Noah's pictures #7: my kids are crazy

I gave Noah some camera freedom last week and he and Evie had a blast. Afterwards they were dying to show us the "cool" videos they made. When we sat down, we understood why it was so noisy downstairs while they were photographing and recording. Our kids are crazy. We had to teach them some additional (obvious) camera etiquette after we viewed their craziness.

I'm not sure I should even enlarge the photos. They're out of control! But maybe I will so you can reassure me... and understand why they have mandatory quiet times every day... and why I'm happy for Terry to get home at night.

Here is one of the only times Noah let Evie take a photo of him - while he was under the kid table. I guess after that he had to be back in the director's chair bossing Evie around. 

Here's an early shot. Nothing too unusual or silly with the two thumbs up and the tongue and the crazy eyes. Okay, maybe it is boarding on weird.

But then she lays on the ground and starts rolling around.

Then he goes in for the close up of her eye.

And a tongue photo. Be thankful I spared you the full on, close-up, foggy tongue photo complete with video (there were several and i'm pretty sure she almost swallowed the camera).

"Evie, open your mouth" (so we can see your gum!) 

"Evie, act deranged"

"Evie, fall over" 

"Evie, smile."

"Evie, fly like a bird." 

He's the genius behind the camera. He does say he wants to make movies when he grows up. That's what he does when he's day dreaming - making movies in his head. Hopefully his movies will be less...crazy.

Here's a little sample of insanity for you. Are all kids like this?

Noah's pictures #6

Noah likes to take pictures so much that I've made him his very own label on the blog. Now we can see  all of the photo posts that he's ever done chronologically. He'll love it. And this will reinforce in my mind what an 8 year old boy cares about...

He likes cars. 

While I was eating lunch he kept moving around his cars to photograph them in different situations. This is under Ezra's stand up toy.

This is under the Christmas tree, obviously. There's been an accident though. The red car was struck by the train!

The whole crew is coming down the couch pillow mountain. Those cars aren't even 4-wheel-drive!

Then he headed over to the counter where something else befell the red car. Boys!

a year of swimming

 Right after we met newborn Sarah Lynn, we headed out to use our first Christmas gift of the season. Terry's parents gave us a family gift this year - a year family pass to the Watiki waterpark! How awesome is that? It's awesome. The kids were beyond excited. Who cares about meeting the new cousin? When are we going to go swimming?!

The first thing they went to do was the kids slide area. I had my camera phone ready to capture the moment for a family picture text. It was too bad I didn't grab the real camera because just as Terry was leading the kids up the stairs to get started, the huge bucket of water over top the whole area overturned on them. Evie and Samuel freaked out. It was hilarious. Needless to say, Terry had to take them to a different part of the park to start out.

So they headed over to the lazy river. That was more their speed. Samuel still didn't like it too much so they went over to the small pool with lily pads for a while. 

Samuel came over to our table after not long to warm up. Ezra was a rock star at this point and slept in his car seat for a whole hour! 

Terry took advantage of me watching Samuel by going down the big slides with Noah. I went at least ten times with Noah later and I can tell you there are a whole lotta stairs. So fun though! Noah was like, "Mommy, don't scream. I like peace and quiet when we go down the slides."

Having so much fun.

After Ezra ate (yay for public nursing!) and the rest of us had a pizza, daddy took over the Ezra babysitting and I got to play.

Nice milky drool Ezra.

Evie and Samuel played near the stairs of the little pool all night. Noah kept begging Evie to go down the big slides with him but there was no convincing her. She was terrified!

Noah liked to jump on the lilly pads in between riding the slides.

To finish off the night I took Evie and Samuel on the lazy river a couple times. Samuel was freaking out. Guess he's a sitting-in-stair-water kind of boy. For now anyway. We have a whole year to "learn" to swim and enjoy this place! :) 

meeting Sarah Lynn

On Friday, December 13, 2013, Terry's sister Shari and her husband Jesse had their second child! We were all so sure it was a boy, but nope! She's a girl and she's adorable. Her name is Sarah Lynn and she weighted in at 8 pounds and 12 ounces. She's so much smaller than Grace was (10 pounds 2 ounces) but they look so much alike. So pretty. 

