Updates From the Past Month :)

We celebrated Mother's Day the same weekend as Weston's birthday. This year for Mother's Day the kids and I made flower pens for the grandmas' gifts. We also made a pen arrangement for our sweet neighbor, Claudia, and helped our neighbor girls, Veronica and Kayla, make some for their grandma and mom. The basic instructions for the pens is to remove the ends off Bic-type pens, wrap them in floral tape, and hot glue leaves and flowers to the end. You then stick the pens in light-roast coffee beans (less oily) in pots or jars. I used popsicle sticks to make little cards for each pot. The pens were easy and fun to make and turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself :)

It doesn't work to well to get a photo of the kids looking toward the sun. A bit squinty :)

I think it's cute how they're all looking at Noah. They take such good care of their little brother. He's already a spoiled baby.

While the men were working on the fence in May, the kids were working on a huge muddy hole where cement will eventually be. You can tell they had a fantastic time playing in their little "pool". We couldn't coax Tirien out of the hole to pose for a photo.

Check out Weston's sock (the match was lost in the mud)! No amount of bleach would get those puppies white again!

Check out our barbecue in the background :)

How much mud can come out of one little hole?

This is a beautiful Dogwood tree in our backyard. These huge blooms were on the tree for at least 3 weeks!

Noah is now 9 months old and has the "army" crawl down. It's quite the feat to keep on top of him every minute he's awake :)

I told them to pretend they were asleep for the photo. Most of them were pretty good actors :)

Rose Garden

Here are a few photos from a family trip to the Portland Rose Garden on the weekend of the 13th. Mike's parents, John and Shirley, were gracious enough to come down for the weekend and babysit so Mike and I could go to the OCEANetwork homeschool conference here in Portland. After the conference we all spent a little time taking in the beautiful roses God created for us to enjoy.

Noah was also very impressed with the roses :)

You can see how many roses are in the background of this photo and this is probably not even one-third the roses at the garden.

I think it's cute how Grace was cupping Elsie's chin for the photo.

Elsie is posing in a little outfit John and Shirley bought for her birthday this year.

Thanks, John and Shirley, for blessing us with babysitting for the weekend. You did a great job!

Weston got into the "smelling" action. These were some of the prettiest flowers at the garden.

Cookie Dough!

Elsie and I made some chocolate chip cookie dough today. You can tell she made herself right at home on the counter licking the beater. I'm going to try to make homemade cookie dough icecream. We purchased the icecream maker attachment to go on my Kitchenaid mixer and it works great. So far we've made vanilla, mint, and strawberry and they've all tasted wonderful!