Memories

Here are a few random photos before I get to the meat of my post.  If one could ever be said to be meaty.  Which they aren't, but we'll pretend because we're nice that way.

This is what we did yesterday:



I made Almond Kisses out of one of the Hannah Swensen murder mysteries.  I didn't like them much but Friend Husband and the kiddles did.  Maybe my taste buds are out of whack from my cold/sinus infection.



We attempted to play Yahtzee.  You see what happens when we attempt to play games when the twins are still up.



And we had pigs in a blanket for dinner.  Oh.  My.  Word.  I'm sure that I've gotten my week's allotment of salt in one night.  The twins had a good time helping me make them.



This is where Lucy spent our weekend away...with her sister Ethel.  She did have a good time, according to Friend Priscilla, but I guess she was ready to go when I came to get her.

And here is what I was doing this morning:  putting the new pictures of the children in their frames.  In the process, I took out the old pictures and laid them out so I could admire how gorgeous they were/are.  And here they are so you can do the same.

I've got to run, natch.  Hope y'all have a good weekend!







I've always said that Abby has a demon seed expression on her face every time Mrs. Owens takes her picture.  Mrs. Owens didn't take the last one...can you tell?





And here's all five of them, hanging up in the hallway outside our bedroom.  (Yes, I know there's a blast of light in the middle of Abby's...I'm in a hurry, peoples!)

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday, sorta

Lotsa pics today, as I've been taking them but not putting them up.  Here's the (scanty) progress on Friend Husband's sweater.  NaNo just sucks up all available time.



Yesterday I talked about the 73-year-old woman at my Curves who works the polls every year.  Outrageous hours but she's back working out bright and early at 7 the next morning.  She was in rare form today.  Anyway, tomorrow will be her 1000th workout with Curves.  I've been working out with her since 2004 and I *ahem* do not have close to that number.  Hazel rocks.  Here she is with the owner of our Curves and her 1000 workouts t-shirt.



I took this yesterday.  I love the way Zi's hair poofs up around the earphones.



This comes under the title of, "I knew it was too quiet in the bathroom."



This is daughter # 3 playing outside in the gorgeous fall foliage in ours and our neighbors' yards.



And this picture is for Yasmin (sorry, I can never figure out which blog is actually yours or I'd link it), who wanted to know what Keziah's hair looked like after the brushing out on Sunday.  Soon I will need to braid it because we get tired of combing it out every day when she has her "Mickeys" in.



Have a great day everyone!

Mouse, part deux, and picture updates

Ah yes, the return of the rodent. Sadly, it wasn't the rodent but another of its extended family. Friend Husband and the little people went out to ride bikes last night. When they returned, they ran in and out of the house a few times and neglected to close the door that leads to the driveway. I went to close it and heard, "What's that?!" "Hush, don't tell Mom!" Naturally, I had to go check it out. What I saw were Rachel, the twins, the husband, and Abby lined up along the edge of the driveway, watching something in the side yard. I gathered from the way they were positioned and the furtiveness of them that they'd spotted a mouse.

What they had, in fact, spotted was the fact that our spoiled house cat had found himself a mouse and was "playing with it". We stood out there for quite some time, watching the cat-and-mouse game. It was vaguely disturbing but it's hard to feel terribly sorry for a rodent who would gladly eat you out of house and home and spread disease in its wake. We finally came in so that the twins wouldn't startle the cat in a moment of exuberance and cause him to lose his quarry. When I went out there this afternoon, I found the sad little carcass. I did feel a little badly but, as Friend Cherylyn said yesterday, you feel sorry for it, let it go, and you are repaid with 100 in short order. Thank you, no. That's a gift I'd just as soon do without.

I just have to show y'all these cute pictures I've been taking. I was lying on my bed last night, reading after dinner. David crawled up behind me, talked for a while, then was silent. I looked back to see him sound asleep. His twin sister thought that was a hoot and crawled up with him, chattering happily all the while. I finally told her that if she was going to be on my bed, she had to hush and keep still (that child is the most fidgety I've ever seen!) After a while, she too, was quiet and asleep. I finished my book, stood up, and looked back to see them all cuddled up together. It was so cute, I had to take a photo of it.

Could you die from the cuteness? I'm partial to pictures of children sleeping (and not just because it's more peaceful when they're asleep!) but I just thought they were adorable.

So, it's Halloween. We don't partake in the festivities (unless you count buying leftover candy at half-price the day after a tradition) but we do enjoy the fall festivals and such that the neighboring towns and businesses have. The children (except for Sarah) particularly enjoy Shaw Farms with their pumpkins and sturdy wooden cutouts painted to look like wagons, tractors, a pirate's ship, etc. They usually close down the day after Halloween and the children had only gone once, so I thought I'd take the twins back to see it before it closed. The Reluctant Scholars also asked to accompany us. I gave permission, assuming they could get a subject finished by the time we were ready to go. Here are the pictures from this trip.

Please don't ask me why the sight of my children locked up here just soothes me.

Well, they didn't say anything about sitting on the pumpkins.

