Celebrations

My Valentine.  I'm so lucky to have one who enjoys cooking and putting
together a picnic.   

I spent my birthday this year bringing the kids around to three different birthday parties.  Birthday parties for other kids.  JB was away on a men's retreat for the weekend, so it actually ended up being a great way to pass the time.  One of the parties was just a gathering at the farmer's market, which we enjoy going to anyway, so no pressure there.  Another party was a where-what-you-choose "masquerade ball" and Benjamin had it in his mind that he wanted to make a mask.  Specifically, the fish mask in the middle of the page below from "King Bidgood's in the Bathtub":   

It would have been pretty easy to shift his attention away from this project.  And I don't really do big involved crafting projects.  But why not, really?  It's not so hard to make a papier mache mask, is it?  

I'm actually very glad we took this on.  The kids both had fun with it--especially the painting and decorating part.  I had a loose plan, I let go of perfection (or even a tail that stays on!), and we all had fun.  Ben was delighted after he got over the initial fear of putting the thing on his head.   

Benjamin has also been enjoying making cards and "scenes" for people.  He makes these great little scenes and then says that they are for specific people, puts them in envelopes, and I never see them again.  So I've started taking pictures of them before they disappear.  

Here's the one for the masquerade ball.  It was so much fun to watch him delight in figuring out (more or less) the spelling of words.  The picture at the top is "The Giving Tree," by Shel Silverstein.  He looked at the pictures in the book, counted the falling apples, falling leaves, and the rocks the boy hides between and put just that number in his own picture.  I love it.  

For my birthday I asked for a scene of my very own.  What I think was at first a purple scribble turned into a map of our trip to Caddo lake last week.  On the left is our house.  The road leads around to grandmommy and granddad's house, then to our cabin in the woods, and finally to the canoe we took out on the Cypress swamp, in all of its gloomy glory at the bottom of the picture.  I think all of us people are squished in there in the swamp.    

Birthday trip to Caddo Lake

Conveniently, my birthday often happens to fall right at the beginning of Waco and Baylor's spring break.  So whatever we do for spring break doubles as birthday celebration for me.  I'd like to think this means I get an extra bit of say about our plans.  This year JB and I got to bring the kids to Caddo Lake in East Texas.  The last time we were there, we were not yet married.  I can't say I didn't know what I was getting into when I married someone who's idea of a romantic getaway is camping in a swamp!  

The point of this trip, when it comes down to it, was taking Benjamin canoeing through the swamp.  We had a few setbacks on the way including pouring rain the evening we drove out, flooding on the bayou which meant the state park wasn't renting canoes, and arriving too late and on the wrong day for any restaurants to be open for supper.  But we made the most of it all and bought Benjamin some rain boots (they light up!), rented canoes further into the swamp, and ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches for supper in our little heated cabin.    

And we got to canoe in the swamp.  Ben loved sitting in the middle, learning the rules about riding in a boat, pulling water plants from the swamp, and asking endless questions about the cypress trees and the spanish moss.  We even found a baby turtle he tried to bring back in the canoe.  We decided the turtle would be happier right there in the water.  

Without grandmommy and granddad's help, we would not have been able to do this at all of course.  They came out for the day and played with Eliza Jane while we went canoeing.  A bit of a long trip out just to babysit, but we all had a good meal together on the way home, and we hope it was worth their while.  Eliza had a great time being a "big hiker"--her face just lights up when she sees her grandparents.