the dino party

Joachim has been talking about a dinosaur birthday party since last year and to be honest I wasn't looking forward to planning this one, but it came together well, even better than the pirate party I think.

My first inspiration was born out of my frustration with our boring dirt backyard. I envied the tree houses and playhouses of my friends and then sitting around the kitchen table chatting I realized I already had the resources for a fort of sorts and so the dinosaur cave was born. I used the fence sections (left by the previous owners) from the pirate ship "deck" to build the above cave. My first feat was dragging them across the yard, my second was screwing them together while Joachim held them up, and for the roof and reinforcement I enlisted Ben's height. After some debate as to the potential sturdiness of the structure I think it came out quite solid. I cut a whole in the back and made a tunnel with the old interior doors from our house (yes, we still have quite a bit of scraps and junk hiding around our yard).
I took advantage of another resource we have in abundance -dirt- and made a dig pit burying dozens of easter eggs with treasures inside, scattering sea shells and providing shovels. I worried about having plastic eggs left in my backyard, but I completely underestimated the thoroughness of kids digging up treasure, I could have easily tripled the size of the pit and they still would have cleaned it out, in fact, I should have just done it in our garden and then we wouldn't need to rototill this spring.

For dino dress up I started with an idea I had for dollar store ball caps hot gluing foam teeth onto them. Last year they had good quality hats which is where Joachim's green one came from, this year they only had blue and black left and all the rest were a horribly cheap plastic polyester that didn't fit right... too bad. I also made sets of foam claws that were cool to wear but less practical for activity, you can sort of see Aidan with them below.
The best part was definitely the tails. I found this tutorial online when I was poking around for ideas. I didn't set out to make one for each child until I made the first one and it was so easy. I found a few shortcuts along the way, like I made the spikes out of felt rather than sewing two pieces of fabric together and turning them inside out, and I used ribbon for the straps rather than sewing more pieces of fabric and finally I used my friend, the hot glue gun, to attach the Velcro and put Velcro on the opening so you can stuff an unstuff it for better storing.

In fact, I enlisted friends to help stuff as they were arriving with their kids because I was still hot glue gunning. In the tutorial she stuffs them with polyfill but I stuffed them with plastic grocery bags... my mom was a trooper and collected bags of bags from the grocery store recycling box because I didn't have enough for all the tails. I only had to buy the ribbon because I had enough fabric on hand for all of the tails, a sad commentary on the currently overflowing state of my crafting nook.

There was one basic activity involving several mini-games. Joachim and I assembled an obstacle course crossing the "lava" flow to safely arrive at the cave. The night before I tied numbered tags with clues on them to little dinosaurs that I placed in balloons. The kids had to cross the lava flow "hatch" an "egg" and bring the baby dino and tag back.

When all the tags were retrieved they lined them up in order to read where the dinosaur nest was with the pinata egg. My original idea was to have two teams competing to find two dinosaur nests, but Joachim, not being the competitive sort, didn't want to race, so in the end it was a team effort which worked out fine, but a line of 9 kids took a bit longer than two lines of five would have.
Above Katia is using the lava walkers as an alternative to doing the course, only the two girls used them, I think as an expression of solidarity.
And they're off to find the nest behind the shed. We acquired this shed in the fall and as with many free things it still needs a little TLC, a project for this spring.



Somewhere in my browsing the internet I found someone had rented a fog machine to fill the party with a prehistoric mist. Intriguing, but a little over the top. I also came across a mom who baked a cake in a mixing bowl to make a volcano. So, remembering a "witches" brew my 3rd grade teacher made, I wondered if I could combine dry ice with the volcano cake idea. It wasn't the fancy cake I'd been envisioning with a river, ferns and lots of little dinosaurs milling around, but considering Joachim and I hollowed it out and decorated it literally 40 minutes before the party, it turned out just fine.
Thank you Kassia for knowing exactly how to help.

