Reunion time!!

Whoopee for me! We are leaving in the next hour for our family reunion. And I ant talking about no boring old fogie family reunion! I'm talking about 48 adults and 38 kids, mostly under the age of 6! I'm talking about fun! And I'm sweating like a hog from hauling stuff out to the van in the muggy icky heat. I'm waiting on mom right now.

We'll drive to Dan and Miranda's tonight and tomorrow we'll head for Colorado. Then we will have 3 fun filled days with my family, before driving back here. I probably will not have any pictures till next week, and I may not have computer access.

This morning, rather than packing like I ought to have been, I was off looking at houses. Dan and I (Mostly I!) are looking at little investment rentals and it is SO much fun! Do you consider the more expensive one that will rent for more and is worth more? Or do you go for the fixer-upper that will be worth more after a lot of sweat equity? Is a ready-to-rent worth paying more for in the long run? A nicer neighborhood will get better renters, but it also is a little more costly. So many choices, so much fun. And then the big question.... do we really have the money to do this?! Hee hee hee, maybe not, but its a good time!

And now I am outta here! I'll keep you posted..... I always do!

Marian's Turn

A funny thing happened today. As I was carting the girls through Walmart, Marian asked me "When I grow up, will I be a woman or a mom?" She does ask odd things, and we had a discussion of what it means to be a woman vs. what it means to be a mom. I thought it went well. Then she says "When I get old, I do not want to be ugly!"

Interesting. When did she fixate on looks? I mumbled something about growing up and looks not being important. She said, loudly, "When I'm old, I do not want to be ugly like her!" and she pointed to an older lady in the cereal aisle. I was quite embarassed and I didn't really know how to spin that to sound okay to someone who did not know this kid!

She does have her sweet moments though. I gave her a horse book today and she read it over and over. Its so cute when she "reads" aloud. She totally can't read, but she makes up the story and its too cute.

Here is my little reader. She loves the pictures.... and she really loves horses.

You talking to me?

Yeah, I'm cute... and bashful.

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!