New bench

The other day I went to a garage sale in our neighborhood and found a lovely bench to go in our front entry way.

Isn't it beautiful? 

The kids have been doing great actually putting their shoes in it as well! And it was only $15 :-) I was super excited!

Eastern Box Turtle

We finally saw a turtle!!!!!!! Today on the way home from church, we were about a minute from our house, there was an Eastern Box Turtle on the road. I stopped the car and told the kids to get out. They were very confused, as I didn't tell them what was going on, but then they saw the turtle and they were super excited. I just happened to have my camera in the car because I forgot to take it out after yesterday's berry picking adventure.

Isn't it beautiful? 

 Kaleb and the girls watching it.

I let the girls pick it up to help move it off the road. 

They were super excited.

I named the turtle Flower, can you see why?

Fruit Picking

Did you know you can still pick blueberries in September? I had no idea! But, I guess the weather was right this year and there were still blueberries to pick. So we picked a gallon of blueberries yesterday along with a peck of apples. Over half the gallon of blueberries is already gone and lots of apples. The kids had a lot of fun picking.

Look at all those yummy blueberries!

Damen and Nathan picking blueberries

Kaleb found a woolly bear!

Kaleb picking berries.

Hannah picking and eating

Evie picking

A grasshopper Hannah found.

Nathan with a gallon of blueberries and lots of smiles!

Walking back with the blueberries!

Kaleb picking an apple!

The trees were loaded with apples. 

Hannah and Evie were great apple pickers!

Nathan picking apples!

And look, I actually picked too!

It was a fun morning in the sun! And it actually didn't seem too odd picking blueberries because it was 80 degrees outside!

baby snake

Today I was walking up the walkway in front of our house and saw what I thought at first was a worm. But after looking at it for a second I realized it was a baby snake. I let Kaleb who was with me pick it up and show it to his sisters and brother. He was so excited to be holding the snake. I thought I had a picture of him holding it, but none of them turned out. That, and he held it covered. Hannah and Evie also took turns holding it.

Here's Hannah with it. Isn't it cute? It's a Northern Ring-neck snake, just like the one we saw when we first moved here, only a lot smaller :-)

Changes and Challenges

My sweet Hannah girl has been processing a lot in the past two weeks. Which has added to the challenge of the boys that I wrote about yesterday. I think she has finally worked through most things for the time being, but there was definitely a lot going on. She is my super serious, super smart kiddo and she's been thinking way too much for a seven year old. It all started when I was reading a book about Adoniram Judson (one of the first missionaries sent from the US) and he lay awake next to his good friend from college who was dying and he didn't even realize it. While laying awake he pondered deep life questions about Heave and Hell and if there is a God. It was a turning point in his life. Anyway, Hannah has always had a fear of death. Reading this story led to a very late night on Friday the 12th, she was up past 10 pm crying and being scared of dying and asking all kinds of questions. Saturday we did our adoption day stuff, which threw adoption issues and fitting in on top of the dying processing. We were repeatedly asked questions of do we like her or do we love her. Saturday she wouldn't fall asleep without us in the room, however she was exhausted so she fell asleep quickly as I sung and prayed. Sunday Nathan sat in the room while she fell asleep. Monday I had her take a nap in an attempt to try and have her a little better rested and reset so she might go to sleep normally. Well, after the nap she would not let me go. She had questions and lots of them. She wanted to know if she would go to Heaven, as she decided she wasn't really sure. Then when I asked her about following Jesus she told me she didn't know enough to do that. We sat and talked for a couple hours, she decided she was ready to follow Jesus forever. I asked if she had ever done that before and she said, not really, she had believed a little, but not much. She has also decided she wants to be like Enoch, who "walked with God and was no more" because he didn't die. Monday and Tuesday night she did not fall asleep quickly, but every time she was scared and called me in she'd say to me "let's pray about it" and then she would pray first and I would pray. This is huge. She has been sleeping much better the past couple nights, so I am thankful about that and I'm excited to see what God does with her in the days, weeks, months and years to come!

