Busy Days

Things have been pretty crazy around here and I don’t imagine it’s going to calm down in the next 8 days. My folks are gone taking care of Josh, (& the rest of the family) and so I’m teaching for my mom. It’s pretty fun, but with half my girls still too young for school, I’m very thankful I have the privilege of just being their mom every day. It makes my afternoons and evenings very busy when I haven’t been home for half the day! We’re also in the midst of preparing for company – Ed’s brother and his wife and family are coming next week and so there is much to do to get ready for that. I’m still hoping to paint the bathroom (yes, a new color has been chosen – watch for it in future posts) and the living room, in addition to doing all the end-of-the-school-year things, plus meal planning and shopping for our guests. I’m really not quite sure how it’s all going to get done. Maybe I should stop blogging… ;)

We’ve also been having gorgeous weather which means I have blooming flower photos to share, as well as pics of the kids swimming in the neighbor’s pool this afternoon…oh, and photos of the girls violin/piano recital which was on Saturday.

Here we go. Friday’s PotD: Oops, looks like I cropped that to 8x10 size accidently. Oh well. It’s my calla lily. They’re starting to bloom, but I don’t have as many blooms as last year. It looks like it might be time to divide these come fall. I have just the place for the divided crop, too!

Saturday’s Photos-of-the-day:

Miss Bethany playing her piano at the recital. I didn’t get a picture of her playing the violin because Ed was at Becca’s last soccer game and when Bethany plays her violin, I have to accompany her on the piano! She did great, though, on both instruments.

Sarah playing one of her two piano pieces. She played beautifully, as always.

Here’s the girls with their beautiful and talented piano/violin teacher. She’s great and fun and challenging for them. She requires that her students record how many minutes they practice each week (she asks for 150/week, which comes out to 30 minutes a day, 5x a week) and then gives prizes at each recital to the student with the most minutes. Last year, Sarah determined she was going to win that prize and at the Christmas recital, she did! Well, things get busy in the second half of 5th grade and she didn’t practice NEAR as much as she did during the first half. So when the prize time came at the end of the recital, we didn’t think either of the two gifts the teacher was holding would be for her. The teacher announced that she had two winners, one had the most minutes total, but she also had two instruments to practice, and that winner was Miss Bethany! Yay Bethany!!! And then she announced that the person with the next most minutes was Miss Bethany’s sister Sarah! So both the girls won prizes and we had what has now become known as the “Ball Family Sweep” of the prizes at the music recital. I just want to know – where’s my prize?

I am very proud of the girls and their diligence in practicing, even when they only did it because I said they had to. It has paid off for them and they are learning so much and becoming talented musicians and they do it all to God’s glory and in thankfulness to Him for the gift. It’s awesome.

Today after church & lunch the girls were invited to play in the neighbor’s pool. Since Elise is still so young and dangerous around the water, that meant I had to sit at the neighbor’s most of the afternoon, so I took a few pictures.

Becca was declared an “official big girl” by the neighbor friends because she could jump off the ladder into the pool and since she is now tall enough to touch the bottom with her head above water. She was thrilled.

More 8x10 cropping – looks like my default crop size got changed somehow…anyhoo…Elise loved it. Except once she wanted her friend’s life jacket on instead of her ring that goes on like a swimsuit. It worked great until she flipped herself onto her back and couldn’t get upright again. She got kind of scared, but wasn’t in danger and I was standing right there watching. Sarah went in and rescued her and I think a bit of fright in the water was just what she needed. She was just a tad more careful during the rest of her swimming time.

Bethany could jump pretty high also! Later on tonight she started not feeling well and has now gone to bed with a fever, so we’re hoping it’s not going to turn into anything serious…say a prayer for her with me.

Sarah of course is almost too big to jump into the pool like this, but she was having fun, despite being the oldest in the group.

And Becca just loves having her picture taken. :)

And lastly, my first peony to open and bloom. I love  those flowers. There is something so timeless-English-garden about them.

Carter Michael, Day One photos (May 28, 2009)

Proud Daddy, my brother Mike, with son #2 Carter Michael, born at 12:29 p.m. on May 28, 2009. 7 pounds, 5 ounces, 20 inches long. A blessing from the Lord, for sure.

