Cha- Cha- Cha!

(Do you like Gracie's outfit? It is outfit number 24 today. I especially like the pokadot onesie unbuttoned and hanging out. It almost matches the leggings. You can't see but they're different color pokadots. Close enough. One sock. And a sweater even though it's 80 degrees.

I'm writing a book

(Well, I started writing a book. Then I asked the boys to help me.)

The title of my book was Jacob's Bear. It begins with a young boy who goes to bed and while lying in the dark, he hears a growling in his closet. He goes into his closet to investigate and slowly his closet turns into a forest...

I never said it was original. At the time, Jacob was afraid of bears, so much so that he was anxious about camping several months away. My goal was to write a story to educate him about bears and ease his worries.

Crack!

      ...he held himself perfectly still. There are many frightening creatures hidden in these trees. Tigers, snakes,

gasp! ba-ba-bears!

Any one of them could have heard the twigs snapping under his feet. Any one of them could pounce at any moment. With a deep breath, he whispered, "I...am...brave." and he trudged on. Bravely. But quietly- just to be on the safe side.

Then one night while putting the boys to bed, I said "Let's make up a story." I thought it was a mistake, but it turned out to be quite an adventure. The story has the same beginning, but now the boy is named James, and he has a pet mouse (that he met inside the volcano) whose name is Wilsom. He has many adventures that I could never dream up on my own.

Here is a sample- James travels to a clearing where he came across a lake. Boom! Boom! What could it be? Cannons? Maybe it's a ... crash! A pirate ship crashes onto the shore.

Jacob "If it crashes onto the shore, how do they get it back into the water?"

Me "They don't. It's too heavy to push back into the water."

Joe "Then how to they get boats into the water after they build it? Oh, I know, they build the bottom part, then they push it in the water, then build the rest in the water."

"How does something so heavy not sink?"

"Can we get back to the story? Ugly, mean pirates crawled off the ship, and they were so hungry..."

"They bended down at an ant pile and started eating ants."

"Were they red ants, or black ants, or yellow ants?"

"Which ones are worser? Red, black, or yellow, which ones do you think?"

As you can see, James doesn't get very far. But I am asked often, "Hey remember that thing we did with the story we made up, remember? Can we do that tonight?" 

One night, James was in a pyramid. They knew that pyramids were in Egypt, so they jumped up and found Egypt on their map. "There! He's right there!" So after he escaped from the mummies, he found himself at the Red Sea. Now he's on his way to Madagascar. We have turned our story hour into a geography lesson. James currently is trapped in a Baobab tree in deep in the forest of Madagascar, with his friend, Tojo the cannibal, that he picked up on his way. Hyenas surround the tree. Oh, no! What will he do?

As I tell the boys at the end of our story, "to be continued..."

Just a few

Is everyone enjoying this warm weather? We sure are! And my new camera is really getting a workout. We have four and a half very long weeks of school left. It's getting more and more difficult to keep the kids inside long enough for a full school day. I wonder, what is your take on holding class at the picnic table? How about laying in the grass while reading from our History book? I'm undecided. Grace and Joshua beg to get outside as soon as breakfast is over. It just doesn't seem fair to keep them cooped up all day while the older ones work. But if we all go out together, I can help the kids with their work and watch the babies play in the dirt pile at the same time. Once, a spider landed on Paige's back, and that, as you can imagine, caused a commotion. We had to stop to catch a yellow swallowtail. And an inchworm dropped in for a quick visit. After that, I told them all, if we have one more distraction, we are going inside. But, hey, we have just as many distractions in the house.

Oh, yeah, we're climbing!

Hi.

Outfit # 16 and 17

I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds her so amusing. I asked Paige to bring her back into the house. She asked her sweetly, "Gracie, do you want to come in and sit on my lap while I dry my hair?" (Because, of course, she couldn't just say, Gracie, come in the house.) Grace happily followed her in, plopped behind her...

"Uh, Grace, that isn't exactly what I had in mind."

Hangin around

Soggy bottom gang

Just some Gracie cuteness

Mother daughter lunch

This year we had a craft fair along with our banquet. What an enjoyable time! By the time we sat down to eat, I felt as if the day had been full enough, I could have gone home happy at that. But we still had a delicious lunch and great program that followed. I wouldn't mind doing this every year. hint, hint

There were plenty of balloons that would have gone to waste so we took a few home with us. Joshua REALLY enjoyed his! All afternoon long, he grabbed the strings, pulled them down and batted them around, laughing and saying "baaoooon!"

Did you ever just get to thinking to yourself,"I really wish I had some scripture prints to hang around my house. I wish there were someone that sold beautiful photos with a coordinating scripture printed on it for a really reasonable price."  ? Well, search no more. Just follow this link!

(and then come back- I miss you when you're gone.)

Action!

I know, you want to see the kids. Who cares about flowers? Well this is for my photoshopping friends. If you want to see babies, scroll down to yesterday's post. You'll be glad ya did.  :)

I found a website recently that I haven't visited in a long time. And I'm all excited about it again. I downloaded, oh, 20 or so actions and I've been up way too late every night playing with them. She has tutorials that are super easy to understand. Go over and take a look.

This is the selective color before the selection of the color.

Here's sunkissed

and the selective color.

Which one looks the best? Or is it too much?

Take your pick

When you capture over 100 pictures and they all look something like this, how do you narrow it down? I like them all. He's just so cute.

Jacob asked me, "Do blowies turn into dandelions, or do dandelions turn into blowies?"

"Yes."

The first pages I've done so far for his baby book.

I now have 18,555 pictures in my photoshop organizer. And how many of those are in an album? I do have a simple sketchbook that I keep. I glue on one or two 4x6 pictures on each page and journal or doodle. It's simple but still enjoyable to look through. But for the kids baby (or childhood) album, I like to have full page prints. Sometimes with the necessary journaling, but sometimes the pictures tell the story all on their own...

Outfit # fifteen this morning

She gets her fashion sense from her mom.

SOOC(straight out of camera)   -really, It was that gorgeous.

Cuteness

I can't believe I caught this

My old man

No, no, not Tony.

Kandeaux has never wintered well. Each year he gets older and older and each spring he is skinnier and skinnier. The vet was out and gave him a clean bill of health, all but the fact that he's loosing his teeth. So since they don't make equine dentures, Deb (who owns the stable) has put him on some different feed and has been hand grazing him in the field. He is in good hands. There was a day when I would have been out there caring for him myself, but six children later...

But today I was able to get out there and see him. We groomed him until I thought my arms were going to fall off. And he munched on the lush grass the whole time. The warm wind kept the bugs away and the temperature couldn't have been more perfect. I sat in the field, watching him graze, while the kids played with the cats and jumped over ground poles. I wanted to stay right there all day.

There was a day when that big, open field would be but a blur as I galloped across it. Ok, ok, loped. Cantered, at best. Kandeaux never galloped for me, well, not on purpose. As soon as I let the reins go, the bucking began. But let's just say for story's sake that I was going moderately fast across the big, open field. Forget the helmet, forget the saddle, just the feel of the wind whipping through my hair.

All right, enough of that. Those days are over. I'm an old lady now, and he's an old horse. But it was plenty refreshing enough just to spend a few hours at the barn.

Yum