On the road to recovery

The Full Hands house is finally in recovery mode from the horrid Norovirus.  Let's just leave it at:  it wasn't pretty...the end.  Yup, pretty much sums it up.  We have some pretty exciting things starting to shape up around here as far as our family vision is concerned.  I'll share those things in another post.  For now, I thought I would just share a bunch of pictures that go back all the way to the beginning of this month. 

I'm happy to know that a healthy amount of dirt is good for you!  Helps with that immune system.  Flannery and Saoirse were making cupcakes, or buns, or bread, or something :-)

Don't worry, I make them wash their hands when they come inside!

So this is where Flannery gets some of her practice at becoming a good cook.

Aubrey was checking in on the baked goods cooking.

Nope, not done.

Flannery decided that she outgrew her previous oven, and set up a new one.  Here she is moving over her backed (I guess it should be 'baking') goods.

This oven didn't have a door, but that didn't seem to hinder the baking process.

This was Saoirse's baking area.  You can see where my missing dishes end up.

Creek time.

Jonah is getting brave enough to venture on to the tree limb.  He doesn't get far.

Lots of exploring.

Hanging out on the 'sand bar'.

Aubrey decided to get into the action this time around.  He will usually wail if you try to dip his feet into the water.

He lasted about 10 minutes :-)  He then wanted to get out and get his cold, wet shoes off.

Jonah found some greenage.

Oops...

where did it go?

Jed was insistent that I take his picture of him swirling the water.

Jonah decided it was time to pour out the water from his boots.

I like the effect of focusing on something up close, but your subject is really the blurr in the background.  Obviously I don't want all my pictures like that :-)  Ha, ha. 

I had my big cleaning spree a couple of months ago.  Now I am trying to find better ways to keep things organized.  As I am working around the house I will get ideas of ways to keep things in their places.  I'm trying to use what we have here at home.  I've had the squared glass jars hanging out for a while.  Their tops are just about impossible to get on, making daily use impractical.  Filling them with our math manipulatives works much better.

Well, it works as long as little boys don't dump out the contents!!

Our magnetic wall is turning into a word wall.

Aubrey is starting to eat on his own.  He loves to have a utensil. 

Using the utensil seems to be an option though.

Isabella made this cute scarf.  I am very excited that they are able to make 'real' things with their new skills.  It can be discouraging to be stuck in practice mode with no actual product at the end.

All smiles.

We bought a new fan for our family room.  Our old fan hung down too low, which has been problematic.

How many children does it take to put a fan together?  :-)

We found a new way to curl the girls' hair.  This is by far the quickest way to curl their hair.  I'm not sure if you can see the head band in the picture (up at her forehead).  Their hair gets wrapped around the head band, left over night and in the morning...

Curls!!

Moira was quite pleased with her curls.  They went to church like this and everyone was asking if they had gotten perms.

Aubrey LOVES bath time.  A lot.  A whole lot.  He gets giddy if you start getting him undressed in the bathroom.  He tries to climb into the tub on his own, which he is unable to do.

See, all smiles.  Although he wasn't smiling much when he got a face full of water the other day.  Poor guy.  But that didn't stop him from turning back into all smiles a minute later.  Quick recovery :-)

For Valentines day the kiddos got a few small things.  These coloring/painting pages were one fun thing.

I hung up these beaded necklaces for decoration for Valentines.  I put some up in the door way of both the girls' and boys' bedrooms.

These remind me of the plastic necklaces I used to play with when we went to my grandparents house.  My aunt had bag fulls of them.

While the boys were sick, Saoirse happened to be healthy.  She made a sweet display for them to cheer them up.

Flannery...sick :-(  At one point eight of the nine of us were sick at the same time.  Not fun, not fun.

I knew we were on the mend when I heard hammers and laughter and shouting.  Moira up to something.

Hmmm, there seems to be a lot of swing building that goes on around here.

Aubrey found it fascinating that he could pull off the bark of this tree.

I found it fascinating that a large tree had this for a trunk!  The whole bottom is hollow, with this hole one side.

Aubrey won't be able to do this for long.  None of us will be able to hang out in the woods in another two weeks.  Why?  Ticks.  They come out in the thousands around the second week of March.  And until our chickens can bring down the population (about two to four weeks) we need to stay out of our beloved woodland.

Flannery and Aubrey trying out Moira's swing.

Aubrey loves to swing.After this I took him out back to swing in the real swing.  I think he could swing all day.

What does one do when they don't get snow for the winter, so you can't go sledding?  Why you sail down a dirt bare hill on a plastic rocking horse.  Actually, he wasn't sailing.  He could only 'sled' a few inches before giving another push to 'sled' another few inches.  But I have to give him credit for thinking this up on his own and trying it out.

He didn't get too far before Jonah distracted him.

Jed decided to give the swing a try too.

I guess this picture doesn't show it too well, but there is a stick on the left hand side of the rocking horse.  It really looked like the horse was tied to a pole, like in the old west.  Except there isn't any rope.  I guess you will have to use your imagination :-)