Equal photos for all

They say that the first baby gets a million pictures taken of it and as you have more kids, you have fewer pictures. I have not found this to be true. As a matter of fact, I have more pictures now than ever before! And the title of this post is not exactly true either. Joshua had lots of pictures because he was the first. Marian was a girl, so she got lots. Dan was deployed when Callie was 3 months old, so there are tons of pictures of her. Delaney has a million because she's cute. Okay, they are all cute. But Delaney was such a happy, content baby and I have actually enjoyed her babyhood, so I guess that's why she has so many pictures. That and thanks to the beauty and ease of digital cameras! I love it!

And here I shall share some of them with you!

We went to pick blueberries on Saturday morning. I know, what kind of mom sends her kid out in public wearing a onesie and shoes. Hey, its Arkansas and it was early Saturday morning. I think she slept in that green onesie too!

Delaney was fascinated by this concept of picking these things off the tree. She really got into it. Unfortunately, she did not differentiate between green ad blue and needed to be fully monitored at all times. She ate whatever she picked- no matter what color it was. Sometime she spit out the green ones.

Then she discovered my bucket. Oooh, free berreis, no picking required!

She started stuffing berries in her mouth as fast as I could pick them. She ate a ton.

And tomorrow we're going to go pick the last of the season's strawberries!

Good Ideas Gone Bad

I had looked up a bunch of fun craft and activity ideas online. I made a list of the stuff that looked like I would do it. Since I hear "I'm bored!" about 50 times a day, I wanted to be prepared. Unfortunately, everything requires time and energy from me and maybe I want to just sit on my bum and not have to entertain them. But I digress.... I meant to tell you about one of the activities we did.

Family Fun suggested using flour instead of sand. I thought this was brilliant. I could just open a bag of flour and it would be much easier than looking for sand to buy and flour should be easier to clean up out of the yard, right? I thought Monday morning was perfect to keep them busy and out of my hair, so I got out the plastic pool, tossed in 10 pounds of flour and all their sand toys. I will say that they had a great time. They jumped in and tossed flour everywhere and played quite well for a while. I got to sit on the porch and read a few chapters in relative peace. Marian thought it was lots of fun to bury her legs in flour, and Joshua liked to throw it in the air and watch it drift away. This resulted in flour all over his sisters, who were not as amused. Then someone started throwing flour on someone else (I think Joshua was trying to make flourballs, which do not work as well as snowballs.), and Delaney got nailed in the face with a handful of flour. Callie tried to wipe her face with a floury hand and got a great flour gotee, and ultimately, everyone was thoroughly coated with it. I had to strip them down before they went into the house. I shook out their clothes and nearly died in a flourstorm. It was a whiteout!

Once in the house, Marian and Callie took baths to get the flour out of their hair. Joshua and Delaney just leaned over and shook most of it out. Sooooo, playing in flour was a lot of fun for them, but it was much messier than I expected! And more clean up too.

Here are the pictures. They don't show the total coating of flour on their clothes. Callie's dress looked completely white. And Joshua's pants are actually a dark blue. I have no idea why he thinks it is funny, but every picture with Joshua in it has the same awful grimace on his face.

Kids and Pictures

I wanted to try to get some pictures of the kids all together this morning. It was Sunday, they were dressed and ready, and it had been a while since I had gotten a group shot. I bribed them with a chocolate snack if they would sit and cooperate. Let me mention though, neither Callie nor Marian is wearing the original dress she put on this morning. Both were wearing purple, until after breakfast, when they ended up wearing too much of it.

This was Joshua's version of a nice smile. Callie was cute, but silly. Delaney just wanted to run away.



Well, this is a little better.... I have no idea what Callie was doing! We took about 8 shots and most of them looked something like this. Or the older 3 looked good and all you could see of Delaney was the top of her head or something as she made a dash for the door.




This was our best shot. If this darn computer had a photo program, I would have done something about the awful red eye, but alas, I am stuck with no photo-shopping ability, and that stinks.



Once they had done enough, I put the camera away, and they begged me to take a shot of them doing "the Laaaaazy Eye". So here it is!








Yes folks, thems my kids and I love 'em!

I Ate a Bug Club

The local library has a reading program for the summer. The slogan this year is "Catch the Reading Bug" so its a bug-themed summer. Today they had a bug guy come and he brought lots of bugs- mostly dead and mounted, but some were for petting. There was a huge milipede, but he stopped letting kids hold it before Marian was close enough. Both girls pet it though. There were some giant cockroaches, but thank goodness my kids were happy to just look! There were some smaller things also- Joshua claimed they were roaches, but I think they were just beetles. Callie and Joshua had fun holding them.

The kids (except for Delaney) were good for the presentations, and when that part was over, they offered bug snacks. There were treats made with bugs for the kids to try. Joshua wanted nothing to do with them. Marian and Callie ate several chocolate and peanut butter covered crickets and Callie and Delaney chomped through a few cricket cookies. Marian refused to believe there was an insect in her candy.

Joshua is showing off his "roach" that his mother thinks is just a beetle. And yes, I did cut his hair like that. If he'd stop squirming, it would look better!

They were fascinated by the cockroaches, and liked to look, but not so interested in the touching. Mom was happy with that.

The librarian just asked Marian if she could take Marian's picture as she ate the chocolate covered cricket. This is her third one and she was upset by the idea that there was a cricket in her snack. She still ate it and pulled out a little leg and handed it to me.

The girls got stickers and certificates that said "I Ate a Bug Club", although neither will admit they might have.

I am suppose to be weeding the garden. I am very unenthusiastic about this idea. It is hot out there! And the weeds are so numerous. Plus I might realize I need to pick broccoli, and then I'd have to figure out what to DO with it! The peas have stopped producing, and the beans, tomatoes and squash are still growing, so I'm safe on that for now. Although I do have a spectacular green bean recipe. Mmmmmmm..... maybe I'll have to make it for dinner.....

Deep thoughts by me

Last night I was watching a lady talk about raising children up for success. I was surprised to hear her talk about a lot of the same values and ideas that I have. I guess I had assumed that non-LDS had very different values, and here was this woman who is MUCH stricter with her kids! I was amazed. She admitted to being a prude with pride. It was gratifying for me to see that I am not alone in trying to keep the world away and out of my home. She has not had a TV in her house in 7 years. Her kids do not go to slumber parties. Her 16 year old daughter is finally allowed to date, but only from an approved list, and the perspective date must ask permission from her parents. After all that, the date will be a supervised date!

I was nodding and agreeing with her thoughts until she went off on a few things that I do not agree with. And suddenly I began to think of her as too off the wall and began to discard her views. That's when it hit me. We are letting things get bad (on TV, in the media, in our movies and magazines, in the government) because we can't work together. The majority of the country may believe in God, and may want prayer in school, but all the denominations can't work together because we differ on religious details. And that's why we keep getting more and more liberal. I may think Harry Potter is fine; she may think it teaches evil witchcraft, but we can still agree that Cosmo magazine doesn't belong in front of our kids in the check-out line of the supermarket.

So, the bottom line for me is that I may not agree on all of her religious views, but I sure do agree with a lot of them. And I am really grateful to know that there are other people out there who are super-strict with their kids, who do not buy them cell phones or cars at graduation, who do not let them use the internet unsupervised, and who are not ashamed of it. It gives me more confidence to stand up and say, no, I am not going to let my children do that, and its not okay. Its nice to know I'm not alone.