4th of July 2014

We had my parents and siblings over for the 4th of July this year and had a great day.

Liberty

Liberty was fascinated by Alli’s star earrings. 

Shucking corn

Hangin with Sarin

We got them all to sit still for a split second.  Ok, not Levi, but close enough.  They made their own shirts this year!  Thanks for the cute idea, Penny!

Watching Fireworks

If you’re wondering what Liberty is wearing on her ears, look here: Ear plugs the Monster Jam way  She looks ridiculous, but they allowed her to actually be outside this year to watch.

Setting off Fireworks

God Bless America!

Our Pinkalicious Turns Four

For those of you who don’t have a pink addict living at your house, you might not know about the children’s books called Pinkalicious about a little girl who is, yes, addicted to pink.  Liberty turned four last week so here are some pictures from the big day and some funny ones I’ve been collecting for a while. 

First, the Birthday Party

We’ve lived in our house for a year now and we are just finally settling on what rooms the kids will be in, so now I can finally do something to Liberty’s room.   For her birthday we graduated her to a twin bed and painted one wall pink.  We won’t talk about how many shades of pink it took before I got it right.  Ok, just two.  Luckily one wall does not take much to repaint.  The room is not done yet; still needs a comforter and some curtains among other things, but it’s a start. 

Her favorite gifts were this ballet outfit from her Hymas grandparents (for her ballet camp coming up next week) and this ribbon wand from her Wesel grandparents. 

Hmm, there is supposed to be music, but it’s not working. And my computer technician is currently out of town, so you’ll have to watch this silent version.

Now on to the collection of pics I take every now and then.

She wears this dress every other Sunday.  It would be every week if I didn’t require her to wear a different color/dress in between.

Nope.  This is not Cade’s shoe basket.

Fashion show host:  “Liberty is wearing a pink dress by Hand Me Down, with a Mama’s Sweater designed by Great Grandma Norma Wesel.  Her hair is in the Messy Modern Bun Come Undone Look.” 

On top of the world.  At least at Target.

My cousin Katelyn got married last week and Liberty couldn’t wait for the reception when she could see Katelyn in her beautiful dress.  “Is she going to dance, Mom?” 


Katelyn looked amazing!!

 

My mom and I took Libby shopping to the mall, which apparently I’ve never done with her before.  She squealed with delight at every mannequin she saw.  She was fascinated by these fake people everywhere and it was quite the adventure for her.   Better than the zoo! 

A few weeks ago she was getting a little talkative in church so I gave her a warning by saying, “Do you need to go out in the hall?” To which she responded, “Yeah, it’s getting boring in here.”

 
We love our little pink addict. 

Summer Stuff

Swimming Lessons!
Our swim teacher always takes underwater pictures and here are the ones from this year.

Fishing!
Rock took Cade and Levi fishing for their dates with Dad this month.  Unfortunately, he only got pictures of Cade. 

The Two Week Summer Reading Program
I usually don’t like the prizes/rewards for the library summer reading programs so we decide on something the kids really want to be their reward at the end of the summer.  This summer Levi decided on a scooter.  He’s been using his brothers’ for a long time and they are often fighting over them, so I thought a scooter was a fabulous idea.  Thinking he’d read about a book a day (1st grade level books don’t take long to read), I set the goal at 50 books.  He had to read the book AND write the title down.  Surely that would keep him busy all summer.  Nope.  He read constantly for 2 weeks and earned his scooter! 

No more fighting over scooters and I can still make him read a book a day.  Mwahahahahaha!

 The Roof Date
Last week for our date Rock took me to dinner.  He got Sushi, a new favorite of his. (Yuck!)

When we got home, we put the little ones to bed and then he totally surprised me by taking me up onto our roof to watch the sunset!  The climb was a little scary, I’ll admit, but it was so awesome to be up there.  What a wonderful, romantic idea!  We have a great view!

I think this one wins “Best Date Award” for 2014

No More Braces! (for a while)
Reagan got his 1st set of braces off this week!  He’ll have another set at 15 or 16.

The first thing he wanted to do was eat a caramel apple.

And lastly this week we made newborn kits for Project Haiti, a project to build hospitals in Haiti.

Renovations

I decided it's way past time to update my blog look, so while I try and figure out what I like and how to make it look cool, bear with me.  :-)  It might look different every time you visit!

Butterflies in Boise

We ordered caterpillars this month to watch them turn into butterflies!  Even though we’ve done this before it was still exciting to see. 

Once they create their chrysalises we transfer them to this:

Four out of five caterpillars made it to butterfly this year, but one was a little mangled.  His wing never fully opened.  He couldn’t fly too well and so he hung around on the kids, which they of course loved.

