Busy busy

I feel like I can finally exhale a little bit.  We made it through our two busiest weeks of the summer; swimming lessons, Turkey Fest, and then swimming lessons and VBS. Woot woot.

 Little miss Two doesn't want pants and she likes to fall asleep reading... :P

First I will tell on sister, then I will join her and get even wetter!

It was a contest to see who could hold on the longest, and Miri needed to join in... no pants because she had just gotten soaked.

We signed up for summer reading and Emmy is working on checking off "reading outside" in the shade of her tree.

Spray!  I do it!

Emmy got it in her head that she wants to sew a quilt, "a big quilt that will cover me!"  That seems a little bit ambitious so we're just starting with a nine patch block.  :)  Ignore the mess on my cutting table, I don't clean up after projects like I should and I often have 3 or 4 things going at once....

I decided that Cecily should probably be in on it too and she's enjoying it more than she thought she would. Haha.

Cadence loved her first day of swimming lessons.  Poor kid has been impatiently watching every year.

Miri didn't want to try to splash in the kiddie pool the first day.

My poor overworked children had to help weed the garden.          

Day 2:  We stayed in this one square foot section of the kiddie pool. :P

Life sized candy land at the library- it was really fun and super cute and this is the only picture that I took... it's hard to juggle a toddler, the game cards, and a phone. 

Just chillin in my new sunny glasses from the library...

Day 3: In which I consent to walk along the edge of the pool. 

Emmy was not afraid of the diving board this year!

All week we watched them put up the carnival from the pool deck....  they were so excited.  Thursday night is wristband night. Woot.  haha.  We told them to put on shorts and t-shirts and actual shoes because it's most practical and she came out like this.  At least she was easy to spot in the crowd! 

They're having a great time.  :P

The dragon is their favorite, crazy kids. 

Oh hello, Logan's twin!  It was really hot and Miri was a trooper. She just sat and looked at all of the people and lights...

It's always over too soon for them, not soon enough for me.  hehe.  It's so overstimulating.

Friday and Saturday were super hot so we didn't go back up to the park.  We got sandwiches at the drive thru and worked on spring cleaning.  If you have anything to Orange Glo, Emmy is your girl.  It's her favorite furniture polish. 

Pretty sure Ma Ingalls never served her family frozen pizza.  haha.

Also, I'm sure the neighbors wonder about us.  :D

We went to the Tfest parade on Sunday.  It was hot.

Once again, Miri was a little bit unsure and was content to sit in the stroller.

Bob weighed the candy they collected- over 8 pounds.  Eeesh.

Look at us all squished into our tiny blue rental car for swimming lessons week 2!  The van A/C quit working last fall and we waited until it got hot again to get it fixed.  It took a few days and cost far too much, but I'm a wimp and the back of a minivan with no A/C is pure misery- some things must needs be. 

First hollyhock dolls of the year. 

Flag day and we can't wait for bible school and we are so excited we don't know what to do with ourselves and Daddy has a bunch of meetings and we are too loud inside so we got out the bubbles to pass the time.

Mr. F was puttering and we were... well, I'm not sure what we were doing.  :P 

I got asked to teach Emmy's class... my instinct is always "do I have to?" haha.  It was quite a week.

VBS Day 1: All 10 kids were soooooo excited, bouncing off the walls, it's Bible School!, can't wait for snacks!, CRAFTS!, RED ROVER!!!!  All to be expected, but it was like 10 times more than expected and Heidi and I are/were very inexperienced with insane 1st grade crowd control.  We didn't do enough separating of boys during singing so there wasn't much singing coming from our benches.  They did their craft first; sticking their feet into wet cement stepping stones.  Didn't calm them down at. all. Lots of falling off of chairs and pretending to die and talking during the story.... *sigh*   

Emmy came up with this all by herself to water the trees.  :D  So resourceful, even though the hose can reach all of them...  "It's like the pioneers did it!" (please ignore the patches of dead grass from the swimming pool.)

Oh hey, there's another kid in the pool and now I'm not afraid at all!!  haha.

