What do you do when it snows in March?

You dress up in your best pioneer dress, put on your dress coat, and Pretend like you are Laura Ingalls in "The Long Winter" of course!

I have been meaning to blog about this for awhile now. It was just too cute to forget. It was late March that we got a bonus snow fall. Everyone was sick of being cooped up in the house, so when Emily came to me all dressed up, and asked for a basket I didn't know quite what she was up to. She has been reading all of the Laura Ingalls books lately and decided to take advantage of the newly fallen snow and pretend she was Laura, trying to survive the long winter. It was fun to watch her scurry around the yard pretending to gather this and that and the other. I just watched out the window, not wanting to disrupt this rare opportunity to watch her lost in her imagination, but she was so animated that it wasn't hard to follow along. Emily is entering into the wonderful "inbetween" stages and is trying to figure out if she is a kid or a "preteen", and it is nice when you get to watch them be that kid you know they still are. Even if it also reminds me of the grown up girl she is becoming at the same time.

You Are A Manwaring If...

The other day I overheard a conversation between Josie and Sam. Sam takes after his father and is often confused about many things including what day of the week it is. So he looks for clues around him to fill in the blanks. Sam asked Josie if it was "Work Day" more commonly know as Saturday to the rest of the world. Which got me remembering my growing up years. So I have come up with the following list to see if you qualify as a true Manwaring:

1) If you walk in to a building and accidentally leave the door open and someone asks if you were raise in a barn. You can reply, why yes I was.
2) For the first 10 years of your life you thought your middle name was "pot licker"
3) Your best fashion statement in high school was your new tennis shoes stained with green from the grass.
4) You had to go through a trap door to get to your bedroom.
5) At the age of 17 you could brag that you had worked at a oil refinery for 4 years.
6) You only could sing the first lines of any folk song and are really worried about being able to wash your neck.
7) The only nose jewelry you were allowed was a grind stone.
8) Your friends could recognize your back pockets and elbows before your face. (because you were bent over working)
9) You know what the phrase " Had the bun" means.
10) Your choices of energy drinks were Barley Green or Molasses mixed with Milk.
Added June 10, 2010
11) If you have had a holy shirt or pants ripped off your body.
12) If your family hugs included the use of duct tape.
13) If in every Family photo instead of hearing "say cheese" you hear "duck, duck, goose". Contributed by BM. You guess which one.


How did you rate? Can you think of any other qualifications?

What I meant to Blog Was....

It's been a while, lets just leave it at that, ok! That way I don't have to give excuses about...

Anyway, here are all the things I have been meaning to post about for a while now an haven't. So here it is: I finally got new curtains in the living room. It took me forever to decide what I wanted, but once I got them up I was so happy with them that I can't believe I left the other ones up as long as I did. (You can't really tell but they are very narrow blue and white stripes)

In an attempt to at least get something close to the cool "Ipod" valentines we did last year we made these fortune cookie valentines. Still not as cool as the ipods, but I thought they were cute.

Emily signed up for the school talent show. She had high hopes of singing a Taylor Swift song, but after the 4th out of tune version of "You Belong to Me" I think she was glad I made her play the piano instead. I think... She did a great job!

Jack had started taking Tae Kwon Do in Michigan, so we signed him up when we got back. He loves it and it is so fun to what him work so hard, and be so focused on something. He gets to test for his low Yellow Belt next Friday. Here are Sam and Jack "sparring" at class. I am thinking of getting these padded helmets for when they go at it at home (which seriously doesn't happen very often).
Of course brothers are required to hug at the end.

So that is what I meant to blog..... More blogs to come!!!!!