Joshua John (3) kissing baby brother Carter.

My dad meeting Carter for the first time.

Check out that boy’s hands! And doesn’t he look just perfect? Aawwww. Love you Carter. Auntie Julie can’t wait to meet you in August. Be good until then!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my brand-new nephew, Carter Michael, who was born today! Congratulations to my bro and sis-in-law and nephew (& new big bro) Josh and much gratitute to the Creator of Life who sustains. A picture will be forthcoming...

Hey Teacher Leslie!

You better come back soon. I think these kids are outta control.

Oh wait. I reined them in. All except for that cute one in the blue skirt. She’s the trouble-maker in the group.

 

Totally new topic:

Here are some random comments from various friends on Facebook.

I say to myself, Don't worry about your tight jeans, that ice cream tasted really good this summer...

and

love it!! I read a card that said life isn't about dieting and looking good, wearing tight shoes and fitting in....it is about sliding into home, dirty with the love of life, holding high only your best chocolate bar!!

I love those friends. Especially when I eat this:

YUM! I think that is my absolute favorite dessert. It tastes even better because my DH loves to dish it up for me and serve me as I veg out on the couch. Mmmmmm.

Another totally different topic:

This child

needs summer vacation.

Seriously, if I could give a little bit of advice to all those 5th grade teachers out there: two major projects during the last two weeks of school is seriously killer. Mostly for the mom. I’ve heard of Senioritis, but I think I have a very bad case of 5th-grade-parentitis. I haven’t had that officially diagnosed or anything, but I have a friend who is a doctor and I’m pretty sure he would say that the cure for such a thing is to stay away from all homework. Another cure is summer vacation. Good thing that in less than one week from right now, summer vacation will be here. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I guess I’ll have to press on, (or at least act like it for the sake of my daughter.) ;)

Memorial Day Weekend

As I type this, Memorial Day weekend is coming to a close…it’s 7 p.m. and the girls are getting bathed and showered and ready for bed. Overall, it’s been a pretty good weekend for us.

On Saturday Ed had to work, but the girls and I went to some garage sales and to the grocery store. Then my parents were kind enough to take all the girls to the beach in the afternoon and I painted white primer over the yucky pinky brown paint in the bathroom. But…I’ve already told that story.

Sunday was a good day – church (choir sang for the last time this season) and communion – lunch with family – music performances – watching nephew Elias’ baptism on video – hanging out outside – teaching Sarah to do laundry – watching “Castle” in the evening with Ed. You’d think with all the “unscheduled time” on Sundays I would eventually get around to reading at least one of the books stacked on my nightstand.

Let’s see…the bottom magazine is a Banner – I think I’m mostly done with that. The Vicki Courtney book next up is something that I should read – but I don’t HAVE to have those conversations with a daughter for another two years, so it’s easy to procrastinate on that one. I really want to read “The Shack” but have heard I shouldn’t read it when I’m home alone without Ed or when I won’t have time to finish it soon. “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” I am about halfway through, but I think I mostly get the point of it by now. Eat healthy, local food. Right? Then there’s that weird one that my friend Beth loaned me. I read about half of it on the flight home from CA in April. It’s OK, but hard to follow because it’s all letters that the different characters have written to each other. Then of course the Bible. I do actually read that occasionally, but not often enough, I am sure. “The Love Dare” is from the movie “Fireproof” which we haven’t seen, but need to see, so I’m told. Then there’s two magazines, followed by two library books that friends recommended. I skimmed the “Free Your Child From Anxiety” book, and am relieved that I don’t have kids with an actual "anxiety disorder” – though one child may have a bit of OCD in her blood. Nothing serious. We joke about it. The top book I know nothing about, so can’t comment. Maybe I should read instead of blogging sometime.

Today was pretty relaxed. Ed & I went out this morning for a bit and left Sarah home to babysit. We’re going to try to do that occasionally in the summers – go out on Saturday mornings or something so that we can have some time alone and begin to teach Sarah how to deal with babysitting issues. We’ll never be far away – home in less than 10 minutes if she calls our cell phone – and will never be gone long. It’ll just build everyone’s confidence in this new phase of life. Then we cleaned the garage and did some other odd jobs around the house. That was all good. Ed got to play some video games and I got to work in the yard a bit. The girls played with a neighbor.

