Gardening and Leprechauns

Today was a busy time. We'd been babying a line of potted vegetable plants for the last couple of weeks, bringing them inside each night, waiting for the weather to be warm enough for them to live outside. I mostly just got fed up with shuttling them in and out everyday, but the weather is pretty warm now so we decided to go ahead and plant them today.

Jake and El and I worked together to prepare the ground. The dirt is pretty clay-ey, so we mixed in some soil that the plant nursery recommended. I am so clueless when it comes to gardening - I'm crossing my fingers this works!

After the big kids got home from school we worked together to put those plants in the ground.

El digging, Caleb planting.

Caleb really got into this and ended up doing most of them.

Emi and the romaine.

Jake was able to plant one too, but I had to supervise him pretty closely for the safety of that poor plant. No opportunities to take pictures of that, I'm afraid.

Not very many plants, but we've got some tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, some romaine and kale, some broccoli, and Elinor's flowers. (There's a teeny garden fairy that El has put near her flowers, but I don't think it's visible in this picture.) I like that it's such a small garden because we don't have much space, but I also don't want to become overwhelmed in keeping it up, this first year of gardening. I want to keep it a manageable, pleasant experience.

Everyone got a good spraying down with the hose afterward, followed by celebratory smoothies.

After gardening we worked on a Leprechaun trap for Caleb that's due tomorrow and other homework.

The signs say "Stay off ladder," "No Trespassing," and "Private Property."

The sign on this side says "No Leprechauns" and the one behind the hanging coin says, "Hands off my treasure."

The instruction sheet said that leprechauns don't obey signs and love shiny things, so we took those ideas and ran with them. Oh, and I love that rustic twig ladder so much! The whole time we were constructing it I was marveling to Joseph about its cuteness and wondering why I've never even made one of these before! There's a hole hidden under the pile of green grass and a yogurt container taped to the bottom of the inside of the box. Caleb was afraid the leprechaun would jump out of the yogurt container so we made a whole bunch of fake fire out of tissue paper and glued that to the floor of the box around the yogurt container. That oughtta hold him

Then we had dinner and then... Well, my sister Michelle was kind enough to look through every box she had in storage to track down an old Nintendo 64 Mario Party for us. It arrived in the mail today and Caleb was ECSTATIC.

Neither picture is very flattering, but I would say this is an accurate portrayal of his excitement. We squeezed in a half hour of game time before bed.

So, we got a lot done (a trip to the grocery store and gymnastics in the morning before gardening), but Joseph had to make dinner, I didn't get to the vacuuming or cleaning the kids' bathroom, Caleb didn't do any reading, we totally forgot about baseball practice, and no one practiced piano. I feel like this is sort of the story of my life. I'm learning to just focus on what we accomplished and feel satisfied about that. There's always tomorrow, right?

Opening Ceremonies

Ugh. I am tired. Who else is super annoyed about losing an hour of sleep this last weekend? I just wanted to put up a few pictures and then head to bed for the evening.

Opening ceremonies for Caleb's baseball season happened last Saturday and it was a lot of fun. Maybe a little heavy on the "ceremonies" part, but still a good event.

Caleb spent most of his time hanging out with his team, waiting to be announced, and marching around the field. I was proud of him for being so tolerant of such a long presentation.

He's the one at the back of the line. But not the grown up. The last kid.

Gah! He's just so cute in his little baseball cap and uniform! The team name is the Purple Hobbits, if you're interested.

While poor Caleb was practicing his "waiting-patiently" skills, the other kids were having a blast on this inflatable slide. No lines! They each had at least three turns. (All the other kids were on baseball teams!)

I especially love Elinor's picture. Is that girl even capable of looking normal in a photo?!

Thankfully, Caleb got his reward after all his standing around. Well, actually, lines for sno-cones and cotton candy were super duper long, but he was able to put those waiting patiently skills to use again and gain his reward. Too bad he decided cotton candy is gross. He gave it to Elinor who gorged herself on the stuff until she dropped it on the ground and Joseph threw it away. She'd already had her fair share from one Joseph had bought for the other kids earlier, btw. Later, while she was feeling sick at home from excessive sugar consumption, she said (rather angrily), "Why did Caleb even give me that cotton candy??!" It totally is all his fault. Poor Elinor shouldn't have to suffer the consequences of her big brother's bad choices.

All in all, a good day.

Growin' Growin' Growin'

Sometimes we hit phases of life that make me feel that time is passing more quickly than I realize. For example, this week Elinor figured out how to read. I convinced her to try reading a Bob book, and she was so excited by her success that she went on to read five or six more after that. Now she's so excited to keep working on getting better. It's crazy to me to think that three of our four kids are reading now.

The other major development this week was Jacob deciding that he's done with diapers and ready to move on to bigger and better things. He is definitely not potty trained, but it'll happen soon. I'm a little bit dreading this, but I guess we can't keep him in diapers forever!

