Saturday

I didn’t accomplish as much as I had intended/hoped to today, but that is due almost entirely to my laziness.  :)  It felt good to sleep late and laze around a bit.  I got some laundry done, but the clouds/rain hampered my getting it all done.  And that’s perfectly okay with me.  It will be plenty sunny and hot all too soon.  I almost got the girls’ drawers organized how I want them.  And then I started feeling kind of puny this afternoon, so I embraced that.  I’ve been sitting on the couch a lot.  Eventually I will have to finish washing the diapers, pick up the floor, and clean the kitchen.  But I’m not going in there until it doesn’t smell so much like food.  Blech.

James discovered Daddy’s giant boots today and actually walked in them from the laundry room into the living room.  Then he had a little trouble.

And he got frustrated.

So I went and got some hand-me-down boots (wahoo!!!) from the closet that are still a few sizes too big for him to “dress up” in.  They’re much more manageable! 

And so stinkin’ cute!

We love boots around here!  And we love boot weather – come on winter!  :)

As you can see, I still have a computer around here.  Shhhhh… don’t tell my mother!  Only kidding, she went on a trip and decided to leave it with me.  Her nights in the hotel on this trip were pretty short and she knew I’d get much more use out of it than she would.  Isn’t she sweet?!

Ice Cream and VBS and Dressing Up

My favorite ice cream from the store is Ben and Jerry’s “Everything but the…”  It’s heavenly, and I’ve been craving it for a while.  I gave in last night even though it was not on sale.  Mmmmmmm…

This morning, knowing full-well what would happen, I let James feed himself oatmeal.

It made him so happy.  :)  And it really wasn’t the worst mess I’ve ever seen.

Josh dropped Ray off and took our picture for green day today.  {Ocean insight: “Change the World”}

It’s amazing how many shades of green there are.

I saw Miss Natalie on the playground today and had to stop and snap a few pictures.

She was having so much fun swinging!

Another pic of Joanna and her bud Hannah that Hannah’s mom posted on FB.  So sweet!

Hannah is taller than Joanna, but I think the perspective of the picture exaggerates it a bit.  :) 

Mr. James when I picked him up today.  :)

We didn’t make it home until 1:00 today, and we discovered the power was out.  :(  Fortunately it only lasted a few more minutes.  I was already thinking of what my game-plan would be for a no A/C afternoon.  Ick!

The 4th and 5th graders did a puppet show today, and Joanna was inspired to have one of her own at home.  Love her!

We rotated a few dress-up things this afternoon, and I found these Superman PJs I had forgotten about!

I wanted to write something about Wednesday that I forgot to put in yesterday’s post.  When I pulled into the garage after VBS at 12:30 or so, I discovered James was fast asleep!  It did not even occur to me that that was a possibility or I would have worked at keeping him awake!  I just knew that was going to be it for naps for the day, and I was sad.  But I carefully pulled him out of his car seat and he actually transferred to my shoulder asleep!!!  This is very uncharacteristic behavior for my children, so I took advantage.  I looooooooooove snuggle naps.  I had just talked to my mom so I knew she was coming over on her way home from the store to bring me some onions.  So I pulled sandwich stuff out of the fridge one-handed before settling into the rocking chair to snuggle my sleeping James.  Thankfully the girls played very sweetly until my mom got there and made them sandwiches.  Yay for perfect timing!  He ended up sleeping about an hour total which isn’t a fantastic nap, but it sure was better than eight minutes in the car!

I actually laid down for a nap today, and I haven’t done that in forever.  I was on the couch and the girls were being noisy in their room, so I didn’t get much sleep, but I did actually manage to fall asleep for a few minutes.  It really helped my afternoon.  Thank goodness!  My house has been (still is) a wreck for going on two weeks.  I’m just so tired in the afternoons!  But I managed to put every single toy away in it’s proper room today, and I feel so much better!  Tomorrow I will tackle laundry and vacuuming, and I will be well on my way to feeling normal.  I hate a messy house.  Sadly I also hate cleaning it.  :)  Maybe the cleaning fairy will come while I’m sleeping and take care of the kitchen and bathroom.

A girl can dream.

VBS, Days 1-4, in a very large nutshell

In a perfect world, I would have done a post everyday after VBS with all the cuteness of the day like last year.  But this is not a perfect world (ha!), and my computer has DIED.

I’m very sad.  I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.