VBS Day 2:  We got a little smarter and put the girls in the front row and divided the 6 boys between us.  Still not a lot of singing, but less of a train wreck.  I had the lesson and Bob and Emmy built me a DUPLO jail to tell the story of how Paul's nephew warned him about the Jews and the Centurion rescued him... it held their attention a bit, but we still had a LOT of extra time and they were still pretty wound up.  THEN.  Heidi brought "Pirate's Booty" snack mix.  "I don't want to eat Pirate butts!! Gross!  Do we have to eat balls and weiners?"  Um.  Say what!?  Yeah.  It just devolved from there...

 VBS Day 3:  Ok, so I realize that I have a very low tolerance for potty language and bathroom humor- at our house we don't talk about bathroom things unless we're in the bathroom.  Really low tolerance.  But not everyone is me, and also 1st grade boys are 1st grade boys and I try to cut them some slack, but when the night starts with one kid singing "tushy" instead of the words to the songs it kind of puts me on edge.  There was so much falling off of chairs and inattention... I don't mind a little silliness, but randomly shouting "poop!" and completely ignoring the Bible story... I got a little bit mad.  When they, once again, were fighting about this person and that person cutting in line, the 'Mean Mom' voice came out... it worked for half a second and a little voice pipes up, "I thought you said you didn't have a teacher voice!"  haha. And they still ran and weren't quiet in the hallway. *sigh*  Why did I agree to this again??

Thursday was our last day of swimming lessons!  Woot woot!  Sara G's girls had swimming lessons the same time we did, and we invited them for lunch and to play for a bit afterwards.  Cecily and Emmy don't remember the time we were at their house, and they were super excited to have friends over.  

VBS Day 4:  My turn again. Slightly better. Slightly more controlled chaos.  Less random potty talk. We brought the Duplo jail again so that after the demon is cast out of the slave girl who is annoying Paul and Silas, they can get put in prison and there was an earthquake that broke the jail.  (Random aside: I can not wait for the new VBS materials... we just read a story about demon possession and the suggested take home craft is.... a yarn doll.  That looks like a voodoo doll.  I'm just picturing the sweet innocence of the person who decided to put that in the book.  :P  Also, what 1st grade boy wants to make a yarn doll?)          

Anyway, we were lining up to go outside quietly and respectfully (except neither of those things) and two boys conked heads in an effort to be first in line.  There were tears, and then when we got outside one of them called the other a poopy head and there was a shouting match about who was lying about that and they had to be separated before it got physical.  On to Red Rover... one of the boys was squeezing Emmy's hand too tight when there was no one running towards their line and she was trying to get away from him... for some reason he thought it would be a great idea to let go and then jerk hard on her arm with both hands.  *ugh*  She was already slightly fragile after such a busy week and she totally lost it- I couldn't tell for a bit if she was just mad, if he had managed to dislocate her arm (she was holding it weird), or what.  She was fine, just upset.  And I had no idea what to do.... he's not my kid, I'm just the vbs teacher and am I overreacting because he hurt my Emmy?  

Friday we slept in a little bit (we all needed it) and then went to Ruth's house to eat our lunch with some friends, see the snake, and then the weather sort of decided to cooperate so we went down to the lake.  Cecily was brave enough to climb up the platform to use the rope swing, Emmy swung out from the ground.

Cadence happily paddled around in the water, Miriel was mostly content in the sand- she wasn't a big fan of the life jacket though.  She let me know when it was nap time though, "Go Home!"  hehe.  They had a great time.

Finally, our final night of VBS!!  I was excited, the girls were all sad... haha.  Heidi had them act out the Prodigal Son, and it actually went pretty well.  It might have been the best behavior we had in the classroom all week. (I mean, by comparison.) It was rainy-ish outside though so we all ate our ice cream bars in the lunchroom.... so of course there was spinning of stools and ice cream cones almost falling to the carpet and getting smashed into other teachers shirts.  But we made it!  And I took the girls to Pinky's because I needed Pinky's.  Showing off their VBS loot...

