Someone Stole My Camera...

well, borrowed without permission is probably a more correct accusation since it was returned without incident.

Here are a few of the pictures I found on the card...

The little thief!

Spring Soccer Season

The soccer has begun! We're still the Strykers and the Crush. Bennett and Maggie will enjoy 10 last games together before his age pushes him out. Ruth enjoys 8 games of dancing around the field with her new friends. I have no good pictures yet. I have a few short video clips from tonight. They all played at the same time so it was a little difficult to watch both games to catch the good moments. Bennett fell injured and his coach had to call "Hey Bennett's Mom" because I was watching Ruth. He was fine after being carried from the field and threatening amputation of the injured leg! :)

In the videos... Ruth is orange and #1. B&M are green. Bennett #8 and Maggie #5. Oh, I had their names put on the back of their shirts. Bennett picked Benito to go on his. It was funny to see him react as people cheered Benito on. Grandpa gave him a hard time too. :)

Brendan is the tall #24 who booted the snot out of the ball for a screaming goal. I didn't get the play... but it was pretty impressive! Jaelen is #6 and the speed demon. We appreciate her hustle many, many times!

Riley is the shortest little orange person. He's hilarious, but he's rarely focused enough to stay in the game. He's working on it! The ref tonight enjoyed beating him to the ball when it would go out of bounds... before Riley could kick it even further from the field. He also stood firmly on the ball while Riley tried to kick it out from under his foot while we waited for the inbounds pass. I hope they get paid!

End of the game hand slaps!
This one... is just Maggie and Jaelen inbounding the ball... but the funny part is watching Coach Katie bouncing up and down cheering them on. She and Coach Sami are both very energetic and have been very good with the kids. Sami wanted to take out the ref tonight... but I had to remind her it wasn't college ball! :) They're fun! They also like snack time after the game.

Preschool Choir Sings 3/15/09 - with new videos added

He's Still Working On Me... 8:30 Service. Ruth and Elliott have solos.
Same song... second service... same solos. A few more background noises and distractions. That's what happens when they actually wake up!I've Got Joy... this is also the 11 o'clock service because the kids are a little more animated and Lydia did NOTHING in the 1st service. It's fun to watch the kids and see what additional surprises they may give us. Our friend Shannon is in the front row with his hands in his pockets. He never sings on stage, but he wants to stand up there with everyone else. He sings in practice and he sang with a microphone (& me) to Guitar Hero! Thomas is in the back row with the bright blue shirt. He's our new friend who came from Seattle (?) and is here temporarily before heading off to Africa (?) to the mission field. We enjoy him a lot and he's so sweet I could squish him! We'll miss watching him grow. Abbey is right behind Ruth in the matching dress. They planned that... to match. Her mom and I had to figure out what they both had that would look similar... ended up being very similar! The girls love to play together.

I'm a Promise... my favorite part of this one is AJ, in the green shirt next to Shannon. He's Lydia's boyfriend - for now.

For those who want to know the rest of the lineup... front row... Elliott, Ruth, Lydia, Kendall, Jake (the most well-mannered and polite kid ever!), Sydney, Andrew, Shannon, AJ, Amelia, Kendall ... back row... Nolan, Abbey, Kinsley, Emma, Sarah, Thomas, Devon or Diego, Matthew, Lyndsi, Ethan... some of these names I'm depending on Ruth so I could be wrong.

Cooking With a 5 Year Old

I know I've posted making muffins with the girls before... but today was especially fun for me.
It doesn't matter how much flour and sugar she spills, how big the cinnamon cloud grows, how much slower the whole process ends up. I love watching her learn and desire to be with me in the kitchen. She even WANTS to do the dishes too! How do I keep that going?? :)
She gathered all the ingredients while I was working on an earlier blog post and waited so patiently for me to arrive in the kitchen. She has made these muffins with me so many times before... she had every ingredient we needed except one. She got all the measuring cups and spoons that we normally use. All I had to do was verify her measuring and memory and she did the rest. Soon, I won't even have to supervise! :) I loved today.
And something funny to me, although it probably shouldn't have been, was when the kids got home from school Bennett said "why is it so clean?"... We had already cleaned up the entire mess and had the muffins on the cooling rack by then. Usually, it's well after bedtime before any cleaning gets done around here.
This is Ruth's favorite part of the cleaning process! She was a little mad that I scraped the bowl so clean this time.



Don't miss the posts below... I added a few today & yesterday.

