Summer - a retrospective.

I'm away right now. I'm travelling to a surprise party for my mother-in-law, so I scheduled this retrospective post. Pictures from the summer that I never got a chance to post.

Hannah with a caterpillar she found. Look how short her hair is.


It's not as bad as it looks.


Playing in the laundry.


Did I post this one? I love this one.


My forlorn horse girl. She was waiting for me to have a second to help her get the pony out.


I got the pony, and after riding it for awhile, her sister talked her into walking the pony while *she* rode.


Oh, relax. I was there the whole time. Pictures add ten feet.


Ains practicing her "scared" look. She was being scared of a soda can when I took this picture, I believe.


Ains with the horses she carried around for a week. They're her sister's horses. You can tell by the haircuts.


She tried to get them to pull the cart.


She brought the rocking horse out to the barn so she could ride while I milked the goats.


Hannah decided to grow a beard.


Grayson and Ains in chairs. Not sure why Grayson is looking Hobbit-y. Ains is nursing the pink poodle.


Just had to throw this one in there. Hannah's cousin Bella. Look at those lips!


Gray got patriotic over Independence Day.


Cute cousins.


Cute sisters.


Ains on her grandma's trampoline.




Hannah writing letters while swinging.


Girls picking cherries.


Hannah, the little lady (just look at those crossed legs), helping pick cattails. More on that later...


Gray sleeping in a hammock while I garden. It was much warmer then. *sigh*


Hannah climbing into the orchard to pick cherries. OLM, I want you to bring your kids to visit next summer - we'd have so much fun! We're only three hours north...

Leaves

We've finally been getting some beautiful fall days here. When there's no chilling 45 mph wind blowing, the weather's actually quite nice.

Nice enough to play in piles of leaves.


I raked the leaves up, and tossed the girls for awhile. They played on their own for awhile, asking me to rake the leaves back into a pile when needed. Then Daddy came home. He fluffed the leaves into a tall pile with the pitchfork.


Then he started throwing the kids around.

You have to spin them to get a good throw.


He got a good throw.


A really good throw.


I was kind of worried about the little one.


She did fine - he didn't give her as much air.


Though she still had a hard time letting go.


Hannah wanted to go again.


On the third time she didn't let go - she'd tried that trick with me earlier and learned that if you didn't let go of a spinning large human who was trying to throw you that they would fall into the pile. I didn't warn him.


Then she wouldn't let him up.


You'd think a four year old couldn't hold a grown man down, wouldn't you?


When you've got your sister's help, anything's possible. "Dream big" is what I teach my kids.


Though if you leave your little sister there and run, she might need to be saved. Look at her, reaching out, asking for somebody, anybody to come save her.


Oh, good. I teach them that too.


Something I learned - little kids jumping into a pile of leaves for hours at a time will not only strengthen a mother's muscles (from raking the leaves back into a pile for the hundred-and-eleventieth time), but it will shred those leaves pretty dang good. That pile is now about one-third the size it was when we started.

Sometimes still photos need a soundtrack.

For example, these cute snapshots.



Cute, right?



Darling even.



They'd be even cuter with the maniacal toddler giggling playing as you looked at them that I was hearing as I was taking them.

These pockets,

on these aprons have been used for seeds, kittens, and eggs since my mother sent them to the girls.

Today they became doll carriers for tiny dolls.


Tiny dolls that had to be introduced to curious goats.


Tiny dolls that had to be rescued from curious goats. They're like babies. Everything goes in their mouths.

Daddy's Little Girls

Arranging a time to go to work to see him.



All dressed up and ready to go.



Helping him get his boots off when he gets home.



They have him wrapped around their fingers.

Sing, sing out loud.

My girls love singing - almost as much as they love stories. Grayson loves singing more. He turns positively blissful when we sing.

I've found a new tool to help me learn the words to kids songs that I just don't know the words to. It also helps me remember songs that I loved when I was a kid.

http://www.kididdles.com/

We now know all the words to all four verses of "Kookaburra" and "Alice the Camel" has become a favorite.

They also have printable music sheets for many of the songs. I will enjoy that when I get a piano...

Family Tree

For years, I've been wanting to make a huge family tree to put up in our home. While looking for good Samhain/Halloween/end of fall activities, I came across the suggestion to have a Family Tree that you only put up once a year. This seems like a good idea to me. This way it won't become part of the backdrop in the home, taken for granted, never really noticed or appreciated.

As time got shorter and Little Girl's insistence to do this project got louder and more frequent, my fancy plans for it got thrown out the window. The night before Halloween, we grabbed a piece of posterboard and I freehanded a tree with roots. She added the leaves and glued pictures on.



I stuck the children in the leaves, my husband and myself on the trunk, and my children's ancestors in the roots. For a child, this was easier to comprehend than the traditional (at least it's traditional in all the Mormon family trees I've seen) method of putting the grandparents or great-grandparents on the trunk and having the children and children-of-children and on and on branching out in the tree branches. That's too abstract for a four-year-old to understand.

But showing that these people are the ones who sustain us, who support us, literally? She got that and she was very excited about it.

Little One doesn't understand the meaning behind it all, but she loves to climb up where we taped it on the wall and talk about all the people she recognizes or doesn't recognize on the poster.

Next year I'll have more pictures to add to it, more stories to tell my daughters about their predecessors. And I'll get it done earlier than the night before Halloween.

This girl...

