We did a craft!!!!!!

I'll be honest, guys.  "Doing crafts" at my house usually involves a lot of yelling, by at least one person involved.  I'm working on that.  Sigh.

For St. Patrick's day we made more tissue paper / mod podge vases again, to put candles in.  That involved me yelling at Cora about WHERE it was appropriate to put mod podge...haha.  :)

This time, for the first day of spring, we made button trees.  It's exactly my kind of craft:  fool-proof, and only 4 materials required:  boards, sticks, buttons, and glue (both elmers and hot glue gun).  I had the kids pick out their sticks and place them where they wanted them, and then I hot glued them to the board.  MAN I burned my fingers several times...clearly this is not my gifting.  Next I gave them each a cup of glue, lots of buttons, and said go for it...make buds on the trees!  I showed them how to stagger the buttons, top and bottom, and to choose all sorts of colors.  They absolutely rejected each and every idea I had about how this craft should go...haha.  It's good for me.  :)

Here you have our spring button trees:

Finn didn't finish his tree in time for pictures.  This was a very...difficult...task, for Finn.
He can build lego things for hours, but gluing buttons on this board?
SO.HARD.
Also, he was annoyed with me for even suggesting to put other colors on his tree:
"Mama, trees are GREEN!"  A literalist.  I can so relate.  :)

Being the dork that I am, I put the buttons on a tray instead of in their OWN BOWLS, like a normal person who crafts all the time would have known to do.  Sigh.  It was so much fun separating them again at the end of craft time.  ;)

Layla's tree is FULL of blooms.  :)
It also has a sky and grass...obviously!

Cora was not allowed to touch the glue.  This was one way I controlled my yelling.
Sorry, Cora.  Maybe next year.
Anyway, I'd dip a button in glue, and then she would point to the EXACT spot she wanted it to go.
Sometimes I fudged a little to try to make it a better placement.
She NOTICED.  And she was NOT HAPPY with me.  :)

He finished it later, with Faith and Gracie (my mother's helper girls)

MY tree.  :)

Layla with my tree.

A few more books...

I've been reading in 3-4 books lately, at different times and for different purposes:

I did totally FINISH this one, though:  :)

This is our book club book for April...it was a very quick read (3-4 days) despite being over 400 pages, but that's probably because it's almost entirely dialogue and marketed as a YA Lit book.

  

I'm just a bit away from finishing both of these books:

I very much love all of the information this book thinks is important to pass along to readers, but I kind of dislike some of Jim Trelease's tone...he's very preachy and plays a bit fast and loose with some science / connect-the-dots, so while I love the content, I do wish he had worked a little harder to sound more professional.  I think his aim is to get to parents, though, not educators, so maybe that's why he adopted the tone he did.  I think the first few chapters are especially CRUCIAL for new parents to know and understand.  

I've had this book for a while and only finished half of it, and while organizing some I came upon it again, so I decided to finish it.  Now that I've started up again, I'm remembering why I left it off mid-way.  Haha.  I do actually agree with 80-90% of what she says and believes, but she's very much a thinker along with the Bill Gothard / James Dobson folks, and I am NOT, so that's where we part ways.  She draws connections between how your family needs to behave / operate to how your kids will think about gratitude, and I just don't buy what she's selling there.  There are TONS of grateful kids who were raised in very different environments, so please just give me your good ideas and leave out the weird Christian stuff, lady.  .  ;)  

And last, this is what I'm currently alternating with at night:

It's good.  Challenging.  I like that a lot.  The writing is a bit dry and repetitive at times, but I like that he tries to balance a professional, scholarly tone with "pulling no punches" honesty and directness.  I'm only half way through, though, and I can only do about 1 chapter a night due to the weight of the content.
Update:  I was completely pulled into the book by chapter 4...good stuff.

Recent updates:

Here, for your listening pleasure, is Layla performing her most recently learned violin song:

(...after the 20 million variations of "Twinkle, twinkle little star"...)

And here is Cora playing princesses with Jonas.  It's her most favorite thing to do with Adults.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

On Sunday Finn wanted to have a lunch of ribs, so early Sunday morning Jonas, Finn and Cora made the rub together:

Measuring out spices.  We'll call that "preschool" for the day, right?  Haha.  :)

Finn had a bit of trouble with the "only in the bowl" thing...

My most dedicated carnivore...

Cora is wearing Layla's dress.
Because...always.

Jonas can't stand watching the kids eat messy foods...haha.  :)

BIG fan.  Even Layla ate some!

Going for a walk in SUNSHINE!  No JACKETS!  Wheeeeeeee!

Enjoying the odd MN Spring:  no jacket, but still sticking with the snow boots for the mud factor.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

The dining room is decked out in green, all Schaefers are wearing green, and many green baked good were created this morning.  The corned beef roast is in the crock pot, the Guinness is in the fridge, and we're getting ready to welcome some guests to party with us tonight.  :)

More photos to come later...

We were going to have Noah and Vivian Caron over for dinner, but Vivian got sick, so they had to cancel.  Instead we watched the children of some friends from church so they could go out for dinner.  The kids had pizza and hot dogs, along with green cupcakes and green rice krispy bars.  The adults waited until all the children had left the main floor, being the sane people we are, and then had a lovely dinner of corned beef, baked cabbage, and roasted root veggies in front of the fire.  Not the night as we had planned, but still a perfectly wonderful celebration.  

