one story from this week. We have a small invasion of ants in the house right now and we're working to get rid of them. Caleb wakes up in the middle of the night one night and asks for a glass of Perrier (yes, that's my influence). Anyway, there he is standing in the kitchen with sleepy eyes, and he goes: "Mommy, why do we have ants?" "Well, because they are hungry and they are coming to look for food, because we have some." "But Mommy, we have to SHARE, remember?!" he says, with a glint in his eye, ready for a good laugh. This is the joke he tells when he is half asleep. Do I have to tell you, this kid is amazing?

So, a little about these pictures... On Friday, right after my last deadline rolled by, we went outside to sit on the front stairs (this has become sort of a Friday evening tradition) and what did we notice? A little worm of some type crawling by. I had to get my camera, Caleb insisted on it too... and had to take many pictures of the little creature, some with Caleb posing with it. Funny, how such a tiny little thing can become such a source of joy. We have yet to draw it in our nature notebook, but we will one of these days...

Yes, his hair is LONG. We kinda like it that way.

And guess what? Facebook agrees. Or at least, my friends on Facebook do. :)

Do you see it? The little wormy?

(If you don't, click on the picture to bring it up larger.)

Ah, it was so cute the way it moved, scrunching up its body as it propelled itself ahead...

and sticking out its nose (nose?) to sniff out (sniff?)

navigate which way is best to take... we could hardly get enough of it.

In other news, this little girl absolutely adores table food:

mashed potatoes, potato soup, squash, sweet potatoes, pears, apples, cantaloupe, bananas, avocado, chocolate cake...uhm, Perrier (seriously, can't keep it away from her)

And, as I've said, she waves a hundred times a day.

Caleb never really got into waving when he was little, so I'm really enjoying it...

She waves to me when she gets something to eat that she especially likes,

she waves to me when she's nursing,

she'll wave anytime really

to Caleb and Daddy as well,

and to cars parking at the store

and to strangers...

CUTE!

We are blessed!

Morning scene

Daddy is leaving for work.

Caleb: "Bye Daddy, bye-bye!" He scrambles to get his shoes on. "I want to say bye to Daddy."

Sweetie, it's dark outside and raining. Don't go out right now.

He puts on his shoes. Realizing it's raining, he stops in the doorway, in his shoes. Daddy is already at the car.

"Daddy! I have something to say!"

Daddy takes a few steps towards the door...

"Bye Daddy, bye-bye! Are you coming back in a few minutes?"

"Bye-bye, Caleb. I am coming in a few hours."

"Okay, Daddy. Are you bringing hami (food)?"

"Yes, I'll bring hami when I come home."

"Okay. Bye."

"Pray for me."

"Okay, Daddy. And the Play-Dough."
(Every time we pray for Daddy, he adds: "so he comes home and plays Play-Dough with me.")

Satisfied, he takes his shoes off and heads back to play.

Is it really March already?

This was taken about 30 minutes ago after I finished my week's work

and took the children out into the backyard for our weekly time of adventure.

This is our standby for adventure lately. How exciting.

It did prove to be an adventure this time...

the baby almost ate an earthworm.

I've been really busy lately, but I still have a lot of Disney pictures to post -

hopefully I can get to it this weekend sometime.

Mission today: make children happy!

Kind of like this. These were actually taken yesterday, when I had about an hour respite from my work and we ventured out into the backyard in the 40ish degree weather. How did we keep warm? We (well, mostly Caleb) ran around a lot. And why don't we have coats on? Because we were optimistic about the temperature out there and well, just generally had no clue. It actually warmed up when the sun was shining, but even so, just under an hour was enough for me!
(Caleb, on the other hand, could have stayed out there all day.)

What is he so excited about? The 40 degree weather, no doubt!

What is he doing with that baby walker toy, you ask?

Not sure. I was going to get rid of it and he found it outside.

It made him happy, though!

The sun was actually bothering Ariana's eyes.

Success as a mother: making your baby smile.

He's in a ditch. Stuck with his walker.

There's this huge ditch at the edge of our yard. Erosion? Yikes.

Gotta go do more of that today.

Still teething

But she is getting some rest, so she's mostly returned to her old happy self.

Completely unrelated: BOTH of my children badly need a haircut.

Shiny new pictures in the shiny new year

So, I've had the last few days off, which has been just awesome and very much needed. I know that I need to gather my strength for the new year ahead, and also wrap up some projects in our home, which is what some of the time has been spent on doing. As you can see, we were busy this weekend taking down our Christmas tree. It's a little early for us, but my reasoning is, with the way I tend to get busy nowadays, if I don't do it now when I've got the time, it may still be up on Valentine's Day. Which is not a good thing with a live tree. Well... not technically live... having lived once tree...

In other news, this little munchkin is teething big time. Which means no matter how many times I put her down for a nap, she will invariably awake 10, 20, or at the most 30 minutes later. All day long, it is a dance of put down for nap, wake up, put down for nap, wake up. So she is not rested and cranky all day long. Which makes it impossible to get anything done unless it is in small increments throughout the day. Let's hope there's a tooth in there somewhere about to emerge.

There was a lot of putting our feet up this weekend.

So out of the ordinary.

It's all about the orange stripes

Every evening, when Daddy gets home from work,

the order of the day is to play Play Dough with Caleb.

Caleb looks forward to it all day long, even mentions it to Daddy in the morning

as he is leaving for work: "Daddy, we'll play with Play Dough when you get home?"

I sure do appreciate Ron's dedication to this particular type of play.

She is practicing sitting up. Sometimes she falls over.

Cranky because she is tired and does not want to sit up anymore.

We've had a lot of time for learning, too. Here Caleb is parking the cars.

Learning to recognize numbers and affix the appropriate amount of animals
to the picture. He is doing great!

Using the glue independently

CHAOS.

This is actually not as bad as it was. The sorting here is already halfway done.

Look behind her. ORGANIZED CHAOS, I'm very proud to say.

And here we have a very close encounter with a Smurf.

Outdoor fun. In the bitter cold.

Stop licking your lips, sweetie. Remember what you looked like at Christmas?

MAGIC. How did he do that?

Rosy cheeks.

Actually, her cheeks were rosy before going outside. Saliva rash.

Okay, sweetie. I don't think it's going to work.

You're doing a great job trying to be DOUBLY excited to make up for her

uhm... lack of excitement

at trying to show off matching baby legs/shirt. You're a good boy.

I, too, thought that she might catch some of your enthusiasm.

However, it appears that she's not having it. I think she really needs a nap.