Her Collections.

All my kids collect things... random things most of the time... but Mars, she collects the most. She collects acorns, mulch chip piles, leaves, branches/twigs, pine needles, pinecones... but her absolute favorite, is rocks.

We have lots and lots of random rocks... lying around the house. And if you move one, she knows you did. While we were on our roadtrip to Colorado , we tried to limit how many rocks came home with us. We narrowed down her collection to 5... a handful. One of the rocks, she even picked up while we were in New Mexico at Capulin Volcano.  I've been trying to think of clever ways in which she can keep these rocks as a sort of a souvenir, without it becoming "too much"... and decided that she needed to paint these rocks, write on them where they're from (and what year) and house them in a vessel for safe keeping. Who knows how many of these vases we'll have by the time she's 10... I can only imagine.