Kepler's favorite place to sleep is on our old couch. I often walk in to find him in the strangest positions!

He really is sleeping like this, not stretching. He just opened his eyes to see what I was doing. What a silly, silly dog!

One of the best things about having more than one kid is seeing them play and explore together. These two are having so much fun with these train cars and tracks this afternoon!

This little girl sure does love airplanes!

Tim bought me a new cookbook called A World of Wisdom for my birthday, and we all have been really enjoying it! Joseph loves looking through the breakfast and dessert pages, and announced a few days ago that he wanted to make an Oat Cake to celebrate Fosalie's pretend birthday. Tonight I told him it was time to get started, and he jumped right in by reading the recipe, getting out a bowl, filling the appropriate measuring cup mostly full of water as directed, and dumping it in the bowl. He already had the lid off the honey and was starting to pour by the time I was there to help! Of course, Rosalie wants to do whatever she sees her brother doing, so a few minutes later, here are the three of us working on the cake together!



Continuing Rosalie's fascination with sea animals, we watched a few minutes of The Little Mermaid this morning, and she continually yelled out "Mommy, dolphin!" no matter what kind of dolphin, fish, crab, eel, shark or merperson appeared on the screen. As nap time approached, she deliberately selected this shark as her sleep companion, and here she is snuggled up with it again tonight before bed. What a little cutie!

Rosalie's has been extremely interested in airplanes lately, pointing them out in the sky or even announcing their presence indoors when she hears them passing overhead. We checked out a couple library books about planes this week, and she's been carefully studying them ever since!

After lots of hard work yesterday, here are the finished valentines ready to go off to Joy School this morning. Aren't they cute? Joseph is very proud of them, and I don't blame him!

When Rosalie was sick last week, we put a humidifier in her room to help with the stuffy nose and coughing. The humidifier happens to be shaped like a penguin, and ever since then, one of her favorite activities has been to open up this animals book to the page of water animals...

find the penguin there...

and tell us all about it, along with the dolphin and the whale, too!



That has naturally led into frequent discussion about the other animals in the book as well. I love seeing her try out all the animal names and the different sounds they make. She's getting to be quite the proficient talker!

Tomorrow is Joseph's Valentine's Day party at Joy School, so today we're making valentines for the other students and his teachers. Joseph has never developed a real interest in coloring, so I was happy to find a project we could print out on colored paper and have him cut and paste instead!

Here he is showing off this stack of leaves he cut out all by himself, and Rosalie is doing her best to look just as busy as he is!



They sure are having fun working hard together this morning!

Can I just say how glad I am I learned to sew? I never thought of myself as one to really get interested in the domestic arts, but I have been so impressed with what I've been able to do with that little machine of mine since I finally put my mind to it. These bags are nothing fancy to be sure, but I whipped them up over the weekend, which for me is fast, and they will be much more durable, economical, and cute than the plastic zipper bags they are replacing. Hooray for handmade!

As usual when Tim's parents come for a visit, we've been playing a lot of games around here lately! Here we are playing Monopoly Deal last night after the kiddos went to sleep...

and here's Joseph playing the original Monopoly with Grandma this afternoon. It's sure been fun to have them here!

Joseph got so interested today when he came out of quiet time today and found Grandma cutting out all these pictures. He sure is having fun watching and helping her!

Rosalie and Kepler are hanging out with us, too, and seeing them together reminds me what a good match Kepler has been to our family! He doesn't mind too much when Rosalie touches his tail...

he mostly remembers to play with his own toys and has a lot of fun doing it...

and although he's potty trained and pretty grown up in some ways, there's just enough puppy left in him to come out a shine now and again. I love the way his ears popped up like this when he dropped his sheep!

We tore down our deck about a year ago to make room for our garden, thinking we would be ready to plant last Spring. As it turns out, it took several months to dig out and break down all the remaining concrete deck supports, and then we had a some sprinkler plumbing issues to deal with. Summer, Fall, and Winter have nearly come and gone, but with Tim's parents here to help construct, shovel, haul, watch kids, and prepare food, we're finally getting our garden boxes ready to go!

Poor Joseph is still feeling quite sick, but Rosalie is out here helping, too! I sure hope we can make some things grow soon!