Merit Badge Update

Again, I'm playing catch-up with some old photos (and some new) and so I pretty much have a ton of photos.

We have been working on our "merit badges." We still have a long way to go to get them all. But oh when we get them all what fun we'll have! (We just haven't decided what the "fun" will be. . .)

One of the first badges the boys worked on was fishing. Ben took them out one morning and here's what happened. . .

Jonas brought in a fish on his first cast (well, technically, Ben's cast)! Wahoo. I was so happy to hear he got one!

Here is Miles putting a worm on the hook. One of the requirements. He passed it off! Squeamish Jonas didn't. :)

Another great picture of Jonas brining in a fish.

Miles caught some crawdads. Crayfish. Whatever they are called. He was thrilled. He brought one home and it lived for less than 24 hours. Oh well. It was huge, I thought.

Jonas ended up catching 3 - sweet!

Miles did end up catching one fish. He seems pretty pleased! He's into the catch 'n release these days, tho, so that fish ended back in the water. The other fish ended mainly in Ben's belly in the form of some kind of fish-pie.

I {heart} this picture.

(A little out of order. . .) Miles picked some radishes today from his garden plot. One of the "gardening" requirement was to grow a plant from seed. Check. We ate them with dressing. Well Miles and I did. Jonas didn't like them and got out carrots instead. I'm not sure what Emmy did. Ben ate a "saved" one from Miles when he got home - plain. He spit it out.

Here is Miles with his first earned badge: biking. Cute!

And here is the sweet Jonas with his, too!

This week I decided we would work on the "health and exercise" badge. Requirements: run a lap without stopping, 1 min. of jumping jacks, 10 push-ups, and 10 sit-ups. So we've gone to the high school this week and have worked on it. It's been super fun.

Miles finishing up his first lap - he did it the first time without stopping. He ran around it again that day, too. And he did 10 sit-ups, plus 1 min. of jumping-jacks. He couldn't quite get the push-ups, though. Until later that night he did them for Ben. He sooooo wanted another badge. It was awesome. (We went back to the track on Tuesday and Miles ran around it twice without stopping. He ended up running 2 more times around it and was so pleased that he ran a mile.)

How great is this picture!?!?

Jonas ran around his first time without stopping. Emmy sort of did. :) But when we went back on Tuesday, Jonas couldn't even run around once without stopping. He was tired, I guess, from the day before! Jonas still has some more to work on for his badge. . . like sit-ups (he did 9 and literally could not do one more. so sad!) and push-ups. We'll try again. . .

Here are my little booklets. So unfancy. But my sister wanted to see them so here they are. They get the job done.

The inside.

The plaques. I bought the wood at Walmart for under $1. The kids painted them. I wrote the words with a Sharpie. And voila! I just got to figure out where, exactly, to put them. . .

Odds 'n Ends

I'm playing catch-up with some photos we took with our old camera and finally transferred them via our new - now returned - camera. Make sense? The "new" camera wasn't any good - so many blurry shots! Argh. So I just took it back tonite. . . now we need to find another one. . .

Anyways, here is one cute girl. She's in to a whole lot now. Like everything. She likes to explore cupboards, the dishwasher, etc. She loves to go all over the house. Luckily she has a lot of "helpers" when she gets to close to some down-stairs. . . She took an actual crawl-step today! But it wasn't your typical crawl-step on hand and knees. A step on 2 hands, 1 knee and 1 foot. Can you picture it? Totally adorable.

Who is this and why is she so sad, you might ask!?

Wow, that's quite the look.

Ohhhh, that's right. Emmy was sad because she wasn't too pleased with my response to her activities in her room one day. And believe me, my response could have been a whole lot worse. I didn't scream, perhaps slightly yelled, and didn't even lay a finger or hand on her. I could have, but she felt pretty darn bad about it. But I'm not sure if that was because she was scared or if she was actually sorry. . . maybe a little of both? I can dream, right? :)

My tree-climbing handsome boy.

Miles always wants to sell stuff. Usually it's stuff that, sadly, nobody but grandparents (his grandparents) would want to buy. Like jokes that he makes up, writes out, and draws a picture with it. (Miles is too practical to think up jokes that are. . . funny.) Or plastic baggies that he covers with blue painter's tape and makes into little purses. Creative, you bet. Sellable. I don't think so. So I convinced him to do the kool-aid and treat stand. He helped and we worked on it together. And you know what that kid brought in? $13.50. Not bad, not bad.

p.s. the first picture, of Lucy, was taken with the "new" camera. see how Lucy is blurry and it focused on the dishwasher instead? we had a bunch of pictures like this one. totally frustrating and lame.

The Maxwell Farmlet

Emmy

Emmy throwing her 23rd fit of the day. . . $ millions of fringed nerve cells

Emmy in pigtails. . . $ priceless

10 months, and a little more. . .

Lucy turned 10 months last Thursday. What new can I tell about her? She adorable, but that's nothing new. :)

So let's see. Still no crawling, but she has definitely mastered the "scoot." She's very adept at it! She seems sooooo close to crawling, yet she's seemed like that for weeks now. She'll got on her knees and hands all the time. Plus, she'll also get on her hands and feet and stick her bum waaaay up in the air. It's awesomely cute.

She can pull herself up - but doesn't do it much since I don't think we have much around for her to pull herself up on? But she loves to pull herself up to the bathtub. Probably because she just wants to dive right in - she LOVES baths.

