I'm very behind with pictures and blogging. Honestly, some days I feel like we're holding our heads up slightly above survival mode with five smallish children... most days we're swimming right at it. 😜
So. To catch up. The new old typewriter was their favorite thing for a few days.
Much, much typing.
They even made a newspaper like Kit does in her book.
Cecily loves to eat raw cucumbers, so we planted one plant in the garden this year.... and ended up with an over abundance of cucumbers. I made one batch of sweet pickles (not Great-Grandma's so we'll see if Bob even likes them. ha.) and then pulled the plant out. We don't even eat that many pickles in a year.
I made an apple pie for the Sunday school meeting. :)
And of course the green beans were ready too. I don't understand people who get bored in the summer.
Little brudder has been getting bigger and stronger and likes to see what's going on.
The last weekend in July we headed to the Ozarks for a few days for Wyss vacation. The van was very full, but we managed to pack it all- except we sent the life jackets with Matt.
There were enough of us along that we took up the entire resort. haha. Which was nice. It was a pretty nice place, and clean. Unfortunately it was right across the water from a large and popular bar. Much loud music all weekend long and lots and lots of boats coming and going. At least some of the boats were pretty fancy and cool?
We saw a double rainbow!
When you've rented the whole resort, you don't have to share the pool! Also, I accidentally put a pull-up on Miri instead of a swim diaper and it was hilarious.
We swam in the lake too- Perrin got to float a little bit, and Galen taught Cecily how to do a back flip into the water. 😋
Deep, important conversations at the pool.... actually, sitting around the pool talking to my cousins always brings out how cut from the same cloth we all are. Like, Bob needed a haircut but we didn't have time before we left so I was this close to packing the clippers. Michelle almost packed hers too for the same reason. And Abby almost brought theirs. And Alyssa DID bring hers and several people got haircuts. It cracks me up.
These kids had so much fun together. They were playing "There's a Moose in the House!" and there was much laughing and screeching.
Well hello, Perrin. He tolerated being passed around really well. haha.
Parker and Abby gave Aunt Pearl a pedicure. 😊
Sun-kissed and happy.
Uncle Ron took some little kids out for a very short boat ride.
Nap time at the beach.
They had the best time.
Miri girl insisted on Tractor PJ's as clothes and we had to hop up and down the steps several times.
Supper time is the best time.
It was good to have both Grandma and Pearl there again.
When we finished the Little House books I looked up where in Missouri Laura and Almanzo lived out their days... and it's just under 2 hours from where we stayed at Lake of the Ozarks! So I convinced Bob that it would be fun to detour there on our way home. :) The girls liked it, although Cadence was expecting a log cabin I think. They've built a new museum recently that has lots of Laura's things (Pa's fiddle!!) and is really nice. I really liked the home tour. We stopped there once when I was a kid and I thought it was cool, but there was a lot that I missed (of course). I didn't remember that they turned the house into a museum months after Laura died, so it has been virtually untouched and not lived in by anyone else. Also, I loved the FLW influence in the living room/library. :) Good times, and here we are on Laura's front porch.
I would have liked to have spent more time there since I am a read all of the signs and labels in a museum kind of person, but we got there at noon and hadn't eaten lunch yet, and we wanted to get home before dark, so off we went again and didn't go see the "Rock House" that her daughter Rose Wilder Lane built. The rest of the trip was uneventful and we drove through St. Louis and looked at the arch out the window, so that was fun.
Somebody found his toes!
Emmy decided that she was going to potty train Miri and was super gung-ho about it for a whole day- she even had a box of treats to give her every time she would sit on the toilet. Miri was semi willing to go along with it, but she was still in a pull-up and made no progress even with all of the random junk treats Emmy gave her. So Emmy lost interest and we got nowhere. ha.
Then Em decided to embroider me a towel, so, now I have a new dishtowel. I love her.
We started getting back to school emails... mur... I went to HS with the Middle School principal and that cracks me up/makes me feel old so I pulled out my yearbook. I was a senior when he was a freshman and his sister was a friend of mine. Oh, and his picture is right next to the girls' pediatrician. 😜
The girls have been beeeeegggggggiiiinnnnggg to have a pizza party with some friends for awhile. Not sure why pizza, but whatever, easy for me. :) They also had a guest list a mile long but we had to limit it to two families, mostly because we don't have that many chairs. The peaches were also ready that day, so it was a bit more busy than I would prefer, but the house got clean, the peaches got done, the girls helped get everything ready and we had a great time.
