Shepherd Boy David

Here's Weston dressed up for AWANAS on Wednesday night. Grace and Weston both started attending AWANAS this year; Weston in Sparks and Grace in Cubbies. They love it! AWANAS is a club centered on Bible memorization and has been around for as long as I can remember. I was even in Sparks when I was Weston's age!
AWANAS is a great opportunity to memorize God's Word, meet friends, learn to participate in a classroom setting, and learn some independence from Mom and Dad. The night consists of Bible story time, singing, memorization/quizzing time, game time and awards time (kinda like Sunday School on steroids). About once a month they have a dress up night for the Sparks. This past Wednesday was Bible dress up night and we happened to have everything to make a "David" costume. Weston is wearing a pillow case and my hairband and has Mike's old marble bag, a sling shot and a stuffed lamb. He loved dressing up and even won a prize for his costume.
From the beginning Grace had no trouble being left at Cubbies. It was a little easier for her as she went with Laelie (her friend next door) into Cubbies and she tends to be a social butterfly anyway :). Weston had a harder time being left. The first few times he was very nervous and even a little teary. When I took him last week I walked him into the gym and helped him get his coat off. I expected him to turn around and say goodbye to me, but instead he ran off to play basketball without a backward glance! Although my feeling were a bit hurt, I am so glad that he's growing up and learning some confidence and Independence.
I'll try to post a photo soon of Weston and Grace in their AWANAS vests. They each wear vests with their patches and awards for Bible memorization and attending club. They look so official!
David vs. Goliath!

Bits and Pieces of Our Life

It's been so long since I've blogged that I've got a bunch of catching up to do. I think I'll just throw a bunch of photos together and make a few comments so I don't feel so overwhelmed. Blogs can be very overwhelming you know :)

Here we are at Gresham's annual Teddy Bear Parade. We all had our teddy bears and were ready for the action. Some of our favorite parade sights were the Great Dane Club, the miniature ponies, and the high school bands. Grace also liked the cheerleaders.
Mike was out of town in MN for the Desiring God annual conference (he had an awesome time!) so my mom was kind enough to come spend the weekend with us.

Waiting for the show.

Pretty cute look on Noah's face :)

This is how I found the kids after returning from the library. I am LOVING the library this year. We go online, put holds on all the books we want, and then just go in and pick them up! What a huge blessing to homeschoolers (and non-homeschoolers too)!

This is Elsie on her big "getting her ears pierced" day. As a reward for potty-training Elsie got her ears pierced just like mommy and big sis. She cried more than Grace, but enjoyed all the attention everyone gave her when we got home. She does look pretty cute in her little pink earrings.

Elsie has been fully potty-trained for about 2 or 3 months now. She turned the corner on being motivated when I took her to the store and bought her a sticker chart, stickers and Smarties candy (thanks to Jamie for that candy idea). It's great to only have one child in diapers now!

This is my attempt at artistic photography. I'm pretty wild.

This is my little funny bunny in her undies eating a carrot out of our garden. She's wearing her Elmo undies she picked out for potty-training.

This is me chopping onions. The Bob the Builder goggles work great for keeping away the tears!

Elsie and Grace love to dress up creatively. Usually Weston is in there with them.

Pumpkin Patch

Our little pumpkin!
Some friends invited us to Liepold Farm's pumpkin patch this year for an outing. The weather was perfect and we had a great time picking our pumpkins (or gourds) as a family. Afterward we were invited to Ted and Kelsey's house for soup and dessert along with some other families. It was a great day!

Just hanging out with our gourds.

Headed to the pumpkin patch!

Noah is One!

So I'm a bit late on this birthday post (like about 6 weeks)! We celebrated Noah's big day with a "Noah's Ark" party. Very creative, huh! My mom created an ark "cake" out of rice krispy treats which she frosted to look like a cake. We all thought it turned out great.

I think Noah was more impressed with the spoon than his cupcake.

This is Noah crying when his genius mother let go of his hand for a second when his candle was lit. He burnt his finger and got his feelings hurt. You'd think we'd figure these things out by child #4, but apparently not :)

This is Elsie's party outfit. Every woman's nightmare!

Everyone but Noah opened his gifts.

Digging the cake!

Eating presents.

He's happy now that he's had some sugar.

The masterpiece ark cake!

Little Guy, Big Bump

Noah fought a table today and the table won :( Mike and I feel badly that we didn't anchor a small table to the wall like we talked about. I'm pretty sure it will end up a black eye. Probably one of the first injuries of many as Noah is pretty adventuresome! A few weeks ago I was in the kitchen with my hands in raw beef when Noah climbed up on the kitchen table and dumped out a glass of water. None of my other kids climbed that high at barely one year old!!!

Frugal Tips

A few of these tips are good but most are just hilarious.

http://www.wisebread.com/51-unusual-money-saving-tips-from-readers

Encouragement

I came across this blog post this evening and thought it was encouraging. I hope you do too :)

http://www.elizabethesther.com/threes_a_crowd/2009/06/how-i-found-gods-will-in-a-sinkful-of-dirty-dishes.html

Today

Here's the big man standing on his own. He can manage a few long seconds but not much more at this point. Noah will be one year-old on Saturday! Sorry the photo is blurry, I had the camera on "landscape" for some reason :)

Sisters goofing around.

Weekend Excursion

This past weekend we took a little excursion we've been wanting to do for a while now. We drove to Hood River then turned South on Hwy 35 through all the fruit orchards to circle around behind Mt. Hood. While on Mt. Hood we did a small hike at Trillium Lake. You can see the day was beautiful!

The 2 mile hike at Trillium is smooth enough to take a stroller on. We discovered, even with a stroller, 2 miles is the limit for our family :) The kids were very tired and hungry by the time we reached the van.

Looking at a dead fish in the lake.

Noah the hiker :)

This was at the start of the hike. The kids wanted to stop and look at things so often that the 2 miles took about an hour and a half.

This picture was taken at a little farm near Hood River. We picked up some delicious corn on the cob but discovered apples aren't in season yet. We might try to make another trip in early October to get some fresh apples and enjoy the harvesty feel :)

We're all a bit squinty as we're looking into the sun.

Weston took this photo. Not bad for a six year-old!

First Grade!

Here's Weston on his first day of homeschool. He is now a big first-grader! This year I've chosen to use My Father's World Homeschool Curriculum. So far we are both enjoying it! We've been reviewing the letters and sounds, working on phonics blends, sound recognition, math, memory verses, an art lesson, a science lesson and much more. In addition to the core curriculum I'm using a couple of other recommended reading lists for chapter books to read to both Weston and Grace. They've loved Henry Huggins and Homer Price!
Grace and Elsie don't want to be left out. Grace has been practicing her letters and Elsie has been drawing and coloring lots of circles in an old workbook :). Although it's rewarding and fun, I'm realizing what a challenge homeschooling is going to be. I can only hope to be successful if I am daily relying on God to give me patience and wisdom. On my own I'm just cranky and tired. Good thing God does not leave me on my own!