Big kids vs. little kids

Often all five kids do things together like they're the best of friends. But sometimes...sometimes the older girls want to act like older girls. Which makes sense. Because they're...you know...getting older. 

So sometimes it's just the three younger kids together doing kid stuff while the teenager-y people are doing do their teenager-y stuff. For example, here are the three little ones riding their bikes around the pond (while Rachel and Miriam, who were actually there with us, walked with me (not that I was sad to have the company)):

And here are the little three enjoying some reading time together in the reading loft while their older sisters were still working on their math lessons:

Today the older girls stayed home to make chocolate cupcakes so they could try out some new decorating tubes that appeared at our house around Easter (in Rachel's case) and practicing the organ (in Miriam's case) while I took the younger three to the park where they climbed a great big cherry tree...

...and threw handfuls of blossoms to make watch them rain down...

Cherry blossoms

You also may have noticed that they're all wearing hats. Benjamin started it by appearing downstairs in a hat. Then suddenly Alexander needed a hat as well, so Benjamin went up to his room and brought down a second hat for Alexander to borrow. Alexander was over the moon!

And then we had to wait for Zoë to go find one of Grandma's old hats so that she could also wear one.

The kids had fun picnicking on the playground, hiking around in the trees, and playing "king of the rock," but I'm not sure they had as much fun as they do when their big sisters come (and it was certainly more work for me, with all the swing-pushing and slide-catching and tree-rescuing that I had to do on my own (Rachel and Miriam usually are happy to split those duties with me)).

Dogwood blossoms

But it's fun to go out with just the "little" kids (though I'm sure Alexander would insist that they are "medium" kids):

Azalea blossoms 

In other news, Rachel's chocolate cupcakes were apparently delicious. We had them after a little family game night we held this evening (with UNO for everyone and Fluxx for the bigger people (including Benjamin)). I, of course, did not have one, but Alexander kindly sucked all the icing off a little star sprinkle and offered it to me (which I, to his surprise, gently declined). 

Andrew tried to compliment Rachel on her delicious cupcakes, but started saying muffins instead, and then knew that wasn't right, so his brain tried to fix what he was saying and he ended up telling her that they were "delicious muuuuushrooms." 

I wasn't in the room when he said this, but I heard him say this and quickly walked back in while everyone was laughing at him to make a quip about how he was a pretty "fun guy."

Anyway, all this is to say that it's fun to have little kids, but it's also fun to have big kids, and though I miss my big kids being little kids...they're also pretty cool big kids, so it works out alright.