Happy 5th, Genevieve!

Genevieve is five, in kindergarten, and loving life. She has the best laugh I've ever heard. She's fun loving and acrobatic and as likely to be found upside down as sitting. She loves her little sister more than words can describe. The feeling is mutual, albeit Chloe would like her to tone down the body slamming to the floor hugs, ha!

For all she was a bit of a suspicious baby Genevieve loves everyone she meets now. She considers everyone her friends. She loves the color pink and wants to grow her hair down to the floor. She asked to go to the zoo for her birthday so we went on Saturday.

I let her pick her birthday dinner so tonight we're having cereal, popcorn, and white cake with pink frosting. I'm pretty sure all the kids are okay with this. Hahahaha! I love you my sweet oldest girl. I wouldn't change you for the world. I can't wait to see you storm the school this year. They don't know what hit them. You're going to flourish, my redheaded beauty!

Eclipse

Today we need to go way back a year and a few months ago to when we took a family trip up to the Philadelphia to celebrate my niece's baptism. While we were there my sister's FIL told Bill and I about this strange thing he called a totality. I'd never heard of the word before but he showed us a website of how this was going to happen in a year and four months and how we lived right there and wow, that was cool! We kind of filed that away and moved on.

Fast forward to January 2017. Bill started reaching out to companies to interview because he was sure he was just about done and wanted to start the job hunt. We found a fabulous place very quickly and started negotiations only to discover a couple months later he wasn't as close as he thought and our timeline backed up to August of this year. And I thought wow, that totality thing is going to happen just after we graduate and leave. Bummer.

Then the timeline backed up to December. And guess what?! We got to be here for the eclipse! This totality thing everyone talked about. Guess what else? It was a HUGE deal here because not only were we in the path but we had the best spot in the whole state to watch just by stepping outside. And then all the schools provided glasses for the kids and people planned trips and there was loads of excitement. And today was the day and we didn't have to do any of that. I got to pick my kids up from school at noon, meander over to Bill's work, then go over to Bill's lab and watch Magic School Bus until the eclipse started. It was in the mid 90s and sunny as could be, so we went in and out for the first 45 minutes and peeked at the sun's progress. And when it got much closer we setup our chairs and enjoyed the cooler temps and watched the show.

I didn't want to still be here in grad school at this point, but wow, the eclipse delivered and I'm glad we didn't miss it. I saw the world darken up and a 360 degree sunset around the horizon. I saw the most beautiful corona for two and a half minutes and that cool effect of seeing the sun peek through the mountains and valleys of the moon as it came out of totality. I heard the crickets go crazy. Then I saw sunrise at 2:45 in the afternoon. It was awe inspiring.

Spencer was jazzed the whole time. He caught right on to wearing the glasses and he ran in and out on repeat checking to see the progress. Genevieve and Aaron were underwhelmed at first because it was still so bright and they had a hard time seeing just the sun. Genevieve got scared because she hurt her eyes a bit first go when she didn't hold her glasses close enough to her face. Hurt in the sense that she got sun in her eyes a bit and immediately didn't want to try again. We got both of them to come around when it got closer to total eclipse and they figured out the glasses, and then they loved it. Chloe just buzzed around, happy to be outside. She pushed her chair around, and completely ignored what was happening in the skies above, lol. We're going to remember this one for a long time. It kind of gave me goosebumps when that corona burst forth around the moon. It was so stinking beautiful. This world is an amazing place.

Moana

My kids love Moana and Grandma was nice enough to send Genevieve a Moana costume as a gift plus fun things for her siblings as well. Today was a dream come true for my kids when they opened the boxes. Here's a few pictures I took. I couldn't catch Chloe slowing down for anything, so these are quite unposed of her. 

Chloe's favorite things to do, holding her new doll and climbing on our chairs.

A girl and her dolls. She loves them so much.

A boy and his Maui hook. He hasn't put the thing down all day.

She giggled in delight when I pulled this doll out of the bag and rushed over. She knows what she likes. :)

All her dreams came true when she opened this costume and especially the necklace. It is so cool. Disney actually did a good job with this one. :) 

Babies and food

I've used baby-led weaning for my three younger kids. That's fancy for letting them eat whole food from the get go. They gnawed on apples or pears as first foods and we just let them have a go at basically whatever we were eating at the time, supervised of course. All three have progressed amazingly fast into being proficient eaters. It's fabulous. And Chloe has not disappointed. She LOVES to eat. And drink water. Don't even dare drink water in front of her without giving her some. She gets ragey if you do, lol. She's a meat lover and loves trail mix and granola bars and cereal and all sorts of fruit and veggies and generally she just loves to eat. This was her first go at corn on the cob. Bill asked me if he ought to cut the corn off and I said let her have a go and we can cut it if she can't handle it. That was not an issue. She didn't leave a single piece of corn on that cob. Ha! 

This and That

I've been doing something revolutionary lately. I have been doing memory worthy things with my kids and not taking any pictures. Gasp! We went on a really cool hike on Saturday to this beautiful waterfall, had a great hike and a great time swimming, and this is the only picture I have. I didn't even take it. It's from Bill's phone. Part of it is my phone camera isn't doing so hot lately and I hate the bad pictures, but mostly it's because I spend a lot of time on my phone and this is one way to push against that. 

So there you go. A really cool waterfall we hiked to and swam at and had a grand ole time.

I got rid of our changing table this week. That felt kind of epic. We got it seven years ago while I was pregnant with Spencer. Chloe is still in diapers and will be for at least another year, but I just put the changing station on top of my sewing desk and it works great. It's super easy to take it off if I actually want to sew, which unfortunately doesn't happen very often at the moment. Someone give me money for fabric, please! I have all sorts of things I'd love to try but alas, no fabric to do it with. I used to have a few other random things on that desk that were much harder to take off so I'm quite pleased with the change. 

I've been plugging away at my current paint-by-number. It's more done than this now, but this is the last picture I took. My poor right thumb and pointer finger are super stiff every morning when I wake up, and I'm sure it's because hello, I haven't held a writing device, or in this case a paint brush, to use for this purpose in years. But if anyone knows anything that will calm down the stiffness, I'd love advice. I'm not going to stop painting, so for now I'm just dealing with it. It is too calming and stress relieving to do otherwise.

The last few days I've been looking at buying vs. renting options in northern Colorado. The goal is still to graduate in December, so that time is fast approaching. I've come to the sad conclusion that when you only have a few thousand bucks to your name it's hard to buy a house, lol. We're skidding into the finish with hardly anything left but hey, we're going to finish!

The timing of finishing in December is so awkward for moving with kids in school and winter but hey, this is not a complaint. OMG, not a complaint! Ten years of school is just about done and I'm mentally jumping for joy. After that long though everything is pretty worn out, us included. One of the springs on my old couch just broke and sitting in that spot is now significantly lower than the other two. Both of our old cars make me wonder on a regular basis if we are going to make it to our destination. The washer and dryer are barely functioning. Five more months. One more semester. Ten more college size paychecks, give or take. How many other ways can I find to count down? 😍