photo journal

We couldn't find Lucas at one point cause he had found Juniper's mp3 player.


This crazy moth was on my lantern.


Fun with the camera at night.


Kids in the morning around a campfire.


Steiner kids make stuff like this when they hang out in the woods.


Washing dishes in the stream.


Up on the mountain top. I love the dynamic between the kids in this photo.

I went as a chaperon with Juniper's class to the Hancock Shaker village yesterday. Here are a few of my favorite shots of the animals:

Ben passed on the bed he build for Eli when Eli was Lucas' age. Lucas loves it. We set it up in the corner of our room and made his own little space. He goes in there and plays or reads - and even naps in it all by himself at naptime! It might be a long time before we have a room to even offer him for his own, so we need to make the best of the space we've got. So far, so good.

Juniper had a sleepover birthday party at Ben's on Friday. 3 girls slept over and they all had american girl dolls... Eli got to come to my house and we watched a movie that we wouldn't otherwise be able to watch with Juniper around - the transformers. He LOVED it. Of course.


Blowing out the candles on her cake with her doll.

Eli was in a play with his class today and he played Hermes. The class did an amazing job for 5th graders and it was cool to see how tight this group of kids has gotten over the 5 years that they have grown together. The way they do plays at their school is that everyone learns every part, then like a week before the play, the teacher picks who has each role. There is always two days that the play takes place, and each day there are different children in different roles.
They never allow for photography until the end where the kids gather for group shots. The last in this series of photos is my favorite just because I caught Eli in the act of stabbing Zeus.

Choo choo...


We build train tracks almost every day. We have many trains from when Eli and Juniper were Lucas' age. Today Lucas and I tried to find all of the trains that we could to make a super long train. I found a few more after I took this photo.


Lucas sang a song about me when we were done. He makes up songs and sings them with his guitar all the time, they can be pretty funny.

Clarra, Eli and Juniper


Lucas and the downstairs cat checking each other out.


Surfing in the back of a truck.


Gather round, Juniper's hair is bouncy and there are many wet dogs here...


Singing herself a birthday song.


Juniper is 9 now!


All the boys are outside.


Juniper enjoys a moment to herself.

Eli was preparing for a report he had to give on a state.


Lucas insisted on doing some homework as well.


Working hard.


Eli's poster for his oral report.

It's raining, it's pouring.


Juniper took Lucas outside with some umbrellas but it was cold...


Rainy day + swimming in the stream + mud = gross wet dog.

Two boys bringing in the empty trash cans.


One girl with funny glasses.


Three kids.


Dinner - veggie soup and toast.

Hazel was here playing with Lucas when I got home. This is them pretending to nap with some dolls.


This is my after work snack. Mmmm.

Here is Lucas last week helping my sweep our very dirty kitchen floor.




Lucas playing with his trains after his chiropractor visit yesterday - this was a good sign that he was feeling a tad better. He used his riding toy to get to the trains.


We had a quick thunderstorm this afternoon and a tree between our house and Nichole's house got struck by lightning. This is the view from Nichole's porch - you can see our house in the back behind the tree. Crazy.

Lucas found Juniper's tea set and now every day he has to have a tea party.


This is how you drink tea I think.


The beautiful tea party attendee.


The sick kid. We think he has lyme disease.

Lucas loves his shovel.




Our sandbox is kinda sad.

Here are some shots of our yard this afternoon.

I cleaned out my fridge AND my freezer today... mostly because I wanted to put something in the freezer and I couldn't fit it. It now has only edible food in it and the best part is that we made like 4 or 5 big meals for Rocco and Kiri (the dog and the cat) for the week out of a bunch of frozen meat and raviolis that were OLD.


This is the pantry. I did a major cleaning of this a few months ago and we've been able to keep it pretty updated with food that hasn't gone bad or won't go bad. You can see my more recent style of shopping which involves buying a lot of one thing when it is on sale or I can get it for a good deal (you can also see the earthbalance in the freezer that went off sale today so I stocked up). That way, we have a nice stock of what we need and we don't have to worry about buying it at the more expensive price when we need it and it's not on sale anymore. Honestly, the pantry looks really bare to me right now - I'm waiting for the bi-annual co-op coupons to come out so I can use them with corresponding sale items and with my 20% discount to do a serious stock up. At one point I was spending $.40 a box or so on the organic annie's mac and cheese when it was on sale and their were coupons that worked for them. I do love finding the good deals...

Here we are right after I got my annual hair appointment.


The hair dresser made my curly hair really straight and really curly all at once. The highlights are a little too red... I was thinking more orangish, but I don't actually care THAT much about my hair and I know they will fade so no biggie.

Here is Lucas after Eli changed his diaper and put his batman underwear on him as pants.


With Lucy.


Crazy big bro.

Here are Lucas and Delany on one of the 2 days between their 2nd birthdays sharing some birthday cake. This photo also represents a little lesson in the dangers of giving a child a lit candle... there was a quick rescue after this shot, don't worry...

It's been a while, we've been busy busy... here are some recent photos of the kids.


Elias before his haircut last week.


The after shot.
He loves to grow his hair long every year, but then there is always a point where his teacher complains that she can't see his eyes and tries to talk him into cutting it. Then he gets all upset because he doesn't want to cut it until he finally decides that he really wouldn't mind a hair cut. Then when we cut it, he always loves it. Every time.


Juniper showing me how she wants to wear her hair with her long braids pinned up on her head.


Lucas getting snuggled up on the couch for Eli and Juniper's movie night. It's not really for him at all, but by default he somehow gets involved every now and then...