Easily Entertained

Jeff has an old cell phone that the kids have really enjoyed. It has games and a voice recorder and ringtones - lots of fun stuff to keep them occupied. Well, we couldn't find the charger for a long time and of course the battery has been dead as long as the charger's been gone. Today, Jeff found the charger.

Kaity, in a sing-song voice: Guess what, Joe? (she dangles the charger in the air)
Joe, pumping his fist: Yes! Does this mean we get to play chess?
Kaity: I'm already on it.

New Chairs

I always agonize over how to spend money I'm given. I want to make the very best use of it, and I normally piece it out to several little things that we've been needing. This time I blew all my birthday money in one place: overstock.com! I bought new chairs for our kitchen table. The ones we had were the ladder-back, cane-bottomed chairs and the cane had really suffered the effects of the years, cats, and kids! I did price getting them re-caned, and ultimately went with buying new ones. It was cheaper, believe it or not. The chairs arrived yesterday, with some assembly required. Joe helped out a bit with organizing the pieces and doing some hammering. He really liked that part!

Kaity, testing out the first new chair.

One down, three to go!

Even with Selah's "help" I was able to completely assemble the chairs, except for the seats. They didn't have guide holes drilled, so getting them screwed on was Jeff's job! My linguini arms just couldn't handle it. He also went back and tightened the bolts for the same reason. They turned out really well, in my opinion!

When Was This Taken?

Selah chasing the neighbors' kitten in 2011 ...

Selah chasing the neighbors' kitten in 1969 ...

I love Picnik!

Barefoot In The Kitchen

Well, it's no secret to y'all that I love to cook. If only I could hire someone to clean up the kitchen after me, I'd cook a lot more than I do! Technically, though, it won't be long before Kaity can start loading the dishwasher and then I won't have to hire anyone - I'll have an indentured servant all ready to go! At this point I'm just waiting for Joe to be responsible enough to unload the breakable dishes from the dishwasher, then I can transfer Kaity to loading it up. Oh-ho, my master plan is almost complete! (Insert maniacal laughter here.)

Ahem. Anyhoo ... I love to cook. In accordance with that, I've decided to print a cookbook to sell to pay for all the groceries I need to support my habit. No, really! I've been working on it for quite some time, and I'm planning to send it off very shortly. It's titled after my other blog, Barefoot in the Kitchen, and it has over 130 recipes. I'm thinking it will be available by about mid-July and I am very excited about that! I'll keep y'all posted on the details. Just be thinking about how many copies you'd like to buy! (You see how I did that? It's a sales technique.)

Selah Rachel!

Selah has been growing like a weed lately! She learns something new every day, sometimes several things! One cute thing she's learned to do is to ask for "more" of something. If her mouth is still full, she just raises her eyebrows and entreats with a "Mmmm!" sound with a rising pitch. She recognizes dogs barking and points in their general direction, yelping "Dog!" Selah is also very opinionated about what she wants, and she's begun crying when told, "No", often going to "tattle" to the other parent. Jeff and I laugh about it when she isn't looking!

I'm amazed every day at how active she is, too. She loves to climb into the living room furniture, and today I caught her sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, drinking water from Joe's cup! On a sad note, she's now breached the barrier we set up at the foot of the stairs. She can climb over the ottoman we've been using to block her access. We're going to have to get a bit more creative now!

Speaking of blocking access, Selah has two favorite places right now and I am not exaggerating when I say that I have to get her out of them a dozen times a day: the trashcan and the cat food. She seriously goes at the cat food with both hands, stuffing as much in her mouth as possible before she gets caught. She's hearing her middle name a lot lately!

But ... she's awfully adorable! And she loves her Mommy.

My "New" T-Shirt

So the other day I got the itch to work on a sewing project. I scrounged up an old T-shirt I don't wear anymore and started cutting!

I used a VW bug from the banner in Joe's room as a template.

Kaity snapped this picture and the next one.

Here it is, attached, but with no embellishment yet.

To finish it off, I sewed on beads in a simple starburst pattern.

I wore this when we drove up to Helen on Saturday for a VW show. Here are me and the kids in our VW shirts ...

Creative Kaity

The other day, before she'd even had breakfast, Kaity sewed a bag for Joe. She did a great job!

It's hard to see, but she embroidered a 'J' on it in blue thread.

My beautiful babies.

Say What?

My kids go through stages where everything they say is funny to me. They're are without a doubt in one of those stages right now!