While I was working in the flower beds I noticed some cilantro ready to be harvested. I knew I had tomatoes in the fridge that needed to be used, some green onions, and a lime…it was time for the season’s first batch of my homemade salsa! Yummmmmmmyyyyyyy! The only thing missing was a pepper. I like serrano pepper in my salsa, but we used some jalepeno peppers from the jar in the fridge. It was good, but not quite the same flavor as a serrano. I like that smokier flavor. I whipped up the salsa and we had it with chips and burgers on the grill for dinner. What a perfect end to Memorial Day weekend!

I gotta blog more

If I’m using this blog as a “journal” of sorts – to keep all my PotD pics and to keep a current record of our daily life – I gotta blog more. That way there won’t be so much to read all at once…but here goes…

Sarah’s been working on a bridge for school. They can use paper, cardboard, and straws. Then they test it at school to see how many encyclopedias it can hold before collapsing. Sarah has no idea what the point of this is yet, and it’s all learning by trial and error. So far, the best one at school held 23 encyclopedias. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Sarah’s. Hers held 5. So. Now she has to start over. Too bad she forgot to bring more materials home to work on it over the weekend with her dad. That’s par for the course with her sometimes. Anybody got any great plans for constructing a bridge that will hold encyclopedias?

Wednesday brought another great soccer game! Here’s Becca’s big kick! She played her friend Sam’s team and they got a little silly with each other, but had fun, and that’s what counts, right? Don’t worry Dee – I do have some pictures with Sam and I’ll e-mail those to you soon. :)

Ed’s had kind of a rough week. On Monday night he played Ultimate Frisbee with the guys from work. The last time he played was a year ago and he pulled some leg muscle that bothered him for months. The time before that he cracked some ribs. Needless to say, I was quite relieved when he came home from Ultimate un-injured. Whew!

Apparently his friends were quite impressed with his athletic prowess after that Ultimate performance because they invited him along on a 30 mile bike ride on Wednesday morning. Yes. You read that correctly. Thirty miles. Or maybe they weren’t impressed. Maybe they’re actually trying to hurt him. Or maybe they’re so intimidated by his brilliant mind and coding genius that they have to show off *their* athletic prowess to him. I don’t know. But whatever it was, Ed went on a 30 mile bike ride with them on Wednesday morning.

He was kinda nervous. I was really nervous. I wasn’t sure I’d see him conscious again.

He finally called me THREE hours after the bike ride started. He had finally caught his breath. I was so shook by the sound of his voice (which basically sounded lifeless) that I thought he must be in the ER. He said he was in his office. I asked him how he felt. This is what he said: “I feel like I just gave birth and I’m really mad at my husband and I never want to go through that again for a long time.”

Yep. That’s what he said. I laughed. I did! I mean, seriously. It was just a bike ride! I know it was 30 miles and I could never do it, but there is no way in the world to compare it to childbirth, unless you’ve actually gone through childbirth and I hate to tell you this Ed, but standing by my side while I gave birth to our four beautiful daughters just doesn’t count.

Anyway, this is what poor Ed did on Wednesday at the first possible moment after he got home.

 

Thanks much to Ed’s so-called friends who took him on this bike ride. He’ll concede – you’re all more athletic than he is. It’s OK with him. He’s OK with just being who he is. Just don’t ever make him do that again. Oh, but an actual bit of gratitude on my part goes to Bryan who rode slowly with Ed on the ride so that if he did have a heart attack, he wouldn’t be all alone. I appreciate that, Bryan.

On Thursday, Becca & I spent a glorious afternoon at the park for her preschool picnic. My mom’s been having these picnics with her preschoolers for 20 years and I FINALLY got to go on one! Last year, Becca’s picnic day was rainy, and so was the make-up picnic day, so we didn’t get to go. I was so excited to go and spend this day with Becca and we had a great time. Teacher brought bread to give to the kids so they could feed the ducks and the turkeys and all the animals. The picture above is of Becca reaching out to her teacher (grandma) to get another piece of bread to throw in the pen. We also had a picnic lunch, played games (including my favorite – the wheelbarrow race. Becca giggled so hard she couldn’t keep herself up!), played on the playground, climbed the tower, and blew bubbles. Then our friend treated us to a stop at Sonic for milkshakes on the way home. What a beautiful day!