It's great to be 2

This is the summer box Auntie put together for Anna. I think it was born out of my lamenting that I wish I could send the kids outside for, well, all day. I like the illustration of me pouring goldfish crackers on them in the sandbox.

Godmama brought a cake to church for miss Anna.


And Godmama embroidered this beautiful head scarf for Anna and Anna loves to wear it. She looks like a little matroshka doll in church.

crafts

Both of our moms have birthdays in May and last year I made these two patio side tables for them. It was relatively easy since we had so much tile and grout left over. I glued the tiles onto squares of wood before grouting them and then Ben screwed them onto iron stands we found around town. I have my eye out for a slightly larger stand that I could use to make more of a picnic table for our house. The colors aren't quite right in the pictures of the second table, but you get the idea.


Last year for Christmas two of Joachim's friends made him a shooting star shirt and it's been his favorite shirt all year, the only drawback is that it was white. I told my friend I was thinking about dying it to hide the stains and she sent me home with a jar of blue dye from her cupboard. Here they are stirring the shirt in the dye.


Unfortunately the dye also dyed the paint on the stars so we repainted them and added another one for fun and so the shirt was revived.

As long as we had the dye out I remembered a white turtle neck my mom bought Joachim for a buck at Old Navy. He dislikes turtlenecks and I dislike white so it sat in the drawer. I wondered if we tie-dyed it if he would want to wear it and maybe he could wear it under tee-shirts to cover up the actual tie-dyed part.

He loved the magic of taking the rubber bands off and he's worn it all winter as often as it's been clean in the drawer (and sometimes out of the dirty clothes). It's quite the conversation piece when we go out, but not too tacky I don't think.

a few outings from last spring

The first three pictures are from around Delta and the above one is in Arches National Park. Our anniversary is May 28 which can still be cold here. Last year for our 5th my parents came to watch the kids overnight so we could get away and I was determined to wear a summer skirt where we went. Someone suggested Moab and guaranteed it would be hot so I was sold. We will definitely return to- lots to explore and lots of good food to eat.

brother and sister

Yes, I took advantage of Bloggers post-dating option and threw in a whole bunch of back posts. Over the years some of the personal blogs I've enjoyed following have left the blogging scene for various reasons- some privacy, others new technology like facebook and pinterest, yet I've still not figured out where I stand with it. I just can't get into the facebook world, I'm not that fond of it yet, but I'm still not sure how I feel about putting my family out on the internet even if I only have a dozen friends reading.

As I've said before, Joachim loves looking at pictures and remembering stories. It was wonderful to get off the phone with great-grandmommy and easily find pictures and stories of visiting her. I figured out what I really want to do is make those shutterfly books, or whatever, so I can have them on the shelf where the kids can access them easily. The idea of dropping my pictures into a digital file and typing a few words about them and then being sent a real bound book is attractive, so until then, I figure I'll keep weeding through the pictures and posting them here so I can easily collect them for my book... someday. I just don't trust technology as much as a physical book in my hand, the internet is an awesome resource but, ya know.










I take a lot of pictures and Anna has picked up on it.

blessing of water at the divide

My first three years in Colorado I made it to the blessing of the water on the great divide. This is a service held near Theophony (Epiphany) where Orthodox Christian from across Colorado meet on Monarch pass and bless the snowpack that will subsequently melt and run to the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We've missed the last three years due to weather and Anna's birth, but this year the day worked out perfectly. We drove up under blue skies and while it's normally below 0 there this time of year, the sun was out and if it weren't for a light breeze we'd almost not need the winter parkas.



We walk to each side of the mountain and toss a cross of ice over the edge to melt and bless the land.

And then as tradition holds, we drive into Salida for pizza, beer and a chance to visit with friends from the other side of the mountains. Here Joachim is munching with friends from the Springs. Each of the kids get a dough ball to shape and play with while they wait. Below Joachim's dough is baking in the oven... too bad I didn't take a picture of his finished product, he'd shaped it into letters.