BABY GIRLS
Liesl was helping me shovel manure in the barn the other day. She was super excited to tell me the different kind of animals that had pooped there: mommy horses, baby horses, etc. At one point, she held her mini-shovel over her head and declared, “I have strong armpits!” Yep.
Penelope has loves her bouncer. The other day, I was working in the kitchen later at night and she must have bounced next to me for over an hour, keeping me company and smiling up at me periodically. Her sweet and sunny disposition truly helps to compensate for the fact that she regularly wakes up almost hourly at night. (She is really great at sleeping between 4:30 am and 9:30 am.) She also has vamped up her rolling capacity to take in the entire floor. She will scoot and turn and roll to get almost anywhere in the room. She loves it!
We recently started her on solids. I made the mistake of mixing some applesauce with yogurt and she was instantly hooked to the creamy sweetness. Now she will tightly press her lips together and refuse most anything unless there is a little yogurt included. Oops. I should know better after all my years of researching the best way to introduce foods...no sweet stuff at first! Of course, this is one of the less sweet yogurts, but apparently, the combination of that with fruit got my little sweetie hooked onto sweets already. She does like guacamole (a very tame variety from the store we always get) as well as the mashed up liquified potatoes from a soup I prepared last week, so her diet isn't exclusively high in sugars. Cute girl. Still not sleeping very well--I guess that just having 13 children in a family doesn't make you a sleep expert. I've tried everything I've heard of or experimented with myself and the more I try, the more often she wakes up. I think I am just resigned to it now.
OUTDOOR WORK
We planted the last of our eight ordered fruit trees yesterday in the middle of a rainstorm: cherry, pear, two kinds of apple, apricot and three peach trees. Can't have too many peaches...ever. We also picked up a whole bunch of inexpensive bushes along with 5 rose bushes for a border along the front of our driveway...I love Aldi! (They have the most amazing random deals.) Anyway, it was a busy day for planting.
Here's a look at my delightfully silly posers after our muddy planting session. The ground has a lot of clay so we had to dig out a bit and fill in the ground with some good soil to offset the clay and give our plants a good head start. Needless to say, it took a lot of digging :D. And a lot of mud.
We also picked up all the supplies we need for the bottom of our chicken coop that will probably outlast any major catastrophe, lol. It will be tough. And large. I have 39 happy chicks in my basement right now in their expanded area that will be excited to get outside and start making a difference on our tic population.
For lunch we enjoyed some Hungarian sandwiches. They were so big, Quinn called his a "Texas Hungarian sandwich":
We love these! This was the first meal Quinn had prepared for us when the entire family joined him almost nine years ago that late dark night in Hungary in our small one bedroom apartment. Ahhh...memories.
ELI
Yesterday morning I was singing "Saturday is a special day" to help remind one of my kids why we work on Saturday. I also started singing other religious songs (it helps keep my spirit right). As I prepared breakfast, Eli came over and stood next to me, fully dressed in his Sunday clothes. I smiled and praised him for getting dressed up so well (he doesn't usually) and then gently said, "That's so awesome buddy, but you don't have to get dressed up today...it's Saturday, buddy." He protested, "But you were singing music about God!"
I assured him it was in fact Saturday and he left with surprisingly little distress.
Later I found out there was another conversation that happened in the other room:
Eli: "It's Sunday, Lily!
Lily: "Uh, I'm pretty sure it's Saturday."
Eli: "No. Mom was singing Sunday music." He started to get dressed into his Sunday clothes.
Lily: "Okay, buddy." (I love that about her! She doesn't push it.)
Fast forward to after he came out and talked to me...
Eli: "Guess what, Lily! It's Saturday." Smiles slyly and chuckles. "I tricked you!"
ADVENTURES
We discovered that our library checks out bikes. And not just any bike...a whole assortment of bikes! You just show up, give them your card and the bike is yours for three hours.
The library is located just off of a relatively flat bike path that we enjoyed for quite a stretch. We stopped off at a place that ended up being right where a helicopter landed at a hospital...the kids thought it was pretty cool. Well, most of them. Eli yelled, "Ha, ha! The police got you and now you're going to jail!" Fortunately, there were no patients getting on or off the helicopter but wow! Eli even waited until the crazy whirring and noise of the helicopter stopped before he shouted. Just today in church, Quinn told Eli, "Shhhh, we're praying" to which Eli replied, "Shhh!! We're praying, Dad!"
Crazy kid. :D
He also had his hair buzzed to almost bald (as close as I would go) when I gave haircuts this week.
Six is sure a feisty age!
Back to the adventures, the kids also went to a skate park while I went grocery shopping and Maia discovered some new heights:
I love seeing this girl do her thing!
XAI
I love to snuggle with this kid. He's super fun. He really enjoyed our "Princess Bride" night last night, when we all dressed up as different characters from the movie, ate a feast that could be something they ate, acted out a few things (sword fight, feats of strength, genius contest) and watched the movie using a projector that the amazingly technologically talented Hyrum set up. Xai was Wesley. Eli was Vinzini (he had to get used to the idea that his character died). It was a lot of fun.
Xai enjoyed our bike ride along the Ohio river and sometimes got tired. (We hadn't been biking like that for a while.) He is also enjoying our two dogs and two cats. Technically we feed three cats, but one hasn't appeared for a while since our dogs started chasing them. We just purchased some shock collars to help teach the dogs not to chase down the cats.
And then there's Drew...a picture is worth a thousand words.
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