But today my mother offered me hers for 24 hours, so I’m blogging!!  I also finally got around to going through all the pictures I took last week at our Musikgarten “photo shoot.”  I’m not going to install and take the time to play with Photoshop Elements on my mom’s computer.  I really don’t have the time and I’m exhausted!  So I just used Picasa to do some cropping and maybe a teeny bit of color correcting.  I’ll share my favorites here at some point.

For now, though, I want to write about our fun week at Vacation Bible School!

Monday was yellow day, and our “ocean insight” was Depend on God.

James would not stand by the girls.  BUT, he would run around and around them, so it kind of looks like he’s standing next to Natalie.

Then I looked around for something to set my camera on for a timer shot, and decided on the giant trash bin – sturdy and just the right height.  Smelly though.

James gets such a kick out of me sprinting across the driveway with him that he’s always smiling in these shots.  :)

I learned that I own exactly one yellow shirt, and it’s from my first year of teaching.  Awww…

I helped in the 1st grade again this year (love that age!), but I got to do lots of spying on Joanna.  She was in the main part of VBS this year (as opposed to the preschool or nursery), and we did all the same activities, just at different times.

Tuesday was red day – “Dare to Care.”  The trashcan was in the street that morning, so we were too.  :)

We must have been running early that day because I took a lot of pictures of the kiddos.  They’re so cute!

James and Natalie have the same face on in this picture:

I think Natalie looks so pretty here.

Wednesday was blue day – “Claim the Name.”

The theme this week was something along the lines of diving into God’s word (Operation Overboard!) and the stories each day had something to do with water.

Hence the boat:

Apparently when I registered online, I ordered a shirt for myself but not Joanna.  I must have been sleepy or something because that was backwards.  :)  I’ve gotten Joanna a shirt every year for VBS I think.  So on Wednesday morning we checked to see if they had extra bitty ones, and they did.  It made her happy.  :)

I’m sure next year I’ll have to get one for Natalie too.  Right now she’s just happy that she gets to be the first one to sleep in it after it’s washed.  That’s what we use our VBS shirts for.  :)

Joanna with one of her buds this week, Hannah.  She was in Joanna’s preschool class two years ago but moved away I think.  They came back for a visit or something (clearly I’m set on the details here), and Joanna has really enjoyed playing with her this week!

Hannah has definitely helped with the Anna withdrawal since she couldn’t come to VBS.

I spied on Joanna in games on Wednesday, and she was playing intently with the parachute.

In fact, I stood right in front of her for several minutes and said her name a few times before she noticed me.

I overheard Natalie’s teacher {LOVE the preschool teachers this year, btw} saying they were going to go over to drama with the Pre-K’s so I got to spy on both my girls while my kiddos were down the hall in science.

How cute is she?!!

Joanna’s head is at the bottom right of this next one.  :)

Today was purple day – “Follow Jesus”

Oh, it was so very very hard to get out of bed this morning.  The children, even though they’re exhausted, have been waking up a bit earlier each day this week.  Yuck.

This morning James tried to wake up at about 6:30, but due to my extreme inability to get out of bed, he eventually fell back asleep, and I had to wake him up at 8.

That’s why he has on his jammies in our purple picture.  He doesn’t have any purple clothes though, so it works.

I wandered around my kitchen while James was still sleeping, trying to come up with a good breakfast to send for him to eat at VBS without it being too much trouble.  I settled on a PJ&J and strawberries, since he LOVES himself a sandwich and can eat it pretty neatly.  Sadly, it was not until I went to drop him off that I realized/remembered that he can’t have peanut butter in the nursery.  So he got to come with me to the 1st grade room while he devoured an entire sandwich and a couple of strawberries.  It was pretty cute to hear several 7 year olds tell me James looks just like me.  :)

And I took him into the gym for a bit for music before taking him back to the nursery.

They brought the preschoolers in today!  Natalie is soooo cute with her moves!

I was planning on being good and going home for lunch, but my mom called and made me meet her at Wendy’s. 

I swear.

I lost track of exactly how many chicken nuggets everybody ate, but the four children polished off 25 all together.

That seems like a lot to me.  :)

I’ve never seen this boy eat like that!

And after all of that, Joanna at a junior deluxe cheeseburger.

