Merry times at the farm

After Christmas comes - HOLIDAYS! Yay! It was so sweet to have a full week at the farm with all the siblings home. 

Hopey got lots of time to hang out with her Aunties and Uncles. :o)

And with extra hands to hold the Joy-Belle and entertain her, I got to do something special with Hopey - make gingerbread cookies.

Mostly, Hope "did stuff" with Granny, but when Mum asked me one day if there was anything special I'd like to do, I answered that I'd really like to do something just with Hope, if someone could take over meeting Joy's abundant needs for a while. (Joy just has a really short attention span, and fast legs that take her all sorts of places where supervision is required! =))

FUN! :o)

Apple thoughts....

Ahh.... my siblings inspire me. I often would find them sitting and reading, something I make very little time for these days of my life. Well done, sibs!

Hope loves drawing on the ipad. She does really well with finger-tip art... when the cumbersome need of holding crayons or pencils is removed. :o)

Lap time - YAY!

Oh - and lest I forget - pomegranate seeds - Joy's holiday favourite food! You shoulda seen her devour those things!

Yay for Play Dough and someone to play it with Hope!

As you can see, Hope's favourite thing to do was to cut the dough into dozens of little pieces. Joy is starting to learn how to play with Play Dough too, not that she understands what it means when you say "don't put that in your mouth!"

Luke was being a good sport at the lengthy premier run of Cities and Knights. It took them over three hours to play as Josh was the only one who knew the game. Poor Luke - he was disadvantaged from the get-go of the game, but he stuck it out.

Kid's games. Yep. We still like to play them! The boys got so stoked when they saw me bring down Hope's fish game. Luke was like "I used to love that game!!!" He was the champ. No one could beat him. :o)

I think Avery was rather dumbfounded by Luke's consistent success. :o)

Aww. Beautiful Auntie Chloe and the nieces. (Thanks for the striped sweaters, Melody! The girls love them and have gotten lots of wear out of them already.)

Choppin' turkey for gumbo. Oh yeah!

Everyone was fascinated with the twist-up crayons the girls got for Christmas, so it led to lots of artists contributing to Hopey's drawing book. :o)

Grandma Collin came to the farm for a day, and she and Hope had a blast playing Memory with some Uno cards.

Hope's still learning the whole "take turns" thing, but she's pretty good at the matching part. :o)

Sharing a laugh - one of the very best things to share. 

Then, Joy got into performance mode, and Luke was experimenting with the video capabilities on my camera with one of his lenses, so you get to see some of it. :o) They started putting Joy up on the coffee table, and were laughing hilariously as she would toddle back and forth on it, never going too close to the edge... she seemed to know exactly where the edge was and exactly what she should do. :o)

Mum had saved some dried beans from her garden just so that Hopey could help her harvest the seeds out of them for the spring's planting. So thoughtful!

It was a perfect job for Hope's little fingers. :o)

Some things never change - Mum still stores her seeds in paper envelopes, just like she did when I was a kid.

Nice sample.

A moment of magic, captured by Luke. :o)