Stick ball

The girls have been getting into sports this year. Hannah has wanted to play softball, so she found a stick and a ball outside yesterday and started attempting to play. I found a slightly bigger stick and got a tennis ball and worked on batting stance with the girls and they were actually hitting the ball. I played with them last night and Nathan and I both played with them tonight. Nathan said he's going to get the girls a real bat and ball....what fun is that? :-)

Not a bad stance huh? 

And here's Hannah

swimming lessons

Last week we started swimming lessons. The water was a little cold, and the boys were not having fun. But today the water had finally warmed up. The girls are working on back stroke and trading water. The boys were doing some kicking and Damen even jumped in today. After all the screaming last week from the boys I wasn't sure we'd make it through lessons at all, but today gave me hope.

A hike

On Wednesday I had a mentoring meeting at 6:30 am, when I came back around 8:20 all the kids were up, fed and dressed! I normally am not able to accomplish such a feat, so I figured I'd take advantage of the great start and we'd head to the park. The first park we went to was at a school, which happened to be having a summer camp there that played on the playground first thing, we didn't stay long due the mass of kids and complications that resulted from my children wanted to play with some of their friends who were at the camp and the campers unsure what to do with that. Anyway, we moved on the Kids Kingdom, which is a favorite of ours, it's a large playground with the bonus of trails behind it. The kids got bored with the playground after about an hour so we decided to go on a hike. There are some nice big trails, but on Wednesday we decided to try a small side trail, it was marked, so I figured it couldn't be that bad, right? The trail was very narrow, with lots of pricker bushes going over the path. The girls had collected walking sticks for us, and I used mine to push the bushes out of the way, which worked well. The path turned into a boardwalk that was four of five boards wide, we continued on that and everyone was having fun....until we got to the point on the boardwalk where the boards were completely covered by stinging nettle, or something similar. Evie charged right through, not stopping and ended up crying on the other side, it was a good 10-15 foot stretch. Hannah made it half way with the boys and then turned around and sat down in tears, not wanting to go on. I carefully stepped on all the plants and got them down and out of the way and made it to Evie, I determined we were 3/4s of the way around a circle, so the best thing to do was press on, even though Hannah did not want to go through at all. The boys made it through and I ended up carrying Hannah past that spot. We made it to the end of the trail and had some great conversations about doing hard things, and how life is like the trail, easy in some places and harder in others, but God is always with us to help along the way. Hannah is convinced she never wants to go on a narrow trail again, but I'm sure we'll try it again in the not too distant future :-)

A new moth

Our caterpillar had emerged Monday morning. I didn't get a good picture, but it looked like this:

We let it go yesterday morning. When we took it outside I wasn't sure if it'd be able to fly at first. I was beating it's wings like crazy but wasn't going anywhere. Then Hannah picked it up and it climbed on to her shorts and then beat it's wings a bunch more and then took off. It was fun to watch. The girls loved the whole experience and were sad to see it go and that their "pet" was gone. But they kept the cocoon and have added it to their bird nest and hive collection. Oh, have I know mentioned that Hannah's found three bird's nests this year?

the penny

I've given up. Evie swallowed a penny four weeks ago. On this day. That Friday I called the doctor to find out how long it should take a penny to pass, because I hadn't seen it. It's now been a month and I've officially given up looking for it. I'm really hoping I just missed it in my search when it came through. Because really, how long should a penny take to pass through your system? Everything else goes so fast.....maybe it's still in there, but maybe it's already come out and giving up isn't such a bad thing?

dealing with DCF still....

About two weeks ago I received a letter in the mail. It told me who my new contact person was for DCF, since the adoption had been finalized. It also told me not to change the child's name with DSS.....thanks! That would have been helpful to know I don't know, two months ago! All that time I spent waiting inline and dealing with DSS could have been saved. I ended up calling my new contact person, who was extremely  nice and helpful and she said if there were any issues with their medical coverage due to the fact that I had changed their name, let her know and she'd deal with it. I should also be getting a new card in the mail for both of them. Well, so far I've gotten a letter in the mail stating that Kaleb's medical coverage is ending at the end of the month due to the change in programs, but not for Damen...I haven't gotten a new card yet. We may end up with more troubles still, even after I tried to do everything right. Apparently, the boys office had no idea the proper procedure for name changes, because pretty much everything they told me was incorrect. We continue to learn even after we thought we were finished.

Frogs and Caterpillars (and a snake)

The kids (all of them) have been finding lots of frogs and caterpillars lately. As in, Monday I think the girls had at least five or six caterpillars in their room and most of them escaped from the bowl they had them in, and they had two missing that night when they went to bed. At least they think they had two missing, we found one the next day....the other is still missing, or maybe they were confused on which ones they had already found.....they couldn't tell us exactly how many they had brought in and were upset with the fact that I wanted them all found and put back outside. Anyway, ironically that night, Evie fell asleep snuggling her giant stuffed caterpillar.
Today one of the boys found a frog, one of the biggest they've found so far and they spent quiet awhile playing with it.

