Summer Happenings 2010!

Some of the things our gang has been up to this summer...

On the school- front, Savannah and I have been spending these hot afternoons together, indoors while the other two sleep to work on her reading, which includes phonics worksheets and reading games (thank you, Internet for letting this pregnant mom rest while my child learns about reading from cartoon characters). We also spend the most time on reading books together, which at this point means she reads them, slowly to me, and I help out when she needs me. I love these sweet, alone moments with her, and she is so proud of herself.

She has also been swimming like a fish / “mermaid” every chance she gets, picking our vegetables for us, enjoying the new super girly room she shares with her sister, wearing dresses all day, everyday, and organizing her purses like she’s going on several trips at once that will each require separate and certain types of belongings (keys, marbles, lip gloss, hair bands, polly pockets, brushes, calculators, etc.)

Enjoying the fruits of her labor.

We have kicked up the learning activities with Liam, working on his letter sounds and his drawing skills. He feels so important being included in with his sis on “school” activities.

We learned a lot about amphibians this summer, including their life cycle and environmental needs. Liam raised some tadpoles and he a Savannah saw them develop into baby frogs! Here he is showing them off to neighbors.



In his free time, Liam has been in immersed in his summery world full of froggy frog (toad) catching and detaining, baseball with his dad, bug hunting, and finding flowers around here for his sister and mommy. I love that sweaty, sweet boy and all his over-the-top boyishness.
Playing golf, another favorite pastime.

And Felicity- well- she's just a certified big girl now!

She is now walking all over the place and struts her stuff like the big girl she thinks she is..

She is already good at screaming "Mine!" as she runs away from her siblings with one of their toys, squealing a sassy "Nooo!" when I ask her to give me a kiss, and trying to sing and do the hand motions for "Itsy Bitsy Spider".

Baby peek-a-boo!




We’ve also enjoyed a great summer harvest of some yummy fruits and vegetables (did you know anything is a fruit if it has a reproductive structure in or on it? e.g. seeds, kernels, etc)

And I, in the midst of the hustle and bustle, continue to grow this sweet little baby boy that we are all anxious to meet.

And try to find moments of rest, like this one, to reflect and enjoy this summer before it's gone.

Thank you for putting up the hammock, Daddy, we all enjoy it!

Happy Late Summer everyone!

Before and After...

This is half of our kitchen, before....

and after...

I am in love with my cooking, baking side of the kitchen, and I am forever thankful to my handy husband who is willing and actually enjoys remoldeling with old stuff.

Like I told him the other day, "I'm so glad we enjoy doing these projects together!", long period of silence on his part, and me realizing I needed to change my wording, "Or, I mean, you doing the work and me liking it when it's done".

Summer happenings post coming soon, we've had such a great, blessed summer (even though the van's broken down and I'm huge and hot ALL THE TIME!).

My girl's spring birthdays!

I have been so delinquent in my posting for this blog, not sure if anyone noticed but I do, sometimes late at night but I never do anything to remedy it!

But today is a sunny Friday and it seems like a day for accomplishments (including painting the trim in Savannah's room) so I'll go ahead and share the very- late pics of Savannah and Felicity's birthday parties!

Both of my girls have birthdays in the spring. So April and May are very girly, birthday festivity happening months, and I love it.

Savannah turned 6, and wanted a park birthday, so we planned it and when the day of the party rolled around it just rained, and rained, and never stopped. But we stuck it out, and so did her guests and we all had a fun/ wet/ chilly/ at-least-the-pizza-was-warm-and-dry night. She wanted a diamond castle cake so she, Liam and I worked on it all day together (honestly they did most of the work, with me hovering tightly over them) with half lemon and half vanilla. They even placed the little diamond and castle cake toppers themselves and sprinkled it. Just making the cake was one of the funnest things we did that day! Savannah had all of those details planned months in advance. Savannah felt so special, and that is all that mattered.

Does that candle SERIOUSLY have a six on it? Isn't she still a baby? No?

Warm pizza!

The present huddle.


Braving the rain!

Felicity is now a one year old and that fact still shocks me sometimes. We celebrated her birthday out at the house on a Saturday evening and had burgers, the fixings, cupcakes and cherry chocolate chip cookies (one of the the best cookies, ever!). Her theme was "Flower of the Prairie" and we had wildflower bouquets full of flowers that her Nanna and Mema brought and that the kids hunted down around our property

The wind wrecked havoc on our floating flowers.

Birthday girl!

Savannah on the deck that Poppy built in half a day for us!! No more stepping out onto a little rock and then dirt! Thanks Poppy!!



Felicity LOVES these "Di Dat" (kitty cat) PJs and couldn't get enough of them!

I don't think I have ever seen a one year old have so much fun at her party. Every inch of her knew it was her party, and she flirted and was cute to all of the guests and actually opened every single present with me and examined each one! She had an absolute ball.

My sweet girls are growing up at super speed right before my eyes and it's hard to take! I am so blessed to watch them grow and see their personalities unfold and get to know who God designed the to be more and more each day, but I always have that bittersweet feeling that every mother knows at the same time.

I truly believe these two girls are two of the most incredible girls in this world, and I am so blessed that I'm their mother. That I get to love them, fill their tummy's, change their diapers (not Savannah anymore :) kiss their boo boos, help them clean their rooms, fix their hair, pick out their clothes in the morning, educate them, teach them about our God and how wonderful he made this world, brush their teeth, and protect them from their equally as awesome but completely pestering little brother.

Here's to another beautiful year with my girls :)

What have we been up to??

