Fourth of July 2012

To celebrate the holiday, we invited friends over to have a bbq and swim before heading over to the beach to watch and set off fireworks.  The food and conversation was really great but the highlight of the night was heading over to the beach.  Fireworks are legal on the beach and so there was hundreds of people there setting off, sometimes very large and dangerous, fireworks. (One large firework fell over in the sand and was shot right over our heads, very grateful that no one got hit!)  It was loud and crazy, I've never experienced anything like it!  I'm surprised that Henry wasn't afraid of the huge fireworks that were going off all around him.  I mean, he wouldn't let us put him down, but there wasn't any crying, which surprised me.  Lillie had fun running around with her friends, holding sparklers and glow sticks.  I think they were pretending to rescue the world and the fireworks were in celebration of them saving the day.  Ha!  It was a really cool experience, it made me really sad about not being around to celebrate the fourth here again.  Our pictures are terrible in comparison to the awesomeness of the night.  Oh well!

 The moon was an orange-ish red, probably because of the smoke from all the fireworks in the sky.

 Kind of a neat photo, showing someone's firework in flight.

Photo of our Group

Daddy Bear Hunt

I want to write this story down because even though it will not seem funny to any one but me, it was dang funny at the time.  Last night as we were finishing up reading a few stories before bed, I pulled out
"We're Going on a Bear Hunt" as the last book to read.  The family travels all over before ending up at a cave with a bear inside and the bear chases them back to their house.  Anyway, after it was over, Lillie said, "The Papa should have pulled out a gun and shot the bear" (I think she's been watching too much "Swamp People" with us).  So I talked to her about how we don't shoot bears unless they're going to hurt us, because maybe the Mama or Daddy bear has little baby cubs at home and they would be all alone.  And she said, "Well, the little bears only need a Mama so if it was a Daddy then we can shoot it."  This wounded her Daddy's ego!!

Weekend Warriors

We've been busy this week!  Last weekend, somehow one of us lost Eric's set of keys, not going to place any blame, but that meant no more work keys, no scooter keys, no mail key.  So, after tearing apart our house top to bottom, with no luck of finding them, Eric spent quite a few hours taking apart his scooter to get out his ignition, taking it to a locksmith, and reassembling it after getting the keys made.
The rest of our time was spent preparing for a yard sale that we had, with some friends, on Saturday.  It wasn't an amazing turn out, but we made a bit of money, which made it all worth it.  And now I've got less junk to drag with us to Cali, so that's nice too.  I'm moving in like a month... so crazy.
Also on Saturday, because we're crazy, we decided to build this child-sized picnic table.  We had gotten the plans off of Ana White's website a couple months ago and got the supplies, but it had been sitting as a pile of wood until now.  We're throwing a 4th of July bbq so I thought it was time for us to get our act together so that they kids could have a fun place to eat.  And it turned out so amazing, we love it!!!!  We were worried about it during the process, seemed a little wobbly and flimsy, so we added extra screws and carriage bolts and now it's sturdy as a rock!  Still it took a lot longer to build than we originally thought, mostly from having to switch out drill bits, etc., but it wasn't really difficult.  It will fit three kids on each side comfortably and our kids still have to grow into it a little bit.
Eric has already been talking about what we should build next.  I think he's getting addicted.  :)

New Church Knickers

When packing for our trip to WA, I had to dig out long pants out of storage since we've been wearing nothing but shorts for a while now.  Still, it hadn't been THAT long, so I didn't even think that Henry might have grown out of them.  Well, apparently he's had a growth spurt and all of his pants were "high waters" in WA.  Oops.
So, I pull out my "Nowhere Man" pants pattern from Shwin & Shwin and made Henry some new church pants (the only time that we need to wear long pants).  They took a few hours to make (I think I could shave off a significant amount of time next time) but I think they turned out so cute.  And they actually fit!  I'd done everything but hemmed them before trying them on Henry, thank goodness it worked out.  I love the details of the tabs, buttons and contrasting pocket fabric.
If I didn't already have a couple of half finished projects in the works, I'd make another pair... with the brown corduroy I've got in my stash or the houndstooth suiting fabric...

My Baby Turned 2!

Before we left on our vacation to WA, we had a combined birthday party for Henry and two other friends who have their birthdays the same week.  Here are all the photos I got from the day...my battery died!  So, once again, I didn't get photos of everyone or any of the opening of presents.  Oh well, I give up.  It was a fun little party with lots of swimming in pools, sliding down slip n slides and squirting each other with water guns.  I wish I had gotten on video the joy on Henry's face as we sang "Happy Birthday" to him and as he opened presents.  He's such a sweet little guy, we love him!

  

Explorer Vest

Tomorrow is Henry and two friend's combined birthday party. We are having a backyard splash party that should be lots of fun, especially because it's been in the 90's as of late. I have been spending a little bit of time with my sewing machine, making birthday gifts for the two other birthday boys. They're both older than Henry, turning 4 and 5, so I did the same thing for both of them. I made the explorer vest from Oliver+S's Little Things to Sew book. Throw in a net and a magnifying glass to spend time discovering the extremely large amount of insects that live there in the south, and they're set!

We Had a Fun Weekend

Resident Raucous

Words cannot express the love that I have for these photos.  Haha!!!!  Such an awesome group of people, I don't want to think about leaving because it will seriously depress me!

Preschool Graduation and Bowling

 Lillie graduated from preschool this week.  She did a wonderful job singing in their little program, but Mommy doesn't know how to upload videos, so here's a picture of all of us.

 I love watching my kids play together.  Last night they were particularly fond of each other, it was so cute.

We went bowling this week on base.  I don't know why we haven't done it before, we all really enjoyed it.  I got a turkey and won, although I had one frame with two gutter balls, so I'm a little inconsistent and Eric just had a terrible game.  So there ya go.

Our Family Artist

 During Henry's nap time each day, Lillie has three choices for quiet time.  Upstairs, outside or art.  She almost always chooses art.  These are some of her latest works, I love how colorful the top one is.  Yesterday she drew an awesome dog.  I love seeing the world from her perspective.

Cinco de Mayo Fiesta Foto

Wow, we are a couple of goobers.

Happy Mother's Day!

 Eric wanted to take a picture of me and the kids after church today.  Please keep in mind that this is after church, cuz I hope my hair didn't look that bad all day!

I love Mother's Day!  I like sitting here at the computer while my husband makes lunch and juggles the kids.  So nice! 
But really, I wanted to get on here and tell you about my wonderful mom.  She is so amazing, the longer that I am a mom, the more I realize just how wonderful she was and is.  It took quite a few years into my marriage to realize that cooking and cleaning were not habits that are just automatically there when you become a wife and mother.  It never had occurred to me growing up that my mom might not think that cooking 3 meals a day, every day getting up at 6 o'clock to make a real breakfast, was the funnest thing ever.  She never complained. 
One of life's greatest lessons that I've learned and am still learning was taught to me by my mom.  That you just do it.  Yes, life is hard, raising kids is hard, keeping up a household is hard, but you just do it.  Complaining isn't going to make it any easier and you do it because you love the people who you are doing it for.  My mother is the most selfless person I have ever known.
She has been such a great example of a strong testimony, of integrity, of service and love.  I am forever grateful to be her daughter.  I consider her to be my best friend, I love her so much. 

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, MOM!  I hope your present came in time.  This is the Mother's Day card that didn't get included in the package.