A couple of the other teachers came up to us later, one of them said they would have needed a cattle prod to teach our class.... why didn't I think of that?!  haha.  And another (who, unlike Heidi and I, actually has boys and knows what she's doing) said she's not sure how she would have handled the crazy energy.  So that made me feel a little bit better about my ineptitude.  haha.  If any of you who read this ever have the opportunity to vote for Sunday school teachers.... please please please DON'T put me in.  :P  I would be terrible. And not enjoy it.

In the middle of the night a storm blew through so we didn't get much sleep.  We heard they clocked 77 mph winds here; we took the girls to the basement for a while because hail and wind and possible tree limbs makes us nervous.  They were half asleep and kept trying to go back upstairs. 

Saturday morning we all slept in and Emmy and I made "Almonzo's Buckwheat Pancakes."  The recipe was in a Little House book we got from the library and she'd been beggggggging to try it.  So I bought some buckwheat flour and we whipped up some egg whites by hand.... she didn't even like them.  Even with chocolate chips in them.  :P  Figures. 

We really didn't have much storm damage, thankfully.  We picked up sticks in the yard, but no big limbs.  The ice last winter must have gotten most of the weak stuff already.  The garden looked a bit beaten down, but is already starting to recover.  And our empty swimming pool didn't even blow away! 

Today was Father's day and we didn't do anything.  Ha.  Actually, Bob thinks he pulled a muscle in his back and it hurts him to move so he rested all day.  I added 2 rabbits to the tally... and found a way to play the old Oregon Trail game online and taught the girls.  :)  Cadence cried every time one of us 'died' (Emmy has dysentery- Emmy has died; tears)  hehe.    

I'm looking forward to more lazy days and a not so scheduled week.

Blessings.

The Merry Month of May

 In general, I like the month of May.  There are flowers, and it's warm, and the bugs aren't horrible...

For some reason they needed to wear bike helmets.  And fill buckets with water.

And slide down our cellar door.  (...and we'll be jolly friends, forever more....)

Emmy's class got to have an outdoor music program.

Oh look, there she is in her bright yellow dress (because they sang yellow submarine).  The weather was great and it was short enough that no one got bored.

Bob was working on the mower so Miri brought hers over too.  :P 

My great-aunt Carolyn is a Titanic fan too!  She and Susan happened to be in town to babysit at Nancy's and they invited us to come join the party and share Titanic stuff.

Arlo warmed up to a bunch of girls invading his Grandma's house.... it helped that Susan comes up with all kinds of good games. 

Also, I kind of love it that I have a stack of books borrowed from Aunt Carolyn now- my Grandma Schlipf almost always had a stack of books that Aunt Carolyn had brought over for her to read.  :) 

Miriel has just discovered the library and she is a big fan!

The girls have been in tumbling classes since February- the last class they took pictures and it was parent watch week so we could see all of their skills.  Cadence and Emmy are in the same class; Cadence is on the trampoline and Emmy is on the bar.  Cadence is such a scrappy little nichtsnutz.  She can't really do a cartwheel, but she would just bop right up to the bar, grab it and pop her toes up to her hands and be off again, ponytail bouncing and little impish grin on her face...

This is a blurry picture of Cecily flipping over the bar.  :P 

They wanted the girls to all get matching leotards and bows for pictures... yeah... I'm not really interested in buying pictures for gymnastics and we don't need 3 leotards that they will instantly grow out of, so I sent them in all black and made quick bows from ribbon I got at Hobby lobby.  Show me the pose you did for the pictures we'll never see! Hehe: 

I've been sewing.  I bought several yards of cute knits and have been making things for the girls.  And for their AG dolls out of the scraps.  I don't have a knits pattern for dolls though, so they aren't my best work- don't look too closely.  :P 

Jayla invited Cadence's Sunday school class to a park to play and for lunch.  Little sister was quite happy to get to come along.  I have very few pictures of Cadence because she was a blur.

We will have to recreate this in a few years... 