3 years old x 2 = trouble

I'm learning more and more about twins as our life continues on. I now fully grasp why schools do not put twins in the same class. The boys are three, as everyone I've talked to lately about the trouble we've been having with them has reminded me, threes are worse than twos, and even more so when you have two of them! I never had terrible twos with the girls, never, but threes, yeah, we won't go there. The boys had a little bit of the terrible twos, but not much. Threes...yeah, well, let's go there. We started having them go to things independently, such as AWANA. There are five three and four year old boys in their AWANA class. There has been one teacher the past two weeks, one of the weeks she only had a 12 year old helping......that resulted in some boys feeling they could do whatever they wanted. Yes, that would be my boys. And then Sunday school.......well apparently they were angels the first week, but by this past week (week 3) the Sunday school teacher was unable to control them. They got a talking to in between services and were much better the second service....but still, you never want to have "those kids."  The advantage (for them, not for us) is that while one is getting disciplined the other can continue to get into trouble, and maybe, just maybe what you said to his brother doesn't apply to him. And when you have two the destructive capability is worse, much worse than with one. I was talking to a dad at the park yesterday who has twin four year old boys. He said all the baseboard heaters in his house were pulled off the wall....yeah, I know about that. Two of ours are no longer on the wall, I thought it was just us, I'm thankful it's not! I know it's just a phase, this too shall pass. And there are some definite bright spots, but some days it's just hard!  I'm trying to focus on the good parts, how whenever the boys see me, especially Damen it's "There's MY MOMMY!!!!!" It's always MY mommy, which makes me smile :-) Also, today at the library they did a half an hour program on their own, they are so excited to be like the girls and do it on their own, and when I picked them up the librarian said they did great. So there is hope. I've also realized through the loving discipline they have been receiving ever so regularly lately and how they react to that and other things they are really well bonded at this point. Which is wonderful!

No Sugar Added

Yesterday we went to Aldi to grocery shop. We had stopped at HomeDepot before that and the kids had completely forgotten how to act in a store. Before going into Aldi I reminded the kids how to behave in the store, this included no crying, yelling, screaming, running etc. Hannah responds "I never cry in Aldi." We made it through the store with pretty good behavior and then I was standing in line at checkout and Hannah was looking at the frozen food. She gasps and calls Evie to come over and whispers "Evie, do you see that, it says 'no sugar add'!" and they hug and both start fake crying on each others shoulders. I got a huge grin on my face and said "I thought you never cry in Aldi?" She had read that there were fudge pops with no sugar added and that is what had brought on the tears, we weren't even getting fudge pops :-) 

Cousins!

Yesterday we spent the day in Boston with Nathan's sister and her family. It was a beautiful day and the kids enjoyed playing outside.

The favorite toy of choice was wagon. Here Nathan is pulling the boys, along with River, who is two. 

Here's River pulling Damen........he was a little heavy for her, so she couldn't pull very fast, hence why Damen decided to try standing. 

 Who taught that boy how to smile? 

Here's Kaleb giving Damen and River a ride

The boys also enjoyed the ride on toys inside

 The girls and Jamie enjoying a picnic lunch!

We all had a fun time and can't wait to spend time with Sean, Rachael, Jamie and River again soon!

adoption day

After we finalized the boys adoption in April I realized that we needed to start celebrating adoption days. Yes, we got Hannah at two days old, so it doesn't seem like that big of a deal when she officially  became a part of our family....at least not to me, as she's always been a part of the family. But it really does matter and is something worth celebrating and as a family we should probably celebrate a little more than we do. Hannah's adoption day is the 14th, but we celebrated on Saturday the 13th. We had lots of fun at the park. The kids were so excited to have Dad there with him and show him all they could do. It was a great morning of just hanging out and having fun outside. We then came home, had some lunch, took a nap (it had been a long night) and then made some home made ice cream! I figured we should have some home made ice cream as part of our Sunday Summer Sundays, and since we couldn't do the Sundays on Sunday we did it with the adoption celebration. The whole day was a relaxed family time and it was great.

Evie climbed to the top of the firemens pole.

Kaleb going down the slide (is the "slide" that Kaleb fell off of in Nov.)

