Fresh Home Grown Veggies Anyone?

Why yes; I think I'll have some. Well, that is what we hope to be saying in a few months once our veggies are ready.

Leslie and I have taken it to the next level and are attempting to grow some vegetables in a garden in her back yard. Now those of you who are laughing at me right now because you know everything I touch dies, stop! I did manage to take care of my mother-in-law's flowers this summer on two separate occasions and they flourished and thrived under my care. So maybe with the help of a good friend I might not actually kill anything.....oh, I hope!!!

Home Made from a Tube Cookies

Any day that ends with home-made from a tube cookies is a great day even if the day isn't all that great to begin with, be it an ordinary day or a day filled with discipline and testing.

Saturday, September 10th started out as a day filled with excited anticipation for all that we had planned that day. Pratt was out of town and so I had tried to fill the day with fun plans. Shelby and I were scheduled to go to a Princess Tea Party for lunch and grandmother was going to come over to play with JP. I think that JP was more excited about having time with grandmother than Shelby and I were about the Tea Party which is pretty amazing because we were really excited.

Grandmother arrived and we left. By the time Shelby and I got to the party grandmother called; JP was having one of his famous and notorious breakdowns over nothing. "Oh joy" I thought, "now we are going to have to go home". Of course grandmother said not to worry, she is a mother too after all and she could handle it. So I got off the phone whispered a prayer for her and Shelby and I walked into the party.

It was more beautiful than I can say. The room really looked all princessy and on each table they had beautiful flower arrangements, placecards, a menu of what was being served and the 10 Rules a Princess Must Always Follow.



The Salt Marsh Fairy was on hand to give the young princesses the rules and instruct them on how to walk, talk, sit, etc. It was sooo cute and all those little girls were precious.



When we got home grandmother gave the run down on what had happened with JP and since the outburst involved going to the pool and someone who shall remain nameless (yes, me) leaving the house with the pool bag I told JP that if he would rest quietly for a bit that we would go to the pool for a late afternoon swim. It was one of the best things we could have done! The children were excellent!!! They listened extremely well and even said Yes ma'am and No ma'am without being prompted. It was definitely a proud momma moment for me as an older couple sitting next to me commented on how impressive it was that they said yes and no ma'am (whew, they would have been saying something totally different had they been at the pool the day that I carried JP away kicking and screaming).

Normally Shelby and JP stick to the pool, but this day they took to the splash deck as well. It was so enjoyable to watch them running through the water. They both looked so free and happy.



Sometimes it is good the reward for good behavior in order to encourage and this moment was just that; I mean perfect strangers said how good they were, I couldn't let that go unnoticed or unrewarded. So on the way home I told the children what they couple had said and how they did such a good job so we were going to make home-made from a tube cookies. You would have thought they won the lottery the way the responded.

After we got cleaned up from dinner and had our bathes we pulled out the dough, rolled it and then they got to pick which shapes they wanted. It was so much fun!!!

Once the cookies were in the oven I told them it would take about 12 minutes and that they could go play, but they prefered to sit in front of the oven and watch them for the whole 12 minutes. Every once in a while they would shout out the status of the cookies. "Look mom, they are getting bigger." "Look, they are getting brown, are they done yet?"



After the cookies cooled they each got to pick one to decorate with whatever they wanted. Look at the concentration going on here....



And the finished products. JP ate is cookie in no time flat. Shelby took her time and eventually decided she didn't want to eat any more. She isn't that big of an icing fan and she put a ton of icing on her cookie so I may have had a bite or two before I threw it in the trash (hey, no sense in throwing away a perfectly good cookie)

Baby It's Cold Outside?!?!?!

So exactly how hot was it this summer??? Well, apparently hot enough that this morning when it was 70 out my children ran around in our driveway telling the neighbors that it was freezing out. JP walked out, turned around and looked at me and said, "Mommy, it is so cold out that it is going to snow!!!" Then he ran in the house got his jacket, put on his hood and went to school. Oh will we be in trouble if the Lord ever calls us to move to an area where it actually is cold:)

A Day of Firsts

Last Tuesday was a day of firsts in our house. It was the first day in a very long time that I set my alarm to rise before the children in the morning for the only reason of getting things started early; it was the first day of JP's orientation week; it was the first day that our first child was going to first grade (tear); and it was the first day that both children would start tennis lessons.

