Flying, six months old, and Valentines Day

This is going to be a very picture heavy post, I'll try to keep it short on words! But a lot has happened, leaving me little time to catch up on here.
On February 1st, Felicity had her first Science Fair. When we found out it was coming up I handed her a how things work kind of book and within five minutes she knew she wanted to build a hot air balloon. It looked fairly simple, so we found a template online for the balloons panels (I found out they are called Gores, who knew?) and she started cutting and gluing tissue paper. It was a little iffy, I think it might be easier when she's a little older.

We tested it outside with my blow dryer, and after several trials, finding and gluing holes shut, and even putting a plastic garbage bag inside to hold the air better, we still could only get it to float a couple inches, and not for very long. But she had loads of fun making it and the boys loved to watch/help/hinder as the case may be.

Seth brought out his dinosaurs to play in the snow while we were trying to make the balloon fly. He didn't get my lame joke when I asked him if that was what killed off the last of the dinosaurs. We haven't had enough snow this winter to kill off much.

Felicity's creation! It turned out cute, anyway. And she got full points, and lots of practice for future science fairs. And we learned that we will not let them procrastinate at all.

Here is her display at the fair.

Then on the 11th, Abigail turned six months old. As you can see from my action shot, she's been rolling like crazy. She'll roll and scoot and turn herself around on our tile floors easily. She made it across the living room floor one day. She still doesn't have any teeth, but she's getting more and more hair all the time, I think she will turn into a redhead, with kind of a dark strawberry blond. She's now eaten rice, oatmeal and mixed grain cereals and even tried squash. She made some funny faces with the squash, but she ate it. We went to her six month appointment yesterday and Seth kept saying over and over that he didn't think Abby should get owies--Seth speak for shots. He told the nurses and the doctor the same thing, and when the nurses poked her and set her off crying he was pretty mad. "I said, don't give Abby owies!" he kept yelling at them. She's pretty good with shots and stopped crying quickly, but Seth might not let her get any more. She's got a good bodyguard.

On Saturday, our living room was invaded with the makings for Valentines for the kids to give to classmates. Nicki came up and helped out, there was always at least one of us telling Joseph to focus. Abigail can reach further than we are used to and she kept grabbing paper to eat. She thinks squash is gross, but pink paper? Yummy. For Valentine's Day this year we decided to make a boy one and a girl one for all the kids to take in. OK, OK, I decided it after I found these cool valentines on Pinterest:

For the girls, Hershey Kiss Rings:
http://www.momontimeout.com/2012/01/bring-on-bling-valentine-ring-craft.html

For the boys, Army Men with fun sayings:

http://jacolynmurphy.blogspot.com/2012/01/for-valentinesall-is-fair-in-love-and.html

Luckily the kids loved the idea, especially since they got the leftover army men and at least two kisses each. Seth, I believe, had more. For the Army Men, we had a couple sayings: "All is fair in love and war," "You dropped the bomb on me!" and "You're the BOMB!" which set off a whole slew of Cars 2 quotes.

Joseph showing off some of the rings we made. Oh, his faces make me laugh every day. Such a silly kid.

Farris usually gets a Mylar balloon for each of the kids for valentines day. They LOVE them and play with them for at least a month after. One dollar well worth it.

Caleb is such a sweetie.

His balloon floated up before I could get the picture, but again, I love the face.

I don't think Seth remembered his from last year, but anything to do with balloons is good.

Aww, love this picture. All together we had a fun Valentines Day. Farris got some tulips for me (favorite!) and I got to help out at Felicity's class party. I love helping out in their classes and wish I could do more. Maybe next year when Abigail is a little older.

We've also been potty training Seth. I think I've gone through a whole bottle of disinfectant wipes for every surface in the bathroom, and our number of laundry loads have gone up. Ugggghhh. But he's been dry every night since we started. Gotta take the good where I can.

My sis in law Tarilynn had been coming up every other week to play with the kids so I can have, sigh, a couple hours of quietness. Lovely. Thank you very, very much Tarilynn! The kids love it too, Joseph can't wait to kick me out when she gets here.

Whew, sorry for the long post, hopefully I'll get back to my once a week with shorter posts grove. Heh. We'll see!