On Friday, Bethany & I spent a glorious day on the beach and at the local marine life center for her field trip! It’s a field trip I remember going on in third grade and one that I was able to go on with Sarah, so it was awesome to also go this year with Bethany. We spent the morning on the beach and the tide was out really far, so we saw tons of stuff. Bethany knew so much about the creatures, and was not at all squeamish about touching the sea creatures, so we just had so. much. fun. We saw sea stars, sea anemones, tube worms, sand dollars, crabs, herons, sea urchins, chitons, limpets, and more, I’m sure. Then we had our picnic on a driftwood log on the beach and headed over to the marine life center where they have a touch tank and all sorts of stations with tanks to watch other creatures. The coolest part of that was watching the live barnacles moving their…tentacles…or arms…or feelers…or whatever that was through the water out of their shell. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything other than a barnacle shell on a rock. I’ve never seen the actual animal before! It was awesome.

That’s Bethany picking up the first sea star she found. I think one of her classmates counted 64 purple sea stars, and I’m sure there were hundreds of sand dollars in the one mud pool, so we really saw a lot of stuff.

Today I worked on the bathroom. As some of you know, I’ve been painting the bathroom. I’ve painted that bathroom 3 times this past week.

 

That’s right. It’s white. I’ve painted it 3 times and it’s white. Here’s the story. I painted it brown. Except it looked pink. It was hideous. The whole family agreed. So. I got more paint. Tried that on just one wall. Didn’t look better. I tried mixing some white paint and black paint into the second pinky-brown paint. Painted that one two walls. Looked a little better, but not really. So. I got some primer and today I painted two coats of white primer over it all. And now it’s white. Just like when I started. Only worse because it’s primer and not real paint. And I still have to choose a brown.

Collages

Wow. Some busy days we have had around here. Instead of posting 15 thousand pictures, I made some collages to be the Photos-of-the-Day.

Thursday, May 14…busy day!

Becca had a soccer game and Sarah had her spring band concert. The concert was really good, but it was pretty long. We had the middle school jazz band, the high school jazz band, the 5th grade band, the 6th grade band, the 7/8 grade band, and the high school band. If each group had played one less song, then it would have been perfect. Typically 5th grade bands are pretty awful to listen to, but this band is pretty good! It must be those 100 required minutes of practicing each week.

Friday, May 15

Not such a busy day…

I planted seed potatoes in a container! My Aunt Adie gave me a few of hers and I read all about how to do it on the Internet. After I took that last picture, I added a bit more soil until just the little beginning plants were peeking out. Apparently, once the plant is six inches tall, I have to add four more inches of soil, and continue doing that until the flowers on the plant die and then I can dig for potatoes. I think I might be a little late in getting these started, but we’ll see how it goes.

Saturday, May 16…oh man…now that was a busy, but very awesome, day!

In the morning, Becca had a soccer game. It was fun. Then we went to see my cousin’s new baby horses:

Are those not the cutest? And Elise’s little blonde head and her blue overalls amidst the dandelions was just too much to resist. I had to take tons of pictures. Love ‘em. And cousin Emily’s blonde head is pretty cute too – she’s the one with the cute little bob there.

The baby horses were so sweet. My cousin’s kids are naming them. I think Abby is in charge of the names. This year they’ve decided to do all biblical names. The one girl horse is Jezebel. And two boys so far are Caan and Saul. The next one that is due (& is maybe born already!) will be Delilah if it’s a girl and if it’s a boy…Herod. Notice a theme here? I think Abby likes the bad guys. She told me that those stories are more interesting. She’s right, I think. Everyone remembers what happens to the bad guys. She just wants her horses to be memorable.

Then we got the van washed at the local Relay for Life fundraiser and headed home for lunch and naps. Then came the big CMT recital for Bethany!