Me: Joe, I will pay you a nickel for every pencil you find and bring to me.
Joe: I'd need, like ... Twenty of those to make even ONE dollar! That's too little.
Me: Okay, I'll pay you nothing then.
Joe: Okay, I'll do it for the five cents.

Later the same day ...

Joe: Mommy, you have hair on your toes.
Me: Yes, sweetie.
Kaity: You have hair everywhere on your body, Joe, except the palms of your hands.
Me: And the soles of your feet.
Kaity, matter-of-factly: And of course Hobbits have the MOST hair on their feet.

Kaity's Turn

Last night our church held the award ceremony for our children in the AWANA program. For those of you not familiar with AWANA, it's an acronym meaning Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed, based on the scripture verse 2 Timothy 2:15 - "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." The program is based around scripture memorization and other biblical precepts like sharing your faith and serving others. AWANA in our church ends after the 5th grade, so this was Kaity's last year. She was very excited to have earned the Challenge award for finishing the 3rd book in the Truth & Training level (3rd-5th grade for us), which is technically the highest book our church offers. There is a 4th book, however, for churches who offer T&T for 6th grade, and Kaity worked hard to earn that this year, as well! The award for finishing all four books is the Timothy award and she was the only one to receive it for this year. The exciting thing is that she did it in 3 years! In addition to her awards, our children's pastor presented Kaity with a new Bible.

The awards are actually pretty cool - the Challenge award is like a green glitter "snow globe", and the Timothy award is blue and green oil in water.

My sweet, smart girl.

Oh, Boy ...

I know I just had a blog post about Joe, but oh, my goodness ... that boy! I could write a book on phrases I wish I had never had to say! My new entry for the day is, "Do NOT put a booger in the toothpaste!"

That is all.

Strawberry Fields Forever

I know this is a pitiful excuse, but I haven't posted much lately because our camera batteries died and I can't find the other pair I KNOW we have. I suppose I could buy more, because that will ensure that the ones I already have will immediately turn up. Murphy's law. Anyway, we did go out last Wednesday to a strawberry field to pick our own berries, and I had the camera - complete with batteries. If you have Facebook you've probably already seen these, but here they are anyway, for my virtual scrapbook:

My very first baby girl, who, it pains me to say, will be a middle-schooler this fall.

Daddy and Selah

Joe-schmoe!

Kaity took this picture of me.

She also took this one of her little sister!

This sweet little outfit was Kaity's when she was this age.

Naturally, Joe found the ONLY mud puddle in the entire field.

I made strawberry freezer jam with some of our harvest. It turned out pretty well, I think. I'll be sharing that recipe over on my kitchen blog, Barefoot in the Kitchen.

21st Century

This past week, Jeff and I took advantage of free upgrades available for both of our phones. We've had a lot of fun exploring the new features our phones have, one of which is voice-activated dialing. A couple of days ago, Jeff was playing around with his. He would say, "Call _____." and the phone would respond, "Did you say, 'Call ____?'" to confirm his choice. Well, my number is saved in his phone under "Beautiful" so here's what happened ...

Jeff: Call "Beautiful".
Phone: Did you say, "Call Lynnette Shields?"

I'm sure my mother will be pleased. :)

I'll close with a picture that has nothing to do with today's post, but it's a recent one of Jeff and me. We went to his cousin's wedding on Saturday, so we took our weekly bath early and changed out of our overalls for the occasion.

Joe-Schmoe

Our little boy is such a ham. He's always saying funny stuff, sometimes even on purpose! He just has such a way of remarking on his observations, and the wording he uses along with gestures is pretty comical. Here are a few recent examples:

I made breakfast pizza as part of dinner one night. After tasting it, Joe ventured apologetically, "Mommy, sorry about this, but ... I'm not a big fan of pizza with scrambled eggs."

Having sent the boy to his room to clean, I noticed it was mysteriously quiet. I looked up to see him standing in his doorway. "Joe, are you cleaning up, or are you playing?" In a disappointed tone he replied, "How did you know who I was? I'm wearing a hat and sunglasses!"

And on the subject of cleaning, I sent him upstairs to bring his laundry down so that I could sort it, wash it, dry it, and fold it. As he lugged the hamper down the stairs he sighed wearily, "Being a six-year-old kid isn't easy, I'll tell you that!"

This is a picture from our recent trip to pick strawberries: more on that later!