Church Picnic

We had a Memorial Day picnic hosted at our elder's house. It was a lovely day - just perfect for barbeque, lemonade, chips, and barefeet, all of which we had. :) I noticed that there are not a whole lot of pictures of Abigail in this post. That would be because she was a blur the whole time. She was chasing people, tackling people, racing people, stopping briefly to collapse, and then she was off and running again. They all slept well. :) Thanks, Jamie, for the pictures. I'm sorry I'm too much of a bum to put them in order.

Jackson losing the ball (see above pics) resulted in this face. :)

And what were the adults doing while all this craziness was happening? Why, sitting and chatting, of course, with some eating thrown in.

Aww. Jamie made us do it. :) Daniel put up with it, as you can see from his face. This week we will have been married 13 years. I'm so grateful to God for him!!

Frontier Culture Museum

This post can also be entitled "The Day From Shiloh's Viewpoint." We gave her the camera, and except for the shots that she's in, she took all the pictures. I was very interested to see what SHE was interested in enough to take a picture of it. I also think she got some very artsy photos - like the one of the rye (?) at the Irish Farm. The Frontier Culture Museum is in Staunton, and it includes an English farm, German farm, Irish farm, and American farm. All of the farms are actual farms from the different time periods represented, and they have living history actors doing the actual chores of the farm. It was fascinating. We had a GORGEOUS day for the museum, which you can see from the pictures. Shiloh now wants to work there when she turns sixteen, because YOU GET TO DRESS UP, MOMMY, YOU GET TO DRESS UP! :)

I'm behind on posts, but the next post will include the 253 or 567 pictures my friend Jamie took of the kids when she came to visit. :) The kids were acting like models by the end of the visit. (Thanks, Jamie!!!)
Love,
Casey

Trying to Catch Up

We went strawberry picking! It was foggy on the mountains, but oh, the scenery was beautiful. The kids had a blast and got thoroughly yucky. Next year - wellies. Nathaniel also thought it was pretty fun to squish the strawberries after picking them. Jackson thought he would help one of the ladies from church by picking strawberries for her, too. Then I noticed that if he got a strawberry with a green end, he would bite off the end and put the strawberry in her basket!!! Yuck. He said he was helping her because he didn't want her to have the bad ends. We came home with two flats - about 20 pounds of strawberries! I made my first-ever strawberry pie, and the girls loved it. I was going to make jam with a lady from church, but we've actually eaten too many strawberries to leave enough for jam. We love strawberries. The ladies in our church are serious about their picking seasons - they go for blueberries, peaches/nectarines, and then apples in the fall. We plan to join them on all their outings.

The last two pictures are random shots. Jackson has a new stuffed companion named Beau from the Bubba and Beau books. He likes the books as much as Abigail did when we lived in Florida. I was going to be all fancy and link to a post from February of 2006, but it didn't work, so here's the quotation:

The following story is also for Daniel (who is following daily life through short phone calls every day and through this blog) but I'll explain it for everyone else. All three girls love these books by Kathy Appelt focusing on characters named Bubba and Beau. Bubba is a baby and Beau is his hound puppy. Daniel recorded one of the books, Bubba and Beau Go Night-Night, onto an audiotape along with many others so that they could listen to them at night in bed. Abigail can now quote the book in its entirety - in a redneck accent- because she loves it so much.She came to me with a plea the other day before dinner, "Mommy, please put on Bubba and Beau because - Sister, those napkins came in handy," and then she walked off laughing hysterically. Bubba and Beau had made an awful mess with some raspberry swirl ice cream cones and the author was informing the reader that those napkins did indeed come in handy. I don't really know how Abigail's mind works, but I think it's pretty funny. Some kids are quoting Shakespeare by the time they are three, but it takes a special talent to be able to deliver a line like that with a redneck accent. I love this child. I just hope she passes one standardized test in her homeschool career.

The next picture shows Nathaniel hard at work coloring. Cora took the picture. It looks like he's going to be a lefty! (He gets that from his daddy. :) ) The picture is not the greatest, but it does show his cute profile.

Lastly, we haven't done a video in awhile, so I thought I'd take one of Adah singing her Kreyol "dokte" song before she forgets it. As far as I can tell, it's a song about preparing to go to the doctor, and there's something in it about being sick and getting a shot. She usually giggles through it, so I can't make out all the words. The two lost front teeth don't really help. :)

Off to start our day. We're signing up for the homeschooling co-op today, and I'm hoping the rain lets up before we venture out. Six kids plus pouring rain = happy kids, sad mama.

I have pictures from our wonderful trip to the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton on Saturday, but I'll have to post them on another post. Shiloh took most of the pictures, and there are a plethora. She did a great job, though - she was a very thorough and enthusiastic photographer.

Love, Casey

Abigail Funny

We read a picture book the other day at breakfast where a pig was composing poetry and comparing the moon to a cantaloupe. Abigail piped up, "Oh, I know a cantaloupe. When we read 'Farmer Boy,' Almanzo used to go and hunt canteloupe." Yeah, that would be ANTELOPE, sweetie.

I suppose I can forgive her because we read "Farmer Boy" over a year ago.

What was even FUNNIER was when Cora started laughing and coughing and said, "Mommy, you TOTALLY have to put that on the blog! That's funny!" :) When did she turn into a 13 year-old??

We're Still Here

Hey, y'all! Yep, we're still here...just working hard and playing hard lately. We're in our last three weeks of official schooling, and then we'll take a break for the month of June. Yea! :) I don't think we'll take much more of a break than that, just because I've seen how much they lose in a two week time period! We're also getting out and about enjoying our new hometown. We've been down to our adorable downtown twice, walking through the "mall," which is like a British High Street that is only open to foot traffic. There are so many cute shops and outdoor restaurants. We've scouted out our library, the nearest Indian restaurant, Target, (less than FIVE MINUTES AWAY - that's BAD :) ) and two playgrounds. One playground is just outside our townhouse complex at the elementary school, and the other is in our "big house" neighborhood at another elementary school. The pictures taken above are right down the road at one of the lakes in the neighborhood. There's a footpath around the lake, and we try to walk there every day when we take a break for lunch. It's been absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I love having another spring! We've been discovering caterpillars, frogs, turtles, budding trees, ferns, fish, and a great variety of birds. So although we are crammed into the townhome right now, we are able to get to open space very easily.

Daniel is enjoying his new job very much. He's not going 100 miles an hour and he says he feels more relaxed already. His new schedule allows for every other Monday off, too. His commute is between five and ten minutes right now, so understandably he's loving that.

The kids are doing very well with the transition. We had a pretty bad first week with everyone being naughty and having attitudes (it was also raining that week). Since being able to get out pretty much every day, everyone is much better. Having the routine of schooling has proven to be a good stabilizer.

Well, off to have a cup of tea with Daniel and watch some HGTV. And this would be why we don't get cable normally. :)

Love,

Casey

p.s. I forgot to say that the last picture was Daniel's first day at work. He's taken to wearing bowties, and an older lady at work just loves him. :) She checks to see what tie he's wearing each day. Since this picture was taken, he's shaved off his goatee as well, so along with the weight he's lost, he looks like he did when I married him. I wish I could say the same for me! :)