Splish Splash Splat

Last week, when babysitting for a friend for a day, I decided to challenge the kids to some "water olympics."  To get the older kids more excited about swimming in our small pool, I pulled out my camera and told them I would be looking for creative water-sliding and that the wildest slides would be awarded an imaginary Bronze, Silver, and Gold medal.

Elijah, the oldest kid of the group, ended up winning the Gold for his wave-making.

A friend had given me a few dozen eggs that were very outdated.  She wasn't going to use them and didn't know if they were still good to eat.  After a little Google research I wasn't sure if they would be safe to eat so I decided we could have some fun with them.  We had an egg toss between the younger kids and the older kids.

It was fun to see Ali and her friend Elijah having so much fun together again.  They used to best buddies when they were toddlers and preschoolers.  Now that they are 7 and 8 and are in different school circles, they mostly play with kids of their own gender and don't get to see each other that much.  The egg toss quickly became a game of chase and these two strong-willed ones resorted to pegging each other with slimy egg shells while laughing hysterically.

My Father's World--The Letter Q (Quail)

A little over a month ago we did our second-to-last week of school and the focus was the letter Q.

We enjoyed learning all about birds, but it was difficult to find any books on quail at the library.  Even our animal encyclopedia, which is a favorite resource for us and contains almost every animal, bird, and fish under the sun did not contain a single reference to quail! 

I found a coloring printable and the kids colored, cut, and pasted the pictures for their binder pages.

Our key words were: I do not grumble or complain; I am thankful.  I had Ali read aloud from her Bible the story of the Israelites grumbling about the manna and how the Lord sent quail.  We talked a lot about gratitude/thankfulness this week.

The key words for Q are definitely among my top 5 "MFW key words" that get frequently quoted to the kids!

We walked to a friends' home who has ducks, geese, robins, etc. to talk to her about birds and observe them in their pond.  We listened to different bird calls on this nature website and tried to learn to identify the birds we commonly hear.  We went fourwheeling with my parents as a pre-Mother's-Day excursion (something my mom enjoys doing) and saw beautiful scenery, and heard our state bird, the Western Meadolark, singing.

In other events of the week, our kids performed in the kids' musical, "Sermon on the Mound" which a lady from our church organized and helped them put on.  It was very well done and I was so proud of Ali and Jer!  Justus, on the other hand, wasn't quite old enough to be in it.  Through most of the program he was sitting when he was supposed to stand, standing when he was supposed to sit, exposing his belly button, hugging his neighbor, rocking back and forth, staring off into space, etc.

Ali and her friend Marlee had a speaking part together about the armor of God.

Jeremiah and his friend Creighton had to read a part about the spiritual armor too.

Ali was THRILLED to get to be a Dandelion in the show.  At first, it looked like only the little girls would be able to do it and she was so disappointed.  But then the director was mentioning that she didn't have enough and I told her Ali would love to be one.  She quickly made her the "leader" and so Ali was in charge of helping the littler ones do what they needed to do during the show.  A sweet lady from our church made the THIRTEEN dandelion costumes all by herself!  One little boy, Justus' best friend, insisted on being a dandelion, along with the 12 girls.  No, he didn't wear a tutu, just a green leotard!

This was after the show--a few of the dandelions that remained on the church playground decided to dance around together and I just so happened to have my camera on my arm...ready to capture the sunset glow falling on them!

The night before Mother's Day I gave Ali a lesson in how to make chocolate-dipped strawberries for her Mom.  Selfish?  Maybe.  Brilliant?  Absolutely!  If I get nothing else on future mother's days I will be happy!

Fourwheeling through the canyon was so much fun.  We had a picnic and hiked around. 

Ali took this pic of us on my old snapshot camera that is now Josiah's.

We saw all kinds of neat things, including butterflies, a white snake, and our state flower, the Indian Paintbrush.

This is Wyoming Rush Hour Traffic =)

The Highlight of My Week...

Okay, I admit that often it's the littlest things that make a weary mom smile and find the strength to go on.  When photographing this awesome young man who just graduated from his homeschool studies, a passerby who knew him from the grocery store where he works stopped to chat and asked me if I was his girlfriend. 

I am 12 years older than him, have FOUR children, am a friend of his mother's, and have never in my life been even remotely hip enough to date a guy in a band with a cool guitar.  I'm sure it was this poor fellow's low-light of the week to hear that...but it put a smile on my face and made me think that those "What Not to Wear Mom Makeover" DVDs my mom loaned me must have really paid off!

  

Little Graces

Life is full of those precious little moments that you want to hang onto...those little graces in your day that whisper of God's goodness...

A little sis wanting to be like big sis

Brother and sister dancing together

The three "camping out" together in the playroom in our big tent Daddy set up for the night

Chubby baby girl in a fluffy, cotton-candy-like tutu that makes her look even chubbier!

Favorite books from the library

A watermelon potbelly

Boys and squirming things

Her saying, "Dance!  Dance!"

A robin family high above our yard

Always active little boy

The way she takes care of her, loves her, and models good behavior for her

Him asking his baby sister to dance

A perpetual smile

Blueberries on sale!  Breyer's vanilla...yum!

A full moon with whispy clouds floating in front of it

Asking me to cut her hair--goodbye daily hair battles and tangles!

His imagination

His love for nature and God's little creatures

Marveling at the snake's blue-looking eyes

Her ability to spend hours playing in or with water, completely fascinated by dumping and pouring.

The amazingly vivid colors that one gets when photographing on a cloudy day. 

This is straight-out-of-camera (SOOC), taken at a wedding we attended on a chilly day in late May.

Young ladies sewing in a tent they made from a sheet

So much creativity flowing between them!

Daddy building a new fence to keep little ones in and unwanted ones out

My brother being home on his days off and hanging out with us

Summer is here!

This is what happens when you give a baby one little Hershey's kiss and tell her to pop it in her mouth and not get sticky!  Uncle Grant (whom my kids call Uncle Googoo) was trying to win Little Miss Katri's affections, as she stubbornly refuses to like men other than Daddy.  He gave her this flower and the chocolate and by the time we drove 3.5 blocks home to our house, her hands and face were covered in it.

An update on our summer:

My goal was/is to have a SLOW summer.  That is my theme-word for 2012.  Boy, it can be a challenge to keep things slow!  My hubby joined a church softball team, clients have come out of their winter slumber and booked photo shoots, the kids are excited about attending a VBS this week, Ali is in a free Reader's Theatre program at the library, and the kids enjoy having pool parties on hot days.  We are striving to do a little school each day, spend LOTS of time outdoors, nourish relationships and spend a good deal of time with family, friends, and neighbors.  This is the first summer since 2003 (the year we got married) that I have not been pregnant or nursing/tending an infant!  I feel like a million bucks and I hope to fully enjoy this summer to the glory of God!

You'll probably see more posts than usual here this summer as I've given up using fb for the summer.  I still use my business page on fb, but I found that I was getting overwhelmed from the info overload there and feeling like I needed to step back from that for a while, like I did last summer, to take a bit of a media-break and recharge this summer.  Blogging is very relaxing to me, and is a great creative outlet for me, so you can expect to see many more pics and posts to come!  And I promise to finish my MFW series and post about our last two weeks of school, Q and Y which we did a few weeks ago!