My Girl Is FIVE!

And today we celebrated with a little party.  She got to invite friends from her PreK class and has been talking non-stop about it for weeks now.  Finally, the big day came for her.  My favorite five-year old girl.

To help decorate for her Tangled party I drew Rapunzel's tower on our sliding glass door.  It was not easy to photograph.

After the guest’s arrived and played for a while it was time to open presents.  Princesses and pets galore.

 

Elias is actually pushing the ride-on train with another child on it.  He’s getting SO big!

 

Then time for cake!

After the party guests left Rob put Zion’s training wheels on the bike that a friend passed down to her.

Then Zion, Gideon and Gabe went out for a ride.  All three can scoot around on wheels now that Zion has some of her own.  Yay!

What a great day and glorious weather, thanks God!

Fall Days

We had a great Fall day here today.  It wasn’t sunny but it was great.  I had Rob buy me a saw the other day and today I got to go out and hack off the bottom branches of the tree outside our backdoor.  This made me SO happy.  Happy because now I can walk more than three steps out our backdoor and not have to hunch over now.  Yay!

Rob and I with the help of the kids got the latches replaced on the bunny cage and the cage all cleaned out and refreshed, dog “flops” picked up, the dead garden plants pulled up, the branches piled up, the bird feeder refilled and the leaves raked and tossed out.  And that was all after lunch and before dinner.  Then Rob and I teamed up in the kitchen and made ham, corn on the cob, stuffed Acorn squash and dinner rolls.  MmMm.  What a great day!

Around the House

Had a great day puttering around the house yesterday.  I’m still amazed at everything I got done.  In addition to general cleaning and normal kid stuff (you know, feeding, changing, bus stop…) I decorated for Fall (a little late to cross that off the to-do list but at least I got it done before Christmas) and organized a couple areas in the house.

First, the top of my cookbook shelf (that would be a four-shelf bookshelf actually, I have a small cookbook addiction – not just small cookbooks either, I collect big ones too, and ones in between – ha ha ha) was a true hazard to anything that might need to be put there.  I wish I’d taken a before picture, but here it is after:

Let’s just say this is a dramatic improvement.  It’s so much nicer to look at this.  The black bowl holds some of the veggies we get from our CSA, this time it’s potatoes, onion and a couple of kinds of squash.  The peppermill and two spice containers were my grandmothers and still hold ginger and baking powder (which I don’t plan to use), the old egg beater and iron came from antique stores a town over, the cotton branch was a find of Rob’s on his last business trip.  I love that he brought it back for me, the kids were fascinated with pulling cotton off and feeling the seeds inside.  We would not find something like this around here, that’s for sure.

I pulled out the Fall decorations box and got the house all dolled up with oranges and browns (my favorites) and used the pumpkins and gourds we got from the CSA to decorate the front stoop.  Now doesn’t that look warm and welcoming!  The CSA sells corn stalks and I was hoping to nab some but I couldn’t fit them in the van with the kids.  Kids?  Corn stalks?  Kids?  Corn stalks?  *sigh*  I guess I have to choose the kids.

Last night I had my first knit night for a while.  When the ladies left one of them pointed out my newly decorated front stoop had welcomed a visitor.

This little guy was sitting on my door handle.  Isn’t he cute?! 

Getting’ Crafty

LA Looks Hair Gel, clear – $2.97

Generic one-gallon freezer bags – .97

Food coloring – in the cupboard

Doing a craft that cost less than $4 and took less than 10 minutes but absolutely thrilled Zion – priceless

Today Zion and I made sensory bags to aid in writing skills and such.  Not like she really needs it, she actually has pretty good skills there, but I saw the craft here and knew I wanted to try it.  And I kind of hope that Gideon will like to play with the bags too and it definitely couldn’t hurt him.

First I plooped a bunch of the hair gel in a bowl and let Zion choose what color to make.  She wanted orange (yay, we can also talk about how colors mix to make other colors) and teal.  Well, she didn’t actually say she wanted to make “teal” but that she wanted to mix blue and green and according to the food coloring box that makes teal.

I fell enamored with the cool pattern the food coloring made as it ran down the hair gel mountain in the bowl.  Oo, pretty.