When we let all of ours go, we went to see the ones at the zoo butterfly house.

Waiting for one to leap onto his finger.

It leaped onto his back instead!

Such amazing little creatures!  Thank you, Heavenly Father for giving us this wonderful creation to enjoy.

Baking, Baseball and Botany

Cade is back in baseball this year and loving it. 

I have to admit I love it too.  No rainy, muddy fields like in Jersey or Washington.  Just blue skies.  It’s great!

Reagan has been doing a lot of baking lately.  He has help sometimes.

He picked the cherries for this pie from our very own cherry tree!  He pitted the cherries and made the crust from scratch.

A few days later he made Rock’s Father’s Day apple pie from scratch too. 

And I made my first batch of freezer jam! 

My children now call me blessed.  Who knew Winco jam was that bad. Picky picky people.

We planted a garden this year!  We started small, just strawberries and tomatoes, but it’s something.  
 

The odds have not been in our favor, though.  The birds have been eating our strawberries (we haven’t gotten to eat a single one!) and Levi was trying to help one day and weeded one of our tomato plants.  He was devastated when he realized what he’d done.  It was so sad and funny at the same time.  But at least everything is growing! 


See the green balls!

So are the birds going to eat my tomatoes too????

An Apple a Day Doesn’t Keep the Doctor Away

I realize that with four kids I should be grateful I’m not in the doctor’s off ice all the time.  Admittedly, Levi has tried hard to make sure I don’t miss out on that part of motherhood, but for the most part the apples I buy seem to do the trick for my other kids.  But this week they really tried to help me catch up on all those doctor visits they’ve been missing out on. 

On Monday Reagan jammed his finger catching a soccer ball.  When it was black and blue and rigid Tuesday morning, I took him to the doctor to see if it was broken.  They didn’t know, so they sent us for X-rays at the hospital.  Later that night while waiting to hear back from the hospital, Liberty ran out into the street in front of a boy on his bike, got totally run over, and fell and hit her head.  For the next hour she was totally disoriented.  She couldn’t remember what happened.  She kept crying and asking us over and over again what had happened.  We looked up concussion symptoms and she had none except for the disorientation, so we didn’t take her in at that point.  I’m not one to rush to the doctor as soon as my kids get hurt or show signs of sickness and now that we have a $40.00 copay, I am even less likely to do so.  She had a good bump on her head and some scratches and bruises, but that was all externally.  When we tried to feed her some bread she kept asking what it was there for.  At one point I asked her who Sleeping Beauty and My Little Pony were and she couldn’t tell me!!   After an hour of this we finally decided to distract her a bit with some TV and she seemed to calm down and went to bed mostly herself.  I will say that I checked on her about four times that night worried that maybe I should have taken her in and maybe she’d die of a blood clot in her brain.  But she slept fine and woke up her usual self-except that she still couldn’t remember what happened.  (She still doesn’t, actually.)

The next morning when the doctor called to tell us Reagan’s finger was not broken, I asked them about Libby and they politely told me that I should definitely bring her in to be looked at and that I should have brought her in right after it happened because it was a head injury.  Nothing like the doctor’s office to make you feel guilty.  So we took another forty dollar trip to the doctor (two days in a row) for him to look at her and tell me she had a mild concussion and that I should make sure to keep my three year old from doing anything where she might hit her head again.  (Don’t you love it when doctors say that? It’s all I can do not to laugh in their face.)

You think I’m done.  But I’m not.  That weekend while I was out of town, Reagan stubbed his toe and took a big chunk out of it.  Had I been there this time, we would have gone to the doctor for sure, forty dollars or not.  But he and Rock opted to band aid it.  I didn’t even hear about it until two days later when Reagan showed me the horror show that was his foot after two solid days sealed in a band aid.  So, Monday morning, we went BACK into the doctor’s office for the third time in less than a week.  This was also the third time I was bringing a child in AFTER the fact and I’m sure they are ready to call CPS on me.  Sure enough he did need stitches but it was too late by then, and his foot was slightly infected.  Doctor’s orders:  antibiotics and no swimming lessons for three days (the first three days of his class, no less). 

Not to be out done by his siblings and because I’m sure deep down he was really missing the doctor’s office, Levi fell down on his scooter and got three good bloody scrapes on his knee.  We put some band aids on and not two hours later he was back in with another bloody scrape on the same knee right next to the band aids for the first three wounds. 

Count em.  1,2, 3, 4! 

I think there was definitely something wrong with our apples this week.  They sure didn’t do their job.