Homerun!!

"Wow, Mom!  Your the best Mom ever!!"

"Look what Mom did for us!!"

"Oh, Mommy!  That's so cool!"

I picked up some Marie Callender's on my last trip to Costco.  We're not usually a packaged meal family, but sometimes a Mamma just needs a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Who knew I'd knock it outtta the ballpark with a box full of personal sized chicken pot pies??

Beautiful Yard Work

I mentioned that we did a smidgen of yard work last weekend whilst we were sick.  Although I thought I was tired and rundown, this is what my Elizabeth saw:

Bless her sweet little heart for making me look so much better than I did.  And for giving me a crown! 

The One Where There's Nothing To Tell

We're still sick.  I'd like to regale you with all the hilarity of our lives right now, but it'd be fiction.  We had all kinds of fun stuff going on this weekend, and we had to beg off every single bit of it and even a party tonight.  The kids are more or less okay, I'm recovering at a snails pace, and poor Joshua, whose already had this mess, started running a fever again last night and is out of commission again.

We pretended we were healthy long enough to mow the lawn and trim the bushes yesterday (Thanks to the needed blessing of rain, our yard was beginning to be a major eye-sore in the neighborhood).  We've both been paying the price.  Why didn't it occur to one of us to hire on of the neighbor boys, I will never know.

Suffice it to say, this is not how I imagined this month looking.  But here's the thing; we're okay.  We're together.  We have plenty of soup and bread and cheese and crackers, but nobody really wants food.  We've puzzled and read books and done school work and folded laundry and vacuumed and changed diapers.  We all have lots of new knowledge concerning early space missions.  We are, for the most part, still sane considering we've all been cooped up for pretty much two weeks solid.  We've watched copious amounts of television and we've talked about some adventures we'd like to do this fall.

We're hoping we are all healthy again by then!

Bring Your Own Kleenex

The kids have been on the downhill slide since Wednesday, but they are finally on the upswing from a yucky summer cold.  Just in time for rain.  So after being home bound for two days, we were still inside most of the day due to weather.

Poor Joshua was in the bed all day.  He made a short appearance around lunch and then crawled back to the cave for the remainder of the day.

And me, I'm battling.  I'm loaded on Vitamin C and all things healthy I can get my hands on, plus Nutella for survival reasons, and praying against this disease.  I've plans for the weekend you see, and it simply won't do to be sniffling and hacking my way around.

Daniel is almost completely better and proudly practicing his new found skillz.



Pretty adorable, don't you agree?

We've been working on a 1000 piece puzzle.  It's coming along nicely.  Thanks, Mom!

Thomas has been working on a magic show that he will perform for us tomorrow, hopefully.  He keeps forgetting his props in Daniel's room and only remembers them when Daniel is sleeping.  Apparently he doesn't know enough magic to make things apparate from one room to another.

Sarah Grace has been reading up on Apollo, Buzz Aldrin, space rockets, space travel, and other assorted space trivia.  She even wrote a quick report.

The little girls have played Candy Land and spent copious amounts of time in my lap while I read to them.  Among others, I've read Curious George Flies a Kite three times today.  There are a surprising number of pages in that book.  They've also been working on a puzzle.  I heard lots of giggling and arguing over what went where.  Each time Elizabeth would place a piece correctly, she would say 'Abracadbra, peanut butter and jelly!"  Then she and Anna would giggle.  It's a pretty sweet memory even if I'm not real sure where everyone's sudden interest in magic came from.

So, how's was your day??

Homeschool Science Lesson

Joshua firmly decided that we did not need pets while our brood is so young.  I agree with him wholly.

Until I see a cute little kitten.  And then I am weak.

Until I remember the maintenance a pet is.  Loving and fun and all that, but still work.  And I certainly have plenty of that on my plate.

However.... the kids and I were at a friend's house recently and we spotted her three little pets.  I giggled as the little critters leaped about, pell mell and roly poly around one another.  

So I promptly went out and bought pets for our home. 

And that is where they live.  I scooted the picture frame over there so you could see how very ginormous their little habitat is.  That's a 4x6, y'all.  Our little babies don't take up even as much space as a picture frame.  Wanna know what's in that there habitat?

African Dwarf Frogs.  Two of them, to be exact.  The children named them Spot and Dot.  Their both male (that's what the papers say, anyway!) and they have all they need to thrive right there in their little cube.  We feed them twice a week.

I know.  Even we can be that responsible!

I don't know who is Spot and who is Dot, but Thomas assures us he knows the difference.

Now the thing about these little frogs is they shed their skin occasionally.  We have watched as one's skin got lighter and lighter.  He was beginning to look quite sickly, but I pretended that he was supposed to do that.

Turns out I was right, thank the Lord!

Today Thomas came bounding through the house shouting that the frogs were wrestling.  No, wait, they had their mouths stuck together.  Now one is eating the other one.

It was all very dramatic.  Apparently, they kind of help each other out during this whole molting process.  Spot was helping Dot shed his skin and there was much activity in that little cube.  The kids all stood around laughing and groaning and being disgusted while enjoying every minute of the action.

Things settled down after about half an hour or so, but the scene was not forgotten.  Thomas and Sarah Grace read up on our little critters and are now armed with all kinds of information about our froggie friends.

I stood back and dusted off my hands after all the hard work I'd put into that lesson.  I might have even popped an extra piece of chocolate.

Just The Girls

Too hot to play outside.  Perfect for cuddling up and giggling.