Small Men (Wet Sand)

Thanks to my dad's generosity, we were able to start filling our giant sandbox today!  On the way home, Mark and Ian took care of some manly shopping.  Ian is growing...and growing!  I just bought that kid shoes a few weeks ago and now he is wearing men's shoes!  And men's sized clothes!

I've always called Daniel my Little Man, but Ian now has the nickname Small Man.  The small men in my home got right to work filling the sandbox.  When they are done here, they are going back to their grandparent's house to shovel beauty bark.

Evie wanted a chance to prove she was strong enough to shovel beauty bark too, so I sent her out to prove herself with the sand.  There was no way my Little Man could stay away, so he was helping too.  And then the rain started pouring down!  POURING!

Wise Man

Wise men get out of the pouring rain.  Shoveling sand is hard work, but shoveling wet sand is even harder! (I'll let you figure out what the Small Men did)

My Small Men (and my Little Lady) are still hard at work (Little Man is already in a warm bath).  I just heard some thunder and Mark is shooing the kids under cover...I just heard one of my "smart" small men quote some statistic about lightning strikes and how unlikely it is that they would get struck.  Mark still made them get out of the truck bed and under cover.  I just love those guys. 

Mother's Day Happiness

All I needed for Mother's Day was happiness (and a clean house).  I got both!  These last few days have been happy moment on top of happy moment (except that moment when I stepped on a dead rodent and it stuck to the bottom of my shoe and I tracked it inside) (and when I found a dead chicken under the watering tray in the chicken yard and it had been there for a long time).  But I had many more happy moments than not...

 How could I even celebrate being a mother without having an awesome father for my children?

Sharing a cup of peanut butter with Pathetic Doberman

I finally got my closet completely empty and had to decide which toxic cleaner I would use to eliminate wool-eating moths and mold.  I chose vinegar so Daniel could scrub instead of me!  He and Fiona scrubbed that closet to the point where I would be surprised if anything grew back!

Mark finally gets to relax

The Pirate is happy because he was digging holes.

His little girls REALLY make him smile (me too)!

Big Hugs!

The biggest and best smile goes to having my mom come out for a Mother's Day dinner cooked by Mark.  We had a seafood alfredo with Copper River salmon, mussels, and octopus!  My mom brought a white chocolate raspberry mousse cake that was to die for!

More Adventures

Look at this crew.  What are they up to now?

Mark went and bought another fruit tree to add to our orchard.  Another quince tree.  He is so much like his father (in a good way).

Mark was so happy.  

So were the dogs.  Of course they don't need much to make them happy!

The girls and I took advantage of their wet hair to experiment with rag curls.

They were so excited to see the results that they were up by 6:00 this morning.  I told them to go back to their rooms until I finished my coffee.  The results were adorable.

Evie was very happy with her curls (plus she lost a tooth that has been bothering her)!  Fiona, however...

 I though she looked like Shirley Temple:

 She's got the dimples and everything!  But she thought she looked like:

I had to comb her curls out with water before she would smile again.  Other adventures are...

 Pruning the fruits trees because...

...we are competing with the wildlife for resources.  That is the explanation I gave Shane when he was upset that we were burning the tent caterpillars.  Anyone who grew up here or lived here in 1985 remembers the nasty tent caterpillars and why I am more than happy to not be Buddhist.  He was so upset that he went and fed his pet spider some carpenter ants he found near the house.  No, we did not point out the irony.

This is the massive 8 by 8 foot sand box Mark built for the kids.  It looks empty with just Lula, but when they are all in there, everyone has enough space to play.  When they grow out of it, we will turn it into a raised bed.  We will not fill this sand box with sand.  They have requested regular dirt with sticks, rocks, grass, and weeds so they can play Dinosaur Hole as authentically as possible.  Lucky for them we have a lot of that kind of stuff around here!  And if everything works out as planned, the kids will stop digging holes where Mark is trying to get the grass to grow back.

Baby, it's Hot Outside!

Five days of hot, hot weather, and I'm ready for it to cool back down.  It's even too hot for me to sit down at the pond and watch the kids swim.  But I could be a little sensitive considering...well, have you heard?  We have some exciting news!  Baby #7 (or #9) is on its way!  I'm due November 20th.  Can you believe it?  Good thing we got the BIG van instead of the little one!

 Edited to add:
1. It was 87 degrees this day!
2. I'm not having twins or triplets.  I say #7 or #9 because we include Ami and Laura in the total count, even though they are all grown up *smile*

Dinosaur Hole

It didn't take long for Lula to join her siblings in an afternoon game of dinosaur.  We've spent the last few days outdoors, enjoying the weather.  Lula especially loves to be outside.  I don't get much work done this time of year.  If everything was up to me, we would start summer break in May and go back to school in July.

First Steps!

Fiona is Five

When I was thinking about what I wanted to say about Fiona turning five this year, I realized that her entire life is right here on this blog.  From the moment we first heard her heartbeat and found out she was a girl, from the day she was born, and every birthday and funny moment since, most of it is right here.  Stories that I never would have gotten around to recording in her baby book or moments I would have forgotten before my bedtime journal writing can be found here, along with pictures! 

The sun was bright for Fiona's fifth birthday.  This meant we could spend the day outside, but it also meant the pictures were all...squinty or overexposed.  Next cloudy day I will get her back out for some better pictures.

I heard a story about a little girl that woke up on her fifth birthday and announced that "...now I am five years old, I am old enough to go to school and get my ears pierced!"  Her consolation prize was to walk to the mailbox all by herself and she had to wait until she was 9 to get her ears pierced.  That was me...and I think it is safe to say that Fiona is my mini-me.  She was full of that same confidence all day long.  Just ask her dance teacher!  Or don't...

The sweetest moment from yesterday was in the morning, before Fiona was even out of bed.  Daniel asked where "Nina" was.  I told him she was still sleeping, but he could go wake her up.  "Make sure you say Happy Birthday to her!"  His little wheels started turning and he got all bossy with me.  "Stay there!" he said.  I was trying to get back to my room so I could get dressed, so I reassured him that I would not follow him and that he would be the one to wake her up.  When we got back to the bedrooms, he stopped to make sure I was actually going into my bedroom.  After I was safely out of the way, he sneaked into Fiona's room and started quietly singing "Happy Birthday to You."  *smile*