Then Zion added the green drops.  Two or three drops quickly turned into six or seven by accident so the color ended up more green than teal. What can you do?

She really was trying to be careful.

Then she got to stir.  Oh, how she loves to stir!

In the end we made two sensory bags that the kids can practice writing with their fingers on.  In the post I found the creator inserted laminated photos and pictures.  I figured since both sides of the bags were clear I could just lay the bag over pictures for the kids.  If that doesn’t work I may put some in the next bags we make.  I still have hair gel left (and Lord knows I’m not going to use it on my hair)!

Playing

I got to play with Gideon while Zion was at school today and Elias napped.  I love our one on one time.  Today it was a Wii game.  Something he’s never been interested in before but Rob bought him a Sesame Street game, Cookie’s Counting Carnival (don’t know why it isn’t the Counts Counting Carnival, that would make more sense).  Gideon loved it.  The game came with a Cookie Monster cover for the Wii remote, which Gideon had to turn and scoop and move to play the carnival games.  He also had to jump which he really enjoyed. 

In the spirit of giving a complete review I should say that I was a bit annoyed that the game kept repeating the instructions every time the question wasn’t answered right away.  This is generally a good thing but it happens too frequently and (a big AND) the child can’t play the game while the character is speaking.  So if by then they have figured out what they need to do and want to answer most of the time the game won’t accept it until after the talking is done.  This isn’t something Gideon would understand so he would get a little lost as to what he needed to do.  And on one game the circle that indicates which answer you are selecting is too close in color to the background and is VERY hard to see.

Otherwise, so far as we’ve played it, the games were fun and age appropriate.  Gideon had to count and recognize numbers (which was a bit beyond him but when Zion played after school she had a great time with it) and complete patterns and recognize shapes.  At the end of each game the child wins a golden cookie.  We haven’t played the entire game yet but so far I haven’t seen what good the cookies are.  We’ve played the Carnival section but not the Games section so maybe they are used there. 

Today had some rough patches.  Rob is out of town, Elias doesn’t want to nap, Zion is hyper emotional, Gabe is testing some limits, Rosie has decided she isn’t housebroken, spills, falls, tears, yadda, yadda, yadda…  So I’m finally taking a breather after the kids have gone down for nap and get to play with the photos I took when I was playing with my camera this morning.  There a few that made me smile.  I think one is worthy of the store, we’ll see if I still think so after sitting on it for a few days.  If you’d like to see them (and I think you should) you’ll have to pop over to my Finding Beauty blog. 

Mud

Warning: This post is picture heavy.  I couldn’t help myself.  I will tell you, though, that I took more than 300 photos today so just think of all the culling I did just to get it down to this many.  You’re welcome!

Saturday we decided to take the kids to a local park.  OK, maybe not entirely local but when you live in the borderline tullies it’s surprising what you consider local.  This park is so very cool, it’s up a mountain a bit and has three play sets (which the kids love) and hiking trails (which we’ve yet to explore – baby and all, ya know?) and a wading pool (it’s never been warm enough when we’ve been) and it’s beautiful.  *sigh* Oh the trees are starting to turn here and are they beautiful!

The kids only care about the play equipment.  Elias went right to work crawling back and forth on the bridge between the steps and the slide.

This would be forth:

This would be back:

Meanwhile the rest of the loonies jumped on the wobbly bridge.

Gabe got busy with a stick writing many things in the sand most of which was dedicated to the new friend he made on the playground.  He fell madly in love with said friend.

Gabe’s new friend:

He was quite sad when I made him find a nice leafy tree on which to deposit his friend.  If I hadn’t had two previously discovered caterpillars already in our butterfly habitat at home I might have conceded.  Alas, there was no room at the inn.

Elias gave himself the charge of filling the slide with sand.

Oh those baby blues!

Zion busied herself with this and that.  Here she said she was trying to water the branch so it would come back to life.  Oh children, why do you make me have to explain such difficult things? 

I had the foresight, for once, to have the kids bring a ball.  Gideon got to play a bit of soccer.  After he had been puddle jumping, clearly.