Here's Hannah with the frog. 

They have been looking for creatures to race. I think they were racing caterpillars the other day. They've been having a blast playing outside recently. 

We saw a snake on the road today while biking as well today. Evie had fun getting close to make it hiss. It was a feisty little one (actually, it was bigger than any I've seen around here), I threw it off the road into the woods after we all had a good look at it. 

fixing with Daddy

Sorry I'm a bit behind in my posting, I lost my camera for a few days and then didn't have time to post once I found it. Anyway, just over a week ago the boys were helping Nathan fix our toilet seat, because you know, why buy a new one when you can fix the broken hinge? Anyway, after they were done, Damen came in...

With a new necklace :-)

Bunk Beds!

We bunked the boys beds today! Nathan made a new better rail for the top bunk than what it came with and it's great. The boys love it. Damen is on the top, and Kaleb on the bottom. Both boys love climbing up and down the "ladder" on the end.

Isn't the top rail great? :-)

I am super excited about this because now the boys can't reach their dresser from their bed, or the window shades, or the thermostat, or the light switch. This will make my life easier. I think, I hope! :-) They both went to bed without a problem, chatted a while and then fell right to sleep.

Pancakes

A couple days ago I gave the boys some breakfast, and then went to talk to Nathan about something for a minute. When I got back this is what I saw:

Kaleb had milk all over the table...I asked "what are you doing?" his response, as he picks up more milk and carefully puts it on the table "making pancakes" how can I be upset with him for such creativity? So you see, all those milk spots are just pancakes waiting to be cooked.......gotta love my boy.

Caterpillar

Last Saturday I found an Eastern Tent Caterpillar. They're beautiful, they have blue spots, and are black with a white stripe. If you haven't seen one check it out here. Sorry, I didn't take any pictures of it at first...we had it for two days, it ate a bunch of leaves, I looked it up and found they like cherry trees, that we happen to have one of. So it ate and ate and ate.....then I looked and couldn't find it, it was on the top of the "cage" we made and it was starting to make a cocoon. Now's we're just waiting for it to come out, which should be in the next week or so. I know Eastern Tent Caterpillars aren't the greatest thing to have around, but it's been fun to watch :-)

 Here is the caterpillar at the start of spinning the cocoon.

Here it is completed. It's white, so it's hard to see......but it's amazing that the cocoon just "appears" around it! Hopefully I'll get pictures of the moth too :-)

Flowers!

Evie has been having fun cutting flowers in our yard this year. I helped her cut these on Friday.

Evie wanted to put blue food coloring in the water to change the white flowers blue, so far it hasn't really worked, but that's okay.

Here's the other bouquet we put together.

Memorial Day

On Memorial Day we went to the local parade, it's small, but our town is small, so you know a bunch of people in it, which is kind of fun. This year we were at the very end of the parade, which wasn't that smart, so the kids got pretty antsy waiting for it to come. But it worked out okay.

The girls sitting waiting for the parade. 

And I was with the boys, apparently I'm not very good at selfies, as I completely missed Damen....Nathan is right behind me, he was talking to our next door neighbor, which is part of the reason we ended up at the end of the parade, because we ran into him and started talking and didn't continue to a better location. 

All the kids watching

Don't they look excited to be there? It was kind of hot, and a long wait, like I said. 

Here's some of the parade.

After the parade we got ice cream at one of the coffee shops, they had a .99 cent ice special going on, you can't beat that! 

When we got home we let the kids run thru the sprinkler.

The boys weren't so sure what to do with it. Don't you love Damen's face?

But the girls had fun jumping over it.

dedicating the boys

Sunday May 18th we dedicated the boys at church. This means we stood in front of the congregation and said we want to raise these kids to know and love the Lord and live for Him. When we got up there our pastor handed the mic to Nathan and said "can you introduce your family for us?" Nathan was like "ah..sure" and proceeded to do so, then the pastor thanked him and admitted that he had him do that so he'd know which boy was which. Gotta love twins :-)

 Here is one of the elders praying over our family

And our pastor praying for the boys

 Here we are after the formal stuff is done :-)

And here we are worshiping, we've been bring the boys into sing one service each week, they LOVE it. They get so excited over the guitars. One of the people who plays let the kids strum his back up guitar and the boys are still talking about it weeks later.

AWANA

We completed AWANA at the end of April. It was nice to finish one of our evening commitments for the year. So this post is a little late, but better late than never right? Anyway, the girls had a lot of fun being in Sparks together this year. Hannah has now completed all three of the Sparks handbooks and completed one of the extra credit books. She has one year left in Sparks and is looking forward to completing the other two extra credit books. Evie, completed her first two handbooks and one extra credit book. But the girls love memorizing the verses and it's been great to see them hide God's word in their hearts!

Evie did not want to wear her vest. But here are the Sparks for this year. 

Hanging out before it began