Natalie

I’m sitting here with my Natalie at 9:50 on a Tuesday morning, and she’s the only one awake!  James was up with us for a while, but he went down in my room for his morning nap.  I couldn’t put him in his bed because his oldest sister is STILL sleeping.

**Breaking news!!  She woke up!  (I’ll bet she’s hungry.)  :)

Anyway… these park shots are from Saturday evening.  Joanna went a birthday party with Gran and David (one of David’s neighbor’s grandson turned four and they needed a four year old to take to the party ), so Matt took Natalie across to the little park by our house.  There’s pretty much just a slide and some swings, but that’s still good fun!

There must have been something loud like an airplane.  That’s her standard “I’m scared of the noise” pose.

I like this one of her sliding down:

You know, I just don’t have as much to say about pictures when I don’t take them myself!  And this next bit is not to criticize my husband but to make me feel better:  I take better pics with our camera than Matt does.  I guess all those pictures I take make me better at it.  It sure is hard to get that camera to take nice pictures a lot of the time.  Done now. 

Anyway, these are from this morning, just a few minutes ago when Natalie was entertaining herself without the distraction of her brother or sister.

She’s making popcorn!  Don’t you love the oven mitts?

We make popcorn on the stove around here, and this is just what I look like when I shake it!

I really need some pink oven mitts though, don’t you think?

Feathers and Feet

You know your eggs are farm fresh when you find a chicken feather in the carton.  :)

We’ve been buying a couple of dozen each week recently; I sure do love eggs!

I love how James will put his tiny foot up on the table or highchair tray. 

Once he’s actually walking on those feet, I won’t let him do it anymore, but it’s just so cute!

We got a new cover for the table.  The other one was like 8ish months old and full of holes from little forks.  (Not to mention blue with happy birthday things on it)  :)

Those little fork-wielders have been threatened (I’m shaking my fist here) that there will be NO little fork holes in our new pretty green cover!

I love my smiling James! (even though the photo is blurry)

Well that was a random post.  I guess that’s the beauty of having a blog.  You can pretty much write what you want to.  :)

I really have been making a concerted effort to get my kids outside a little, even though it is offensively hot outside.

This was Friday afternoon while James was having a quick third nap.  (He’s feeling TONS better from being sick but sometimes needing a little late-afternoon nap.  His naps are short, don’t anybody get excited.)

I love Joanna’s faces.  :)

And Natalie’s faces.  I love their sweaty selves.

I don’t have to go out with the girls; they’re okay to play awhile in the backyard by themselves.  We’re very fortunate to have a nice shady backyard in the afternoons though, so it’s almost bearable to sit under the umbrella with a book.  :)

Matt and the girls went to the elementary school up the road Saturday mid morning to play.  The real park is a bit far for walking in this heat, but the elementary school is very close, pretty shady, and fun!

I love watching my girls run.  It’s cute.

And these pictures are courtesy of me.  James was asleep when they left, but Matt made us come when he woke up.  He’d forgotten the camera.

I told Natalie to go get a drink of water.  She said, “I bring it back.”  She meant she would bring the whole wagon (it was at the monkey bars) that had the water cups in it!

James, chillin’ (yes, in his jammies) and watchin’ his sisters play.

Monkey bars for Natalie too!

This elementary school isn’t the one I went to as a kid, but it’s the same model with some of the same playground equipment that I remember.

Joanna said that inside the jungle gym was a candy factory.

I’m not sure what she’s doing here, but I like the shot.  :)

I like this shot too, of Natalie framed in the triangle.

They sure had some hot, sweaty fun!

I barely tolerated it.  I was hot, I didn’t wear good shoes, and I forgot a hair tie.

But I had my book.  :)

Everybody was getting hungry, so we headed back home for some chow!

It was good to play, but it is just too doggone hot outside for the momma!!

August Miscellany

Gran came over for some grandchildren snuggles yesterday and for half a second I believed Joanna was asleep in her lap.  Doesn’t she look so content?

Here’s a shot of my kitchen after the last time the girls “played beans.”  Not too bad, eh?  I make sure to sweep my kitchen before they play so that when I sweep up the beans, it’s just beans that go on the… the thingie you sweep into… oh my goodness, why can’t I remember what that’s called?  Anyway, the beans, and not dirt and muck from the kitchen floor go back into the bean buckets for another time!

sweep…mop… broom… dirt… dust… pan… ah!!  Dustpan.  Oh, my goodness, I thought I was loosing my mind.