Zion and Gideon spent a moment in silence for the closed wading pool.  Dear poor, sad, wading pool, my children would have happily splashed in you regardless of the temperature.  Perhaps next summer when the sign is removed (and so are the dead leaves and other yuck). 

Before leaving we walk to the lookout.  I shot this picture and then spent the next while taking macro shots of flowers just outside the view point.  One of these days we’ll actually go down the path to see where it goes.

I love the windy twisty road that lies on the other side of the lookout.  Nice curves.

Gideon looks hopefully for any puddles he may have missed while we meander back to the van.

Then we’re all hungry so we hit up this new lunch spot nearby.  It’s a smoothie joint that serves paninis and wraps.  The wasabi chicken wrap did wonders on my sinuses.  WhooWee!  We got Gabe, Zion and Gideon smoothies.  I made the mistake of letting Elias try Gideon’s dairy-free strawberry smoothie.  Oops.  He wanted to drink the whole thing.

This is what happens when you take away the nums.

Am I a meaner mommy for making him cry or for taking his picture while he cried?  Oh well, nothing to be done about it now.  Poor 4th baby.  No sympathy. 

And then we go home for nap.  Mine!

Excited! Excited!

If you’ve seen Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs you can say that in your best Steve the monkey voice, that’s how we always do it in my house. ha ha ha

I haven’t been posting that much here lately despite a lot of really good photo days and fun with the kids but I think it’s for a good reason.  I waffled on what I would write here or how much I would reveal because making a full announcement would tie my personal and business lives (i.e. my “real” identity) together maybe a bit too much.  But who am I kidding?  I am me, after all, and that means oversharing.

So without further ado, I am announcing that I’ve made it official and gone into the photography business.  Not how you are probably thinking, I don’t want to get hired to photograph your family (who I’m sure is very lovely), that doesn’t appeal to me AT.  ALL.  But what does appeal is taking photographs of the beautiful world God has given us and making those photos available to anyone who wants one.  (For a price of course or it wouldn’t be a very good business.)

I have an online gallery where some of my photos are available to purchase and I would love for you to stop in and take a look.  Go here:

Finding Beauty

So, what did you think?  I am offering a discount to celebrate, if you make a purchase in the month of October you can use the coupon code GrandOpen to receive a 10% discount. 

You may notice that I will create a custom photo-scripture pairing on request.  I also intend to make the photos available as cards and possibly other products but am still deciding whether I will make those products available somewhere like Etsy or on the zenfolio site.  So keep checking in for future updates!  In the meantime, if you are interested in a card set with a photo(s) I have on the site feel free to contact me and I’ll get you a quote and put something together for you.

And it’s Fall.  Isn’t that just awesome in itself.  Yay!

Lastly, you may notice, if you are a regular reader, that my photo challenge posts have disappeared.  I will be posting those to my new photography blog, Finding Beauty Photography (still in the design process), and rededicating this one to my family.  No guarantees that I’ll be posting a ton in the near future but please know that it’s only because I’ve got this exciting new endeavor going on and I’ll be back soon!  Blessings!

Steps and Sincerity

My girl.  She’s so sweet.  Today she told me that she wouldn’t be happy if I died.  I touched her face and told her I’d do my best not to for a very long time.  She looked up with a serious face and said “Well, you’d better stay away from dinosaurs then.”

“And lions.”

Thanks for the advice, baby girl, I don’t know if I would have thought of that myself.

~~~~~

And Elias is taking more steps daily.  He’s such a funny boy.  I’d predicted that he’d be my earliest walker as he was showing signs that that would be the case since he was about 6 months old are so.  I was wrong.  Here is at 15 months and I still don’t consider him a walker.  But he’s a wicked fast crawler.  Shoo boy!  When I stand him up that boy gets that mischievous grin of his on and falls to his knees and takes off like a shot.  Who needs to totter along when you can rocket even if it is low to the ground?

Still, I catch him practicing when no one is looking.  Lately he’s learned that he can walk with Zion’s baby doll stroller.  He wouldn’t do it if I asked him to but as he’s discovered it himself and he doesn’t notice me watching I’ve been catching him at it more and more.  And I couldn’t be happier that he’s getting so close.  Not because I’m anxious about whether or not he’s walking but my back needs a break!  That kid is getting HEAVY!