Cassie's First-Year Pictures

The three older kids were with a family friend today, so I decided to try to get some pictures of Cassie for her one-year-old picture. These were done at about 11 am, so she squinted in most of them although we were in the shade. I might try again another day in the later afternoon, or then again, maybe not. I feel like I've accomplished a lot to have gotten these. :) Hope you enjoy looking at our sweet baby girl.

#1 She liked the hat. I didn't think to try it until we were nearly done; wish I'd done it sooner before I ran out of space on the memory card. She was so cute putting it on.

#1b Daddy is about to get out of his truck and come see her. She gets so excited when he's around.

#2--Daddy came home for lunch as we were finishing. She's watching him get out of his truck here. She loves her Daddy!

#3

#4

#5 Flirting with Daddy

#6 Look at me stand!

#7 Gnat attack

#8 Her shell-phone. I didn't tell her to do this, but I sure thought it was cute.

#9 I think this is my favorite.

#10

#11

#12

#13 All four animals were out there with us. Cinderella the cat stayed the closest.

Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears

This morning Matt was cooking some eggs and some of the butter must've gotten too hot on the griddle, making smoke travel to the upstairs. The fans sent it back down where it mingled with the dust floating around in the shafts of sunlight coming through the upper dormer window in the living room. Lissy was trying to catch the dust and then stopped and looked up at the hazy glow. She quietly asked me, "Is that God speaking to us?" I laughed and said, "No, it's just dust and smoke." :) I guess it looked like what she'd seen in movies.

Why Zacchaeus Climbed the Tree

At lunch today the kids and I were talking about the account of Zacchaeus since that was one of the stories from Bible School this week. Micah told me,
"And we sang a song about that: Zacchaeus was a weed wittle man. . ."

I was going to correct him, but kept laughing each time I tried. It was just too cute, because he was very serious as he sang it. I wonder if ol' Zacc was an ivy, or maybe kudzu? :)

Not Your Mamma's Bible School

This week our church is having Vacation Bible School. I'm an "as-needed" teacher, which means I drift back and forth between classes as help is needed. Today I filled in for a teacher who was gone, and had 20 second graders with one teenage assistant. I'm looking forward to being a drifter again for the rest of the week.

Maybe my memories of the years I attended are a little hazy, as it was 20+ years ago, but seems to me like things are a little, no a LOT, different.

I remember playing on the playground for recreation, probably playing kickball in the grassy lot beside the church, Red-Rover, etc. We pulled into the parking lot this year and saw two giant inflatables on the grassy lot: one for bouncing, the other a slide.

The theme this year (did we even have themes when I was little?) is Saddle Ridge Ranch, aka cowboy theme. The rooms and hallways are decorated in amazing detail. The missions room looks like a cave, with brown paper crumpled up and covering every inch of wallspace like a rock wall. One room has paper covering all four walls with panelling drawn on it to look like a lodge. The craft room is decorated like a barn. The kindergarten room has brown paper logs on the wall to look like a cabin. Cowboy boots, hats, saddles, ropes, bandannas are all throughout the church. A big inflatable horse stands in the sanctuary. Each room has a paper mantle and fireplace taped to the wall. I remember helping as a 9 or 10 year old with the decorating and it took a long time so it was probably kind of elaborate then too. But I remember using posterboard, scissors, markers, glue and tape.

The crafts now come in pre-assemble kits to match the theme. I remember stacks of construction paper, puddles of glue, cap-less markers, scattered glitter. The teachers had curriculum, but the work of assembling and creating were left to them.

Can you really have Bible School without watered down Kool-Aid and butter cookies that have the hole in the middle for sticking on your finger like a ring? We are this year. And I must say, I appreciate the change. The fellowship hall is Big Sky Grill for the week and we've been having some hefty snacks: yesterday was grilled cheese sandwiches, pickles, cereal trail mix, pudding, and choice of sweet tea or pink lemonade. Today was mini-pizzas, animal crackers, watermelon and cantaloupe wedges, and the drink choices. Those ladies and their grandkids who are helping them are working non-stop for 3 hours or more, but they are making our jobs as teachers so much easier.

