Pi Day and other celebrations

Thanks so much to all of you who took the time to interact with the conversation about holiday celebrations via facebook, blog comments, private messages, and face to face.  I loved all of the different perspectives.  And I especially loved being reminded how blessed I am to be surrounded by so many moms doing so much each day to make a difference in the lives of their children.  We approach it in as different of ways as we are different people, but it is so encouraging to know that we're in it together.


So, speaking of taking time to celebrate...
That's exactly what we did last weekend.

It started on March 14th.  Pi Day.  Which to us is way more than just about circles.  Two years ago, March 14th was the very first time I even recognized Pi Day with my kiddos.  And by that very evening there were three more little loves sleeping in our home.  An event that would definitely change the next five months of our lives, but in many ways would change US forever.  That's why we remember it.

Although, even if the day itself wasn't so significant, I'm not gonna lie.  I think having a day that I get to come up with fun ways to incorporate circles into the ordinary things we do, that I can give my kids early lessons in math without them even realizing it, and that we can have an excuse to make and eat pie together- yep, that would be a pretty good day.  But I'm a dork like that.

This year we celebrated both.  Pi Day AND our temporary party-of-eightness.  We celebrated by going to pick up those same little loves that helped change us and starting our weekend off right with a stop at DQ (during which the kids got so many compliments for being so well behaved that I thanked THE LORD for having mercy on me.  Taking all of them on this little road trip by myself could have lead to an epic fail.  With the exception of one chaotic trip to the bathroom with all 7 of us in one stall, it was quite the opposite of fail)

And we celebrated with circles.  Lots of circles.

"Auditing" circles by showing that it is "about 3" times farther around a circle than through the middle. (of course we had to eat our yummy measuring instruments, too.  i mean, since they were circles and all.)

Drawing circles with chalk on the driveway.  Which, because they are boys, turned into a target so that they could throw things at it and compete with each other to see who could get more points. Sheesh.

And of course, making and eating some circle pies. 

As tempting as these beauties were- RRL and I passed on eating any.

And then, because the celebration couldn't be limited to just one day.
We made a weekend of it.
We played at the park

And played at the house.

We also had an (early) Easter celebration together.  Including a fun lunch and hunt at Grammy's house.

And some fancy Easter clothes pictures together before the festivities ended on Sunday. 

My sweet niece telling everyone who would listen that her cousin, Lou, picked out that new dress for her, was worth the cost of the dress and then some (especially since it was super on sale).  I loved watching the two of them so giddy about dressing up together.

And then there's these hams.  My musclemen.  Gotta love 'em.

So, there ya have it.  A smack-in-the-middle-of-March celebration worth remembering.
ABL

Of course there were also parts, not mentioned here, worth forgetting.  Which is why they aren't mentioned!  Just picture seven children under the age of 7, one potty training, one crawling and putting everything in his mouth, and 5 others oblivious to how this might make it impossible for me to pay attention to each of them without ceasing.  And yeah, you'll get a pretty good picture of the chaos.  Happy chaos.  But chaos none-the-less.