I thought I'd write a little more this post, a little more than quick captions.  All photos are from my phone so I didn't waste time editing them.  Our basement server that holds all our  real photos is disconnected right now.

The ground is still covered in old crunchy snow but we have beautiful birds back in our yard, after a long hiatus due to a squirrel-broken bird feeder.  We put out three plant saucers full of mixed bird seed and a suet feeder and it's been like a busy airport in the front yard. The regular juncos, chickadees, tufted titmouse, cardinal gang are fun to watch but we've especially enjoyed the visits from the red-bellied woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers and blue jays.

At the $1 mall carousel a few months ago.

Cathleen is gearing up for her "5th" birthday in April.  She talks everyday about the jellybean cake with pink frosting that I am to make for her.  And DO NOT TELL HER SHE'S ONLY TURNING 3.  Please. You will endure screechin' and hollerin' like you've never heard before.

On her new balance bike.  The learning curve is much harder than I expected.  Hopefully she'll get the hang of it come warmer weather.

We love her funny little 2-year-old speech, like how she needs to get juh-jamas on at night.  Sean loves to tell her that monsters are real.  She looks up at me with her big blue eyes and says, "Mommy, monsters aren't real.  They're just pretend, right?"

At the park one cold December day.

Both kids clamor for Krtek play everyday.  Krtek is a mole from a Czechoslovakian cartoon that seems to have disappeared from Youtube.  I'm Krtek, during this pretend play, and the kids hide under a blanket until I waltz into the "forest" singing my "doot-duh-doo" ditty.  Then I encounter my sweet animal friend, Sweet Pea, who is sometimes a mouse, a newborn horse, a grasshopper, etc.  And then I meet the often-fierce animal, Sean, who likes to scare Krtek by coming after him for lunch.  We play this EVERY DAY.  Unless someone's naughty and then Momma doesn't "have anymore energy" to play.

At IKEA with his first "crustless" PB&J.  Those things are good!

Sean and I are hammering away at our school lessons most days.  Today was a little rough, after a strange snow week and lots of traveling week.

Sean loves it when I "strew" things for him to find (though he doesn't know I do it on purpose most of the time.)  Here, I placed one of his new favorite books, the abridged version of the first Narnia book, at his place so he looked through it before breakfast.  I can place a wide-lined sheet of paper with a few words written on it and chances are he'll write them down on his own without even thinking about it.  'Cause I didn't ask him to do it.  :)

He's starting to balk at the reading lesson.  It's really painful for him to cuddle up in my arms on the couch while we learn a new trick to reading!  He's progressing well with his reading but I still force it on him most days.

AnnMarie Gardens in Solomons, MD.  We attended a wonderful art class  for Sean's age and up.  They each made a story quilt.  Sean's was a picture of the "quimney in the chimney" from Dr. Seuss.

Cathleen and the other younger siblings had a craft room of their own at Annmarie Gardens.

Math is still Montessori Math and we're still working on adding (and the regrouping of) large numbers.  He likes this a lot but it takes him so long to get the proper amount of beads out for each number b/c he gets so distracted!  Frustrating for me but I have to repeat to myself that he's got the attention span of a kindergarten boy and that ain't much.

Writing his name in cuneiform on a clay tablet.  It became a Christmas ornament

We still reading and working on The Story of the World.  My favorite part of our history lessons is listening to his narration after I read the week's history story.  I write each of these down for his notebook and he's made a lot of progress from the first one-sentence narration a few months ago.  We're currently learning about the early Jewish people, and. once again, I'm learning just as much as he is.  

(Warming up for his first big concert at the Mormon Tabernacle in DC)

Violin is going well, though the last two weeks have been tough b/c his teacher is cracking down on all her students' bow hold.  It's maddening, how unnatural it is to hold the bow and hold the other hand!  Sean's been a real trooper and at his lesson today, Mrs. Monica was very pleased with his bow hold.  He will probably learn the "real" bow hold soon.  He's happy about that b/c then he'll be "an expert."

Adam's very busy at work with lots of new boss changes and the ensuing worker bee changes.  He's in sunny San Diego right now at a training seminar for the high-end speakers the band uses.  Last I heard, he was holed up at In-and-Out burger.  His 34th birthday was last week and I finally made a decent birthday cake.  Somehow they've all had glaring errors but this lemon cheesecake was "the best birthday cake I've ever had."  The four of us ate it in 48 hours.  A whole cheesecake.  Sean had at least 1/4 of it.

I worked for days on crocheting a granny square.  I think Adam's right:  you have to be a granny to make one.

My goal in life, besides the obvious family-related ones, is to play more music this year.  I've been playing the silver flute enough now that my cheek muscles give out on me after 25 minutes instead of 10.  And my piano playing, though the frequency has lessened since Christmas, is still in the works.  And I'd like to get back to cooking.  Somehow, that became a real chore for the last 4-6 months.