Love to all my "fathers".

I LOVE YOU ALL !!!

A day of work

My Margie Sue. She is becoming a kid.

Dad usually saves us some work to do at the end of the year. Sometimes it is the locker rooms but this year it was the weight room. What a job. The kids enjoyed getting in a little work out though.

Come on Josie you can do it!

I spied Russell getting into a little trouble. Rule number one in a weight room - always use a spotter. He doesn't even have any weight on that bar!! Don't blow a fuse Russell.

Almost!

But not quite! Who's going to save him? Not me, it was too fun watching him. We brought him to help and this was the most he worked all morning! Just kidding.

Here is the cleaning crew taking a break for lunch in Dad's office. Well cleaning the weight room ended up being better than scraping gum off lockers and locker room floors! YUCK!! (It wasn't that much better though.)

Baby Birds

I love searching for fledglings in the spruce trees out back. Here is one. There were two the last time I looked and right before I took this picture one flew out to trees quite a ways away. Now there are none!
We've been keeping an eye on this mama too. She has laid 5 eggs in a flower bed out front. I am soooo curious to learn about these babies. They are going to stay right there quietly on the ground? I look forward to figuring it all out.

softball

Almost home Georgia, what a lead. Georgia's softball is about half over now and I went to the game last night thinking I'm going to get some pictures. Right by the field there is a storage building that was casting a welcome swatch of shade so we parked the stroller there to keep the baby out of the sun. Unfortunately all of the young kids like to play around a kick board nearby and go virtually unwatched by there parents so I felt obligated to babysit and therefore this is the only picture I got.

I have to add that last week she pitched for the first time in her life. Now usually when the kids start pitching the game goes into "slo-mo" and lasts forever. She faced three batters, struck them out and then was taken out because she was too GOOD. I never heard of such a thing! We made sure to tell her not to expect that outcome next time but what a way to start.

unplugged Project - slippery

"Slippery" is the theme for this weeks unplugged project. The big girls went fishing with Grandma G. this weekend and I thought "that'll work". I forgot to send along the camera for pictures but did swipe one from my sister Stacy's blog. I found this really cute cd-rom fish craft and had to make it for the slippery theme.

Here we are gathering our supplies. Don't worry the cover is on the glue stick. (...although she would have done the same thing if it wasn't.)
A certain little Margie Sue played inspector and made sure we made them correctly.

Here is Emeline's. It's cute isn't it?

Georgia folding her fins.

Josie gluing her pieces on.

There they be. Georgia accidentally glued her dorsal fin on backwards. It looks like a little "dude" fish that way.

We hung them above there canopy and now they can imagine they are under the sea in their bed.

Josie's

Here is a picture from fishing. I wish I could have seen their excited faces. Georgia caught 4 fish and eventually Josie fished and caught 1. Josie was a bit afraid at first according to Grandma and Georgia.

Em's cheer

Every now and then we run into a particular cheer leading doll in a store that I think is pretty cute. You push the button and there are about 3 or 4 chants that she says. One of them caught my attention and makes me smile each time I hear it. Emeline knows it (in her mumbling sort of way) and out of the blue started saying it yesterday. Here she is. It may not be very nice but like I said it makes me smile (in sort of a not so nice way).

"Cookies, cookies, cookies and cream,

what's the matter with the other team?

Nothing, nothing, nothing at all,

they just don't know how to play ball!"

ice cream and a happy baby

What better way to close the day than with the first ice cream cone of the season.

Margie woke up especially happy this morning.

Silly girl.

She loves to talk now!

rainy day

Dad picked a wonderful time to have a s'more fest. You can't tell in the picture but it is raining. Just added to the fun I guess!
I can't remember where I was at the time, maybe parish council, but Dad played some games with his girls. I guess Margie was real good at playing Don't Break the Ice. She looks like a pro.

Unplugged Project - Homemade

I was up really early this morning and accidentally posted this under the unplugged project. I posted it without even writing anything - I must have been delusional! This is Josie's T-ball team. She finished last night. She is in the back all the way to the right. I guess she is homemade so I decided I wouldn't delete and do it again!

This weeks unplugged project has the theme of homemade. Well we do a lot of homemade around here from laundry soap to rag dolls, butter and Christmas ornaments. One thing we haven't done in a long time is to simply make cookies. So that is what we did. We did a batch of peanut butter no-bakes and a batch of the more common chocolate no-bakes. YumYum!

Just a pretty picture of Emeline

This is Emeline Sunday morning. They all looked so pretty. She does have a cute little profile.

First Holy Communion

Well it was a wonderful day. She did great and felt very excited all day. Thanks for the well-wishes from everyone. That made the day even more special.

The blessed moment!

Georgia and Father Chris. We are losing Father Chris. This was his last mass with us. On Wednesday he will officially be the administrator at another parish so in his words this day was "bittersweet."

My family with Father Chris.

"The Church" held a gathering for the kids after mass. This is the beautiful cake.

This is Georgia and her Godmother, Lori.

In the Grotto.

Here she is back home.

We are so proud and happy for you Georgia as you take another step on your Catholic journey! xoxo Mom and Dad

Finally the garden is in.

We've had such rain and cold that there was a span of a couple weeks where the garden was just impossible to get in. Well we finally did get things planted! You can see the soil is still very wet.
This will be the first garden that Emeline can partake in. She should enjoy watching it grow.

After we did the garden the girls helped me transplant a couple of houseplants that urgently needed bigger pots. Now that is done too, I've had it on my to-do-list for a while now.

*Georgia makes her First Communion tomorrow!!*

Unpluggd Project - petal

The unplugged theme for this week was petal. We decided it would be fun to dissect a flower. The irises around here finally bloomed so we chose that flower to look at more closely.
When looking at them in a group they are breathtaking but when looking at the individual and it's parts I think it was even more so.
I found a flower anatomy worksheet that they used to label the parts and write definitions of those parts.

Working away.

When we got inside they were pretty intrigued by what they found.

Here is the inside of our iris after the standard petals were removed. They thought the beards were quite funny and Emmy loved to touch their fuzziness.

For Emeline afterwards, we created a flower shop game. She played and played.

Here she is paying for her flower.

THEN, the big girls got in on the game after seeing how much fun little sis had. They soon realized that it wasn't as much fun as Em was making it out to be!