There are many great things about being back in the Black Hills. One of which is that we were able to meet Sarah on the very day she was born instead of three months later like with Grace. All we had to do was drive 15 minutes to the hospital instead of six hours up from Nebraska for a "quick" trip just to meet her. Pretty convenient! Plus, they only live three quarters of a mile away.

Shari was so nice to let me hold her. And now Ezra is HUGE. He's only six months old and he's HUGE!!!

See what I mean?! 

I tossed Ezra at Jesse so I could hold Sarah :)

Terry was up next.

She really is so pretty.

They're a family of four now (Grace was out with Terry and Shari's parents at the time). Congrats to them!

"Don't go Daddy"

That would be the caption of the this photo if Samuel could talk [better]. "Don't go Daddy." He was blocking the door when Terry was attempting to go to work last week. Guess he loves staying home with me that much. 

PS. Samuel can talk... a little. Mostly it's caveman grunts or pretending to be a dog/animal of some kind. So perhaps this photo should say, "Nooooo guhhhhh, Daaaaa!" He's pretty good at "No!"

Christmas program 2013

I haven't done a church Christmas program post since Gburg! I'm sure the kids were in it last year but I have no post. Perhaps because it's always difficult to get decent pictures.

Samuel has not been going to his little two year old's Sunday school class since he stays home with me during Ezra's nap. We were glad for that too since his class had a part in the program. To find out what kind of destroyer baby shenanigans he would get into in front of the whole church, we were not interested in finding out.

Here's Noah with his cool sunglasses on for the first part of the boys' performance.

Then they turned around as little drummer boys. Noah remembered all of his lines. When he was done he pointed his drum stick at the next boy up. It was cute. :)

"I wish I was a shepherd boy..."

Here's Evie in her little group. She's on the very end of the middle row, paying extra close attention for when her bell color comes up. After this several of her classmates had to recite some lines. Her's was the longest and she was last in line after everyone else had remembered their lines just right. She had been sick for the week leading up to it so I didn't go over her lines very much. She remembered them all perfectly though! She did great.

Looks like she was a red bell. It also appeared, from our viewpoint, that she was about to shake her bell right at the boy's head in front of her. It was funny. I don't think he was in any real danger since he was to the inside of the row. 

poor snap

Poor Snap. He's always getting man handled. Last time it was Snow White. This time it was Samuel who put a clip on his ear and Evie who put a girly bird sticker on his collar. Poor Snap.

homeschooling

We homeschool. 

I've been thinking lately that the longer I do it, the more I like it and the more I feel committed to the long haul (as long as I don't think about that in terms of the next 18 years. whoa.). 

So perhaps I'll do a little post about why we decided to homeschool our kids.

I had always considered homeschooling when Noah was little, though Terry and I were both public schooled. I probably felt that this is what we would end up doing, but needed help making that decision. I really weighed the reasons why I wanted to do this. 

Did I want to protect my children? Yes, of course. This world is seriously messed up. I just read an article about a kindergartner being teased about his daddy dying and the kids saying he was a zombie. Messed. Up. And that's not even the half of it in this world. My kids don't even know what zombies are. And I'm okay with that. Does that mean I will forever try to keep zombies and scary stuff away from them? No.

Back to my point of analyzing why I was even considering doing this. Was it a control issue? Absolutely it was. I knew that I hoped that by keeping my kids close to home and teaching them about our faith, that they would become true hearted believers. Absolutely. But what I had to get around was that that was not in my control. Salvation is God's work and His alone. The end. I had to accept that. 