Ainsley runs giggling past me, Hannah chasing her, saying in a pleading voice: "Ainser, princesses get their hair done! Ainser, just let me finish! Ains, princesses are patient! Don't you want to have pretty hair? Don't you want to be a princess? Please be patient. Let me finish your hair. FINE!!! You're out of the family and you're no princess at all!"

------

Showing me a doll she's playing with: "This is my new baby. He's got an optical cord. See? Right there on his belly button. The optical cord will fall off soon, but it's on there right now 'cause I just gave birth to him. He's a him because he has a tiny penis? See his tiny penis? That means he's a him."

------

While helping me move all of the pantry items from our old pantry area to the new pantry area: "We work like a team, huh? Nothing can beat us when we work like a team. Not even tomato sauce!"

Today we....

Today *I* came face to face with the reality that I am outdated, old, out of touch. I took the kids to see their dad at work and since the girls wanted to drive home with him, I got to listen to 'real' music on the way home. I flipped through the stations trying to find a country music station. I haven't listened to country radio for four years. It ain't what it used to be.

I finally settled on a song playing that seemed to have a storyline, so I figured it was probably country. I listened to four songs in a row and had to come home and scrub my brain with some George Strait and Trace Adkins.

When did male country singers get so wussy? And boy-band-ish? Damn. It's disheartening. Distressing. Disgusting. (That's all the alliteration I got in me.)

George Strait, Johnny Cash, Trace Adkins, John Anderson, Willie Nelson, Chris LeDoux, George Jones - these men don't have boy voices. And now, since this happens to coincide with a more emotional time of the month, I've been sitting here bawling my eyes out to "Mendocino County Line", "Goodbye Time", "Missing You", "Today My World Slipped Away", "Look at You Girl" and so many more. I just need to step away from my (old, out of touch, outdated) CDs.

I *have* been just plain enjoyin' "Pickin' Wildflowers". I think I'll stop on that one. And not listen to country radio for another four years.

I don't.....

I don't know what to say.



I got nothin'.

Two year old chatter

It's not clear yet whether Ains will have the same verbal .... idiosyncracies as her sister. She's certainly as chatty as her sister at the same age, but she isn't yet picking up on unusual or interesting words the way Hannah always has.

Her most common words right now are "SELF!" and " 'elp? You?" (a request so darling - and so worth accommodating - that no matter what I'm doing, I find a way to have her help) A frantic "POOOOO POOOOOTTT!!!" also figures into her most frequently used words. She chats constantly, talking about her favorite stories, singing her songs, talking and giggling with her sister, and teasing her momma, da, and 'gay-gay' (her way of saying Grayson's name gives her father fits). She has the most endearing way of saying "Peasssss????" that pretty much guarantees her whatever she's asking for. She won't be spoiled. Don't say that.

She's moved from only saying one syllable in each word to saying whole words. She now uses sentences, though her unique inflection style leads you to believe that a three word sentence is in fact three sentences - most often interrogative sentences. "You? Kiss? ME?" or "Mone? Mash. Tatoes?"

She calls me "Momma" instead of Hannah's preferred "Mother" and she's cementing her Daddy's place wrapped around her finger by saying "Kiss. You?", taking his face between her pudgy little toddler hands and kissing him.

This unique chatter won't last long - it's such a short phase in their language learning - but I do believe it's one of the "attachment behaviors" that little human babies have to tie us to them. It's too cute for, well, words.

"Are we meat?"

Asks my daughter.

"Yes we are. When we eat meat, we're eating the muscles of other animals. Since we have muscles, we could be meat, yes."

...

...

... "Just out of curiosity, why do you ask?"

"I wanted to know if I should be afraid of dinosaurs."

Fair enough.

Jack-o-lanterns.

A few days before Halloween, we went to visit some family and carve pumpkins.

Hannah partnered with her Aunt J'in. Her job? Draw her desired face on the pumpkin.


J'in's job? To decipher those scribblings and translate them into an acceptable jack-o-lantern. She is a very patient woman. And she did a fantastic job.


Ainsley was partnered with her daddy. She kept a close eye on the proceedings.


She did the honors of 'lidding the jack-o-lantern' when it was done.


Their cousin partnered with her daddy - isn't she the most photogenic child?


It was a fun, fun night.

Today we...

Dancing.
Coloring, writing notes. Getting up to dance, going back to coloring.
Bath.
Grayson is cueing well with pottying! Very happy.
Care bear videos online.
Playing with kittens. Squishing toes in mud.
Doing animal chores, collecting eggs.
Playing with ice, feeding pumpkins to goats.
Visiting Uncle Don and Aunt Renee, playing with Chunk, their puppy.
Visiting cemetery, wondering about dead people, trying to read words off of headstones.
Using magnifying glass to investigate clues and trying to solve a mystery.
Setting up a party picnic.
Cleaning.

Listening to Grandpa read books.
Playing with ponies.
Reading books.
Fixing hair. Learning about hair spray.
Helping grate cheese. Eating lots of cheese.
Running to Daddy's truck. Helping him chore.
Running back in the house and putting cold hands on Mother's face to hear her scream.
Helping Gray walk. Even if he doesn't want to.
Eating dinner, taking a bath.
Kids dropping one by one - the last one is still holding out, taping paper to the wall and then washing the paper with a washcloth for reasons only two year olds know.

Good day. Sometimes you don't realize how much is done in a day until you write it all down as it happens.

My day included helping my children with any of the above that they needed help with, laundry, dishes, feeding, rendering lard, and drying buckwheat.