Ruth's Kindergarten Registraton

The day has finally come! Ruth has looked forward to going to school since before her 5th birthday. The Tuesday after she tuned 5 on Monday she was certain she would get to go to school, as I had put her off over and over with the "you can't go until you're 5" answer. I then had to explain she would have to wait another 11 months. That's an eternity when you're 5! So, since January we have been counting down to registration day, 3 months... 6 weeks, 3 weeks, 10 days, 3 days, the day after tomorrow, in the morning, TODAY! Woo Hoo! We had survived!!
She insisted on wearing a dress so "I can be pretty" despite our trying to convince otherwise. Curtis made sure she understood that what she wears doesn't determine if she's pretty. I also told her we would be going straight to playgroup afterwards and she would have to change clothes too. No dice! She was wearing the dress. She did look rather cute.

She thought she would meet her teacher, and she may have, we just won't know until mid-July. She went through all her testing stations with flying colors. I asked the vision lady (Ms. Libby) to test with and without her glasses since we haven't gone back to the optometrist or had any checks with the prescriptions. She saw everything just fine with... and nothing without. I guess they're working. I'm so glad for my friend who's post convinced me to have them all checked last year. Who would have thought?! Ms. Libby also said Ruth didn't tell her which direction the table and legs were pointing... she said they were M, W, E, 3. :) She talked with a teacher one-on-one and answered "what color, how many, what shape, which sound, what letter"... according to Ruth. The teacher didn't jump up and down and say she was the smartest child she's ever seen. I don't know why. She very calmly said Ruth did well. I'm sure Guinness will soon be calling to talk about her. Ha! I really am kidding but she is my clone! :)
After an hour + at school with many other excited 5 year olds and they parents, we headed over to Strong Rock for playgroup at the gym. It was an incredibly beautiful day... as it's been all week. During the day I tried to take some pictures of my favorite kids... Shannon "stole" my camera and took some shots of his favorite people instead... not that they aren't the same people and all. ;)
His best friend, Elliott.

Elliott's Mom!
Elliott's brother, AJ. Lydia's leg.
Shannon's Daddy.

Ruth also took the camera on their cart ride to the barn. She returned with shots of the horses and dogs. No people except in the corners of the horse/dog shots.
I love these faces!

We procrastinated leaving long enough to be able to pick B&M up from school on our way home. We also had time to stop by DQ for a little ice cream cone treat. We haven't done that in many, many moons.
We're in the midst of our spring soccer season so we run on those nights from 5:30 until 8:30. Dinner usually is snacks before, during and after practice. Baths as quickly as they'll tolerate and then bed by 9... if we're lucky. Here's some of Ruth's team... Makenna, Cheyenne, Ruth, Trey, Riley, Katherine. Last night Maggie crashed before we even said good night, the light was still on and Ruth and Lydia were not quiet in their bedtime preparations. 9 o'clock is too late for her... or maybe it's the 7am that's too late.
Today Ruth helped me make muffins. Post to come...



Riley's brother...

Free (or not) Wild Olive Tees

I'm not sure if the links will work in a message, but there's one on the edge over there you can use to go view these really cool t-shirts. I found them through The Pioneer Woman. They are giving away stuff. I'd like to have a really cool t-shirt.
Therefore, I post about the Wild Olive website! Go visit. Go shop! Be Happy!
Time to make muffins with my favorite #3 child! :)

