Reunion season is coming to a close.

Our last family reunion of the year is this weekend. It's a gathering of my great-grandparent's children and their descendants. It has the potential to be a massive undertaking but as my grandpa's siblings pass away and the family gets more spread out, it is getting smaller and smaller.

Today was a long day filled with a lot of fun activities. When we got there, the first thing the girls did was the zip-line. (We tried to explain it to Hannah on the way to the reunion and after a few minutes of descriptions she finally said "Oh, I get it. It's like swashbuckling!")

Later today she told me "It wasn't like swashbuckling after all, Mother. It was like Diego." There you have it.

On Ainsley's turn, she decided she'd rather be pulled up than slide down.

And then there was the 'train', a contraption that we made for Matt's father a few years ago and brought in to the reunion.

It was fun.

A lot of fun.

There was independent play while parents were involved in what seemed to be never-ending chatter.



Homer the Clown came. He came to our smaller family reunion also and Hannah fell in love with him. His show had some new stuff in it and most were amused.

I say 'most' because I couldn't tell if Grayson liked it. He never looked away and his face looked like this the whole time.

Hannah was completely twitterpated and wanted a picture of him to put up in her room.

After Homer left, we had a family auction with donated items to fund the next year's reunion. I won a fantastic quilt (which Ains promptly fell asleep on) ...

and these absolutely darling cow tea towels.

I say 'won' because I don't want to admit how much I spent. So don't ask.

Our puppy was endlessly fascinating to this little guy (who is my third cousin twice removed - or something).

Meanwhile, Hannah found out who'd won the kitty cat embroidered tea towels that *she* had wanted ("One of them was planting flowers, Mother!") and went to go look at all seven of them.

Then it was time to go back to my husband's parent's house to do milking duty so Hannah did one last activity before we left - she got a Super Soaker.



And then she got in the truck.

So now we're 'home', Daddy's milking, and children are screwing around.



We'll see you tomorrow for Snapshot Sunday!

They say it's your birthday!

My grandmother and my father stopped through on their way to a family reunion today. It was her 92nd birthday. I can't even imagine.

Ainsley sat beside her and chatted for over thirty minutes, which warmed my heart as my grandmother is her namesake.

Hannah made her a 'Birthday Monster'.



Happy Birthday, Grandma! You are an inspiration - one of the strongest women I know and I don't want to think of where I'd be without your presence and influence in my life.

There be monsters here!

My sister's been here for the last two days to help with a doll making project.

This morning Hannah asked if *she* could do a craft. Because I'm brain-dead from making too many dolls, I asked her if she had any ideas. She suggested painting on wood with acrylic paint. I revived my brain long enough to come up with another idea. I do *not* need to be wrangling acrylic paint while I'm stuffing doll legs, thank you very much.

"Draw a monster," I told her. So she did.

And so did Ainsley.

While they did that, I rounded up some supplies. Felt, the button jars (of course), thread, stuffing, yarn ... And then we set to work 'interpreting' the pictures.

Since we've never done this before, the girls had drawn without picturing their monsters off the paper. Now they got to pick a color, add texture in the form of buttons, embroider expressions, and pick yarn out for hair. It was such a fun process and we have lots of ideas for more texture we can add to future monsters.

I folded a piece of felt in half and cut out the front and back of the monster together. Then I laid out the top piece and had the girls match the fabric up to their drawing/imagination.

When they'd decided how they wanted their monsters to look, we started sewing them. Hannah could do a lot of the work herself - the buttons, the ribbon toes, and the smile - and I did what she couldn't.

Ainsley couldn't do much but explain to me what the different parts of her drawing were ("It's a COWBOY monster, Mommy!"), but every so often, a set of little pudgy hands would try to help me sew a button on here or do some embroidery there.

Once we had all of the embellishments and expressions added, we stuffed them. First we used all of the felt and thread scraps and then we added in stuffing.

Hannah's monster was fairly straightforward and easy to translate from paper to felt. Here's her drawing again ...

And the finished project (which is cuddled up to her as she sleeps right now) ...

She had an absolute blast doing this project and has three more monsters (and another one 'just for GrayGray') laying on the counter, drawn up and ready to go.

Ainsley's finished monster is true to Ainsley Style, with a diamond necklace, a bow in her hair (between two of the three eyes), a flower in her hand, and a cowboy hat and boots - most of which I wouldn't have understood without her explanations. I cut the monster out using the outline of her drawing - I thought about embroidering the many circles and then, thanks to my ever-sensible sister, decided not to. I'd still be sewing.

Here's her drawing again ...

And the finished project ...

"She so coooot!" was what Ainsley said when she'd inspected the final project.

She wants a ballerina monster next.

Their cousin wanted a monster too. Her drawing was a bit more ambitious.