Shelby is so excited to be in first grade!!! It is so cute to see her get up every morning and put on her little uniform and get ready. She has usually favored the hair down look but now that she is in first grade she has changed that up a bit. Now she goes for the pony tail look with a headband to match whatever she is wearing. It is so fun to see how her likes/dislikes change, but sometimes it catches me off guard at how all the sudden without warning something changes and then I try to remember exactly when did that happen. Like the whole hair thing....

Our annual fisrt day of school pictures....




It was just the first day of practice school for JP and he actually has this week off. I think that we are all ready for him to be in school. He misses his little buddies so much and we all are looking forward to a little more rythmn and routine to our days. On his first official day he will be going for a whole day with lunch box and all. He can't wait!

Shelby, is that a yawn I see??? She was so excited about her first day that she really had a very hard time sleeping the night before. I just love her enthusiasm for school. She has been known to exclaim to her friends, "Isn't first grade so fun!! We get to do home work and have spelling tests!!!" Oh, now I know she truly is my child:)



There is this tennis program called Quick Start and they have recently started it in our area. It is a great little program that starts with the basics of hand-eye coordination and foot work. This will be Shelby's 3rd session and JP's first. After much discussion and trying to figure out what activity the children would want to participate in we settled on this and it is the perfect fit for us. Both Shelby and JP had so much fun!! You know when you are sitting there watching your children do something and you can just tell that they are truly, 100% enjoying every aspect of what they are doing? Well, that is what watching them last Tuesday was like. You could just tell that they were 100% enjoying everything that they were doing.

JP and Coach Jackie working on bouncing the ball once and catching it while moving down the court



Shelby and Coach Jackie working on hitting the ball after one bounce

Final Trip

Summer is finally winding down and right now I would say we, in our house, are in the dog days of summer; but before I got into that here is what we have been up to since the middle of July....

On July 10th Pratt left with some men from our church to go do missions work in Ringold, GA. This sweet little town was nearly wiped off the map when the Tornado Outbreak of April 2011 occurred. They had a wonderful trip and accomplished a ton on the little house they were helping rebuild.

Pratt got home on the 13th and then had his inaugural guys golf weekend tournament. While the guys were busy playing golf and watching golf (there was some big tournament on that weekend) myself and some of the other moms loaded up our children and went to the lake house. It was a blast!!! The children had so much fun and the moms enjoyed some qt in the evenings when the children went down.

We had a whole week at home together as a family and then on the 27th I hit the road for my annual girls trip. This year was a lot more subdued than in the past, but it was just perfect. We all got tons of rest and relaxation and came back rejuvenated and ready to get school prep started.

And now on to our final trip....I got home Monday from my girls weekend and then on Friday we packed up the car and made our way down to Boca to visit some dear family friends. Shelby and JP had so much fun visiting with their friends and we all are looking forward to going down again.

The four little ones enjoying an afternoon swimming in the pool. I have to admit, it was soooo nice to have a pool right there in the yard. Cheri and I hung out in the nice cool air conditioning while the kids swam. We had a perfect view of them from the dinning room table.



An afternoon of swimming will definitely wear you out so a little rest time was in order on the most comfortable lazy boy couch in the world.



And now to what brought us to Florida in the first place...Pratt had a sales training conference to go to in Orlando so we turned it into a mini vacay that started with our trip to Boca and ended with Orlando. We had such a great time, but missed Daddy like crazy.

Since Pratt was going to be in a conference all day I decided to be a brave mommy and take the children to Sea World by myself. Yes, there was a little bit of insanity in that decision, but my children are now to the age that once you mention something you have to follow through because they will hold you to it. So, Tuesday morning we got up and made our way to Sea World. Of course, we are talking about Florida in the summer; as soon as I bought our tickets the skies grew dark and the rain started falling:( We looked like a family of cookie monsters walking around in our blue ponchos all day; every time I looked at JP or Shelby I just laughed to myself.



Sea World was great!! We were fortunate enough to catch all the shows before they officially closed the park due to weather. Shelby especially loved watching the shows. She couldn't even stay in her seat she was so enthralled with it all. I just loved it!

The next day we had to check out of the hotel, but Pratt still had a full day of conferences ahead. I had hoped to take the children swimming at least in the morning, but the weather had other plans and it rained again:( So, being as resourceful as I could I decided to take the children to this fabulous mall called Mall of the Millenia. It is a super cool mall and if Pratt and I lived in Orlando we would definitely have to become a credit card free family as I know that we would not be able to control ourselves.