David wasn't too sure about the witch. He finally approached it and found it was just a statue, like everything else.

This pumpkin was over 800 pounds!

I guess I was fascinated by the white pumpkins this visit!

Tomorrow being the first day of November, it's time to crank out our NaNo novels. As Sarah mentioned on her blog, I'm a little freaked about the process this year. My brain steadfastly refuses to think clearly if at all about the topic I'm planning to capture in words. I'm afraid the whole thing is going to blow up in my face. I went back and read my NaNo novel from last year and I really liked it! I thought the prose was good, the subject was relatively interesting, and the story well-told. Now I'm really spooked about it!

The topic is semi-autobiographical, only the main character has a lot more problems than I do. A big part of the book is e-group postings, blog posts, and e-mails/letters. I have read a few novels in this format and I really enjoy it. I'm afraid, though, that it will bog down quickly. Anyone want to share some funny or strange things that have happened to you in the context of online friendships? I need the inspiration, badly.

So, here's my pre-writing journal (a birthday gift from Friend Cherylyn) and my trusty old laptop (that I haven't opened for 11 months). I hope all goes well...wish us well (Sarah and me). And now you know that, if I don't show up for a while, it's not the mouse who did it.

Wordless Wednesday

Back to School and other Stuff

This will be brief as we're in the midst of our first day of school. You can tell how thrilled I was to get started.



I assure you that everyone else was every bit as thrilled as I was, but they are way into hamming it up so it's harder to tell.


Sarah, already cranking away on her Spanish.

Rachel, the only scholar who decided to get dressed for the first day of school.


Abby taking advantage of her status as homeschooling student to wear her p.j.'s to school.

I wonder sometimes where they get their hamminess. Surely not from their mother!



Edited to add photos of the twins' activities on this first day of school:



Now you know why I look that way in the first picture.

So, a few of you asked about the deck. I still don't have a picture of the full thing, painted. Don't know why, just haven't done it. I do have pictures of most of us while we were painting and you can see the paint color there. Especially in this one of Friend Husband which nicely shows the juxtaposition between the old and the new.



Here are a few others of the hard workers:





Sarah helped a lot but somehow I didn't get photos of her.

And, as Miss Lori has mentioned already, we got to spend a couple of hours together on Saturday, watching her son's team pull from behind to win their football game. Very exciting! Unfortunately, it was also quite hot. I took the twins and they were freaked out by 1) sweat and 2) the yelling that all the adults around them were doing when something happened on the field. Here's a picture of Lori, getting the sunburn she alluded to on her blog.



At one point, Keziah pointed to her forehead, which was dripping with sweat, and said, "Mom, what's this?" We've been having an amazing number of bug bites lately and I thought she had a new one. I looked, didn't see anything, and realized what she was talking about. "Um, that's sweat, Keziah." "Sweat?!" Like she'd never heard of it before or anything!





Here's Dave, sucking down a generally verboten can of soda. The concession stand ran out of water and PowerAde, so soda it was. I figured Pepsi was the lesser of the two evils (the other being Mountain Dew).

Anyway, it was nice to see Lori and her family again. The last game we went to over at Landmark, it was so cold that Lori was wrapped in multiple layers. Funny how you remember things like that.

I guess that was all I was going to blabber about today. I hope y'all're having an excellent week. Back to work for this homeschooling mama!

I'm baaaaack!

Hey there, hi there, ho there! We survived camp and also had a lovely visit with the Cherylyn_P family beforehand. Even the trip back wasn't as bad as I feared (although I did sleep a lot of the way and Friend Husband totally lost Tulsa, but that's beside the point). So now I'm sorting through pictures. First up, the pictures from Abby & Bethany's birthday party. Then I've got to take the twins outside and pull weeds. Yay. At least most of the plants survived our absence.

Oh, and I forgot one thing...this picture is for Debbie. Debbie, you should tell Jonathan not to mess with older sisters who are cunning and reactive.



Here's the back story: Jonathan (Debbie & Doug's son) wandered into the breakfast line Friday morning looking like death warmed over. I had been taking pictures of him surreptitiously all week, trying to get some good ones to send to Friend Debbie. I told him to hold it right there so I could take a photo of him to send to his mama and he struck this pose. I took the snap, told him I would get it right to his mom and he made some comment about how he'd probably make it there first, because he was due to go over there on Tuesday. I told him I could have it e-mailed on Sunday and he countered that e-mail was slow in Africa. I thought about that, then said, "Ok, I'll put it on my Xanga and she can see it when she logs on." He didn't seem all that thrilled about that but maybe he was just throwing me a bone. Anyway, Debbie, here's a pic of your "little boy" to look at until he comes to see you for real.

Of insects and girls

Apparently, it's cicada time here in my home county. A few years ago, Cincinnati had its cicada invasion but it wasn't so bad out here in the 'burbs. Not only have the news types talked about it, but I've seen literally hundreds of cicada holes all over the yard in the last couple of weeks. Yesterday, the first cicadas were spotted in our yard.

Aren't they cute?