And her mother, for all of the sense she talked into me over Ainsley's monster, did a heckuva job making a patchwork monster to match the picture.

Think 'monster bird. It's so fun. Very tactile. The ribbon hair (above the black face) is so sweet - little pigtails.

When I was discussing the picture with my niece, trying to decipher heads and tails and legs and eyes (she's got several by the way - some on her head and some on her tail), I pointed to the line on the bottom of the monster and asked "What's that? Is that it's leg?" Because, you know, if it had been Ainsley's monster it would have been a leg. Or possibly a penis. "No, it's PEEING." she said. She seemed irritated that I even had to ask.

So my sister - because she's awesome - put it on the monster. When I was taking the picture of the monster, my niece asked "What's this thread?" pulling on the yellow thread. "That's the pee, of course," I answered. She dissolved into giggles.

I wonder how many more of these monsters we'll make - I have some drawings waiting on the counter, a ballerina monster in another daughter's head, and my sister has another drawing that her daughter made.

Easy, fun craft - and cuddly to boot!

This post is brought to you by the color Orange.

Yesterday was a muggy, overcast day - the first in almost two weeks that was cool enough to hit a park during the day as Ains has been requesting (for almost two weeks). There just happens to be a park across the street from the library and Aunt Ria (It is how she's referred to at all times, so it has become her name.) and her kids were there, so that was the park we went to. I had business at the library after all (or rather, they had business with me - we got a library membership because it was supposed to be cheaper than buying books *sigh*).

Three hours at the park, one hour of that on swings. How do their bums not go to sleep?

Aunt Ria helped two of the girls figure out how to cope when there are three swingers and two swings ...
and she helped my Intrepid Explorer on his adventures.

To escape an interesting extended family that was gathering at the park, Aunt Ria took some of the kids over to play on some large rocks.

I stayed and swung the other kids that were with us and most of the kids of the family that was gathering at the park. I've never seen a family like that, but that's a story for another forum. Boy howdy.

We had a sporadic picnic lunch, bites grabbed between bouts of playing.

It's nice to hang out with someone who you can trust completely with your kids, and who your kids trust. I loved looking over and seeing this.

Then it was off to a few stores for supplies. Just Ains and Gray and me while Hannah stayed and played with her cousins.

We found some treasures in Michaels craft store (was there ever a more beautiful word than 'clearance'?). We were getting in the car when I snapped this picture.

My pirate girl and my backpack monkey having a sword fight.

When we went to pick Hannah up, my sister talked us into going to a sushi restaurant with her. (Pregnancy cravings for her. I just wanted to try sushi. It was gooood.)

Ainsley got her first crack at chopsticks. Very cute stuff. The next two pictures are horrid because of my over-active flash and then my absent flash, but still funny.

First you pick the sushi up with your chopsticks - use two hands if necessary.
Then, when you get it most of the way to your mouth and it starts to fall, you use any means necessary to get it the rest of the way.

It's worth it.

Then home to bed.
It was a long, fun-filled day.

Visiting Grandma and Poppa.

This last weekend, we went to Grandma and Poppa's house so that my husband could help his father out with some farming and cattle work. This meant that the kids saw very little of Grandma and nothing of Poppa. 'Tis the way of farming, I suppose - especially during the busy haying season.

So we amused ourselves in other ways.

The trampoline figured prominently. For jumping on...

and for having tea parties under.

We found innovative ways to keep cool.

And then, in the evening, we came inside to play. When we used our bird book to look up some hawks that we'd seen, Hannah's cousin Zee was bitten by the birding bug. She didn't put the book down for an hour.

We pulled out an UNO deck, removed all but the number cards and had a rousing game.

Trust me. It was rousing.

Giggler Extraordinaire, that girl. And sharp as a tack, too. She beat all of us.

Summer rituals - The Reunion.

Our weekend started off with cousins visiting on their way through to the reunion.

Pony rides are obligatory.

Then off to go camping!

Making fairy houses with cousins.



We spent a day at a lakeside beach.

In the water ...


out of the water ...
building sandcastles ...

destroying sandcastles ...

pondering ...

(not my baby, but she was too cute to pass up)

Back at camp it was s'mores and reading by the fire.

The next morning was investigating junebugs while eating breakfast. Yum.

Then a full day of playgrounds and fishing that I have no pictures of because I forgot to take my camera. *sigh*

That evening we had Homer the Clown come visit - Hannah was in stitches. She was also thrilled that she got to go up and help him do a trick.

I didn't get any pictures of how hard she was laughing during his show, but look at this little cousin - they were laughing just about as hard as each other.

Then there was the Spongebob pinata ...

the only casualty was Spongebob. Ainsley got his leg. She was pleased.

And then we slept like the dead.

Until Grayson threw up. Then I got up and walked him around for hours on end.

It was a very fun weekend.