She did great! Her group song was a version of “Zip-a-dee-do-dah!” and was really fun to watch and listen to. Her solo was “Puff, the Magic Dragon” and she sounded beautiful! I'd go on and on about her perfect pitch and how she's overcome so much shy-ness and how proud we are of her and how she had the most impressive voice at the recital, but I don't want to brag. ;)

Then we drove out to the new Sonic Burger for dinner and dessert. We have never been to a Sonic Burger and it was pretty fun. Bethany thought that the car-hops on rollerskates were “weird”, but we all thought it was cool. We parked, ordered, paid, ate, ordered dessert, and ate dessert – all from the comforts of our van. Yippee! ;)

Then we drove back for another CMT recital in which our friend Holly was the star! I have a few pictures of that too, but I’m going to e-mail them to her mom so she can post them on her blog. I’ll put up a link once she does that. :) She may even have some of her own pictures, but I doubt it. She’s not a crazy-picture-taking-mom like me.

Sunday, May 16: Thankfully today was nice & relaxed. We went to church, socialized a lot more than we often do, came home to a lunch with just the 6 of us and spent the afternoon finishing up a few things that didn’t get done yesterday and doing fun things together. There were baseball games and soccer kicks, rides on the swings, first tries at riding without training wheels, baking cookies, and blogging. And, Bethany found the third partial robin’s egg that we have seen on our property. There must be a nest somewhere…we just haven’t seen it yet.

On to a new week…only 3 more of these before summer vacation!!!

Correction: My friend IS a "crazy-picture-taking-mom" and even more so than me! She beat me to it all! Her blog already has all her proud ravings of her daughters and pictures to boot. Click here to read all about the up-and-coming local star.

Pick a brown, any brown

Just not that one…

…or that one….

hmmm…I don’t like that one either.

Such is the story of my life the last few days! I’m trying to pick a light brown paint color for the main bathroom in the house. It is disastrous. I thought I finally had something. I got the paint. I took it home. I opened it up to test it on the walls. Oh man. This was not brown. This was orange! I hate orange. Never mind that Bethany likes it. I do not.

So, back to the paint store. Lucky for me my dad works there and I know some people. We tried to fix the paint. We added brown. That was a little better. Then we added more brown. Definitely less orange, but not dark enough. So we added some black. That was OK so we added more black and that is where things went very, very wrong. When we opened it up, it was gray. It was the color of gray caulk. Or weather-stripping. That is what I would have named it if I could have. Gray caulk weather-stripping.

So the guy says, “Let’s start over.” Great! Because I do not like paint color “Gray caulk weather-stripping.” We head over to the paint chips. But now I have NO idea whatsoever. What is the right color brown?  Who knew there were so many browns in the world? So, now this is sitting on my bathroom counter.

At the moment I’m leaning towards something called “Summer Sands.” Sounds nice, right? Yeah. Except when I take it home it’ll probably look more like “mud cave.”

PotD for Monday:

We had our GEMS Father/Daughter Night and the plan for the evening was to do yardwork for people in our church and to spread bark around the flower beds at church. Sounds great, right? Yes! And despite the POURING DOWN RAIN and the THUNDERSTORMS, everyone smiled and worked and had a great time!

PotD for Tuesday:

Yes, I messed with this in PSE…just trying some things out. Ed & Sarah went on a date to the orchestra concert at school. They had a good time!

If any of you feel less color-challenged than I am, come on over. You can pick my brown.

Happy Mother’s Day to me…and my mom…and others!

Fair warning: This is a looooooong post. Make sure you have some time before you start.

Today has been a wonderful Mother’s Day! In many ways, Mother’s Day now has a bit of sadness to it, since Ed’s Mom is gone as is my good friend Lea’s Mom. I know that for a lot of people there is a lot of pain surrounding Mother’s Day – because they’ve lost mothers or children or can’t have children or they are separated from their mom or their child in some way – but I am blessed and thankful for the family that I have – for my DH and my girls and my parents and everyone else.

The girls & Ed had surprises for me this morning.

Hugs at breakfast

Homemade cards from each of my girls

Here Becca is giving me a “Smartie” she saved from her soccer treat yesterday. Now these were not regular old Smarties – the kind that come in a roll and are kind of chalky and tart. These were the Canadian version – the Canadian M&M’s that they call Smarties! I gushed over them when she was eating them after soccer and she saved me one. Sweetie!

Bethany made me a card and gift at school and she gave me a coupon telling me she would fold two loads of laundry for me! Lucky for her there are two loads ready to be folded on the floor in the living room.

