Father's Day Outing

We spent yesterday at the beach!  It was great!!!! However, I have no pictures for you of the sand, sun, and water.  I was too busy playing.  (and counting to make sure all 4 boys were still above water.  seriously, they are little fish!)  After we swam and picnicked we headed for the cool shade of the woods.  

The hike was wonderful.  The boys have been on this trail before but not this year yet.  They really enjoyed it and Little Owl was seeing things as if for the first time.

Below, they are looking over a deep ledge.  Over the rail and way down many,

 many rocky steps is........

this waterfall.  

We hiked for awhile looking at all the different kinds of moss and fungi.  I especially liked looking at all the tree roots that are exposed.

Owl still is at that stage of the super funny grin.  Gotta love it! 

At the end of the trail we were greeted by this.  Wouldn't that be fun?

A storm, a Break, and a Sunset

Another stormy day.  In more ways than one.  I've been more aware lately of the challenges that are mingled in with the joys of my job.  I LOVE my job.  I am so thankful to be the mama to these beautiful babes.  I am so glad to be home with them all day.  But....that doesn't mean that every moment every day is smooth sailing.  Sometimes it's a bit stormy.  And I totally admit that much of the storminess is simply a result of me being selfish or tired.  I sometimes turn into a little black stormcloud when things get overwhelming to me.  Thankfully, I am getting much better at relying on God's guidance in the little things in my life and the storms are fewer and less volatile than before.  (it's true, right J?)

Anyway....today the weather was humid and the clouds built all morning.  We spent the time planting the morning glories around the sunflowers in our playhouse.  Then there was the discovery of two sharp rocks in the "quarry". (the quarry is the hole the boys have excavated in the gravel driveway in their search for fossils and interesting rocks.)   They quickly found some large sticks and began whittling.  So fun!

All the while I kept my eye on these little ones, I faced a challenge with Hen.  He is growing and teething and my milk is waning and all of those things leave one unhappy little guy.  And I am getting really tired of the shirt pulling, biting, arching back, and screaming that ensues when he is tired and frustrated that the milk isn't there.  (i don't know why there isn't milk?  I'm not pregnant though, don't worry. )  Anyway...the end of the story is that he finally fell asleep and I set him down with his favorite blanket only to have him wake up again.  Oi.  This happens often lately and it tires me out a bit.  Today, I just took a deep breath, said a prayer,  and tried again and he settled down soon after.  Then....I got a few minutes with the boys watching this storm roll in.
They whittled and I had a few moments, my only time to myself all day, to wander around the garden and see this.  Ah, my hydrangea is blooming.  And the feverfew.  I love feverfew.  It's so old fashioned looking.

I also spied that the black raspberries are starting to ripen.  These two little beauties, those five minutes of quiet wandering helped so much.  We settled in for the afternoon with some baking, reading, a David Attenbourough film, and making a nice dinner for Papa.  And then this.....

This sunset was the view from the kitchen window tonight.  All the while this was happening out the northside of the house, the southside had beautiful blue lightening.  Wow.  

Practice

Cricket, enjoying just being by Papa

showing Papa the marbles they were given at the Market today..... 

thanks marble man  :)

Hen loves being on the blanket where everyone is sitting.  It's like having his own personal jungle gym....

Badger catching the ball.  Wow.  This boy LOVES baseball.

This can be supper, right?

The boys enjoying a parfait of homemade granola, berries and plain yogurt.  yum!

It's been raining, and raining, and raining.  And raining.  The mancubs are restless.  We've been doing a lot of drawing.  Lots of playing games.  Here are a few of the creative endeavors that have kept us busy for the past few gloomy days. 

This is Badger's game that he made.  It's a version of Battleship.  He read about Battleship in a Calvin and Hobbes comic.  (we've had to hide that book for now..... it's not a children's book!)  Anyway, he must've liked the idea of the game, because one day about two weeks ago he drew his first game out and taught Cricket how to play.  They will sit and do this for an hour or more!  Playing in different rooms than each other so there is no peaking at each other's board.  :)

Badger and Cricket have also made magazines for each other.  Lego magazines of course.  Here's the one Cricket made.  The top left hand corner is a picture of an Ocean Lego Set.  (see the writing says..."includes first Lego coral"...Cricket doesn't see why they haven't designed Coral yet as he thinks it is super important.  He wants to be a scuba diver some day.)