And just to be fair, here are some brief updates on the other kids:

Emi is thriving at school. She loves her teacher and has made many good friends in her class. She is still rock climbing once a week and enjoying that.

Caleb is probably a little bored at school, and continues to amaze us with his reading. He joined a Little League T-ball team this week and loves it. (And he looks pretty darn adorable in a baseball cap!)

Shark Attack!

Sunday morning was pretty fun. Joseph and I set out all the presents the night before, so that was the first order of business on the big day.

This was the gift from Grandma Oba.

It is something he's been asking for for a couple of years now, so he was pretty excited.

He basically played with it for three hours straight that morning. And then it was time for church.

Grandma Cooper's present.

This has gotten a lot of use. Nerf guns are always welcome in our home!

Matching Google shirts for the boys! The great thing about a shared birthday is group gifting. Joseph and Caleb also got matching ties and a Minecraft lego set to work on together.

When students in Caleb's class have birthdays they often bring in treat bags for the other kids. We neglected to put them together until it was Monday and we realized we had nothing. I told the teacher I'd bring something before school ended, and this is what I came up with:

It was great because it was using stuff I found around the house and didn't have another use for! Caleb has so many army guys giving away 24 didn't even make a dent in his supply. This one happens to be an astronaut, but most were army guys. And the tag was a nod to Dr. Seuss, who had a birthday on Monday.


Well... Sunday and Monday I had stuff going on in the evening, so we were finally able to do cake and ice cream for the boys on Tuesday. And the cake. Well, we have this book called "Hello Cupcake" that the kids love to pull down and just look through, so I told Caleb to choose one and we would try to make it. He chose one for the props the shot had been styled with, but anyway, we ended up with shark cupcakes. And they were definitely not as polished as the ones in the picture. But it was pretty fun to try!

Joseph is much more in his element doing this kind of thing than I am.

The kids were calling dibs on their favorite sharks.

Emi's choice.

Some of the sharks were a little wild-eyed and crazy looking.

Crazy El. I couldn't get to her before she started into her shark. It was their first experience with Twinkies!

And Jake. He hates to get his hands dirty. He got a school of Swedish Fish embedded in a mound of Mallomar and frosting.

And this is Joseph's Tardis. I cross-stitched one a while back but then I sent it away while he was at work. Too bad I didn't realize he thought it was his. He was pretty sad to see it gone. So I stitched and stitched and finished one in time for his birthday! I think it looks pretty great with our other decor - Joseph's quilled leprechaun and a temple egg from Ukraine. Yeah... doesn't get much more eclectic than that!

Big Basin

March 1st is a big day in our home - Joseph and Caleb's birthday!! We love having them share a birthday. It makes going all out for a birthday celebration twice as fun. This year we started with a camping trip on Friday. We drove about an hour south to Big Basin Redwoods State Park and set up camp amongst the incredible redwoods. The scenery was really spectacular, and I am really hoping to go back this summer so we can camp for two nights and get some hiking in.

The two birthday boys were so good about getting things set up so we could have a comfortable camping experience.

All of the kids were beyond excited to play in - and eventually sleep in - this tent. Literally every 20 minutes for the whole afternoon Caleb was asking us if it was time to go to bed yet.

Our tent is really huge, but looks so teeny next to the huge trees!

Here's Emi standing inside one of the trees right in the middle of our campsite.

The fire was the other really exciting thing about camping. Here they are all enjoying chocolate-chip pumpkin muffins as an appetizer before the fire was ready to cook on.

Elinor and Joseph worked together to get dinner ready for the family. Ellie was so cute, taking one for the team there, standing in the smoke!

I have entitled this picture "sisters demure." It shows Elinor and Emily enjoying some food together. (Dinner was pretty simple - hotdogs, grapes, Doritos, and juice - but SO delicious! Maybe we were all just really hungry!)

This one is called "sisters crazy." You really should click on this one to see it up close. That Elinor.

And here we have "sisters proud." El is just so pleased with herself for pulling a crazy face just in the nick of time for that last shot.

Not convinced? She was really on a roll this trip. I don't think I have a single normal picture of her. This was during our after-dinner walk:

 

 

I'm pretty sure this picture happened after she pulled a face and was laughing about it.

Here they are at the top of a hill that we hiked up.

And climbing on some fallen logs we came across. They really were so big, the kids called it a tree playground.

The weather was great during the day, but it rained all night. Luckily, our tent kept us dry and there was a big enough break in the rain to start another fire for breakfast in the morning.

The last time we went camping was before Elinor was even born, so it's been a while. I decided last year that our family has reached a stage where we can do more stuff like this, so I got Joseph this great big tent for Christmas. It is so nice to have all of the kids old enough to run around and be excited about camping. I am determined to get at least a few more uses out of this tent before the year is out. Let's see how we do!