Side note about corned beef:  While I was taking Layla to swimming and ballet this morning/afternoon, Jonas, Finn, and Cora at corned beef for lunch.  JUST corned beef.  Because...why not?  It's like Thanksgiving leftovers.  You eat what makes you happy, and those are for sure my 3 meat eaters!  :)

Another book:

I finished this book by Steve Wiens last night and very much enjoyed it.  I'd recommend this one for sure.

Finn's latest Kiwi Crate:

The latest crate Finn got from Kiwi Crates was a kit for an arcade game / pinball machine.  He LOVES it, is so proud of having put it together all by himself, and plays it daily.  Fun fun!

Always with the "concentrating tongue" out.

Books

A few books I've finished lately:

This was an extremely interesting, engaging book.  I could say so much more about it, but I think I need to let things sit for a while and come back to that later.  It for sure is not for people who fear change or are committed to keeping things "the way they have always been" or "the way we've always done things."  Now that I think bout it, I think I may have heard Dr. Salter McNeil speak at Urbana, oh so many ages ago when I was in college...maybe my Sophomore or Junior year?  

This is our most recent book club book, which we'll be discussing on Monday night.

I loved learning about this piece of American history, as I have never spent much time in more "modern" eras when it comes to reading and classes.  In fact, I hope to audit some great modern American history classes at local colleges and universities when the kids are grown.  Thinking of that ahead of me, way down the road, makes me very happy.  :)  This was a great book (history but reads like fiction), but also rather depressing.  I read the entire thing (450 pages) on my 4 day trip to Arizona, so it was nice to be back in the swing of "old Lisa" and how she used to read.  ;)

I grabbed this book based on Sarah Bessey's recommendation on Instagram, I think.  It was good, but not *amazing*.  I very much appreciated all of the logical thinking and practical ways to really make things happen for families, but I wanted a bit more depth and complexity in the thinking sometimes, and the writing.  I found myself thinking "That's a great idea...let's find a more artistic way to SAY it, rather than only that simple sentence."  Haha.  Like *I* am one to talk, right?  But I've never sold myself as a writer or an author, and I do appreciate quality writing very much.  I will probably come back to this book many times for the great, easy, practical advice...but I wish the writing had drawn me in more.  Then I'd be more likely to recommend it as a book, not simply an instruction manual.  

A small family getaway:

We spent last night in Duluth, as a very small family getaway / break / spring break trip.  We tend to go to this water park in Duluth once every winter, to beat back the MN winter blues, but this year it's hardly necessary.  These last three years have kind of quieted global warming skeptics around here...haha!

The trip was delightful from start to finish, and the kids all had a great time.  Jonas and I always return a bit exhausted from this kind of intense action travel, vs. just going to the cabin or a lake and relaxing, but it's worth it.  

(Sorry I cropped some of these photos in annoying ways...turns out some random, near-naked people are not the people I want forever saved in either my memory or my blog...haha.)

While put Cora to bed on Saturday night, Jonas took the older two to watch Star Wars in a conference room.  A hotel geared to kids is a really nice thing, guys.  REALLY nice.  Layla spent most of the time drawing and coloring.

But can you see Finn's hat here?  He was WAY into the movie.  It was probably his first time seeing it all the way through.  He named the movie as his favorite party of the trip...haha.  

We always end our Duluth trips by eating out at Perkins, because it's cheap, but a good practice for "sit down dinner" restaurants still.  (We don't do those much...or ever.)  ALL Cora really wanted was chocolate pie.  So chocolate pie she had!  Vacation is vacation, right??

I'd like to title this photo "Schaefer kids exposed to commercials."
They were equally annoyed and mesmerized by them.
"Hey, where did the movie go?????"
"Hey...we need THAT!"

"CORA!!!"

Watching the fun blow from our top story window.
I've gotten pretty good when I sign up for a room at leaving SPECIFIC instructions on where we would like to be situated in the hotel:  away from the elevators, high traffic areas, or ice machines.  On the 4th floor so the sound is less, and there are no spotlights outside our windows, etc.  It's a gift.  ;)

Pizza and movies on the floor after our Saturday swimming.

 Sunday morning swimming:

Layla is pretty much the best big sister anyone could ever hope to have.
I hope Cora realizes this sometime very soon!!

Layla didn't want to wear any flotation device at any point this year.  It helps that she is taller, so almost nothing is over her head now, and it helps that she is a darn good swimmer now.  

Finn also didn't want to wear any flotation device much of the time this year.
The only difference is that he is BARELY tall enough.
I think he gave many life guards heart attacks.  :)

This is how I saw Layla for 50% of our trip.

She IS actually having fun here.  "AGAIN!!! AGAIN!!!"

He was so stinkin proud he did it all on his own.

Cora got really overwhelmed with how loud the swimming area was this morning, so we took a break back in the room.  Heck, I related to her...it was loud for me too.  I felt like I shouted the entire weekend.

I almost don't recognize this child.
She looks so different and grown up to me in this photo.  :(

After our Perkins lunch today we headed down to the water front, because...it's Duluth.  You HAVE to.

It was cold, but not THAT cold.  However, Layla and Finn were not big fans of the wind.  So we didn't stay long.

Throwing rocks.
What you do along the shore.

That black dot in the whiteness of the lake is the rock Layla is throwing.

"We go home now??"