Also in Cricket's magazine...the bottom left hand page is a Star Wars set.  The writing says "Droids are attacking the Jedi City".  And the two sets on the right page are Space sets.  See the earth on the bottom picture?

Badger made a magazine too.  His writing is really amazing to me.  (Cricket's is too!)  It's just that I haven't really formally taught him how to write anything.  I mean, once I taught him what an apostrophe was, but that is really the extent of it.  I occasionally get asked how to spell something, but mostly he "looks up" how to spell words from a book.  (not the dictionary, just any book that he thinks might have the word he's looking for)  And he LOVES to write!  Almost as much as he loves to read.  I'm so glad about this. :)  And I'm soooo glad to be able to have him learn at home.   

I also wanted to add that my Little Owl has been playing and pretending up a storm lately.  His favorite thing to play is "adventure".  This involves pretending that the Learning Tower is an airplane and recruiting someone (mama, or a brother, sometimes Millie) to be copilot.  Then he flies to a different country, sees the different animals and then flies off to somewhere else.  His top two faves to visit are Australia (kangaroos), and the Amazon River. (to see the green anaconda of course.)  It's super fun to see his imagination "take off" like this!  

That's all for now.

Love, 

Reba

ps. sorry about the weirdness with the font size.  I apparently can't fix it easily and it doesn't seem worth the time.  i hope you understand.

Menu for the Week

Post #100 and it's a menu.  Ha.  That's how much my job of being a mama involves feeding this crew of little men.  :)

M - Eggs & Toast & Grapes

Impromptu out for sandwiches! (we had a baseball glove to buy today!)

Pasta w/marinara and Organic chicken sausage, spring onion & parmesan biscuits

T - Soaked oats breakfast cake, fresh blueberries

PB & J, fresh veggies and apple slices

Sloppy Joes (yes indeed!), salad from the garden

W - Waffles with berries & cream

BLTs (we have lots of lettuce right now)

Quiche (onions from the garden and cheddar and ??), salad, and banana bread

Th - Soaked oatmeal w/ raisins and nuts

Hummus, feta, tomato, cukes and pita, fresh fruit

Tuna melts, fresh veggies/salad

F -  Eggs in a nest, fresh fruit

Pigs in a blanket, carrots and red peppers

Roasted lemon chicken, mashed potatoes, veggie of some sort

S - Homemade whole wheat monkey bread, fresh fruit

Black bean & rice burritos with fixin's

Chicken artichoke & spinach calzones with marinara for dipping

S - Granola & yogurt & berries/bananas

Leftovers

White chicken chili (crockpot recipe), homemade beer bread

I also have a rather loosey goosey plan of making homemade whole wheat graham crackers, and whole wheat snickerdoodles.    And yes, the weeknight meals are a bit "sandwichey" but that's because it's teeball season and we have practice tuesday, wednesday, and thursday!  Oi!  The eldest boy got his new glove today and he is sooo keen on it.  We even bought a real aluminum bat and ball which was much needed because the plastic one is falling apart from much use.  I tried my hardest to convince J to get the padded foam bat, but it didn't work.  I have an irrational fear of someone becoming injured from an unintentional hard swing.  eek!  *Deep breath.*

Anyway........that's the plan for the week.  I've been realizing more and more how crazy, interrupted, and spontaneous life is these days.  I'm trying to just go with the flow a bit more and not worry about what the plan is so much.  Like Jesus said, "each day has enough trouble of it's own..."  I'm glad He knows how it is, so I don't need to worry.  :)  

Check in soon for some tee ball pics!

Getting Back to Normal...

We spent the weekend joyfully doing ordinary things....like filling the bird feeders.  Feeding the chickens.  Watching the baby squirrels that come to our garden for birdseed.  Look at this little fella.... can  you tell how little he is? (He's just big enough to fit in the palm of my hand. ) Here's the Mama squirrel.  She thinks the picnic table is a fine spot for perching and taking a look around.

Other ordinary wonderfulness included......

reading books.....

snuggling.....

eating homemade strawberry shortcake!  Ooooooooo, you should see the strawberry patches this year!  Plentiful indeed.  But not enough for a family of 6 to have some left for freezing.  Perhaps we'll have to go picking somewhere.....

And all of these ordinary, everyday things produced lots of this.....

Aaaah, to be getting back to normal....whatever that is.  :)

Hen's New Love...

The Learning Tower.  :)

Be still my heart.