Eika turns Eleven

The past year has been a full one for our oldest.  She has created all kinds of things, finally traveled beyond North America, become an aspiring gymnast, and so much more.

 A rug woven using a hula hoop for a frame

Hand-sculpted and painted bowl

Getting acquainted with a crocodile

Pouring out love at Kibuye Hope Hospital in Burundi

Soaking up sunshine on the shores of Lake Tanganyika

Beauty in Bruges, Belgium

 

Looking way too grown up

Gaining confidence, strength, and poise

Making lotion

Dressed as the perfect Pippi

who are you,little i

(five or six years old)

peering from some high

window;at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling:that if day

has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

               

                                 --e.e. cummings

Instructions for triumphing over Mondays

1. Give your three-year-old a pair of sunglasses.  Tell him they are spy glasses.

2. Give him the vacuum hose.  Tell him it is a spy gun.

3. IF he is wearing his special spy glasses, and IF he says shu-ZAM at just the right moment, his spy gun will magically make things disappear.

4. Point to all the crumbs (dried-up play-dough bits, wood mess and splinters by the wood stove, etc), sit back, and marvel at your genius plan.*

*raisingourebenezer.blogspot.com, the Willis family, Jude the Spy, and Hannah the Spy Mom are not responsible for other items that may inadvertently disappear if your spy is left unattended with his spy gun.