Josiah!

This is my sweet boy. About two weeks ago the weather on a friday was GORGEOUS! so we went out into the back yard of gran's house and took some pictures in the green grass. By this point he was getting tired of having his picture snapped, but he still posed for me. He is so fun.

Will's Birthday Card 2010

Josiah loved helping me make this card that I got the base idea from www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjE4q7l63Ug. We cut out two extra top notes and he helped me stamp them. We used creamy caramel cardstock for the base, very vanilla and chocolate chip for the front top notes. We stamped in creamy caramel, close to cocoa and chocolate chip. Josiah had tons of fun just stamping this. As a matter of fact it touched off a new phase in my house. It is now a great treat for my kids to get to stamp and make cards during their break times from homeschooling. LOL. I hadn't thought of trying that before, but we are getting more school done now than I had hoped to in one day. :D Yay us!

Fishing

The otter they saw from the boat on their way back in.

Caleb working at fishing.

Hannah and Josiah getting ready to go out.

Sadly, none of our fishers (Jonathan, Josh, Hannah, Josiah, Caleb) got anything, but I think they had a pretty good time and they did get to see some neat things.

BIG tractor

This is the lego tractor Jonathan and Josiah put together the other night. Jonathan had been playing with Josiah and the legos for quite a while so I went to see what they were doing and Jonathan showed me what they had built. :D

LIVESTOCK!

Yes, we now officially have livestock. We are the 'proud' owners of one cow, one dog and 7 chicks. I am starting to feel a little overwhelmed at the prospect of being responsible for the health and well being of so many animals. Right now the chicks are in a cardboard box on our front porch with a grate of some sort on top. We also have a cow that may have a calf come october or november. (DH just informed me that it is more likely to be november or december).

Tired tonight

I'm tired tonight. I have been on my feet cooking and cleaning most of today. Wow. I did get a lot done, but there is still more to do.

Jonathan's grandmother is not doing very well. SO we may need to make a quick trip to see her soon if we can.

I hope we have a good b-day party tomorrow. If me being tired is any indicator, it will be GREAT.

Josiah's 6th birthday

Rebecca bought Josiah some legos. One kit made a rocket, a jet, and a boat. Seth helped Josiah put it together. Josiah has loved this jet and probably hasn't been with out it when he is awake. (big grin)

Josiah and Abbi with Lady. They had been running around and Lady had been chasing the kids as well as racing back and forth between them and me. She is such a good dog to have. She tolerates so much from those kids. It is also awesome to have her because we can teach Josiah some sense of responsibility because he is in charge of feeding her. It almost looks sometimes when the kids are in the dog pen with her that she is watching over them and grinning...

Josiah and his lady.

Josiah and Lady. It has been a while since Josiah has been allowed to play with Lady outside of her pen. Then other day, however, I finally let him take her out. She loved being out. Even though her pen is relatively large, there is still something about being outside of it. Josiah loves Lady a whole lot and I think she loves him, too.

Ps. 1:1

I have been teaching the children psalms 1:1 - Blessed is the man that walketh not in the council of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

Josiah knows it all pretty well and he was telling it to Jonathan the other night on the way home from Austin. All of a sudden he changed it:

"Blessed is the naughty man for he shall get away from the law." lol

I had to swallow laughter and Jonathan had to explain that it is not good for naughty people to get away from the law.

Little kids, gotta love them.

Play Doh Time!

Josiah and Abbi managed to save enough money along with the coupon I gave them to buy this set of play doh and tools (I think the tools were the part that they liked the most.) So I let them play with it. They had lots of fun and then they put it away for me (most of it) so I finished putting it away. (I hid it a little so they aren't asking to play with it every day.) BTW abbi saw the pictures as I was typing this post and she started asking "Momma, where is the play-doh stuff? I wantto play with play-doh!" LOL.

These are some projects I picked up after Valentine's day at Joann's for 70% off. Josiah did three. I did three. Abbi did six. She loved it. These were so easy it was just peel and stick. The kids had a great time.

Invitations for Josiah's 6th Birthday Party!

We (Josiah and I) are pretty excited about these cards. Josiah was not convinced at first that they would be very nice looking, but I think I managed to convince him that they would be ok. Then when I made them he got very excited. There are two colors because there are two birthday parties. We have one in Waco for Jonathan's family and our close friends up there and then we have one at our house. I really didn't like the idea much when I was a kid and some of my cousins would have two parties one for us and one for the other family. I almost felt like my cousins would feel the other party was more fun than the one I had gone to. So, because of that I didn't want to have two parties for my kids. Now, however, we live further away than we did when the kids were born and some of the family can't travel this far, so we do it. I am going to have to re-write the party info for the Austin party becuase I have been forced to reschedule it. A meeting came up unexpectedly on the weekend I had his party scheduled for. Josiah is a little sad about that, but I think that actually it will stretch out the fun of birthday longer.

Well it has been a few days since I have been able to post on my blog. :) Jonathan stayed home sick, yesterday (some sort of stomach bug) but I think it was just a 24 hour virus because he went to work today. (So glad.) I tried to explain to Josiah about viruses and how they can make people sick. How bad bacteria get into you and that the good bacteria inside you fight them off and that is why you are sick. This morning, when I had told him that Jonathan had gone to work he asked me if the "Good guys had gotten the bad guys off of Dada" lol. He is so sweet.

We went skating a few weeks ago. It was the first time Josiah or Abbi had ever been. It had been several years since I had gone and I don't know if Jonathan had ever been either.

Abbi was pretty unsteady. Matter of fact keeping her up on her skates gave me a pretty good work out. We had gone and bought her some mittens at Target from their clearance winter clothing. She loved them. The problem is that she insisted on wearing them even when she couldn't hold our hands properly because her hands kept slipping out of the mittens.

At first Josiah was a little unsure of how to go. He had to have at least one hand and sometimes two like Abbi.

But before we left, he was skating all by himself. I was really impressed with how he would skate along, fall, smile, and bounce right back up. He was so precious

Origami Box

I found a wonderful tutorial on one of the blogs I am following on how to make these CUTE boxes. I am pretty excited about this little box I made for Josiah. I think he was pretty excited to be receiving something special on an ordinary day.

Josiah's Horse Throw Quilt

While Donna and I were doing all our shopping at Joann's (love that store) I was getting material for baby projects (for all my expectant friends) and she was getting fleece to make knot quilts. I was struck by the thought that Josiah might like a throw quilt that I had made just for him as much or maybe even more than some of the other things I was thinking about giving him for his birthday (which is coming up in March). So I bought some fleece with horses printed on it. I could not bring myself to purchase orange fleece for the backing (orange is his current favorite color) so I did the next best thing -- I got bright red.