Annah practicing

Beautiful Day

Thankfully, the weather has been mild and beautiful this week! This evening was the first we didn't have something going on, so we decided to have a backyard supper picnic.

The kids love their swingset.

Caeden tried to tell me that I "never play with" them, and that he feels "abanded," which is his new favorite word this week.  He wanted to play Twister, so we all played a few rounds.  It was pretty funny.

Although Jeremy won the first round, Sylvia really contorted this one and was the winner!

Gone Mac

I seem to have some kind of curse, whereupon I kill a computer every 3 years or less.  I really don't abuse them, but Jeremy is convinced it's me doing something to them.  Seriously, we have had to get a new computer every 2-3 years since we've been married.  It's not good for the finances.

We have always had PC's, and our most recent HP Pavilion laptop was doing very well for us for almost 3 years...until about 6 weeks ago.  It decided to start up and not open anything.  Upon having a knowledgable friend look at the computer and research said problem, we found that it was no longer under warranty and that we would need another new computer.

Upon the suggestion of many friends, and a few trips to Best Buy, we were repeatedly encouraged to look into Macintosh computers.  The fact that we use our home computer mostly for photo editing, wanted to get into saving/editing digital videos, and needed it to last longer than 3 years kept pointing us in the direction of a Mac.  Once we started looking at them, I was very impressed.  They are so much more compatible to everything now than they were when I last used them in college for music.  There are little things to learn, but overall...so easy.

So, after a lot of questions and consideration, Jeremy brought home our iMac this evening.  I am really excited, and can't wait to get caught up on editing photos from the last 2 months.  

They say, "Once you go Mac, you'll never go back!"  We'll see how it goes...!

1st Day of School 2010!

I don't know whether to say, "How can it be here already?!" or "Thank goodness it's finally time!" but the first day of school arrived today.  What a blessed life we live, that we were able to send three healthy,  beautiful, ornery, excited children off to a wonderful elementary school today!

I love my husband for making it a special tradition to be home for the kids on their first day of school every year.  They have come to expect and love it, and he wouldn't miss it.

Can't imagine my life any better than it is!

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your love and joy in our home!!

Annah is in FOURTH grade this year!

Sylvia is in SECOND!

And my baby, Caeden, is going all day every day now too, leaving Mommy at home alone so he can be in KINDERGARTEN!  

No reservations whatsoever...running toward the bus-stop!

I hadn't left time (or space, with 3 children to ready!) to get emotional, but when Annah took Caeden's hand to cross the street to get on the bus, it tugged my heart hard enough for the tears to go!  I really am amazed that all three of our kids are in elementary school now!  Time passes faster and faster each day, it feels like.  I am so thankful for this life.

Since we have a kindergartener, we were off to school too, for a little orientation.  

When we got there, Caeden's teacher gave me a hug (Annah had her for kindergarten too, and she is a wonderful person and teacher.) and asked if Caeden had gotten off the bus.  We saw his things, and then saw him over on the playground with his friends...no kindergarten jitters for him!  The girls both found friends too, and were just all smiles.

We tried to stay at the edge of the crowd, and listened to Principal Jones welcome everyone to the new school year!

Caeden found his seat, and listened intently to his teacher.  Parents helped get the school supplies sorted, and tried not to cry.  (Though we were actually doing okay.)

The kids were so precious getting to check out their lockers and learn how to close them quietly!  They got a bathroom break then, and went back into the classroom without the parents.  Many of the parents wiped away tears, but we actually did okay.  It was much less of an adjustment for Caeden, since he went to preschool here in the building, and rode the big bus home every day for the past year and a half.

It was only a half day of school today, and the kids hopped off the bus grinning ear-to-ear, with lots of stories, and ready for lunch.

Praise the Lord for a great start to the school year, and another long list of blessings!

The Last Day of Summer Break!

Today was the last day of summer break, and I wanted to do something special and memorable for the kids.  So, we decided to go to the zoo!

Our local zoo, Miller Park Zoo, is pretty small--easy enough to cover in detail in just a couple/few hours, yet nice, with some very cool animals.

We first saw the wallabies and wallaroos.  The kids were surprised to see them hop!

I don't know if it's new to the zoo or not, but we had never seen the porcupine there.  It was hilarious, stretching itself out to get food!

These beautiful flowers reminded us of some of Gram's flowers, and we thought they were SO beautiful!

We had to do one carousel ride.

As we were exiting the zoo, we saw some beautiful butterflies who were visiting too!  They look just like the ones we saw in Indiana last week.  Yellow tiger swallowtail.

An elderly lady was trying to take a photo of a young girl with her outside the zoo, so I offered to take their photo together.  She volunteered the girl to use my phone to take ours.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time at the zoo together.  The kids repeatedly thanked me with dramatic "This was the best day ever!" statements.

Sylvia wondered aloud if there were any geocaches in the park, and we discovered there were several.  We searched for 5, and found and learned lots of cool things, but only found one of the caches.
This was a 2-part geocache, which we didn't complete (because the 2nd part was over a mile away), but it was amazing to learn a bit about this enormous engine, coal car, and caboose, and whistle from the Chicago & Alton Railroad.

One cache was hidden near a memorial to veterans of the Vietnam and Korean Wars.  A park worker came along on a mower, so we had to stop hunting, but we were touched by the beautiful memorial and how it honored those named there.

This tank and 2 cannons used in WWII are now poignant monuments in the park as well.

