Loving Life

Last week, Ana was so excited to finally turn double digits on her birthday. She kept commenting on how being 10 felt so old. She went to camp on her actual birthday, so we celebrated it a week late. She invited her best friend TJ over along with another boy from her class (yes, she's a tomboy). She wanted to make piranha cookies instead of a cake. Since Ana rhymes with piranha, she likes to call herself Ana the piranha and then threaten to eat everyone. Here's her big piranha cookie unfrosted. She then made little circle cookies, cut a triangle out for the mouth and stuck it on the back for a fin, so she could have smaller piranha cookies to share. The frosted and decorated version. Baby piranhas. Here we are singing to her. Blowing out 10 candles. A hot sauce packet eating contest with her best buddy. It seems so hard to believe that my first little girl is 10 years old! I fall more and more in love with this girl every day. She is so very athleti...

Ana was on the food committee for her class' Halloween party.  She volunteered to bring brownies, suckers, and candy monsters.  She was most excited about making candy monsters.  Here's a sampling of her work. I know it's hard to tell what everything is since they are all bunched up together, but they turned out super cute.  Each one is different.  She couldn't wait to go to school today to share them with her classmates. These are currently the best things ever. Caramel Pear Scones. My recipe made 10 of them.  There are currently nine left.  I want to soon make that eight.  If someone tries to help me not over-indulge in these lovely things, they may get their hand bitten off. Someone needs to teach David to put his school work away as he finishes it instead of moving to a clean spot on the table for the next subject.  This is the table at the end of his school day. This is baby's stuffed doggie and blankie. My mom has bought ea...

I suppose some of you don't care about running and find running pictures of my son redundant. (hey look, here he is running through a field again - big whoop!) If you are one of those people, I apologize. Sort of. I, however, love running pictures - especially when they include my favorite son. My mom and I went to another one of David's meets on Monday.  We had a good time watching for him and cheering him on.  This meet, he was the first boy on his team.  He's slowly improving his times and ability and really catching the running bug. *sigh of parental pleasure*  Since I'm not running right now, I'm living my running life through him. Once I'm done being pregnant and have recovered from labor, I aim to get back in running shape.  I told David he had better keep running through the winter if he wants to continue to be in better shape than me, because I'll be coming for him a few months.  We're not at all c...

Since I didn't do a good job yesterday in filling you all in about the girls' first day of school, here is a more complete overview along with pictures taken by my dear husband. As I said before, they were both a little nervous about going, probably Ana more than Abby.  But Abby takes her cues from her beloved big sister and was parroting most of the worries Ana was speaking. Heading out the door! Beginning to short walk to school Aaron walked with them the first day and he said by the time they got to the top of the hill leading down to school, they had found some friends and went happily scampering off to school. Ana is more introverted than Abby, so once she got home, she spent a couple of hours just quietly reading and getting some quiet and alone time.  Once that was out of the way, she told me quite happily about all the fun things they did and about her class, teacher, and classmates.  I think she will have a good year, though she's a bit sad that she onl...

Today is Ana's 9th birthday.  But before I get to the celebration of the day for her - here are two exciting (to me) pictures for you to enjoy.  This first one is from David's bling he won last night in the 5K Fun Run he ran in.  He's been training to get a new PR in the 5K - he's previously run two.  His previous best time was around 36:20ish.  Last night, he ran a speedy 26:48 - finishing 3rd in his age division and thereby making him the proud owner of this medal. The other exciting thing was a phone call I got from my in-laws this morning.  They were at a garage sale and called me to let me know there was a whole pile of maternity clothes for sale.  I quickly grabbed my shoes and wallet and zoomed on out.  I found these two bags stuffed full for only $28 - some single shirts cost more than that!  It made me happy! And now to the main event of the day - my birthday girl!  We started off the morning with an early morning mother-da...

If you think of it, I'd appreciate a prayer or two on behalf of Ana tomorrow (Monday) as she is having a minor little surgery done in the late morning.  This will hopefully help with her recurrent UTIs and help her get past getting so sick when she gets them.  She's pretty frightened by the whole surgery aspect, but it's just a day thing and we'll be home by late afternoon, should everything go as planned.  We're bringing along all sorts of comfort things from home to help ease the anxiety.  So any and all prayers for her are greatly appreciated!  Thanks!