 Damen going down the slide

And Hannah on her way down. 

Nathan following the girls around

Fun on the Green

I took the kids to the town green today before the girls had library programs. We have a tank on our town green that is fair game for playing on. I figured I'd let them have some fun since it was a beautiful day and we didn't have enough time to go to a park. Anyway, the kids were having a blast climbing up and jumping off the tank. Damen was jumping from over five feet and loving it, he is my daredevil. Anyway, as we were doing this someone walks by and says "the hospitals down there" I said "I know. Thanks" and I turned and looked it was one of the pediatricians who's office happens to be across the street from the tank. I found it rather amusing that a doctor was telling me where the hospital was instead of saying "I'll see you in a few minutes" :-) But we made it out with no injuries and lots of fun jumps. Damen was literally bouncing when he hit the ground, all the kids thought it was hysterical including Damen. 

new car

We decided it was time to upgrade Nathan's 1994 Toyota. We had a good place for it to go so we started looking for a new car. We ended up with a 2008 Toyota Corolla. Manual transmission, manual windows, manual door locks. Yes, my kids will know what it means to wind down the windows! All I have to say is the costs of cars has really gone up in the past 10 years! That's when we bought Nathan's old one.

Here's the car, in case you wanted to know the color :-)

big tree

Just over a week ago Nathan decided to finish taking down a large tree that had lost it's top half in a storm this summer. The tree was bigger than his saw, which makes it a bit more challenging of a cut. He did a beautiful job and he dropped it exactly where he wanted it!

Here's Damen with his foot stuck in the middle of the stump, the tree was rotted in the middle. But it give some perspective on the size of the tree :-)

As you can see (sort of, maybe?) it was dropped nicely in between two other large trees!

The Birds and the Bees

This post is about the bees. Yesterday when we got home from church the kids went out on the deck to wait and for their lunch. On the date they found two bees on top of each other. I went out to investigate and it was a queen with a drone. Have you ever seen a queen in the wild? They are huge. Have you ever seen bees mate? Well here are some pictures, as it intrigued my kids for quite awhile, especially Evie.

A side view.

Just kind of hanging out.....

And the queen. 

They hung out on the deck for quite some time, then the drone flew off and the queen a few minutes later. The queens mate with multiple drones to my understand, but we only saw the one, I was reading on wikipedia (I know, not the best source, but at least some source!) about it and it's all very interesting. The queen only goes out to mate once and then can lay eggs for years! I hope you enjoyed this real life nature tidbit.

poison ivy update

If you're wondering how my poison ivy is, it's not gone. For those of you who are keeping track, that means I've had it almost three weeks and I am currently on my second round of prednisone because the first one didn't seem to do much. I went back to the doctor on Wednesday because I was at the point of not being able to function very well due to the lack of sleep and itching. I am very much hoping this round works better than the first, I've been on it four days now, I was really wanting it to be gone at this point, it seems a little better, not much, which isn't giving me much hope. But we'll see. The doctor said that normally poison ivy responds to prednisone really well and she's only had to put someone on it twice a few times. The one person she told me about she assured me it cleared up the second round. Hopefully, after I'm slightly more functional I'll be back to blogging a bit more, as there has been lots happening :-)

The Wizard of Oz

During the summer I read the Wizard of Oz to the girls. They really enjoyed the book and didn't want to stop listening. Well, this past Saturday, the Home depot kids workshop was a birdhouse with a Wizard of Oz theme. Here are the houses the girls made!

Picture

I was uploading pictures to my computer yesterday and found this one in the camera. I thought you might like it as much as I did!

First day of school

We started school on Tuesday. Everyone was up, dressed and ate breakfast in a timely manner and then the girls got right into their school work. We finished around 10:30ish and went outside where I did some yard work and then kids played, then we had lunch and the kids played a little more until Aunt Debbie showed up. Then Aunt Debbie and the kids headed to the beach while I ran an erran and then I joined them at the beach. We came home, took and super quick shower and headed out for dinner. What could be more fun for the first day of school?

Hannah, Evie, Damen and Kaleb enjoying the water!