We now have theme songs, videos, and choreographed motions (more like dances) for those songs. ("Say yeah-yeah yeah yeah yes to V buh-buh-B S.")I remember having Miss Edith the elderly organ player (who is still the organist, by the way) play a certain two chord combination that meant "stand up" and another for "sit down". I don't remember if we sang, but I don' t think it was taped music with a heavy drum beat and western twang. In my day, we lined up outside and filed in by class, and I hated it. It was hot, took forever to get lined up and march in and was pointless. We still march in by class, it's hot, doesn't take quite as long now that I'm older time goes by faster, and I still hate it. It's still pointless. But we do, as we did then, say the pledge to the American flag, Christian flag, and Bible. I like that. Hearing 100+ kids drawl out ,"I plehhhhdge alleeegience.....toooo thuh flaaag....uv thuh U-niiited States. . . ." was enough to make me get all teary this morning.

Now I know that just because things were done differently when I was a kid than they are now doesn't make them the right way but seeing VBS now is a little sad. We assume our children need a flashy, fun, entertaining, pre-fab, themed, loud, new, decorated,costly week's worth of Bible School. Oh, well. They'll have their memories 20 years from now, and I'll keep enjoying mine.

Walking and Leaping

Cassie stood and took 3 steps all on her own today! I was reading a book to the other kids on the sofa and Micah was laughing at Cassie. I looked up and saw her standing up grinning. She stayed that way for at least 10 seconds, which for a non-stander/non-walker is a long time. Then to my utter delight and amazement she took three wobbly steps forward! After she fell she did it again two more times. Our video camera is, as Matt commented the other night, ready for a trip to the beach or a party since the battery is dead, DVD is full with no more blank ones here, and the memory stick is full of pictures. Thankfully, my sweety surprised me with a new Mommy Phone recently (water resistant and tough for all the dropping it gets) that has a camcorder on it. My old phone was very basic and had no camera. So I did video her taking a few steps. I don't have memory card in my phone for pics and videos so I can't post it. Just take my word for it. It was adorable. :)

Still here

Wow. It's been nearly a month since I posted. It's a good thing I am doing it today. If I'd waited till Friday it'd have been exactly a month. :) Nearly is better than exactly.



Matt was off from school for 3 weeks and we had a great time having Daddy/Husband home at regular hours free to hang out with us and go places. Summer classes have started back, three of which are online classes, so back to the grind.



Our tomato plants have become tomato trees (and that's what Lissy and Micah call them . I don't bother to correct them, since it is a better description.) The cherry tomatoes have begun ripening and we all like picking and eating straight from the garden. Even Cassie likes them. Even the tomato worms like them. Doom on you, tomato worms. Matt read online that you can shine a blacklight on them at night and they'll sort of glow, so we have plans for a worm hunt soon. In the meantime we pick them off and feed the ants and the kids get a lesson in the food chain. :) Camie calls it "the show." Pretty morbid, huh?



Today we went to the library for their summer reading program storytime. As we pulled in I called Matt and asked if he wanted to take his lunchbreak with us. He was too busy today and couldn't. :( Oh well, I thought, we'll think of something else to do after storytime. I was thinking it was a magic show today, but after we got there and saw books about penguins on display I realized that must've been for the older kids yesterday. Hmm. Didn't I do this same thing last year. Yes, I did.
I was a little confused about why Mrs. Cindy the library lady was doing door prizes before the story, as the kids were getting very noisy. And my friend Missy said something to her kids about having to leave in a few minutes. "Why did she even bother to come if she's not staying for the story?" I wondered. After each of the 20 kids had gotten their number drawn out of the hat and received a prize Mrs. Cindy said something about "see you next week." Ohhhh. It started at ten o'clock, not ten thirty. The kids were disappointed and I was too. I asked Missy what she was doing today, thinking we'd go out to lunch together. She already had plans. That's okay. The kids and I had the list of books we'd read together since last week and we could cash in for valuable prizes like suckers. Oops. No, this year they have to read 9 before they get a prize, not 5 like last year. So we picked out a load of books to bring home and decided to go by and see my niece Courtney at her job and see if she'd like to go eat with us. Not today, thanks, already have plans. Sigh.



My dear mother came to my rescue. She was home and didn't mind us coming over and hanging out. Thanks mom. Didn't mean to make it sound like you were my last choice, I just hate to overwhelm you with four hungry kids too often, so I was trying to find somebody we'd not overwhelmed in a while. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and we actually got a visit!

Kids are in bed now and Matt awaits my help with one of his online classes using my superb typing skills.

And now, a literal translation from the strange language of Micah: He was setting the table the other day and said he was getting "every spoon for each body." :)