late night over pancakes

Last week we did some little alphabet sheets I found via Pinterest (the best thing ever). And we're continuing in her Rod and Staff workbooks, which she loves, and the reading book, which is (as I predicted) a little hard for her. So she and I have slowed down a bit with that and are spending a couple days on each lesson. But Jason and I are so proud of her since she is recognizing letters right and left when we go out and starting to remember her numbers too...

This is what a typical morning looks like around here: Hazel wearing some funny outfit she came up with (I can't wait until that dress actually fits her - it's from my sister-in-law and I love it!) and Klaas was getting frustrated that he couldn't get his feet into the klompen slippers without assistance.
And this is Hazel and me reading last night on the couch. It made me happy because she just climbed up on my lap like that to look at her AWANA book while I was drinking tea and relaxing. And it makes me laugh because this is her attempt at a "real smile" when Jason asked her to look happy. (We're keeping it real with the random diaper, apron, and shirt that are on the couch. This is just what our place looks like on a Sunday night: slightly crazy.)
A project I finally finished. We bought this stepstool when Hazel was a baby and I finally painted it this summer. I can't find a before picture, but it was very beat up and pink. Jason helped me sand away some nasty who-knows-what it was (wait, Jason probably does know) stuff that was on the steps about, oh....3 months ago. I got around to painting it a couple of weeks ago. (I'm keeping it real yet again by showing you the random Lego pieces and my shoes that are on the floor.)

Another little project we did was this. Jason saw something similar on Pinterest (there it is again, the best website ever) and found an old shutter at work somewhere. So I painted it "way too green" in Jason's opinion and we hung it up to hold pictures, cards, and whatever else we want to stick up there.
I also repainted our kitchen table, something I've been talking about doing for about 1 1/2 years. It's now white and I love it. But it's covered in stuff like always, so it's not very photogenic right now. I will try to style a very chic photo shoot later this week.

And just so he's not neglected by not being super-involved with this post, here's Klaas yesterday, lying down in the slide. I guess he wanted to watch the clouds.