Last week the girls got Happy Meals at McDonalds, and they got Smurfs as their toys!  So of course I had to pull out my bag of 80’s plastic toys for them to play with.  Joanna didn’t really get why the Smurfs were cool so I added The Smurfs season 1 from 1981 to my Netflix queue.  :)

I had to take a picture of the new plastic army of toys.  Notice there aren’t just Smurfs, but also mini Cabbage Patch dolls, some Strawberry Shortcake characters, and a set of Bambi Happy Meal toys.  There’s also a blue dinosaur.  I really can’t explain me.  But I was clearly very cool.

Up close – Handy Smurf from today and Handy Smurf from the 80’s.

Good times.  Good times.

Playing

We’ve been trying to come up with fun things to do around the house lately.  It’s just so stinkin’ hot, not that I’m much of a outside gal myself.  Joanna especially is very ready for school to start, and she’s quite the grump when we have a boring day.  Me, I could do chores, lay around, and snuggle all day long.  Joanna needs stuff to do.

I sacrificed some beans from the pantry for some scooping/pouring/spilling fun.

The girls have gone crazy over this!  I let them play in the kitchen so I can block it off if James is scooting around.  And it’s easy to clean up.

I took a picture of what my kitchen looked like after they “played beans” today, but it’s still on the camera, which isn’t right here by my hand.

Monday I tinkered a bit with my sewing machine, and this time it was Natalie who joined me.

Isn’t she the cutest?!

Monday evening we had home group here, and there were nine kiddos in attendance!  James was asleep (or sort of or not or supposed to be), but the others had such fun playing!  I haven’t the slightest idea what we talked about in the study, but it’s fairly likely I wouldn’t have anyway – we’re studying Revelation.  We attempted to quiet the very exited kiddos down a bit with a little Backyardigans (streamed from Netflix on the laptop – yay technology!).  It totally worked for about 20 minutes, then most of them decided wild play was way more fun.  :)  Have you ever seen eight (poor Logan couldn’t fit on the couch!) cuter kids?  They range in age from almost 2 1/2 to just turned 5.  (Wow I just realized all those other kids were born in between the Rucker boys.

The girls LOVED being wild and crazy with their friends, and they slept really good that night!

Did you know that it’s only Wednesday?

The really hot days are the longest.  Hmmmm… 

We’re having a really good week so far though. 

I can’t believe it’s almost midnight.

I am so going to regret this in the morning.

Actually it will be the Dr. Pepper at 7pm that I’ll regret.

Oops.

Oh Roseola, we meet again

Poor James has been sick.  Last week he just wasn’t quite himself, then Thursday evening we noticed a little fever before he went to bed.  Then Friday I thought he was better, but then his fever went way up that evening so we brought him to the doctor Saturday morning.  The doc diagnosed a little ear infection and prescribed an antibiotic.  Honestly, I think that was just a coincidence (or a byproduct of the virus) because the antibiotic did not make him feel better at all.  He does think it’s horribly yucky though.  :)  Anyway he’s just been miserable – clingy, fussy, grumpy.  Over the weekend Tylenol would make him feel better but did little for his fever, poor little guy.  And it’s funny, his fever was always higher in the morning than when he went to bed.  That seems backward.  :) 

I think this was Monday afternoon.  I walked out of the bedroom after putting Natalie down for a nap and found James fast asleep on the floor.

He had a good little nap there too!

He’s been pretty much attached at the hip for several days.  I love my little attachment, but it’s too hot to be so close to anyone.  :)

We’ve still gone about our regular stuff.

Hanging laundry and what not.

This morning, he finally woke up without a fever – wahoo!  He’s still been a little more clingy and needy than usual, but soooo much closer to “normal” today!  He ate some, filled up his diaper, played a little.  And this evening we saw the spots.  Those tell-tale Roseola-ish virus spots.  I’m looking forward to Jamesie Boy getting back to normal in the next few days!  I hope we didn’t infect anyone; we haven’t been having so much fun.  :)

Under the Hood

There is something wrong with Matt’s car, and he’s determined to figure it out!  It still runs, but idles very rough.  I drove it to the store the other day, and every time I was stopped, I thought it was going to stall about nine million times.  It never did though.

All that to say, that’s why Matt is looking under the hood here, and Joanna is asking him about everything.  :)

Can you get over the hands on the hips?!  I LOVE her!

I know there’s gymnastics and ballet and soccer and stuff for this age.  You s’pose there’s auto mechanics for preschoolers?