I actually like the cicadas. They are supposed to only come around every 17 years. They're compact. And there's something compelling about those shiny red eyes. They just seem like happy bugs.

Of course, the girls started their whinging about them and I asserted to them through clenched teeth that we were not going to give the twins any ideas about them because, to be quite frank, I didn't want to deal with the histrionics. So I took some photos and we admired them but left them alone. As I told the twins, "We have to leave them alone so that they can go up in the tree and have baby cicadas. Because that's what bugs like to do--have babies."

And then we proceeded to plan and execute the plan for Abby's birthday sleepover. You see, about every five years or so, Abby decides to throw herself a party. When she turned three, she was apparently miffed that she didn't get a party, so she began to ask everyone she knew (mostly people in our congregation) to her 4th birthday party. I remember one of them looking at me and asking, "Didn't she just have a birthday?" I told him yes, but that she was planning ahead for the next one. None of us thought she'd retain any memory of this party but she worked on that sucker for the next year. And yes, we did have a party for her when she turned four. Sadly, she fell asleep as all the guests were arriving and was quite grumpy for the actual party.

When she announced that she wanted a party for her 9th birthday, and that she wanted it to be a sleepover, I groaned inwardly. I may have groaned outwardly, I don't know. Having one little girl spend the night can be very fun. Having a bunch of girls between the ages of 7 and 9 spend the night sounded not-fun to me. And when she started inviting random urchins, ahem, I mean girls from the 'hood, I was not at all pleased. It sounded like we were going to have a free-for-all rodeo of estrogen going off in our living room.

What saved us was that the girl next door, who is all of 2 days older than Abby, was having her slumber party the same evening. That party drew most of the neighborhood girls, bar one. The rest of the party consisted of two little girls who've spent the night with Abby (and vice versa) and one friend from her enrichment classes who had wanted to spend the night. All good. Except that the one neighborhood child seemed to need to either be the center of attention or needed to cause turmoil amongst the general populace. After what I thought was a surprisingly nice evening, a fracas erupted at about 1:30 AM. Now I'm not all that happy about having a brouhaha in my home during the waking hours. I was less than thrilled to get to be the referee at that time of the morning, especially since one of the girls was crying and there was a great deal of finger-pointing in the arena. I told all the other girls to be quiet and go. To. Sleep. NOW. And I talked to the other little girl.

The formerly-crying little girl and I stayed up talking for about an hour, at which point I told her that I was old and needed to sleep and she also needed to sleep. She turned over and started sawing logs. I went back to bed, feeling very old indeed and wasn't able to go to sleep until after 3.

It was not pleasant when everyone started waking up around 7.

Once the girls were up, I pulled a couple of them aside to get the story on what had happened the night before and got a more complete picture of the situation. Friend Husband heroically cooked 3 batches of waffles & pancakes for breakfast and we went out to enjoy the achingly beautiful spring morning. Me and about eleventy million children.

You see, I had our 4 slumber party girls plus 4 of my 5 children, plus a toddler from next door who was over to play with the twins, plus the toddler and kindergartner from the other neighbor who Rachel was babysitting. It was a circus. I'm glad that they all got along well, but I will admit that I was watching for trouble with a gimlet eye. The girls seemed to have made up, for which I was glad.

Friend Gina's Daughter is always so kind to Keziah. They have big times together.

After a much-needed nap and a restorative game of Pack Rat, I went out to attempt to make gardens out of the mucky clay which is the basis of my front yard. Keziah and David were out with me and Keziah found a pile of cicada shells beneath one of our massive oak trees. She took me by the hand and led me to them and we looked at them and talked about the cicadas for a brief moment. As I was turning to go back, I noticed what I thought was a shell starting to move. As I looked closer, I realized that it was a cicada that hadn't shed its shell yet. I was all excited, thinking that I'd get to see one molt, but no, it was just heading inexorably for the tall oak we were standing near. In short order, we located three more. After watching them (and yes, photographing them), Friend Husband and I gave them a boost up onto the trunk and watched them crawling up. It was quite amusing for an amazing amount of time. Maybe we were just too tired to do anything else.

This guy was actually coming out of his shell in the grass but hadn't finished as he was making his way toward the tree. See the 2 sets of eyes?
Cicada races!

Oh, I forgot that I was going to post pictures for Friend Gina of my massive window cleaning. While we were getting the house spiffed up for company, I finally decided that I could no longer tolerate my kitchen window being dirty. This was a big step for me. I had been looking at that window get progressively nastier for the last three years and had done nothing about it. I just didn't have the umph to tackle the job. Since I finally decided I'd had enough, I thought this was a good sign. Unfortunately, three years' accumulation (and resultant petrification) of June and other bugs was rather nasty. To wit:
And a nasty close-up for the perverse in nature:


And, finally, the end result:
Much nicer indeed!

So I'm leaving now to ponder the inexorable mystery of why females are so catty at any age, and why I like the bug-eyed cicadas but don't like the bugs in my window.

Wordless Wednesday

We're on spring break this week, so I'm playing with Friend Husband and the children a lot. Last week's "massive" snowfall is gone but here's another pic.