After a quick picture in front of the fountains we continued straight to the escalator. This by far excited Shelby and JP the most so we spent the morning walking from one end of the mall to the other and going up and down the escalators until it was lunch time.

After lunch we went back to the hotel, packed up the car and made our way to Downtown Disney. It was so much fun to go back there and just walk around. It made me super excited for our next family trip to Disney. There is no telling when that will be, but I know that we will have tons of fun.



We finally got home Wednesday night around 9 and I was so glad to know that we are going to be here for a while. I love, love, love traveling with my family. The children always do so well and it is great to have that family time.

On a Side Note

Today Shelby and JP started a week long camp at school. I for one was somewhat looking forward to this adventure as all of us were getting to that point of desperation to have some space. While we have had the most wonderful summer and have lived it to the fullest, we haven't had much of any time away from each other and it was starting to show. This morning was great, filled with excitement and anticipation of what the day would hold for them as we headed out the door.

And then the strangest thing happened....as we pulled up to the school and first JP hopped out with not even a glance back. He immediately launched into a story for Ms. Sharon. "You know what, Ms. Sharon?" (this is how he starts nearly all of his conversations these days) and off he walked. What?!?!?!? This is my child who is always slow to separate from me and usually requires forceful encouragement to get him to go. So, I gathered myself and drove over to the place to drop off Shelby....and that is when it happened....as she jumped out of the car and walked up to the big kid building that she will be attending for school next year all of the sudden I realized that I was A-L-O-N-E for the day!!! I expected to feel a little relief to be able to run some errands, listen to the radio, and get some stuff done around the house alone, but I didn't. In fact, I immediately called my mom to share my sorrow and fight back the tears.

This is a natural progression. As we train our children they are supposed to take steps to separate from us and we are supposed to let them go, but it is crazy hard!!!

Hopefully this preparation will make the first day of school somewhat easier on me. It is just a strange feeling, the "this is it" feeling of knowing from now on everything they do is one more step to leaving our house forever. I mean, I know I still have at least 12 more years until Shelby gets ready to go and 14 for JP, but suddenly that doesn't seem so far away:(

Blueberries!!!

There is something wonderfully satisfying with picking your own food. I don't know what it is and the only thing I can think is that it must be because that is how God created us. I have a wonderful friend who currently is biking across the entire state of Iowa who brought me to this cute little farm in Georgia called Ottawa Family farms about a year and a half ago for strawberry picking and this year we went for blueberry picking. One of the good things about going with her besides spending precious quality time with her and her cute children is that she knows what she is doing and has all the tips you need like packing a small cooler to put the berries in for the trip home and also to keep some cold water in because it is crazy hot right now. Anyway, we had such a wonderful time. The boys ran around on various little make believe adventures. The girls hung in there for quite a while before deciding that the heat was more than they could bear anymore. And Heather and I walked among the blueberry bushes picking berries and talking about all sorts of life matters.

This is the best picture of the four children that I got....



I had so much fun picking the berries and listening to the children run around that I knew I wanted to got back at some point, but once we got home and I got my first taste of the sweetest blueberry you will ever have I knew that we had to go back right away!!! My children, who prior to this didn't really care for blueberries, were hooked. It could be the satisfaction of eating what you picked or it could be the deliciousness of these berries, I don't know, but I knew that they were eating them and what mom wouldn't be happy to have their sweet little kiddos eating healthy foods.

So a week later I sent out a call to anyone who wanted to join us. This time we had three other families come and it was great fun. Since we were heading that way, we just had to stop at Dunkin Donuts for breakfast (don't you hate it when things like happen) and then we hit the road. I think that the mom's were more into picking berries than the children, but once again they all had so much fun running around the bushes on their little imaginary adventures. I just loved listening to them while I picked berries like a mad woman!!! I was definitely a girl with a mission and there wasn't much that was going to come between me and filling my bucket.

Shelby picking before she got to hot


Another great thing about this farm is that they have some animals to look at. We saw lots and lots of cows, dogs, and goats. Some of the goats just had their babies. Have you ever seen a baby goat that is 3 days old??? Well we have and they are so cute!!! Our first trip there the goats were born on Monday and we saw them on Thursday and it was really fun to go back the following week to see how much they grew.

Shelby, JP, Gracen and Pavin checking out the goats



Shelby picked out two who were her favorite and she just followed them around talking to them and about them.

And, do you want to see what 3lbs of blueberries looks like?? This was our bunch from last week.



Don't you just love Shelby's sassy pose??