When things are pretty quiet on this blog it usually means we've been up to a lot, and there just aren't enough moments in the day to give us the time to keep up here! And when Momma (me) gets the time at the end of the day while Nick's playing with the kids, Momma is reading and resting. But, for those of you who want to know what we've been up to, here's a synopsis:

The kids have been enjoying all the winter snow, and we even had a day where we went "sleuthing" around the backyard, using high tech detective skills (animal track identification) to see what creatures had been romping around back there and what they must have been doing.

This included a pack of dogs--or could they be coyotes, heading back to the fields from a night time hunt through the neigborhood. We determined that that was the most plausible explanation.

We also noticed numerous bird tracks, we're talking hundreds here, that were lingering around where the cow had been weeks ago. We were quite stumped as to why. They hadn't been where her food was, they were where, ahem, where she used the bathroom.

We also noticed that a stranger (neighbor kid) had been lurking back there. If these neighbor kids weren't so great we might have been disturbed.

Savannah and I (Liam gets bits and pieces) have been enjoying delving into the Little House on the Prairie books. Such a wonderful childhood classic. She really gets into it (so do I) and what's neat is that our family has actually done some of the old techniques that they do in the book.

Savannah is continuing her "learning to read" adventure, which includes us reading lots of books together, working together on reading workbook exercises when the rest of the house is napping, and now we are challenging her to read a set number of new words a day, whether they be on food containers, signs, toys, etc.

Liam is working on tracing workbooks, which he loves! Oh, and he's playing plenty of cars and appropriately wearing out the knees of all of his pants.

On another note, recently, by finding a listing on craigslist for free barn wood, Nick, his Dad, and brother went out to the middle of nowhere to bring back all sorts of stuff, barn wood for refurbishing, an antique Westernware vase, wagon wheels, vintage advertisements, antique windows, antique doors (we're talking skeleton key hardware here and peeling depression blue paint- the things my dreams are made of), all for free because the landowner thinks it's junk, and well, to him, it is.




While raiding the junk, Nick met a neighboring cattle farmer who is about to tear down 4 very old homesteads and gave him his card so we can raid them for all there worth, door and cabinet hardware, antique lighting, who knows? May turn out to be just a neat experience. I can't explain how much we love old things. Nick and I both sigh when we see old homes being torn down, silently hoping someone got to take advantage of the antique treasures that might be in them.






Other things that have been going on, well we went to the zoo on spring break with Nana, which just so happens to be a tradition she started with me over 20 years ago, and a tradition which we all love to keep up. The kids had so much fun...
Nana with all 3 grands, Felicity loved the baby bunny.



The kids enjoyed exploring the new children's zoo that just opened...





And then the next day, Nick and the older kids took off for a camping trip to the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge with some of our good friends and their kids (it was all Dad's and kids, they had a blast).

The kids look like they're about 2 inches away from a dangerous fall.
"Wait for ME!" says Liam.
The dam.

The campsite at breakfast- they look like they are having sooo much fun here!
Ready for the days adventures with Savannah's BFF Sidney.


Awesome Dad.

Liam thinks the world of little Kayman (the girl in the striped pants), when he saw her for the first time that day he said "Kayman you look beautiful". No other girl gets that kind of attention from him. We've warned her parents ;)



Seeing the buffalo.





That's a quick run down on some of the things we've been up to, spring weather is here and we have been enjoying it, about to get some veggies in the ground:)

Learning Encounters of the Felicity Kind...

Yes, our littlest Kittredge has been learning so much lately! Did you know she says “Uh-oh” when she drops (or throws) something? Did you also know that she says “Di Dat” for “kitty cat” every time Helios walks by? She’s also saying “Da Da” now when he walks into a room. She’s so smart- she’s not even 9 months yet!
Can you tell we’re just a *little* bit proud of her? We’ve never had a baby talk this soon. She now army crawls everywhere...
Oh, and she’s also turning into quite the feisty little spitfire. Yelling at anyone who takes her toys away, dramatically throwing toys down when she is tired of them and we keep giving them back, trembling her whole body while grunting with puckered lips to try to manipulate us into picking her up already, when honestly the baby gets held more often than either of the other two when they were her age.
Can you see her spitfiery-ness as she attacks her brother while wrestling?

This facial profile is just oozing with her spitfiery-ness.

And this picture just screams fiesty.

But she’s also so sugary sweet, and I mean sugary, deliciously sweet. She talks in sweet, breathy babbles when she’s feeling particularly content, gives us huge smiles and lunges at us when she wants us to hold her, she’s cuddly when she wants to be, loves to play with her own hair, loves playing and laughing with her big sister and brother.

Remember the picture where she was attacking her brother? Now she took a break to just talk to him.







And now she's just cuddling with him.




She is such a wonderful, unique little baby girl. We are so blessed to have her.

Glimpses

The word around here is demolition. I don't know really why or what sparked it but Nick and I went absolutley crazy these past couple of weeks with home-remodel stuff. None of it is anything extravagant or expensive, and a lot of the rebuild supplies are coming from a heap of FREE old barn wood and antique windows and doors. But really, we went crazy and currently have 3 unfinished, trashed looking projects.
But amidst the chaos, we have been playing and teaching and learning as always, which included at this time of year learning about Martin Luther King Jr., watching his speech on youtube, and following African American history. I think we were all touched when we watched his "I have a dream" speech together. It seems like we hear it so much in the background of life (radio, newsprograms, movies, almost like a song in your head) but actually sitting down and listening to it, was like hearing it for the first time with my kids.
Savannah is on the brink of reading, she is very interested and we have been focusing a lot on that, along with math and workbook activities. Liam has been working on controlling his cute little fingers while coloring with some coloring exercises.
The kids made a very complex board game with Nick complete with specific rules and playing cards. Savannah drew and colored a lot of the game board and came up with most of the rules, it's crazy and fun and actually flows like a real game. They have played it over and over with us.

More to come soon, just thought I'd share some "glimpses" of life out here latley.