This is the gift she made for me at school. Isn’t that a cute idea? Thanks, Miss B!

Sarah sent me on a scavenger hunt to find my gift from her. She got me a Hawaiian wallet in her class auction. She actually used her stickers that she earned from her class participation, etc. to buy something for me! Thanks, Sarah!

Then I got to open my present from Ed. He had the girls color and draw on white paper to wrap up the box from newegg.com. I LIKE boxes from newegg.com. ;)

MMMMmmmm! A 50 mm fixed length lens for my camera! As you can see from the box, it has an f-stop as low as 1.8, which, in non-photographer terms, means that I can take GREAT portraits and close-ups. At least, that’s the theory. I’m counting on it working out so that I can take nice pictures of my girls.

Also yesterday we went to the local country store and did their inexpensive “build-a-basket” project and had free hotdogs. It was fun and I hope this basket grows quickly. The girls helped pick out all pink & white flowers, so we’ve got some fuschias and bacopa in there and who knows what else. It’s small now, but in a few months I’m hoping it’ll be gorgeous!

I also got to work in the yard almost all afternoon yesterday. It was so wonderful to actually spend some time out there and get all my stuff planted! I also managed to score a tomato-red sunburn on my back, but it was worth it.

Gerbera Daisies in my window box.

My new tomato-growing experiment – the topsy-turvy hanging tomato grower…I’ll let you know how it’s going in a few months!

My mini-veggie-garden: I’ve got 3 kinds of peppers (which do not grow well in the PNW, I usually get one pepper per plant!) and a spicy salad mix from the local farmers market, some chives and cilantro. I am also planning to do some potatoes in my big pots once I get some more dirt.

Now for some of my new blooming stuff from around the yard: I think this is some kind of columbine?

Ed loves the yellow-orange irises. These are his favorite!

Some creeping phlox under the forsythia, which is no longer blooming, but it is growing!

Snowball bush

Sarah’s strawberry patch. Looks like we may have a few strawberries this year! In the past, hers have grown and grown, but haven’t produced many flowers or fruits – there are lots of flowers this year! Bethany has a patch of strawberries in the back, which produce a ton of berries, but never get bigger! This year though it looks like it’s finally sent out some shoots and we may get even more berries. Yay!

My lilac tree – I am so glad it is blooming! I had not a single bloom last year. I found out that I either a) gave it too much fertilizer (apparently lilacs don’t like nitrogen) or b) cut off all the buds when I pruned it the year before or c) both a & b. My guess is c. So, after I learned not to do that, I stopped fertilizing it and didn’t touch it with a pruning shears and viola! Lilac blooms!

I had just a few minutes to try out my new lens. Pretty fun and awesome depth of field!

So, the rest of the Mother’s day…

Much of my family was at my mom’s today for dessert! Hooray! We had to have a picture of all the women. This is me & my girls, my mom, my Grandma, my Aunt Nancy and my Aunt Adie. Uncle Stan, my dad, and Ed were also there. Uncle Jim was unfortunately at home as he had fallen and hurt his shoulder and back. :( It was a great Mother’s Day!

Time to catch up on PotD!

Those are from Becca’s soccer game on Thursday, May 7. She did great, though she likes practice better than games. Why? Because in practice everyone gets their own ball and in games everyone is trying to kick the same ball! Makes sense to me.

Okay, this is Friday’s PotD even though Becca is holding something she made in school on Thursday. I took the picture on Friday when I was going through the stack of papers on the counter and found the picture and hung it up on the cupboard. Thanks for the great picture, Becca!

 

Here’s the Saturday morning breakfast picture. I purposely focused on the food, since that’s why I took the picture. That’s why Bethany is slightly out of focus. Eggs and toast – Ed’s Saturday morning specialty. Thanks, Ed!

We also had Becca’s soccer game on Saturday afternoon. She got to play goalie for part of the game and did great! She blocked 3 kicks and didn’t let the other team score any goals!

She was also getting more aggressive in going after that one ball that everyone is trying to kick!

 

Okay, I know I already had lots of photos for Sunday. But I just had to include this one as Sunday’s PotD. I also know that I have lots of pictures of Becca on my blog. She’s just so darn dramatic and photogenic. I can’t help it. Is anyone else as cute as this?