After some caching, the kids ran out almost all the rest of their energy on the great playground in the park.

We decided to try to find one more geocache, after having no luck with the 4 we'd searched for.  Caeden got his first find!
This thing is the iron (steel?) dome from the Bloomington courthouse that was destroyed in a 2-city-block fire in 1900.

After all the excitement at the park, we stopped at the store quickly to pick up the last school supply--$20 worth of disinfectant hand/face wipes.  Now we are all tuckered out from this summer, but feeling blessed of all the great times and memories!  Thank you God, for summertime and togetherness!

Hawks in our yard!

We've been watching a hawk in our backyard for several months now, and came to realize it must have had a nest in one of our neighbors' trees.  We've heard it a lot and have seen it hunting in our yard lately. Jeremy said last week he saw 5 juvenile hawks chasing something around our burn pile area for about half an hour!

This afternoon, we were in the front yard and saw these two roaming about the back yard.  I grabbed my camera and telephoto lens and started sneaking down the other side of the driveway and behind the garage to see if I could see them closer.  At one point they were both in the same tree.

I was able to get about 20 feet or less from them.  I assume this was because they aren't completely confident in their flying abilities.

We knew they weren't red-tailed hawks, but weren't sure what they were until I got these photos and could look them up.  They are Cooper's Hawks, not to be confused with the similar Sharp-Shinned Hawks.

'Caching all the way home

We had a good time in Indiana, and were especially grateful to be able to stay where there is central air.  I've been having a horrible asthma attack for about 3 weeks now, and it is obviously somehow related to the extreme temperatures and humidity we've been enduring.  Being in the air conditioning as much as possible here has helped.  We even stayed an extra day because we knew it would be the hottest it's been all summer when we got back home.  

On our way home, we decided to take our time (and stay in the air-conditioned car) and stop for some geocaches along Route 24 on the way.  Our first stop was just outside Wabash, at this lovely tucked-away spot called Possum Hollow.  It was so peaceful there, and felt like we were back in the time of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Another of our stops was by the "Old Man in the Stone" in downtown Monticello, Indiana.  This was from the original courthouse there in town, and we thought it was pretty cool looking!

One of our finds was this itty-bitty magnetic cache container!  It wasn't even half an inch long, and the log was a tiny strip of paper rolled up very tightly inside.  Nifty!

It was neat to stop and go a little farther into some of the places we've been driving past several times a year for the past 9 years.  Geocaching has been such a cool adventure for us this summer!

Beautiful Lengths

When Sylvia was a toddler and preschooler, she twirled her hair around her fingers and broke off big chunks of it at the roots every day.  We always had to have her hair cut short.  For the past couple years she has relished growing it out and having it long.  She loves to have it in braids and to wear it down her back.  Her long hair is a great treasure to her.

It is at her waist; it's so long!

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Recently, another precious relative of ours has been diagnosed with cancer, and is currently undergoing chemotherapy and losing her hair.  We have been praying for her, and talking with the kids again about the difficult journey that is cancer, and our many loved ones who have fought it.  

Sylvia was inspired to give her hair to Pantene Beautiful Lengths in honor of our aunt, and so happy to do it.  She had 8" cut off this evening, and feels so good that it will help a woman going through chemotherapy to have a wig to help her feel better.

Annah didn't have enough length to donate, but needed a few inches cut off for the health of her hair.  So she has a new back-to-school 'do too.

Adventures of a day

Krampa has been busy re-roofing and re-siding the workshop in the barnyard, and came across this strange bug in the wood and sawdust today.  It looks like it's a little pile of sawdust--until it moves!  So wild!  Have you ever seen anything like it?!  We sure hadn't!

We went to our favorite spot, the Quiet Corner Tea Room, today.  We planned to just have tea and look for a couple geocaches, but ended up arriving just at lunchtime.  So we ate lunch too.  Such a lovely place.

We did a little more geocaching with Gram today.  This was the coolest find we've made yet!  And the kids thought the SWAG was the best too!  Caeden was the only one of us that could reach it...

Another cool find...

We also stopped in the teeny-tiny town of Collins, IN, because my mom was telling me there was a community center there, and I hadn't known it.  The kids thought the playground was very nice, and loved the merry-go-round.  I was telling Mom that it looked a lot like the one that had been on the 'Busco playground when we were growing up.  I'd posted this picture on Facebook, and a friend who grew up in Collins saw it and said, in fact, it IS the very merry-go-round from the school! 

We visited Great Grandma Crabill, and Caeden couldn't wait to go down to the basement to play.  It's neat to see the kids enjoy playing with all the same toys my cousins and I enjoyed there while we were growing up!  

Grandma showed us the invitation to the Zeigler reunion, which included this, her mom's recipe for Spice Cake.  I got a kick out of the fact that it calls for 2-3 cups of lard!  I wouldn't even know where to buy lard, and can't imagine that much lard in a cake!!  Whew!  

Swimming tricks!!

We staying at Krampa & Gram's!  And, in the summer, it's even more fun, because we get to swim in their awesome pool!  The kids have all increased their swimming confidence and abilities this summer because of our visits. 

Caeden does some cool twisty jumps.

Tonight, the kids came up with the fun idea of noodle "pole" vaulting into the pool!  Ha!

And, together with Krampa, they devised this fun trick to have him flip them over backwards off the new flexible float!  Too fun!