In order to get a better feel for what homeschooling entailed and was all about, we both attended a Nebraska homeschool conference and that helped me to sort things out. It must have been when Noah was only three because he wasn't even old enough to do preschool yet and I wanted to make up my mind about what we were going to do. So we went. It was really wonderful and helpful. Though I can't recall many details from the lectures, I do remember their high school graduation ceremony pretty vividly. The parents gave their own kids their diplomas. It was very moving. You could just see how much it meant to them to have reached that point. All I could think of was all the sacrifice and hard work and love those parents put into that child and now here they were, an adult. I remember Terry and I looking at each other like, "Wow." Pretty inspiring.

I can't point to one single argument from that conference that pushed us to homeschool. What did push me over the edge was what I did when we got home. I did a Bible study. I researched how many times in the Bible words such as "teach," "mother," "father," "child," etc. were used. I came away with 18 PAGES. That's a lot of references. 

So when people talk of being "called" to homeschool, I feel a little dubious. A calling is pretty serious and I never heard a voice from on high telling me "Thou shalt homeschool!" What I do feel, however, is a strong conviction to homeschool. 

I never ever felt I wanted to be a teacher. That would have been the last thing I would have chosen for a degree. I didn't even like kids very much. When I babysat as a teenager, I totally didn't like it. Boring. I like my own kids, but I'm not one of those really sweet homeschool moms who always talks all sugary and just loves kids. That's so not me. So I'm not someone who was "born" to do this. I hear all the time "Oh I could never do that!" Yeah? Well, join the club. I can't either. And you know what? I'm still doing it. And it would be easier to go to work a lot of the time. Serious. But it's worth it.

I love my kids. And I want to do absolutely everything in my power to enable them to be all that they can be. Educationally, emotionally and most importantly, spiritually. What else matters, I ask you? Does it matter how cool and witty and "socialized" they are? Nope. I think their character and spiritual maturity are far more important and homeschooling will take them much farther.

So what it comes down to for me is that we are able to do this and I think it's the best way. Now that does not mean that I look down at public schooled kids. My husband is a youth pastor and most of his students are public schooled! I was public schooled! We love those kids. But for us, this is what we want to do. 

tree hunting 2013

Since we had such a busy Thanksgiving weekend, we were going to put off tree hunting until the following weekend in December. However, after a friend reminded us of the frigid temperatures that were coming (it's like 5 degrees out), we changed our minds. We got the boys up from naps early and headed into the hills. 

We went to the same place as last year, hoping there'd be a tree we overlooked - it was pretty sparse before. Headed out with only the iphone for photos...blah.

 Even Samuel and Ezra got to come this year so we couldn't take the Blazer and the handy trailer. Terry had to tie the tree down around the van!

The older kids and I climbed to the top of the hill hoping for more trees. No luck.  

When we got back down, Noah headed off to find Daddy who was examining a potential tree.

That car seat cover was such a good investment. Widdle Ez is all comfy and cozy and warm. 

After much deliberation between this tree and the one down the road, we decided on this one. It was too tall for our house, but since it wasn't 20 feet tall, we could still take it and not be breaking the rules.

It was at this point that I went and grabbed the real camera. Much better. Noah and Evie had a little sword fight while Daddy cut the tree down.

That's my lumberjack.

Cute girl. She threw up seven times the following night. That wasn't so cute.

I went to feed Ezra and put Noah in charge of the camera. This is what happened.

But at least he took a good one of Terry and I. 

a second Thanksgiving 2013

We did Terry's family Thanksgiving at the ranch the Saturday after since Alice had to work on the actual day. Instead of doing turkey, they did ham and ribs. Oh, it was delicious.

Terry dropped Ezra in the lincoln log container just like he did to Samuel when he was only about a month older than Ezra is now - Ezra just turned six months old last weekend!

Gramma and Evie eating their second dinner.

Little baby Grace is nearly ready to be a big sister. It'll be just over a week and she will be! 

And these two little punks. Eat your food! Samuel always looks like he's up to something. It's funny how I didn't realize he had mischievous eyes when he was a cute little lincoln log.