The Cousin Community

My 13 year old niece from Pennsylvania is visiting Georgia for her birthday. Yet another benefit of homeschooling! Mom brought her north to visit with the cousins. Friday night they stopped in to see Seth's and eat dinner with them. Then they headed on over to our house. They arrived later than my kids desired, as it was after 9 and already bedtime. There wasn't much time for playing and visiting Friday night, but they had high hopes for all day Saturday. When Mom arrived there was no one with her in the car, or at least that's what they wanted us to believe. We thought Grandpa was coming... but he didn't. Marci was hiding in the van as well as Micah... Seth's eldest. He and Bennett are the best of friends and beg to spend time together every weekend. We usually can't because of the hectic schedules and school demands. He begged Grandma and since she's a sucker... they convinced his folks to let him come for the day. The boys were both ecstatic when he jumped out of the backseat. We finally got them into bed and quiet. Mom and I were able to stay up a while and play cards... until after midnight!! That's quite a feat for Mom. :)
Saturday morning started EARLY with the boys making racket at 0630! I tried to keep them quiet and contained in the bedroom but they just couldn't handle the demands. So, by 0715 I had them get dressed and go outside! It was already well over 50 degrees and the sunshine was beautiful. They needed the open air and space to run. Boys! I started cooking breakfast and the others started rising. Funny how the nose works to draw them out of bed. It was fun to eat around the table with 6 kids, even if they weren't all mine. They all went outside after breakfast and stayed out ALL day. Somehow they came up with the Cousin Community. Bennett and Micah came in several times to get supplies to make signs and eventually, flags. I didn't go check on what they were doing until it was time for lunch. They had all 6 been working together to clean up and design a whole new "community" area based around the playground/clubhouse. They added roads from wood, a special room for the boys, the castle was added, and who knows what else they thought up. Bennett and Micah's signs said "enjoy our community" and that's what we did. I brought lunch outside for them to eat in their new place. I appreciated not having to clean the kitchen again. :)
We finally drug the kids inside late afternoon. Mom had to return her kidnapped grandson... who was extremely upset about having to go home. And they wanted to get back at a decent hour since we "spring forward" tonight. Yippee. So, it made our afternoon short... but so fun and full of great memories. Marci was terrific with all her younger cousins. She even got to race a couple MarioKart circuits. Then the kids had to take their nasty brown filthy feet into the tub.
They were in their beds by 1900 and asleep but 1902. Not one sound! Life is good.
Freckles even got to try Marci's new sunglasses on for good looks! What a good spot. He only wanted to be close to the kids... all day he hung out in the new community.
Monkey Boys... hanging until the can't see straight!
Happy Mommy face... no kitchen to clean for lunch! :)

A Day in the Life of... being my kid.

I posted these pictures on Facebook earlier but forgot to put them here for all those non-facebookies! :) Mom refuses to join... even if it means being able to see more pictures of the kids AND keep up with what we're doing at all times. Good thing! I can talk about her without worry.

Ok... the other day Bennett got up with extremely large bedhead because he needs a haircut. The girls laughed. He got mad. So, I took a picture. He got happy. Really. After this shot he was laughing with us.

Maggie was pretending to have really bad bedhead. She does a good job too. She just hadn't brushed it... but it doesn't stand up like her brother's.

Ruth... being sweet Ruth. She's just missing her glasses so we don't see this face very often anymore. Missing for the photo... not missing as in lost.

Lydia hiding behind the Batman mask... with her silly little stinky pillow that is so falling apart.

Snow Day... sorta

Ready...
Aim....

Fire!!

Georgia got a little snow on Sunday. For some strange unknown reason the clouds floated south and hit Athens to Macon but completely bypassed us! The mountains! In the words of one of my educated friends, "What up with that?". So while most of the cities south of us got to stay home on Monday and play in the dusting... we went to school. That's ok! If they miss a day we just have to make it up. But while the big kids were learning I took the little girls on a road trip uphill. We went north a few minutes to the top of Blood Mountain. We could see the snow covered caps from our driveway so I knew it was there. They were excited about getting to see the snow. We put on boots and grabbed jackets and loaded up the van. Lydia was extremely cute when we got there... "stomp stomp stomp" she says as she leaves her footprints along the ground. So, after we had run through the woods, written our names on a bench, hiked up the hill and watched the waterfall... we headed back down the mountain. Something about being the responsible adult and picking up two more offspring. Anyway, we went to the school and picked out some fun books to read from the library and retrieved the two missing kids. Then I surprised them (more than leaving school 15 minutes early) by taking them back up the mountain. Ruth and Lydia were so animated telling Bennett and Maggie all about the snow and what we did and what we should do again. They explained about the trees being white and the rocks having ice and seeing men on bikes.

Bennett and Maggie pretend to be afraid, very afraid of the bears in the woods.
We played for an hour and hiked into the woods a bit. I was a bit nervous being up there alone with the kids after hearing stories... but we had a great time. Bennett kept going off exploring and I had to keep calling him back to the trail. After having so much freedom in the woods at home I'm sure he doesn't understand his mother's concerns when we're in the middle of nowhere and all sounds are deadened from the snow. One day!

Ruth dances on the table!
They were happy to get to go play. But, then ready to come home and get warmed up. We had a fun family dinner too. Daddy's cell phone started talking in his pocket and they all burst into laughter thinking it was the funniest thing EVER! I can't put into a public forum what Maggie said... but it was funny! Crazy funny! Now, if we had been in public we would not have laughed and I'm sure there would have been some sort of parental guidance from somewhere... somewhere.