Picture Mash-Up

Here's another picture mash-up post collecting a bunch of random pictures from the last few weeks.

Edie recently figured out that she can catch and pick up a chicken all by herself. She now loves the chickens and is convinced that the chickens love her. If one of them is going crazy with the post-egg-laying bawking, Edie will often declare her chicken needs a hug and go catch it and give it a hug. Surprisingly, that usually does actually stop the bawking.

Today Edie asked me if I could cut up a peach for her, so I did and then she asked if she could eat it outside so I followed her out and put it on the table in the back. Then she cried and told me she wanted to eat "with mine Emma chicken." After a minute of back-and-forth I determined that she wanted to sit *inside* the chicken pen and eat with her chickens, to which I replied that they would immediately eat all of her peach if she did that to which she replied, "I don't care." Now I'm wondering how much of her food she has actually taken outside and fed to the chickens. So I told her we don't feed our good food to the chickens and if she wanted to eat with them, she would have to sit outside the pen. She did.

Last Christmas (or the one before?) Grandma (I think it was Grandma?) gave the girls each a kit that had everything you need to sew a bag from two fat quarters. The bags are very cute, but Catherine saw the origami design recently and decided it actually looked like a hat with ear flaps. And it fit perfectly.

I like that she's still willing to be goofy at 10 years old. I hope it lasts.

I have no explanation for the next three pictures. Edie's hair is basically an animal in and of its own right.

I also don't remember what was happening here. Either Gussie and Edie were wrestling and they just bumped faces, or they were playing a game that involved trying to figure out what the other one was saying with a hand over the mouth, or... who knows. But Edie saw this picture and said "It's my lion!" Gussie has been her pretend lion for months and months now.

Just five kids climbing a thing after playing in the splash pad.

Gussie got tired of holding both animals, so he asked Edie if he could borrow the wrap she uses for her baby.

More Gussie! I asked him if he wanted to take a picture with me, and he said only if he could ride on my back. Then I handed the camera to Michael Jr and Gussie immediately started hiding his face and making pretend angry faces. At least it's a picture!

Climbing Camp

Since the girls have a week-long musical theater camp later in the summer, I told Michael and Gussie that I would try to find something similar for them if they wanted. They both told me all they want to do is swim all summer.

But the indoor climbing gym near us had a sale on their kids' climbing camps so I signed Michael Jr up for a week. There were only 5 climbers in his week so he basically climbed non-stop for three hours a day for a week. Even though he was less than enthusiastic when I first signed him up, and even though we had to stick around for an hour or so on the first day before he felt comfortable being there by himself, my suspicions that 1) he would have a really good time and 2) he has a natural talent for climbing were both correct.

They learned how to clip into the auto belays on the first morning and pretty much took off from there.

This was one of Michael's favorite walls. It was the tallest one (obviously) and it actually took him two tries to get all the way to the top.



And his face when he reached the top.

But his favorite favorite part was the bouldering wall. You don't have to be roped in for that wall because it is shorter and the floor under it is bouncy. I don't think I ended up catching it on video (what with trying to keep the other four kids off the walls) but his favorite moves on the bouldering wall seemed to be leaping to a handhold just out of reach or getting both hands on high holds and doing a pull-up to find a place to put his feet. This video is him reaching the eyelash near the top, something he didn't manage until the second or third day. Watch for his face after he jumps down.



Just another bouldering video, with the same face at the end. And keep in mind the videos are all from when I picked him up, which means he had already done a couple hours of climbing. I think he was finally tired at the end of the fifth day.

It turns out he's still pretty flexible also.

He really wanted to make it around the eyeball in the middle but that one is going to take a bit more practice.

So after a week of climbing everything with great success and having a really fun time, I asked him if it was something he would like to do more often and he just shrugged his shoulders at me. This kid.

Circus Flora

Grandma recently treated us to a circus show and it was even on Daddy's day off so we had a full family outing with Grandma and Olivia. Except I couldn't really get pictures of anyone because I was sitting in the middle of them; I only managed this one picture of Gussie while he was watching the trapeze artists.

And I did take a few pictures of some of the kids' favorite acts. Even though they aren't in the pictures, they enjoy seeing the pictures and remembering they were there. [Side note: Have I told you about how much the kids love the printed version of the blog? I think we have 4 or 5 years printed now, and Catherine and Mary have read every one from cover to cover. It's some of their favorite bed time reading. If Mary tells you about a memory from when she was one or two years old, it's because she read about it in the blog books.]

Anyway, here are some of their favorites. Catherine and Mary really liked the aerial acts.

Michael and Gussie and Edie liked the horses best.

I was worried that the youth tumbling team or the guy running straight up a pole would inspire some new shenanigans at home, but they are mostly up to their same stuff, so I think we safe (ish).

More Splashing

It's early June and it's consistently in the 90s already. I think we're going to be spending a lot of time at the fountain this summer.

I don't remember why we didn't have swim suits with us this day, but the kids didn't care at all.

Oh, except Gussie who preferred to ride his bike all around.

The kids collaborated with some other kids to figure out how to climb on top of the fountain. Just when I thought there wasn't anything else they could think of that would make the passing rangers yell at them...

Edie's not worried. She can outrun any ranger in her beloved "watermelon" shirt.

Videos of Edie

Edie's vocabulary and strong opinions combined with her small stature make for a funny picture sometimes, because you just don't expect the stories and songs she has to come out of her little frame. But they do. All day long. Here are a few examples that I managed to record. Some of them are long and 65-year-old me is probably the only one who will watch them all the way through, but here they are.

Any time Edie wants to show me how to do something, it starts with, "So. Mommy." This is her tutorial on how to wrap her baby bear.



Have you heard the story about the helicopter? We were driving out of our neighborhood one day and I saw a yellow helicopter up ahead, and was ready to point it out to the rear-facers in the van when we got to a point they could see it. Then we rounded a corner and I saw that it wasn't just a hovering helicopter; it was a helicopter hovering over a set of wires strung over a set of train tracks, and hanging from the helicopter was a man, in a bucket, doing something with the wires. I immediately pulled over and unbuckled the kids so they could see better. When he was done, the helicopter flew off with the man in the bucket still hanging and flying behind. This is Edie's version of the story.



One of Edie's favorite songs for the last few weeks has been No More Monkeys Jumping On The Bed. But there aren't just monkeys in her version. Puppies, Mommies, Grandmas, and Grandpas all jump on the bed, and in these cases it's usually the children who call the doctor, or the mama who calls the children, or the grandma who calls the mama... so many options. This one is long because Gussie heard her singing and starting singing along with her, which made her really angry and she had to stop and wait until he was done then start over so she could sing it all by herself. Her pouting face is worth a view.



But now Catherine and Mary have the CD of the musical they will be in for their musical theater camp in a few weeks, so Edie has a new favorite song that is something like "Whoa, whoa, Jonah go! When God gives a message, you listen and follow!" This is the background music for all of her activities right now. By the time the camp comes up, she'll have the whole thing memorized just as well as the big girls.