Heart of the Matter

So I was going to join in the meme this week at Heart of the Matter. I am a little limited on the photos I have as my last computer crashed and the photos are still in the hard drive.

So I thought I could use this photo. This was taken on a sunset cruise after James got home from his last deployment. The only pictures I have on the laptop are from our trip(s)



I kept looking to see if i had anything else and this one had me cracking up!! But that's off subject......


Well, if you can stop laughing now.....


James, whether it's hiking around the islands, getting the children to laugh themselves silly or reading them a story before bed. You are so caring and loving and we're so glad we have you to call daddy. Love you babe!

our new van

We have a pincher in the family. a biter too. He only seems to do it to his siblings and only when mom and dad aren't looking. But I've seen the evidence, it's not pretty. A good time to use his weapons of choice is in the van, where he is seated right next to his brother(#3). So we've been debating on how to rearrange the children to keep this nonsense down. We have a 8 seater van, but we decided the best thing to do was make it a 7 seater. This seemed this simplest solution but where would we store the seat? We really lack the storage out here. James found room in the shed and we will work on "geco proofing" the chair so it's not covered in poo next time we need it. We removed the middle seat in the middle row so now no one is sitting next to each other. It seems so roomy now! Like a whole new van!

Now to work on that little guy. He must learn to use words not action and the others must learn to listen to him and not ignore. He is very cute and sweet and loud and into everything!

Helping mom

#4 likes to help. It's one of the good influences from the others. Of course at his age it's sometimes hard to find things for him to do that are actually helpful and don't create more work. But since we want to encourage this, we do our best to find things for him. Today it was vacuuming. It was very cute to watch, he required the vacuum to be on while he pushed it around. Now again because of his size he was pushing it on the back two wheels so all it was sucking was air but he was having a grand ole time pushing it around the living room while I was finishing dinner. He had a big smile on his face the whole time-I love happy helpers!

James has been working some shift work lately which means I've been getting the children down for bed. Tonight has been a long night. I believe the blame is lack of physical activity. Day's like this I am dreaming of a big yard for the children to run around in. We were going to go to the park in the a.m. but one child was dragging their feet on some work. Then I planned to take them swimming after naps but 2 children decided to take a 3hour nap and the pool is too crowded by then and it's time to work on supper......
then the crazy shenanigans happen and I realize I have a headache and it's now too dark to run this energy out! Must make this a priority tomorrow!!

Good news-James found the camera charger today! It was hiding in the printer.

Camera charger, camera charger where art thou?

We reorganized our computer area and we now have a missing camera charger. Of course the camera is on it's last little bit of life so I really need to figure out where it got misplaced!



It was this one's birthday yesterday(June 6th, I actually started this post a few days ago).


He's the Big Number 4!!!

These are some cards the older two made for him. Aren't they neat pop up cards? I really like having all the Usborne craft books around. The kids are constantly getting great ideas from them!



We took a cake to bible study and sang to him. He had been a little more cuddly than usual before we brought the cake out-not sure why. But he did try to blow the candles out but they insisted on staying lit! This upset him quite a bit(I believe the picture of him and cake is after his attempt at the candles) so his sis blew the candles out for him. After he got his piece of cake to eat he was as happy as a plum!
He got a little black and decker tool set like daddies. It's really quite cute. Daddies stuff has the rechargeable battery that you slide on each piece, #3's has this piece too(although his isn't actually rechargeable-it does need a battery)
Today we picked up a scooter and helmet for him. He hasn't quite figured it out, I think he walked it more then rode it.
He's a very happy and healthy young boy-we are so blessed to have him in our lives!!

If you are interested in our cake recipe we used this for the chocolate cake. This was the icing-I used some odds and ends of colors I had left over from other events. It was really yummy!
#3 was helping me roll out the pie crust for our chicken pot pie this week. Now he's use to rolling out the pizza dough which is a little tougher for him to roll out. With the pie crust I had to keep telling him to go easy-then I finally realized he was use to the different consistency and was having fun with how pliable it was.
At the park today.

I blame this headless shot on the fact that they kept walking, while I was trying to zoom in a little on the fact that #4 was holding out a flower for me.

Our days.....

The little one and I went to get the mail and when we came back we found #2 & #3 gathering some flowers. They were having such fun picking which ones they liked. They'd drive their cars along the sidewalk and stop at different places to pick a few.


We went to the beach today! It's been awhile since we have gone, it was good to be there again! #1 and #2 spent most of their water time getting water in their noodles and blowing it on each other. #3 swam around in his tube and collected shells. #4 spent alot of time playing in the sand, then finally wanted to play in the water. It was chilly! He is loving the water, we've been using the water wings in the pool and he will float around and have a grand ole time. Then he's tired and will lay his head on your shoulder until everyone is ready to go.

kitchen helpers

Today was #2's day to help me cook. To try to help with the fighting over who helps in the kitchen we have a 3 day rotation marked on the calendar. If that person is not interested in helping then I will let someone else help. We recently came up with the system because I needed help with the chaos that happened if everyone was in the kitchen at once. It seems to work pretty well, although #3 is really bummed if it's his day to help and we aren't doing a lot of cooking.
We had Chicken and Dumplings for dinner. #2 is quite handy with the carrot peeler and I found out tonight that she is great at picking the meat off the chicken. She was working on that while I was getting the dumplings ready, when I went to double check that she had gotten all the chicken off the bones I was very happy to see she did! Great job sis! C&D were yummy and some were sent to the freezer for a fast meal when needed. Not sure how well dumplings freeze but nothing like trail and error to learn.

Savings

We did our grocery shopping today and I had a coupon savings of 12%. Better than it has been in the past so I'm fairly happy with it. My 'coolest' savings was in milk-which I wasn't planning on buying at the store but it happened to be on sale for 2.64. Which for organic milk is HUGE, it's usually double that cost for a half gallon. AND they had coupons for buy 2 half gallons and get $1 off so I'm stocked up on milk for the next 5-6 weeks. I think I might be able to increase my saving even more because this milk was the whole milk and I usually buy the 2% so I might try to dilute it with some water and see how we like it. My second favorite savings of the day was an item that was marked at 1.79 and I had a coupon for $2 off-pretty good deal!

James came home for a few hours this afternoon so we hit the pool, had a late lunch, naps and are getting ready to go to the library.

Hope you have a great Tuesday!!