She now says "mama." I'm in love with that, of course. :) She likes to nod her head up and down. She's getting 3 + teeth at the present time (at least what I could see. . . there could be more), in addition to the bottom 2 she has.

I've started the process of weaning her so that by a year she'll be done. She already started taking less of an interest, so I knew it was time. I go slowly in my weaning: like dropping a feeding every couple of weeks. Then it's not such a painful process. She hasn't been eating super great, but I think that might be due to the said teeth coming in. But who really knows? Perhaps she takes after her older sister and is a less-than fan of fruits and veggies?

Lucy is, indeed, one of the best things in my life. What a darling little blessing she is to our family.

Camp Raw-Raw

We went camping this past weekend. And it may or may not be our last camping trip. Not that it was horrible, but it did have a rough beginning. But we finally settled in to camp and did have some enjoyable camp moments.

I called it Camp Raw-Raw due to the fact that there was a fire-ban. So lame. So our s'mores were "raw," oatmeal was cold, and hot dogs were cold, too. But that was all fine. Miles burst in to tears when he found out that we were not going to have a fire (my boys love playing with fires). But it worked out okay.

It was a little chilly on Friday when we were setting up camp and playing around. The sun would come out for a moment or two, then would go away and brrrr. It even hailed on us for about 30 seconds.

S'more time. Miles decided that he liked the cooked ones better. But it must have been okay enough to have a 2nd. :) (Lucy was sleeping in the tent by this time.)

The kids went on a short little walk with Ben while I was putting Lucy to bed.

(A little out of order, sorry.) So here is Lucy ready for bed. She went down really, really well. She just didn't stay down all nite. At 1:30 she awoke and cried out. I grabbed her and snuggled her up by me with our blankets (it was a very cold nite. when i went to the car at 6:15am, it said 29 degrees.). I can't sleep with a child next to me. I was always checking to make sure the blankets weren't covering her, etc. And if I moved it would disturb her - and, when camping, you got to change positions about every 15 minutes or so! By 3 am I had to do it - a full-shifted body change. Lucy awoke, so I just held her for the rest of the nite. From 3-4:30 I sat on the ground. From 4:30-6:15 I got on my camping chair. And I didn't get a wink of sleep, not even a nod. It was slightly miserable - not because I was tired (tho of course I was) but because I was a little chilly and A LOT bored. By 6:15, after Jonas had stirred and awakened, I was done, got the keys from Ben, and took Lucy with me and thawed out in the car for a little bit. :) Do you want to know what times the birds start chirping? 4:45 according to my watch.

Two cute kids having fun in the tent!

One boy enjoying some food in the great outdoors.

This was the boys' favorite activity: creating dust-smoke! They got filthy, but pretty much loved every minute of it.

We had never seen so much animal-evidence: tracks all over - deer, elk?, little mice/chipmunks, bird tracks; all sorts of poop; this beautiful ground nest with eggs; chopped down trees by beavers; dams; and Ben even spotted an owl pellet (apparently owls don't have teeth and so they gulp down their prey whole. the undigestables come back up as pellets and you can find such treasures inside the pellets. such as bones. teeny-tiny bones. crazy).

Morning time in the back of our car. Ben thought Lucy looked a little knight-ish. A beautiful knight, of course.

On Saturday we headed out on our hike - we left our camp at 7:30. It was a really beautiful hike and really fun. The kids did super well on the way out. It was a nice downward slope and took us 1 1/2 hours.

Lucy eventually fell asleep. Sooooo cute.

We hiked to "Rough & Tumbling Creek." It was just beautiful and lovely. There were dams all over. So pretty there! I loved all the trees logged by beavers! So cool. We'd find logs all over that were chewed up by beavers as well. It was so cool. (Weird: with all the signs of animals, we didn't see anything but birds! Weird.)

Crossing the "bridge." Super fun. Of course we had to get a picture of all the kids doing it. . .

Beautiful, huh!?

Hiking back was a little more of a challenge. Within a minute of starting back and up, the boys started complaining of their legs hurting. Emmy didn't - she got a free ride with Ben on the way back (I had Lucy on the way back.). But I held their hands for the most of it, and that seemed to keep the complaints at bay. I was proud of the boys for doing it - and they get to check off a requirement for their "hiking" badge (one of two 5-mile hikes).

Jonas wanted to see what it was like carrying Lucy. I love his face here in the picture. He is really a happy little fellow and generally a very easy-going optimistic little guy. (Tho he can whine with professional skill.) He lasted a minute or so like this - with me holding it up in the back. Too cute.

The end result of all this camping and hiking? Very. Messy. Kids. And some good memories, too.

Happy Father's Day

I hope all the father's have a great day today - they deserve it. I know that both myself and my husband lucked out with great dads who continue to love and support us still. We still look up to our dads and seek their advice and input. And I know that my children like-wise lucked out with a wonderful father that loves and supports them.

Here are the answers the children gave when we were making cards for Ben:

I like my dad because

he plays. (E)

he helps me. (J)

he's my dad. (M)

My favorite thing to play with dad is

princess!

minotaurs.

just anything.

He is so nice because

he kisses.

he helps me clean the chicken coop.

he takes me fishing.

He is so funny because

he makes funny faces.

he makes silly faces.

he talks funny.

I like to _______ with my dad.

swing

ride bikes

do stuff

Love Letters

From Miles, a song:

This is Jonas' love letter. Here is what it says: I love Lucy. She ("the") is so cute. She plays with me. I love her.

Too, too, cute!