Art Work

Josiah's comic book:








Micah's art creation:



The story of Micah's creation:
First, you have to picture it without all of the light green stuff. The person is nana and she is stepping on the snake so that it wont eat the dark green bug. But the blue smudge to the left of nana is a whole bunch of bugs, but the green snake did not realize them! Oh, and the blue wiggle by nana's hand is a worm. Then, along came another snake to get the bugs that the dark green snake didn't realize and a whole bunch of bugs came to save the other bug from getting eaten by the dark green snake. The end.

Emilia's artwork from church on Sunday:

It's a Hard Knock Life

Earlier this morning...

Emilia: Whatcha doin', Mommy?

I'm turning on the air. What're YOU doing?

Emilia: (slightly exasperated) EVERYthin'.

It's just crazy what they expect a 2 year old to do these days.

Emilia: (sighs) Yeah.

(I'm surprised she didn't say, "Tell me about it.")

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This part of the post is called:

Workin' the system

Emilia has been using the potty occasionally. As a reward, we give her a few M&M's. (This is relevant later in the story.)

At grandma's on Friday Emilia had eaten all of her lunch except for her carrots and broccoli. She asked for dessert. I told her she had to eat her vegetables first. She sat at the table and messed around for awhile.

Meanwhile, the rest of us finished our lunches and then grandma pulled out the brownies. For those of you who don't know, my grandma makes THE. BEST. BROWNIES. I've tried to make her recipe and can't. My grandma ALWAYS has some of her brownies in the freezer, and really, they are best frozen, although fresh from the oven is also quite tasty and even just room temp. I guess they're just delicious however you eat them, but we all prefer them frozen. So anyway...grandma pulls out the brownie container (which has always been the same container, we all know what's in it, including Emilia who has been known to throw her hands in the air and scream "CHOCK IT!" when she sees it. But back to Friday...).

Emilia: "'Ssert?"

No, sweetie, you've got to eat your vegetables.

(my grandma also had M&Ms on Friday.)

Emilia: (hopefully) Nem-nem's?

Not until you eat your vegetables.

Emilia paused for about half-a-second.

Emilia: I need to go potty.

You need to use the potty? (In the past 4 months she has ASKED to use the potty ONCE. She typically tells us after she's taken care of business)

Emilia: NEED TO GO POTTY!

Ok, let's go.

I take her to the potty and take off her diaper, which has clearly been peed in recently. I sit the manipulator Emilia on the potty. She S-Q-U-E-E-Z-E-S a few little drops out, throws her hands in the air and screams,

"NEM-NEM'S!!!!!!!!!!!"

I would also like to note, that even with working the system like this, and in spite of getting some M&Ms as reward, she still ate her vegetables so that she could have a brownie for dessert. My grandma's bownies are just that good.

Stories from the Week

Last Friday was our first trip up to Dollywood for the year. With this, comes standing in line to renew our season passes. While waiting, there was a lady behind us that began talking to the boys. She asked them their names, about Micah's hair and then she commented on Josiah's eyes.

"You have beautiful eyes," she said. "You're going to be a real lady killer when you get older. Those eyes of yours will attract all the girls."

Josiah blushed and changed the subject.

Later on that day, the boys went to ride the VeggieTales roller coaster. Standing in line behind them were two teenage girls. One of the girls was talking to the boys. After they got off the ride, Josiah was telling me about their conversation.

"She was talking to me, but I kept my face away."

Why did you do that?

"Well, you know what that lady said earlier...about how I would attract with my eyes? And I didn't want to attract."

Oooh, no. We wouldn't want that, would we?

"No. So I kept my face away. But I think I might have attracted some because I looked before I knew."

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At every mealtime after we pray I have the boys say something they are thankful for. Try as I may to get them to think about the intangible things to be thankful for, they usually say some item of food on their plate. What should I expect? They are boys, afterall. Emilia has started saying things she's thankful for, too, though it's mostly been repeating something one of the boys said. But on Thursday (or was it Wednesday?) she came up with her own thing to be thankful for! And it was so cute. She had talked on the phone to my cousin Emily earlier in the day and when it was time for her to say something she was thankful for she put both hands up in the air and said,

"I TALK EMMY!!"

Yesterday at grandma's she was thankful,

"I PLAY GARAGE!" (my grandma's garage is the playroom)

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I've told you before about how Micah comes up with ways of describing things that are so unique and totally him that they make me smile, right? At Dollywood last week I played one of those carnival-type games and won a basketball for the boys. They agreed on the Lady Vols basketball (YAY!!) but as we walked away, Micah said,

"I was really hoping we'd get the pretzel ball."

(aka the North Carolina ball. It's blue, you know.)

Also, last week Micah fell while riding his bike in the yard. I asked him what happened and he said,

"Well, I just got tired of riding my bike in the plain place (aka the driveway), so I tried riding through the yard, but then I fell."

So Far, So Good

Much to our dismay, last year's garden a big ole failure. Something shredded (yes, shredded) all of our corn, squash vine borers destroyed our zucchini, squash and pumpkins, our peppers never grew, something kept stealing our tomatoes just before they were ripe, birds got to our blueberries before we did, something (we suspect chipmunks) ate our potatoes, squirrels dug up our lettuce, so it never grew past sprouts...oh wait--our cucumbers did great!! We're hoping for a better year this year. We put up a fence around the garden to keep all of those pesky "somethings" out and we will be spraying/sprinkling some sort of something our plants to keep the bugs off. Last year was just so frustrating!

This year will be better. So far, so good!

Last year we got maybe a total of 8 strawberries (our plants were small). But this year we already have 8! I picked these beautiful berries today.



Yummmmm.



Can you believe this sweet thing is already/almost/only 3 months old?



She's lost all of her newbornness, not that she ever had much to lose. :) She's grown into an adorably sweet baby. She LOVES to be talked to and pretty much smiles all the time. Every now and then, just to keep me on my toes, she cries. I keep telling the kids that babies do that sometimes. They think that's questionable since she's happy so much of the time. And you know what, that's just fine with me. They can discover the truth when they have kids of their own. And I hope Micah, especially, has one that cries as much as he does did.

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Happy Friday!

This Little Girl

Guess what my little girl is outside doing even as I type this...



digging for worms.



She just loves those squirmy, squishy little things to death.



Literally.

Holy Birthday, Batman!

We had Micah's birthday party today. He requested a Batman birthday party, so Batman it was. Mostly the kids just ran around and played, and since that's really the point of the party, I didn't worry about getting them to do any "activities."

I did make my first attempt at using fondant on a cake. I have mixed feelings about it. While I have no doubt it simplified making the Batman signal, it was quite sticky. I had issues getting it on the cake, because when I rolled it up to put on the cake, some of it stuck together which resulted in holes on the cake. Not pretty. I patched them as best I could, but once the fondant is on, there isn't much that can be done to fix it. I did make my own fondant, and maybe all of my problems started there (especially since I'd never done it before). But I'm a make-it-from-scratch kind of girl, so that's always what I try first. Anyway...here a picture of the batman cake and some others from his party.


I love this next picture. Most of the time Micah seems so big to me, but look at him here--he's still my little boy. I'm loving the reminder that 5 really isn't so old afterall. :)