We went straight from the park to school for Emmy's field day!  Woot woot!  Haha. 

Thank goodness for snacks.  I forgot sun screen for all of us, thankfully I'm the only one who got a bit burnt.

She refused to tell us exactly how/what she hit her head on (probably doing something she knows she's not supposed to do) but it made a pretty nasty, impressively sized goose egg.  This girl is tough as nails though, so the joy of getting an ice pack pretty much made it feel better.

Aaaannnd we were back at school the next afternoon for Cecily's field day. She was in a relay and her team came in second.  So fun, and so funny.  Grade school P.E. teachers are saints.

The three new trees that we ordered were delivered so Bob and the girls planted them. 

Josefina came home from the doll hospital!  Hair fixed, clean legs, hospital gown with socks and id bracelet; there was great rejoicing!

Fairy garden planting was full of conflict.  I had to referee a lot and there were several laps around the house taken.  But they finished it and it looks adorable.  Also Miri moved any unattended plants all over the porch- "help you." 

They very industriously cleaned the playhouse.  It always involves lots of water and paper towels and looks about the same when they are done as when they start.  :D 

 Tate and Tamra got married on the 23rd and I took zero pictures the entire weekend.  We went over to Ron and Kary's on Saturday night to hang out with the out-of-towners.  And then Sunday was the wedding in Eureka.  Sometimes I wonder if they are really my children- I took the girls down to Sunday school and they just... went.  No looking back, no hesitation, who are you and where did you come from??  And then they told me that they made new friends!  They can't possibly be mine. 😜 They were even relatively good during the wedding, and survived the long reception line with minimal complaining.  It helped to have Gideon and Aurelia and Jack to be crazy with.  I'm generally feeling old- Tate was only 8 when we got married... and he's only 10 years older than Cecily... cue all the feels.  hehe.

WE MADE IT TO THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!  And only one healthy quarantine (Cecily's whole classroom was quarantined, which makes me wonder- where they all actually exposed?).  Emmy: It's the last day of school!  And I didn't get quarantined!! 

Drinking pop is serious business.

Take a picture of me and Rebecca in our matching dresses! 

No school and warm enough weather means it's time for the pool!

And celebratory bottles of pop.  Em is living her best summer time life; Cadence- "I'm living the dream, Mom."  haha ok?!

Take a picture of me and Maryellen matching!

Emmy came with me while I was running errands and we just so happened to see this Nat Geo magazine at the checkout.... it was all about Titanic sooooo.  I'm an enabler.

Spur of the moment on Saturday afternoon we decided to see if Grandma Beutel could come over for pizza.  The girls were pretty excited and had to show her just about everything. 

And pick her flowers.  We looove to pick flowers.  :D 

It didn't sound like there was going to be much going on in town for Memorial Day so I took the girls up to Washington.  They have a parade (that we were almost too late for) so that was exciting.  It was also exciting to see Amy and her kids riding in her Grandpa's classic car!  Also, they got a fire call in the middle of the parade and the fire trucks turned around right in front of us and went rushing off- we could see them suiting up in the back while they drove.  

They were not very excited about the "boring talking" at the cemetery, and it did get a little bit long (not that I'd admit that to them hehe).  They were rummaging in my purse for snacks and random things like my tape measure and key chain but overall were pretty quiet and non distracting.

Oh hey, there's Miri's head from her constant perch on my lap.  It never fails, just when I'm getting frustrated that they just aren't behaving and I'm telling myself that the important thing is that I brought them and people would rather see noisy kids at a Memorial Day service than not have them there at all,  an older lady came up and complemented me on my four adorable girls and "they were so good and quiet for so long."  Haha  Good thing you couldn't hear me whispering to them to sit down and be quieter....

But we made it and then we got McDonald's and went to the park.

This is a pretty fun park.

Next stop was to see Grandma-Lydiann-at-the-condos and Grandpa Carl before heading home for naps.

They could not be quiet today while Bob was in a meeting so they got shooed outside.  So sweet- they were actually getting along and having fun together. 

Blessings.