Swimming like a fish

Wow! Two blog posts in one week! I need more stuff to do, eh?

So, today was the last day for Addy's swimming lessons. She's been taking them M,W,Th for the whole month of June with her friends Maggie and Mackenzie from church. She has had a good time and now is ready to be thrown in the pool without water wings to see if she's learned anything! So, if you have a pool...we may be over soon!! (hint, hint)

Addy with her class





The sweaty onlookers (its very hot and humid at an indoor pool!)



The jumps into the deep end!

Addy


Mackenzie


Maggie



Until next blog,
Jen

Almost July...what happened to June???

I just realized yesterday that JULY will be here next week!!! So, I hurried and put up my fourth of July decorations (that I bought at the end of season last year!) so I could get more than a week's worth of use out of them. I still can't believe how quickly June has gone by. I think the two weeks of VBS planning, decorating, and actual VBS really made this month fly. I was so pooped each night that I always forgot to bring my camera, but I did manage to bring it to Sunday services when the kids sang some of their VBS songs in front of the church. Addison's performance was a repeat of her preschool closing program...she got up on stage, danced a little, but SANG NOTHING. The fact that she can sing every song word for word at home made this even more baffling. It seems she has inherited Brian's fear of public speaking. Oh well. She had a blast at VBS and...except for the poor attendance of my volunteer leaders...overall, I enjoyed it, too.



The kids got new 'dos this past weekend. Addy kept her hair in curlers overnight for the first time and it got SUPER CURLY. And, Brian kept bugging me to give Keith a buzz cut for the summer. So, I whipped out my clippers and did just that! He sat still for all of it except the very end, at which point I accidentally nicked his ear! So, above the ears are a little off-whack. His hair grows so quickly I doubt anyone will get a chance to notice!





We're continuing the saga of potty training Keith. Although I did FINALLY get him to go #2 in the toilet, its still pretty much a no-go. He'll go when prompted, but has yet to tell us he has to go. Here's what he likes to do with the seat:



So, the exciting news...which really led me to blog today...we have TONS of little baby praying mantises all over our front porch. We noticed it this morning as we were heading out to swim practice. Last fall three of these strange little pods appeared on our porch. After I destroyed one, thinking it was a spider egg-pod, I did some investigating and found out that it was actually eggs of a praying mantis. I read that they would hatch sometime in June or early July. So, all month we've been checking for them to hatch. I know, its probably not exciting to most of you, but to us bug-lovers, its front page news!!! Please ignore my goofy comments on the video!!





Here's one on Keith's matchbox jeep, just to show you how tiny they were:




Until next blog,
Jen

Addys video for Little Guy

VBS and the Next Great Flood

In a little over a week our church is holding our VBS (for the non-churched or non-Protestants of my blog fan base, that stands for Vacation Bible School where, for one week, kids come to the chuch to participate in games, crafts, and stories based on the Bible). I have committed myself to being in charge of the preschool portion of this as well as decorating the preschool area. Since my artistic abilities are non-existant, I recruited my art-abled niece Brooke and also put Audra, Keith and Addison to work as well. The theme of the VBS is science, so we've made DNA strands, molecules, gears, light bulbs, magnets, flasks, beakers and Bible-based periodic tables to decorate the rooms. We found out the hard way that if you try to spray paint styrofoam, the propellent MELTS the styrofoam (and, hence, Nana saves the day by running to Hobby Lobby for more styrofoam balls!!). It looks like hard work, and a big mess, but we had fun doing it.

Making styrofoam molecules



The crafting mess


Some finished wall decorations (on top of my laundry piles!)


Now...for the real news of the week...THE RAIN!! My goodness! I really keep thinking I'm going to one day look out my window and see animals walking in pairs toward a large watercraft. Thankfully, I was able to get all my garden planting done before all this rain. As you can see below, the corn (and the surrounding weeds) in my front garden are doing great. This is because that garden is on a slope. The back garden is not fairing so well, with only part of the beans,beets, squash and cucumbers coming up through the puddles. As far as damage to our place from all this rain...I really can't complain. I've heard some of your horror stories of 4 day power outages or raw sewage backing up into your basement. While the softball diamonds just down the street from us has turned into a lake, we have only minor puddles in our yard. The wind blew down a down spout, but it was already loose from a previous windstorm earlier this year. And we have some leaks in our basement and garage, but thankfully the only damage to our stuff was mildew growing on our umbrella strollers in the garage. (and the basement is guaranteed, so no money to fix it! Yay!!)

Front garden of corn (and lots of weeds)


Back garden


Our downed downspout


Basement leak. It was actually coming from a leak in the chinking of the brick wall and looked just like a Dutch Dam Leak that a little Dutch boy could hold closed with his finger!! Thankfully there was nothing in front of it and the stuff around it was sitting on a pallet, so no water damage to our luggage collection.



Garage leak. Seems to be a result of bad flashing around that completely useless chimney. Yeah, thats right, we have a chimney in our garage. The dork that used to live here wanted a pot-bellied stove out there so he could work out in the garage during the winter. Unfortunately, it seems that he didn't know how to install it correctly. May result in a costly repair to the roof, so we'll have to get someone to look at it.



The coolest part of all these storms...last night about 9 p.m. there was a break in the action and a VERY BRIGHT double rainbow appeared. We had to pull the just-bedded kids out of bed so they could see it, it was so awesome! God must have known that we needed a little reminding about his promise!!!

Rainbow


Addy and the nighttime rainbow (it soon started clouding back over)


Keith and the nighttime rainbow


Until next blog,
Jen

A Fun Little Survey!

Well, every morning my routine consist of breakfast and then drinking my coffee while I watch an episode of Little House. Today, I got the notion for this survey...

QUESTION: Which Little House on the Prairie character do you see yourself most like and why?

Now, if you aren't familiar enough with the Little House character line-up to pull it from your memory then, I must ask myself, why am I friends with you?? ha ha. But, seriously, if you need a little help, go to this site for a complete list of characters: (sorry, I can't get the link to work in my blog for some reason. But if you highlight this text and then copy and paste it to your address bar, it should work)

http://littlehouse.sphosting.com/cast.html

My answer: I think I'm most like Ma. I was going to say Laura, especially since I dressed up like her for Halloween once, but I don't think I'm as stubborn as her character was. I think I'm like Ma because I regard my family as top priority after God, I like to make homemade bread, and whenever I get an infected cut by a rusted barbed-wire fence I have hallucinations just like she did in Episode 38 "A Matter of Faith"

OK, your turn! Please respond!!

Until next blog,
Jen