Wait a Minute, How many Children Do I Have?

This week, we are spending time in Tucson visiting Grandpa (Pop). We have all kinds of activities planned while we are here. Today after church, we decided to go on a family outing to the cemetery to visit my mom's grave site. We spent 5 minutes repeatedly telling children to get their shoes on. The older children ran outside to get in the car. I collected Katy and took her outside. Pop made his way out and we locked up the house. I buckled Katy into her carseat, and we finally backed out of the driveway and went on our way. It's always quite a production to get 7 people moving in the same direction.

Well, ten minutes later someone (I think it was Matthew) said, "Where's Andrew?"

"What!?!?" I turned around to look at the empty carseat at the back of the van. Then I looked again. Sure enough, Andrew was not anywhere in the car.

Needless to say, Kevin turned the car around and raced back to Pop's house. On the way back, we called a neighbor and asked him to go over to check on Andrew and to calm him down. I was pretty upset thinking how terrified he must be getting left behind like that.

When we finally got back to the house, Andrew was in good spirits chattering away to the neighbor. While I had been trying to herd everyone else out the front door, he'd gone to change his clothes. He'd unlocked the front door, saw that we had gone, and then went back inside to see if he could get on the laptop and play computer games. He said he started to get "a little bit sad, but not too much."


Silly Boy. At least he wasn't scared, even if the rest of us were.

And hey, we made it through 9 years of parenthood without ever forgetting one of our children. That's not so bad, right?

ER Visit

Well, Katy had her first ER visit today. Nobody knows how it happened, but she was playing outside with all the other kids, and she managed to dislocate her elbow. The ER doctor popped it back into place and gave her a sling. It's about 5 sizes too big.


We were pretty surprised with how well she kept that sling on. Her elbow must have been really hurting. She wouldn't move her arm at all--not even to bring her thumb to her mouth. And if you've spent any time at all around this girl, you would know that her thumb is always in her mouth. Poor girl. Hopefully it will be back to normal in the morning.

Random Thoughts

Matthew: When people make Swiss Cheese, what do you think they put in it to make it so yucky?


Maggie: Just one more chapter?? It's such a good book!


Andrew: This dinner is crummy!


Katy (in a soft, breathy voice): Mom-ee, Mom-ee, Mom-ee. Ball!

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First Birthday

Katie (Katy/Kathryn--we still haven't cleared up that debate yet) turned 1 a few weeks ago. Here are some pics of her with the traditional 1st Birthday Cupcake. (Actually the Traditional Cupcake would have chocolate frosting on it, but I was lazy and just picked up a six-pack of cupcakes from Publix. Chocolate frosting wasn't an available option.)


Unfortunately for Katie, she is a 4th child. And we don't need any more baby toys in our house. So she only got one present. It was from Grandpa (thanks Pop!)


But it was a good present.


She loves it.


If you can't tell, it's a cell phone, and Katie loves all things with buttons.


And so does Andrew. We routinely have to take her toy away from him so she can play with it.

Jumping on the Trampoline

Today I am going through all the pictures we've taken recently. Here are some that I especially enjoyed taking.

Pictures from Matthew

As I mentioned in my last post, Matthew is our budding photographer. He loves to grab the camera and take pictures. Here are some that her took recently.

He's usually the first person Katie sees in the morning.


She's always happy to play with her big brother.



Goofing off on top of Maggie's bunk bed...




And finally, one of those way-too-close self portraits.

The Zoo (again)

We went to the zoo a couple of weeks ago. Again. We have a zoo membership, so going to the zoo is not as exciting as it used to be. Especially not in the middle of summertime heat. But we went with friends, which is always fun. And we saw some of the animals that we don't normally see.

The kangaroos were out and hopping around. That was new. I've never seen them do anything more than lie under palmetto bushes.


I handed the camera off to Matthew several times during the morning. He is an aspiring photographer. I'm not quite sure what he saw in these emus.


But perhaps it's best not to probe the depths of a six-year-old's mind.


We had a treat when we found out that the butterfly exhibit was back up. I've missed those butterflies.


They gazed at the cocoons for a few minutes.

Does anyone know the difference between a cocoon and a chrysalis?

Maggie tried to coax a butterfly onto her finger, but it earned her a scolding from a zookeeper.


Another highlight of the day was the aviary. Andrew spent his life savings buying nectar cups and seed sticks for everyone.



Matthew got a hold of the camera again, in an effort to photograph the bats.


I can see his photography skills really taking off once he grows a foot or two.

Finally, after we wore ourselves out at the play area (at least they wore me out), the kids begged me to take a picture on the gopher tortoise.

Tabletops

I know I haven't been posting much. Well, not at all lately. We're still here. We started up our new school year last week. During our 3 week break Katie learned to climb tables.



I tried removing all those tempting mugs with pencils, but she still loves the table.


School with a toddler is definitely more challenging than school with a sweet little newborn. My arms are getting tired of dragging her off the table. And scooping her off the floor when she falls off the table. Hopefully, the novelty of tabletops will wear off soon.

Bread Pudding (Pioneer Recipe)

On Saturday, we had the missionaries over for dinner, and I decided to make some rolls to go along with our dinner. I had some bread mix that has been sitting in my pantry forever, which I felt really needed to be used up. They didn't turn out very well, but luckily, even not-very-good bread tastes okay if it's fresh, and missionaries don't have very discriminating tastes.

Yesterday, I looked at that leftover bread (which was now hard-as-a-rock and not-at-all-good), and I thought about bread pudding. I pulled out a couple of cookbooks and chose a recipe for which I had all the ingredients. It billed itself as a pioneer recipe. Kevin was dubious. "One-and-a-half cups of milk and only a half cup of bread crumbs? How is that going to work? And that sauce? Three cups of water with with a cup of sugar? It sounds like Kool-Aid!"

I shrugged my shoulders and continued making my pudding. Who knows? It might turn out okay.

When it came out of the oven, it looked like runny oatmeal. And it tasted like stale bread. With sugar water poured over the top.

Kevin just shook his head and said, "I feel sorry for the pioneers."

Swimming Pool

Bonnie finally talked me into letting her get a pool for the kids. I realized that surviving summertime in FL means you need to have something outside to occupy the kids, and swimming in a pool is just about all you can do outside this time of year. Katy sure does enjoy it. I think she could probably swim without the floaty if we let her try.

Kid Pictures

Here are some pictures that I have taken over the last few months.

Sword-fight

Boy with Sword

Oh! You caught me!

Argh, Matey.

You can pick me up now, Mommy

She's a Walkin'

Doing the Dishes

It's so hard to find good help these days...