Earlier in March, I helped hostess a Girls' Tea Party for the girls in our youth group. Quinn was off school for the day, so she got to come along and help, which pretty much rocked her extraverted little world! She was large and in charge, answering the door, pouring tea, serving the girls. She also soaked up some attention from the other adults who were hostessing, which thrilled my heart. I love to see my kids "at the feet" of beautiful servants of God, so it thrilled me that she got to spend some time with such great role models! We had a fun time!
I made a strawberry cake and a cinnamon coffee cake for the party.
Rachel decorated with a "Mad Hatter" theme. We used all my mis-matched teacups.
Rachel made these cute hats!
Photobooth fun:
My friend snapped this one of Q, listening intently, to the lesson. Love, love, love seeing this!
Beck caught a skink, which is pretty difficult to do, because those little guys are QUICK! He was very proud. We learned they have green blood! Not by experience, just when we were researching whether a skink is a lizard. It is!
We put some new stone around our front island flowerbed, and used the leftover to do around the mailbox to build a little flowerbed. Beck loves it because he can reach the mailbox now! It's partially completed in this picture. Tomorrow I need to snap a finished picture, as Q and I planted the flowers and finished adding the rock when it was too dark to get a picture tonight.
Sunday was our day to cook/serve the Impact meal. After years and years of leaving Impact meals wanting to pull our hair out or cry because our kids were wild and crazy, they are finally to the point where they can serve and be very helpful! All that training and practice is finally paying off. And I just love people that take my kiddos seriously and let them help out! Quinn went with Matt to help cook all the food while Beck and I went to teach Bible class. Matt said Quinn was awesome and knew exactly what to do. She loves making the mashed potatoes. The senior high youth group was serving the meal this quarter, and Q also loves hanging out with the big kids! :)
Daddy added a new feature to the treehouse. He mounted the old ladder horizontally so that it can be used as monkeybars now. We'd gotten an old wooden ladder out of someone's trash, and it was a bit longer than the old treehouse ladder, so we replaced it with the longer one to make it safer when friends visit. Of course Q was instantly ON TOP of the monkey bars, so we had to do a bit of pruning to get the branches out of her face.
Beck and Dad built 4 wooden airplanes on Sunday afternoon. Beck has a helicopter next on the agenda.
Walking to church on Wednesday night. Unprompted. :)
Over Spring Break we went to a nature preserve and did some pond dipping, which was really fun!!
They also had some reptiles there, and Beck got to pet a Green Anaconda, which was pretty much the most amazing part of his week.
Also they had several venomous snakes, which B loved.
Making some paper airplanes @mamaschool.
After Bible study last week, Beck found a molecricket in the parking lot. Which, of course, had to be his pet for the day.
Drilling holes in an empty peanut can to make a bug jar for his molecricket.
The next day he drew one and we wrote about it. We watched a Brave Wilderness episode about Mole Crickets in Texas, which was exciting!
Heart-shaped mushroom!
My personal banker. Economics @mamaschool.
A couple Saturdays ago Quinn went with Papa, Christine and Mandy to see the King and I musical. Beck had Dad and I all to himself, (well, and our little fosterbabylove) and he was THRILLED!
They built his model rocket the Tadlocks gave him for his birthday. Then off to Hobby Lobby to buy engines!
Hat "cheers" at Hobby Lobby.
Watching the big boys. Not so much a fan of the rocket launching noise, though.
Love this next set of photos...which tells the story of their lives quite well. ;)
Even Alie has been stopping to smell the flowers this year! Our azaleas are the prettiest they have ever been this year!!
And this guy discovered he loves to draw! He spent the first 5.5 years of his life protesting against any form of art/writing/drawing, but these past weeks he has fallen hard in love. He's been drawing like crazy, and best of all, his drawings actually look like something!! Yeehaw! Mostly he loves to draw mountains right now, which is a hit in this house.
This is a mountain with snow on the top and trees growing off the sides. Except not at the top, it's above the treeline.
Some of our dear friends have been in very poor health. Sweet Quinn got a prayer card at church and wrote down a prayer request for them all on her own. I love that girl's sweet heart.
What he does on rainy days.
Petting the cat with a stick. A hit with both of them.
Writing letters in the gravel at the park. Seriously. NO INTEREST AT ALL in letters, sounds, etc. until just this last few weeks, and now he is going gangbusters with it!
A banana and audiobook on the drive to get Q from school. I usually listen to my own podcast on my phone and he listens to his stories on my old phone. I download them via wifi from the library onto the old phone and use it like an mp3 player.
This blog is our memory book for our "Little Bean" and "Bacon Bit." We keep it updated primarily as an online journal to remember the ins-and-outs of our daily life as a little family. A handy side-benefit is that our friends and family (from Wyoming to Germany and beyond....) can stay current on the books thrilling our hearts, Quinn's latest critter catch or Beck's favorite vehicle. So don't expect anything too super-interesting around here....but I can promise you a few {thousand!} photos of the cutest kids on the planet.