James also ate some of the fruit off my mom’s salad.  And Natalie had some fries, her absolute favorite food.  I didn’t eat anything.  But that’s only because an hour and a half before I ate bbq meatballs and tater tots in the snack room.  Yuuuuuuuuuuumm.

Well, if you made it to the end of this enormous post, I applaud you!  Hopefully I’ll be able to come back soon.  I miss blogging regularly.  I have so many thoughts.  :)

Mostly the Extreme Cuteness of James

Speaking of dress up for little boys, how about stealing the helmet from the build-a-bear!

It really is time for James to start thinking about getting his hair cut.  Sniff… sniff…  It really only seems so long when he’s all sweaty.  Otherwise it’s very blond and wispy.  He’s so cute!

My children, after playing outside for a little bit this morning:

Joanna’s a little dirty, but not super-gross.  And she can clean her own self up – wahoo!

Now take a look at the next two pictures.  I know they’re 21 months apart and different genders, but it amazes me how she can stay so very clean…

At the same time he gets so very dirty!  :)

He gets so sweaty that the dirt just sticks to him.  Love it!  And love bath time!

Davy Crockett, anyone?

I’m sorry James.  But it’s so cute!

I’m a terrible mother I know.  Joanna did it.

The One in Which I Ramble… a lot.

On Thursday when I woke up my computer wasn’t working.  :(  That’s pretty much why I haven’t blogged much this week.  But I have also been kind of lazy and busy.  My computer is at the doctor right now and I’m awaiting prognosis.  I’m hoping for a very simple, quick, inexpensive fix.  I’d settle for getting the contents of my hard drive though.  Thankfully, even in the worst case scenario, I have kept up with backing up all my photos.  Phew!  But I’ll be sad not to have a computer for a while.  I am soooo thankful for my little iPod, on which I can check email and Facebook and Pinterest.  They make me happy.  I’m also thankful my mom let me steal her computer for a couple of days so I could blog and look at things online larger than 2x3 inches. 

Thursday afternoon I got a group of kiddos and their parents/grandparents together so I could snap pictures of us doing Musikgarten lessons.

I want to have some images we can put up on the website and on Facebook and wherever else we want.  It was so fun!  And also absolutely crazy.  Yay!  I’m not posting most of the pictures yet because I simply haven’t had enough time to “process” them.  I still haven’t learned much about editing, but I’d like to at least get them cropped and maybe play with some colors a bit.  But of course I’m waiting on my computer with Photoshop Elements.  If it turns out that it’s dead, I’ll bat my eyes at my mom to see if I can use her machine a little more and load Elements on it.

And then I’ll cry.

I told Matt I didn’t think we would replace our (only 1 1/2 year old) computer right away (if in fact it’s dead) since our money is busy doing other things right now. But then kind of randomly out of nowhere he got a bonus on his last paycheck. Almost a small, computer-sized bonus. So that’s kind of comforting.

But I’ll still cry.

I took a bunch of toys, including all our Little People, up to the church when we did the “photo shoot” to keep those not in the current “class” busy.  The LP were a hit!  And they ended up all in the middle of the living room when we came home.  :)  Normally we don’t have so many out all at once, but I’ve been lazy putting away toys this week… ahem.  And the kiddos are having so much fun playing with them all!

This post was all over the place!  Oh, well.

More to come, but this time I will include some extreme cuteness.  :)

Natalie and Daddy

I have this funny story I want to tell about Natalie, but I have to wait until after Father’s Day since it involves a gift for Matt.  I’m worried I’m going to forget so I decided to go ahead and blog it, then schedule the post to come up June 18th.  (It’s only June 1st right now.)

I’ve seen all year on Pinterest these surveys/questionnaires for Father’s Day where the kids fill in the blank things about their dad.  So I found one I liked and asked the girls the questions (separately, or the answers would be the same).  After we finished I realized I had forgotten one of the questions for Natalie that went something like this:  My daddy and I are alike because________________.  I was paraphrasing it for her so she would understand what I meant.  I asked something like “How are you and daddy the same?”  She thought about it, then said in all seriousness “Well, sometimes he pees on the floor.”

I died.

The tears were rolling down my face; it was so funny.

Happy Father’s Day

To the man I love, on behalf of your amazing children who cannot write yet.  :)

And Happy Father’s Day to my father, and my husband’s father, and anyone else I know who is a father of someone.  Y’all are amazing!

P.S.  It is extremely hard to get a decent picture of all three of my children.  Just so you know.