Saturday Fun

I was happy to discover this past Saturday that Wonderscope, a local children's museum we've heard great things about, was taking part in a Smithsonian-sponsored event called Museum Day. What that meant for us was FREE admission into the museum for the day!

One of the things I just absolutely love about my kids is that all four of them are equally genuinely enthusiastic about doing things like this. No one mopes around wishing they could be somewhere else, no one tries to hurry anyone else through the attractions. Whether 12 or 3, they all just PLAY and suck up every minute with joy! So we were there for probably 4 hours, skipping right through lunch (which no one seemed to notice but turned out to be a good negotiating tool for me when I decided it was time to head out...I'm getting clever at this parenting thing).

Saturday night was also a whole lotta fun for the cajun family. Literally around the corner from our block of the neighborhood was quite an unusual fundraiser for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Food, games, and activities the whole family enjoyed. There are not too many places a family of 6 can go to spend a great evening for a mere $5 plus minimal $ for food and drink--ALL of which goes to a fantastic cause. So there will be some photos to come soon of our Saturday night fun also!

But first things first, here is an assortment of pix from the Wonderscope museum...

In Case Someone Out There Needs a Reason to Smile...

 

From my desk, this is what I could see. My sweet boy loves his 3-D movie glasses.

And yes, I did ask for his consent before posting this pic. ;)

Alaire Shares Her Latest Tricks

On this blog in recent weeks and months you've seen Alaire display her extreme slip-n-sliding, her swimming, and her 2-wheel bicycle riding. Now I bring you all the latest and greatest in hula-hooping techniques! Heehee... gotta love this little girly! :)

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Garden Progress--1 Month In

We're new to composting, and it's been years since we've gardened at all. So there's bound to be a learning curve, right? Once our little sprouts began making their leaves, we realized we were growing a whole lot of something we didn't intentionally plant. We figured the leaves belonged to either cucumber plants or cantaloupe plants, both of which we ate plenty of over the summer and composted the remains. That was a LOT of cantaloupe seeds thrown into the composting bins! So we pulled that stuff up to give half a chance to the things we do wish to grow, and now at one month in, our stuff seems to be growing nicely.

 

 

This is what we had tons of that needed to be weeded out. Oops!

 

beets

carrots

various lettuce

basil

Ramsey's 12th Birthday

Every birthday finds me more and more in disbelief over how quickly a year in a child's life slips by. On this day in 1997 I was preparing for my discharge from the hospital with my very first, brand new, 2-day-old, 7-pound baby girl. To say she has always been quite a little character is so very true as anyone who knows her can attest! She brings joy and sunshine with her wherever she goes, and she has the purest, gentlest soul-- so filled with love and compassion. Always one to crack us up into laughter, she herself can also be heard all the time loudly laughing hysterically. Completely loving and still so irresistably love-ABLE. Such an amazing and beautiful girl, still so childlike in so many ways, and yet also growing into such a very mature little young adult. We just could not be any prouder of our Ramsey.











Little group shot of all of them which I like to do on each ot their birthdays.


And moving to Kansas, she has met Ali, our just-turned-12-herself neighbor who is also such a funny little one! Perfect pair, these two! Here they are about 7:15 am the morning of Ram's birthday. I thought I'd never get a "serious" picture of the two of them. :)













Since we didn't do the whole birthday party thing (being so new here and all), we tried to make Ramsey's day a special one ON her actual special day. It was a little tricky because they have School of Religion on Wednesday evenings. We have a few bags of very precious Gulf shrimp that Pop hauled over here from Louisiana when we moved. We fried some up for a really yummy birthday dinner. We savored every bite... then had to rush out to bring the girls to their class. Afterwards we came back home and let Ramsey open up her gifts from us and then we dug into the way-too-delicious frozen custard cake she'd requested. And then around 9:00 pm we sent all the kids off to potty and get shoes on for a little surprise we had in store. Please do not tell the bedtime police on us ;) , but we took an extremely rare trip to the movies to see a 9:25 PM 3-D showing of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. On a school night!! Naughty parents! Well there was much rejoicing and screaming over that as you might imagine. Heehee! Such a fun day and night to be a parent!







I'm also including a few pics of Ramsey opening some of the gifts she got from her grandparents a few nights earlier!







Now for those of you who don't know Ram, I hope some of these pics gave you a little glimpse at how much fun she is. And for those of you who know her and love her and would normally have been celebrating right alongside us, I hope you almost feel as though you were here. You were certainly in our hearts! xoxo

Baby Ramsey

There was an incident during our packing and moving this time around in which once the moving truck was completely loaded with everything it could possibly hold, I discovered all my boxes of photo albums were not taken from the cabinet they were in and got left behind. They're all safe and sound at my mom's house, but it made it difficult for me to pull an assortment of baby photos out for posting this entry. I had to go through the boxes of leftovers I have here and managed to find a few!

Apple Fest

While Aaron attended a seminar today, I took the kids to the annual Apple Fest at the farmstead. There were extra little activities today. It was such a gorgeous day God gave us, we just relished being out there and enjoying the simple things.

What apple festival would possibly be complete without ooey gooey caramel apples?








really ooey




and really gooey


They learned how to use an old-timey cider press to make apple cider...








even got to churn a little cream for butter


Got a lesson on making corn cob dolls in the old schoolhouse
















don't worry--he put himself in the corner, he wasn't really in trouble this time


Fun day


...and now Mom's pooped!