Yesterday I caught Ella trying to blow her own socks off.....literally. She must have heard that expression somewhere recently. 

The girls have all been playing outside most of day. They have been cloud watching, pairing up for hikes in our "woods", and now they are decorating a tree by poking dead leaves onto the branches they can reach. The tree really needs to be trimmed or cut down, but they LOVE that tree. Sometimes when they get in the holiday spirit they call it their Christmas tree and hang every ugly plastic yard toy they can find on it. 

I absolutely love watching them play from my big kitchen window. If I were to go out and sit on the patio or join in their play it would turn into an exhausting session of fielding their unending questions or mediating their arguments. So I stay inside. And I watch. I watch the way Gwen bobbles around the yard in her mud boots from one interesting thing to the next. I watch the way Ella flies on her swing like a superhero, over and over and over again. I watch the way Josie and Addie look out for the younger two, helping them into their swings, pushing them, holding their hands and leading them thru the more dangerous paths on their "hikes," turning over rocks and logs and showing them the gross bugs underneath.  Yes. I love to watch.  I am proud of the loving sisters they can be when they don't know I am watching.