BUBBLE FUN

Jacob experimented and figured out how to blow huge bubbles while washing his hands! This was the best picture I got, but he actually blew some that were way bigger.



Then WesLee was eager to learn also...



I thought it was pretty neat and they sure had a lot of fun doing it!

Bounty

I was so happy (and kinda surprised) when our garden grew ALOT of food!
I'm not trying to brag because I think maybe gardens just grow easier here than some other places. But we are definitely doing this again. We had lots of lettuce, spinach, cilantro and basil until the weather turned hot and they 'bolted', going to seed. We've had delicious tomatoes every day (and still getting more)! We have so many jalepenos, which I know we won't use all of. We got many loads of squash, cucumbers, and enough onions to last us for several more months at least... and the food from our garden has been so flavorful! We got about a dozen mouthwatering cantaloupes. The tomatoes are so sweet. And my eyes water so much when cutting these onions.



All the kids (except Preston) got very good at cutting veggies up for meals.



The kids love to go out and pick food from the garden, and for the most part they have been careful to only pick food that is ripe.
They wanted me to take a picture when 2 yellow squash were grown together:



The things that did not do as well as I'd like in the garden were:
-peas (just didn't get much of them for some reason)
-brocolli and cauliflower(I found out too late that I should have folded the leaves over the tops of the cauliflowers)
-carrots (we got lots of carrots, they just don't taste that sweet. I let them grow longer than required to see if they would get a "riper" taste but they didn't. Maybe my soil is not a carrot's favorite.



My little broccoli:



We were also able to get even more food from the CSA farm that we joined. It was so nice to become friends with them and I learned so much about organic gardening just from asking questions. (I didn't use any chemicals on my garden) We also got several foods that we'd never had before, such as white eggplant, husk tomatoes, mulberries. We went to various farms around here to pick food, such as PEAS, since we didn't get many of those from our garden...



APPLES!


CHERRIES!



BLUEBERRIES!





It was a lot of fun to get food from our own backyard garden and from these other farms. Its a good thing that each farm we went to had the policy that you can eat as much as you want while picking! That's all that Preston did!

SSSSnake!

Jake found a snake. (In our backyard)

When they told me this I was a little worried,
until they showed me...

In case you can't tell, it was really little! It's head was around the size of a clover leaf! Upon closer inspection, I could tell it was injured (most likely one of our cats was playing with it), so we took it back to the ditch and tried to hide it where our 2 cats wouldn't see it. When we checked later and it had slithered away already. The kids were really glad that it was still able to move around after being hurt.

I'm sure they will always remember the day there was a snake in our backyard!
(I'm just glad it wasn't a big one!)

Zonkey

...Petting a half/Zebra half Donkey!

Preston "reading" like the big kids...

Preston has enjoyed walking around since he was 6 months old. I guess he was always so busy walking aroung that he didn't really think to sit down much.

He has recently discovered how easy it is to climb up on chairs and couches. I guess it had to happen sometime, despite my worry that he could fall off the side or the back.

Thank goodness he has actually been quite careful about it.

He finds a book and climbs up and then looks at it. I guess he figured he should be like Jacob, WesLee and Faith who he saw reading books all summer long for the summer reading program. He always climbs up to sit and look at a book now. Its very cute!

Just trying these on for size...

MAYBE NOT...



Oh, hi Mom, I think I'll just cling to your legs instead~

First taste ever of a lollipop!

We went to a Dr appointment, and they offered the kids suckers before we left. I was so fortunate to have my camera with me in the car to catch the reactions Preston made when he tasted his first sucker ever:

He just put it in like it was a toy,
not knowing it was anything special..



But then he realized it WAS something special--











WesLee is pretty smart. As we were driving away and they were all sucking on their lollipops, he said "Mom I think I know why they give us suckers. They think if they can get people addicted to sugar there will be more sick people, and they will make more money."

I'd never thought of it that way!

Did you ever want to know how to catch a dragonfly?

I guess you'll have to ask Wes to try to teach you.
He hasn't succeeded in teaching me how he does this yet.



I guess he takes after his Dad who can catch flies in mid-air like Mr. Miyagi. (Seriously, not kidding)

First Day of School!

Today the boys went back to school, and Faith had her very first day of Kindergarten! She is so happy to join her brothers. I couldn't stop myself from tearing up after she walked into the school. They have all grown so fast. My kids have grown faster than I ever imagined they would.

Here (!) are my 2nd and 3rd graders:



And now, my Kindergartener...



She was so excited, she couldn't stop dancing around when I was snapping her picture!



With barely a wave, off she went to greet Mrs Quimby...



I know she's going to love it and she's going to do SO great!


When we took Faith to Kindergarten registration a few months ago, they gave her a sunflower seed with a poem directing her to "plant this seed and watch it grow" and "when it's as tall as you, off to Kindergarten you will go!"




It grew very fast and she kept asking anxiously about it... when it was almost as tall as her, she asked if she would go to Kindergarten soon. I said yes, soon.




Not much later it was taller than her, so she figured Kindergarten might start the next day. Well she had to wait longer than she wanted, because it grew tall VERY fast. I told her it was because she took such good care of it! (which she did!)




So now a couple weeks after it bloomed she finally got to go off to Kindergarten. Boy was she happy!

SCRAPED KNEES

Preston scraped his knee for the first time a couple days ago.

It didn't even really bleed but I had such strong feelings when I saw it...

a sort of reminder that I can't always control whether bad things happen to my children. I wish it was in my ability to prevent them from ever getting hurt, but I know it is an essential part of life for them to experience pain and sadness and that they may have major trials in their lives at times.

And then came the peaceful reminder that healing is possible... that even if we aren't always able to heal from physical ailments, God will always heal our hearts and spirits, if we stay close to Him.

Summer FUN~

The last day of swimming lessons:



Jacob and WesLee KNOW HOW TO SWIM. (All over, even in the deep end). Faith can too, she just doesn't know it yet. The way I see it, if she can swim with her feet off the ground in the shallow end she can do it in the deep end too, she just isn't comfortable yet. They all did an awesome job!


Preston got a little time of his own in the baby pool:







And everyone loved the sprinkler hung over the swingset:



And of course, mud is always nice option too...

right place at the right time

Faith was playing outside and she just happened to notice something wiggling, she looked a little closer and saw a "leg sticking out of a cocoon". She called WesLee over too and they watched this Monarch butterfly come out of its cocoon! She said it happened all at once, very fast, when it came out. They came to get the rest of us. Wes carefully let it onto his finger. I wasn't sure if that was best but he insisted he would be careful so its wings could dry. He eventually put it on the yellow flowers where it continued slowly flapping its wings to dry and then flew away!



Faith showing me where the cocoon hung:



I thought that was awesome. God's creations are amazing.