Except for Miri, who was playing with the baby doll that she refused to share with Brielle. (The grown ups were learning Gen Z slang with Emily translating... hehe)
We're getting some of the woods cleared and a lane put in this summer. There was no access from the road it borders because it was part of a larger farm once upon a time and they just drove across the creek. And I don't think the road existed until more recently? Maybe? Anyway. We went to check it out one afternoon.
Troy managing while Luke works.... hehe. It looks so much more open now that you can actually walk!
And putting the cart way before the horse, they were staking/taping out the possible floor plan that I have in my head in the yard. ha.
Oh! And Leanne and Eric brought over this amazing antique sink! I'm so excited about it. Bob is anxiously wondering how much more random old stuff I will be squirreling away to use in a new house. (I will take any and all architectural salvage leads.... 😁)
It was super heavy so we took the sink out of the cabinet to make it a little bit more manageable to move down to the basement. They said it was originally in the old white frame AC church which was built in 1909(ish I think) and there is writing under the counter- it looks like "Lidy", "Lydia", and then "Gau" maybe. I do not have time to research who that/they might be, but it's super cool!
The girls have been begging to swim at the town pool at least once this summer and we finally had a day that it worked. The pool is pretty empty the beginning of August, which I thought was great. They all found friends to swim with in the big pool though. ha.
Miri and Perrin and I hung out in the kiddy pool. :)
We did a little bit of sweetcorn- look how amazing that sink would be for a canning kitchen! Seriously! It's so perfect.
They think shucking corn is fun and I'm not sad. :P
Checking out progress at Firefly woods clearing. 😁
That is one of several large piles of trees. Yikes. If anyone local is in need of firewood- let us know.
Oh Miri-girl.
We met two families who moved nearby from other towns/school districts. One family has 3 girls, one has a girl Emmy's age who is in her class at school, so that is fun!
Digging potatoes with Daddy. We planted two varieties and ended up with an almost full 5 gallon bucket of each. Bob was happy because that's more than we've grown before, I was not sure how we were going to store them.
Ah yes, the dreaded day in which I am the meanest Mom ever and made them pick up boxwood bush clippings. We have three bushes. There is absolutely no comparison to the bush trimming days of my youth when the whole house was surrounded by boxwood, yews, and LAVA ROCK. They get no sympathy from me picking up a few clippings out of mulch.😁 It didn't help that Cecily was off at a birthday pool party- they all got to go to Kids night later, so it wasn't all bad.
It's a sidewalk chalk fairy village.
Kelly's girls invited our girls to a picnic and to play in the Dillon creek one afternoon. They had a great time. 😊
We went to the last lake day of the year, and then back to school we went. *sigh* I took Emmy and Cadence to meet the teacher night at the GS (they are both soooo excited about their teachers and classes so that's fun), and then came home and switched them out for Perrin and Cecily and went to the 5th grade ice cream social. mur. How are we at the middle school already?? They were so excited for the first day. I don't think they're ever gotten ready that fast or been so early. 😂 I'm sure it won't last.
In "Bread and Jam for Francis" Albert eats a cream cheese- cucumber- and tomato sandwich on rye bread. I didn't have rye bread, but we did have cucumbers and tomatoes! It wasn't quite as flavorful as I was hoping, but it was good.
We've been working on potty training again (for real). It was not going well again, but since school started we've had three days in a row with no accidents! There is a glimmer of light at the end of this dark tunnel! haha. Maybe she will get to go to Sunday School yet this year. 😜
Emmy is ever my little domestic goddess and wanted to fix a rip in her shorts. She was adamant that she didn't like when I patch the inside of her pants- she wanted to stitch it up herself.... so I showed her some pictures of sashiko/visible mending online. (Then I iron-on patched from the inside, stitched around it, and let her go to town with colored thread. win win.)
So cute!
We made it through the first three days of school! So we went down to Prairie creek for a little bit. The woods are so overgrown that we haven't even attempted to get to the creek this summer. The original, legal access to our property was this creek crossing in the bottoms. Our new neighbors are super cool and said we can use their side any time to get to the creek- and it's nice and mowed! :P
We are a ragtag bunch in a random assortment of ill fitting water footwear... hehe.
They kept finding "clam shells" and trying to put them in my pockets. Ew, no thanks.
Mr. Perrin was enjoying himself thoroughly and even got his feet wet a few times.
A few rocks were thrown.
Anyway. Good times. Although, after three days of school everyone is a little fragile and not always excited to go exploring with me.
Blessings.
