First Parade

Isabella was in her first parade yesterday. Her dance studio always participates in the "take Santa to the mall" parade. Here are few pictures of us walking and then just some random "round the house" pics. Enjoy!

The other night I realized I hadn't taken pictures in a while, so when the kids finished their bathes, I grabbed the camera. Well, I guess I didn't wait for Ellie to finish. The last one Isabella took.And one last fun picture from the parade: a tricked out car...it was really cool!

A Slight Misunderstanding

For centuries children have been misunderstanding the words of songs. There's the classic: "There's a bathroom on the right." And the unnumbered variations of the Star-Spangled Banner. Elijah is our singer. He loves to sing and sings constantly. He learns the songs that we hear on the radio. Some of his favorites right now are Slow Fade by Casting Crowns and Lose My Soul by Toby Mac and Kirk Franklin. The chorus of the latter makes reference to scripture in the line "I don't wanna gain the whole world and lose my soul." On the way home from Elijah's last soccer game, where he scored 2 goals!!!, we hear the song on the radio. After we came in while I was fixing lunch, Elijah was singing the song: I don't wanna gameboy to lose the store. I felt it was important to teach him the actual words and the meaning, but I'm not sure it's sunk in yet!

Too cute

I haven't posted much about Lydia lately, but she said something the other day that had me in stitches. She has just learned to sit cross-legged, back in the old days we called it "Indian style" and now it's called "criss-cross applesauce." Anyway, the other day she sat on the floor criss-cross and wanted to roll a ball to me. She told me to "put my lap on." Now I've heard of putting your groove or funk on, but as a mother, I suppose I will just be "gettin' my lap on." Hope this made you smile

Pumpkin carving

Fall has finally arrived! Lovely cool temperatures have moved in it looks like to stay. The leaves are falling off the trees, which is something new for our kids. They are obsessed with picking up the leaves off the ground. We decided to carve a pumpkin (although I use the "we" royally, I was the only one with the knife) Isabella took most of these pictures. In other news, Ellie's picture will not be taken for at least a few more days due to a close encounter she had an end table! We don't know for sure if she broke her nose, but most of the swelling has gone down and at least she doesn't look like Owen Wilson.
And Tim entered a new decade! Happy Birthday, Baby! I will be re-making your birthday breakfast with REAL Jimmy Dean's!

Apple picking

We had a field trip to day to a local apple orchard. It was a lovely day! Another homeschool mom and I headed to the orchard with all our kids--7 kids and 2 stroller, loads of apples on the ground, bees buzzing round, horses and a cat! It was very fun! Here are some of the highlights!

Ballerina Princess

Here's the sweet picture of a sweet ballerina princess. I got to watch her class. She (and I don't think I'm just biased) did the best in her class. One girl kept turning the wrong way and sucking her fingers. The others just weren't paying attention. She knew all the moves. I was proud.
This one with Lydia was just too cute to pass up...she's little wild looking because she just woke up. She thinks she's a ballerina princess too.

New Glasses

Ok, so I'm not doing so well on acheiving my goal of posting every Thursday...it is one of many goals that I'm falling short of acheiving! Here is a picture of Elijah in his new glasses though. I will try to post a picture of Isabella in her ballet clothes very soon.

Baby Buddies and on being "Violated"

Yeah, I'll explain the second topic first. Elijah, like Isabella, is having problems with his eyes. This week was appointment week: dentist, pediatrician and eye doctor all in the same week with a crazy trip to the library! Yesterday was Elijah's eye check-up at which he had to have his eyes dialated. Later when he went to soccer practice, I was worried that his eyes would hurt. When faced with the choice of resting his eyes and not playing soccer or toughing it out, I'm sure you can figured out which he chose. Before practice started though, he was telling another little boy about his day. He said, "I had to have my eyes violated."

Here are some pictures of of Ellie and Noah. We joke about them being "intended!" Hope you enjoy and have a great week.

Is anyone out there?

Yes, I know, I am sure that no one is reading anymore except for my Mom who informed me that a girl in her office keeps a "Dog Blog" and adds to it EVERY DAY!!!! I do have 4 kids though, so I hoping to start working this into my schedule more often.

I thought I would start back easy by just posting some pictures of Elijah's soccer games. His first game they had had only one practice. One sweet little girl on our team scored 2 points...for the other team. Oh, well. Eljah though is really catching on. He got the ball several times and almost scored a goal.
Game 1
Throwing the ball in

His favorite thing: digging the ball out of the net.

He kept forgetting he was supposed to be playing the game, so he rested his arms on his head.

Getting to the ball

Game 2

Hustling to get the ball (he was much more aggressive this week)

Kicking the ball in

On top of this, the rest of us are doing well. Bella will be going back to Ballet tomorrow after the fun few days with no electricity caused last week's to be cancelled. Lydia is getting wilder and wilder. She's learned to jump with both feet off the ground and loves singing "Itsy Spiderman." Ellie is still army crawling, but has added pulling up to her list of skills. Also, I must add that so far she is the most skilled of all the kids at the "getting down" part. No free falling backwards for her!

At the zoo with Nana

Elijah's Spiderman cake...I didn't make it! :(

Eggplants and winter!

This summer as we are staying in the parsonage, we have a very small (and weedy--my fault) garden. Mostly it's filled with herbs, but since I found a Japanese eggplant plant, I thought I would try to grow that too. Those are the kind of eggplants we had in China. I am so proud that even though my weeding skills are completely lacking, it's growing!

Also, although the weather has not been too hot here, I would hardly say that it warranted hat and gloves. We found some old winter things, and the girls wanted to wear them around. Bella liked the gloves because she said they gave her pink fingernails.In other news, Ellie is rolling all over the place. She often finds herself stuck in places. The other day she rolled up to the bookshelf and looked at the books as if she wanted to pick one out and read it. Of course by the time I got the camera, she was off to other adventures! So here are some cranky pictures. Hopefully, I'll get some of Elijah. He's been gone everytime I've gotten the camera out.

And baseball is almost all over...

Elijah's last T-ball game was last night, unfortunately he didn't get to play. Earlier in the day he was playing on some monkey bars and busted his chin open. He got three stitches and a trip to the ER. How fun for him!
Isabella's last baseball game is on Monday. We have been so impressed with how much she has improved. She had two solid hits her last game. I'm hoping on Monday she can get to score a run too.

In other news, the pool is open. The first day that Bella and Elijah were in the pool getting their chins wet was major trauma. But we are doing lots better now. Bella is even swimming with floaties with her face in the water.

Lydia is at the tail end of being potty trained. We are so impressed with how well she is doing. She is growing up on us so fast. Her vocabulary is exploding although we don't always understand her. One funny thing she is when she needs to go potty. Instead of saying "pee pee in the potty," she says "pee pee in the panties." I don't really care which she says as long as she doing it right!

Elliana is also getting big. She's over 16 lb. She eats two jars of food a day with cereal. And she rolls all over the floor. She rolls until she gets herself stuck, a lot of times under the couch. Although yesterday she rolled over to our bookcase (the one that Tim built) and started browsing through the books. It was really cute. But as many of you know, by the time you get the camera they've rolled off somewhere else!