Edelweiss

I just love singing Edelweiss to Rhianwen at bedtime. It's something my dad sang to me, and now Rhianwen requests it most nights of me. When my dad sang it to me, I knew he was singing about me, and not just a flower growing in the alps. It was so special. "Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow...". Snow takes on a whole new meaning when we get 6 inches of the real stuff! Another song we sing at bedtime is "Nothing but the Blood of Jesus"; after all of our snow, Rhianwen noticed that it says "Oh, precious is the flow, that makes me white as SNOW" and got very excited about that connection.

My little blossom of snow making a snow-angel.

We went sledding in our yard and in our woods. By the end of it all, my arms are still sore from pulling and pushing. Impressively (in my opinion), my legs aren't. Maybe I'm more in shape than I thought! Greatmama, do you recognize the sled? It's a gift you gave Wally long ago.

Smiley eskimos. Notice the scarf I'm wearing that I actually made for Rhianwen but who opted for my scarf instead.

Alden is really into dress-up now. We have very few boy-appropriate outfits, but he manages to make do. Doesn't it look like we are all warm and cozy in a Swiss chalet?

Wally and I enjoyed sledding too. We had some close calls with our fence, but it's still standing, and we still have all our limbs.

Guess who got a haircut? He did amazingly! Just sat there like it was the most normal thing ever. We set up the video camera and connected it to our tv so he could watch his hair get cut. Mirrors just aren't 21st century enough for us.

Not professional but quite adorable. At first we thought that Alden just cared about his ring-pop...

"No offense, dad, but I think I'll wear my hat."

Rhianwen got inspired from daddy's haircutting skills and decided to try it out on her grass-head.

I just love this picture. The light, the mood, my cuties. We were looking at the prism casting rainbows from the morning sun. It reminds me of how Christ's light shines through us and adds beauty to our world.

Last week we enjoyed a visit from Nanny Kim. It was a lot of fun. The kids were so happy and really enjoyed her child-like spirit. We found a great book called The Paper Princess at the library, and Nanny Kim made a paper doll to match the Paper Princess paper doll in the book. Here they are reading the book with the Paper Princess. Alden got a fun ginger bread man. We discovered covering them in contact paper makes them very sturdy.

I think Nanny Kim's visit has sparked the craft spirit in me again. Of course, my crafts are not very ornate since they are geared for 18 month to 3 year olds. We've been trying to memorize one Bible verse a week since recently in my life every venue of Scriptural teaching/learning has somehow stressed the importance of keeping the Word close to our hearts. It's wild to me how God does that sometimes! Anyway, this week's verse is Romans 6:23. So I made the craft (below) with Alden and Rhi. They each do one, and eventually it ends up on their bedroom wall. Alden knows that they are about God, and took his paper Gingerbread man and held it up to the wall that had all of his verses on it, and said, "God." I'm not sure if he thought his Gingerbread man was somehow a craft about God or if he thought his Gingerbread man needed to know about God. Either way, it was so cute!

The thing that makes this craft so great is that they can open the "gift" on it. Fascinating to their age range. (And, just to make myself very clear, I am not saying the Atomic bomb was God's judgment, I just used it b/c it looked big and fiery and less terrifying than other ways to depict death).

As you can see, Rhianwen actually learned most of the verse b/c of the craft! Yay! Of course, her retention is questionable. But we've gotten a lot of good discussion that we otherwise would not have had b/c of it.

In Aldi-man's words:"Bedtahm now now now!"