PLAYING IN THE CRIB

As you saw in the previous post, I'm trying out Cecily in the crib. At 5 1/2 months, she still seems comfy and content in the cradle in my room, but I'm trying to break her into the crib because she'll be outgrowing that cradle anytime. I laid her in here briefly the other day and Amelia started piling some goodies in with her. Putting in an old, Cabbage Patch doll that used to be mine.
A baby blanket.

A monkey puppet. Looks like Cecily is enjoying this just fine.

IN THE CRIB

She's 5 months and growing reddish, fuzzy hair all over her head.

SPACE PAJAMAS

In the process of getting stored clothes out of boxes, I came up with some new pajamas for Ben and Cal to wear. They put them on and we realized they were both space pajamas. They were so thrilled. I took a really great picture of them in the kitchen and then accidently deleted it. Argh!! I'll still post these other ones I took. We went in their room and shut off the lights, because I told them I thought their pajamas might have some parts that glow in the dark. Sure enough, both pairs had some glowing parts. Oh my. Such excitement. I took the below picture in the dark in their room. I couldn't actually see them, I just aimed the camera in their direction and then the flash went off, lighting them up and we could view them on the digital camera. That gave us an idea for a game. Ben would make a face and I would aim the camera in his direction, unable to actually see him and snap a picture. Then we'd view it and be surprised to see whatever face he was making.
Cal joined the fun.

MY FAVORITE NEW DRESS

I would love to sew her several dresses in different prints of this pattern. I just love it. I did not sew this myself. It's a Hanna Andersson that I thrifted. I love the white piping and casual, shirtdress style.Thick, white, cotton tights and blue mary janes. I really enjoy clothing.

CLOTHING, CLOTHING EVERYWHERE!!!

This week was the big sorting, trying on and purchasing of clothing for the season week. In recent years, I have come to devote a week to this big task, once in the spring and once in the fall. A couple of my friends run a consignment sale for children's clothing that comes once at spring and once at fall. I take the opportunity to pull all of my clothing storage boxes out of the attic and begin the sorting. I find all of the clothes and shoes that seem like they will be suitable for each child for the season ahead. Next, I try them all on to decide on the ones that will definitely work. Then, I write a list of all the things that each child will need in light of what I discovered from the previous process. I shopped at the sale on Thursday, trying to get much of the things on the list. Friday, I tried on the new items, assessed how they suited and worked through putting them all away. Today, Saturday, I went back to the sale for 1/2 price day and got several items more to complete the process. All done! A huge project!

The attic boxes

Stacks of new clothes, ready to be put away.
I had a lot of fun picking out all of Millie's little "frocks" for the summer. She's the first one to enjoy trying them all on, too! :-)

CECILY READING "SIR CEDRIC"

:-)

ARMOURED FUN (A POST BY SAMUEL)

We have a dry erase board on which we write all our events and things to do. Well, visiting a tank monument for the 11th Armoured Infantry Division had been on it for months! So dad finally decided to get it out of the way. And here are a couple of snapshots we took.First dad took one of all of us. It was pretty cold, and the tank dwarfed our green Suburban!

The tank was so big we all could sit under it. That ol' tank had a gun as long as a sailing yacht's mast.

Ben and Calvin! Not a bad pose.

Will and I lay on the steel hulk's wheels and smiled. How dad took such a great picture I do not know.

Here we are saluting the 11th armoured infantry division. It's a relief to have it off our board!

SUNDAY EVENING, GOOD WEATHER

We were scheduled to have a teaching time and a psalm sing on Sunday night at church. We saw that the weather forcast was unusually fair, however, and made a last-minute switch. We invited everyone over to our house to eat some snacks and play some ultimate frisbee on the field adjoining our property. It didn't exactly go that way, in that we didn't play ultimate frisbee, but we had some good outdoor fun and fresh air conversation. We had a large number of sick people and some traveling so the group that showed up were not adequate to play ultimate frisbee. Since there were so many children, the men all spent some time throwing balls and frisbees with them. They played Dodge Ball and then put little ones on their shoulders and chased each other around. I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures of any of that! I was hanging out with the other two women and the babies and toddlers. I ended up with a few pictures of these smallest church members. Here is Amelia and Katrina, who are very close in age. They nicely shared this plate of snacks, especially the popcorn.Katrina was a great picture-taker. She looked right at me, gave me this smile and said "cheese."
Amelia was being a little too persistent in sharing the popcorn. Katrina was done with that.

Samuel liked this funny picture of him eating his popcorn.

Megan Oldland pushing little brother, Jonathan down the hill.

Cutie-pie Jonathan.

The little girls, swinging.

Trading swings.

Katrina. So cute.

The babies socializing with the mommies.

Amelia is thinking she would really like some of Will's lemonade.

That's it. Not too exciting. I hope you enjoyed your Sunday evening, wherever you were!

MY OWN BIRTHDAY

Well, it's been a busy week and there hasn't been much time to put things on here to share. The boys are taking assessment testing to fulfill state requirements for homeschoolers. It takes three days and tomorrow is day 3. A lot of Christian homeschooling families do the testing together, so it's actually quite fun and the boys really look forward to it. But it makes for a busy week and I actually downloaded the following pictures over the course of a couple of days.

My own 33rd birthday was last Sunday and Peter took a whole bunch of pictures. This first one is my sweet son making spaghetti for me for my birthday dinner. Peter arranged to take me out to dinner for my birthday, so we didn't plan a home birthday dinner. We hadn't considered that the kids would feel left out. On the day of my birthday they asked about my dinner and were stunned to find out that we weren't having one. They really wanted to cook a meal for me. It was Sunday and filled with church activities with no time to plan anything. We came up with pulling some leftover meatballs from Calvin's birthday out of the freezer and letting the boys fix up some spaghetti with that. It meant a lot that they so much wanted to do it themselves and to celebrate. They've always really been too young and I'm very used to not really doing anything. I guess we're getting to a new stage of life.

We had a bottle of sparkling cider that had been waiting for a special occasion.
A dinner, thanks to my kids!
Enjoying the feast.

Spaghetti's always good for a big mess.

Cleaning up the mess.

Just a picture Peter took before I opened gifts.

My mother-in-law got me two very large crocheted doilies to use in my house. Lovely idea.

My sister-in-law made me a very pretty card and then sent me some homemade cards to use for myself.

This bag was a gift that my mom sent. She was very organized to get that in the mail when she was on vacation and then laid up after surgery!

My dear sister, JoAnn, is a gem and sent me Joy of Cooking, which I was really wanting, as well as a copy of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South.

These were the gifts from my mom, some new pajamas and a mighty, marvelous, magnificent....cast iron dutch oven!!!

Samuel made me a beautiful card with a poem.

Will's card.

A birthday kiss. What a great gift.

Ben's card. :-)

And last, but not least, Peter and the boys got me a new, larger crockpot for my gift. Hurray! I am so blessed!!!!