I found this miniature soft marshmallows the other day (half the size of regular mini-marshmallows).  I'm a sucker for cute, small food so I got them!  The kids love them in their weekly art day treat of hot chocolate. I planted one seed packet of carrots in my garden.  I dug them up this past week and was surprised at how many I got!  I have frozen some of them and given some away and have used some fresh.  I still have a pile left in my fridge to attend to at some point soon. In Ana's Friday class, they are reading the American Girl book series and talking about them and doing crafts from each time period.  Ana is here modeling her hat she made.  She also learned how to properly make, serve, and drink tea.  She came home and dried some of our mint and then constructed her own reusable tea bag and happily brewed herself a cup of tea.  I love her enthusiasm for projects!

Ana always wants to have long hair.  I am fine with that and would be happy for her to have long hair.  The problem lies in her bad habit of chewing on her hair.  It's not noticable for awhile, but as her hair grows out, I realize that only the back is growing out while the sides remain chin length (or the length it takes to reach your mouth).  After awhile, it starts to look not so nice.  So I have to whack it off, much to her displeasure.  Here she is pre-haircut - notice the length differences. This is mostly done here.  I had to even up a bit here and there, and then once we washed it, it looked even cuter than the picture shows. It's actually a pretty cute length on her and she's no longer making this sad, grumpy face about it when she looks in the mirror. Abby said she wants to have her hair cut short too.  I'm not sure if I'm ready for that yet.  I only trimmed the ends on her hair the night I cut Ana's hair.  The last time I trim...

The girls are at it again with their creative play.  This time the theme is sports.  They realized that they had matching shirts (thanks to Grandpa Tom & Grandma Kay), and both had black shorts.  So they donned matching outfits and declared themselves football players.  Ana made them matching pink helmets too.  They went outside to practice and Ana came in to tell me that they are much improved from last year so perhaps they might win some games now.  I was glad to hear the report. They also set up a Nascar circuit in our house.  They put a number on their little wagon and took turns racing around like madwomen in the house with it.  Of course every good driver needs a good pit crew.  The one who wasn't racing at the time stood in the pit stop area (also marked with their car number) and waited until they needed their tires to get changed.  And I was happy to see that safety came first - they each wore helmets, gloves,...

I love how it doesn't take much to amuse my kids.  It's been hot and dry here for the past while, so the girls are really enjoying playing with their little dolls outside.  Add a little water and the day turns into great fun! They dug a small hole in the lawn and filled it with water to make a little swimming pool for the dolls.  At least part of my lawn is getting watered and looks a bit greener than the rest. Of course, playing in the mud makes one very dirty.  Abby usually is the dirtiest one of the two as she can't seem to keep her dirty hands off the rest of her body.  Ana isn't quite as bad with it.

In history this week, we are starting off learning of the fall of Rome and that will launch us into the Middle Ages for our study this year.  So we decided to pretend we were Roman soldiers for the night (not very authentically, Aaron might add).  I sent some scouts out ahead of us to find us a good eating spot for the night while I made hobo dinners.  I had also made some dark rye bread to be torn apart as we ate our supper (without silverware, because it wasn't invented yet!).  We did use plates to hold our food to help keep hungry/curious insects away.  The kids all brought out their weapons so that they would be ready to fight at a moment's notice.  Ana really gets into these things and stays in character the entire time. It was fully brought to my attention on day one of school that Ana's preferred learning style is completely different than David.  David easily fits into the traditional public school style of teaching, which makes it easy and com...

Yesterday, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by my to-do list.  But then something magical happened.  These two strangely dressed creatures arrived at my house and without speaking began to clean.  I had something like this happen last year.  It was amazing.  They wouldn't speak to me, but just went about silently cleaning.  I managed to convince them this year to stick around for a little snack as a thank you.  They even let me take their picture this year. Ana and Abby arrived right after the cleaning fairies left.  They said they had been outside playing.  They were surprised to see the house so clean.  But they were disappointed when they asked for a snack and I had to tell them that I gave their snack to the cleaning fairies.  The cleaning fairies visit definitely brightened up my day.  We also went to the city yesterday and stopped off at the library.  I got our first round of library books for school (which will sta...

Ana found this cool little caterpillar in the garden this morning. So she brought it inside so that she could draw it.  She was quite pleased with the results of her drawing.  The caterpillar was then released back to the wild. It's green bean season!  This huge pile is just from my little garden here at home.  I have a bigger patch at my mom's that I will go and pick tomorrow. We went wild raspberry picking again last night after realizing that batch #1 of my jam was not going to last more than a month or two.  So I needed another batch to make.  Yum! The girls love to fill up this little basket with things from the garden and have a picnic together outside. I received this invitation a little while later.  It was in an envelope that said "Do not open unless you are hungry."  I was hungry so I opened it up.  This is what I got. "You are invited to a pikneke.  Tell David to come too.  Midel squere of the driveway." I found Davi...