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Fishing is a mostly male past time that runs in my family. I can’t say I really spent a lot of time doing this while growing up, but I certainly had the opportunity.  But my Boyz have taken a different spin on the sport and often fish in our front hallway.  I can always tell when they’re sneaking out of the locker room with a duster or a mop in their hand that they’re going on a fishing expedition.  Some days I indulge their creativity, other days I don’t – it all just depends on my mood.  Sometimes, I’ve been known to use it as an opportunity to get other things done around the house and I’ll coach them and say “You know, fishing requires a lot of patience.” or “Maybe they’re just not biting right now…” to hold them off for a bit while still maintaining their interest.  Then after a while, they’ll feel a tug on the line and when they raise up their “poles” they’ll find an oreo or a box of raisins or a piece of gum or some other treat clipped to their “lines.” It doesn’t take much to capture the creativity of a child. And once you do, usually – they’re hooked.

The joys of summer!  No schedule!  No homework! Freedom!  We’re taking full advantage.  Here’s a glimpse:

Summer is about choosing your own clothes to wear.
Running around in your jammies half the day.
Doing puzzles.
Planting a garden.
Being creative.
Reading a whole book in a day.
Swimming in the pool.
Trying to catch a chipmunk with fresh strawberry tops from breakfast.
Chasing flies around the house because the door’s been open too long.
Nighttime swims instead of baths.
Popcicles through the window of “Bub’s ice cream shop”
Spending the day watching construction across the street.
Staying up late reading with a headlight on your head.

“Bub’s ice cream shop” popcicle treats!

Say summer!!

Kiefer enjoys picking out his own outfits (multiple times a day!)

Griffin’s still in his jammies

puzzles!!!

Fletcher enjoying the lid to a puzzle

Kiefer being Kiefer 🙂

Fletcher experiencing what the grass feels like!

popcicle treats

And the drips they make!!

Good thing we’re in swim suits you can just go jump in to wash off!

Helping Daddy-o with a fix it project

What great helpers!!

A perfect summer day

Fletcher enjoying his first ear of corn!

Carter & Kiefer on a “Fly Hunt” wearing headlamps in their jammies with flyswatters ready to fire!

Kiefer jumping off the diving board for the first time

“I liked it! I think I’ll do it again!” (and again…!)

Good way to get out of the sun and dream a little….

Best way to end the day!

The first chapter book I ever read by myself was “The Boxcar Children.”  We’ve read that one together so much as a bedtime story that they boyz have it memorized. We act it out and pretend that we have a boxcar in our back yard.  Now, we’ll have to pretend we have a magic treehouse because Carter is pouring through the Magic Treehouse chapter book series. We learned of this series from our older cousins.  He read the first two in the first week of summer and now picked up the pace a bit and has read one a day the past two days. I’m going to have to go back to the half price bookstore to restock!   Good thing there are 22 books in the series! That should last at least a few more days!!   The first day of summer break we made “Reading Trees” for them to add leaves to with each book they read or that we read to them.   The leaves on his tree will be filled out in no time.  And he drew a treehouse in the tree, too.  Most appropriate!  Now we have to continue to encourage Kiefer and the others to follow suit.

Carter making his reading “Tree” -his is a “weeping willow”

Kiefer working on his tree

Final products

Carter drew a tree house and they both had me draw them swinging in tree swings from the branches.

Caught Reading!

Caught reading!

Caught up in treehouse reading

Bedtime reading with headlamp!

The other night as we were outside cleaning up the driveway full of toys, at such a random insignificant moment, Kiefer says to me, “Mommy, the love songs make me cry.” 
“Which love songs?”, I inquire.
“The Veggie Tales ones.  The ones Junior sings….  I wish he didn’t sing them….”

My heart melted.  Junior is the tiniest asparagus and he has a really sweet singing voice…but that these sweet songs make him cry, nearly made me cry.  I’m so thankful to have such a tender-hearted boy who cries at these sweet love songs to God. Sometimes it takes the faith of a child.

I tried to reassure him that it’s ok to cry as I’m picturing him up in bed at night listening to bedtime music wiping tears from his eyes.  Then he asked, “Like the mommy in the Peter Pan movie cried?  Why did she cry, Mommy?”

“You mean because she was happy when Wendy, John and Michael came home to her?  Why did she cry then even though she was happy?” I ask to clarify.  “Yeah?”, he says as we’re still picking up toys in the garage.

“Well, you can cry happy tears, too!  I cried when you were born because I was so happy!  I cried when each of you were born because I was so happy…  Sometimes the love just overflows and you have to cry.”

The next day while driving in the car I listened to the words Junior sang more closely and my eyes welled up… “I know that God loves me, I know that he cares, when I’m feeling lonely, I know he’ll be there. I like loving him because he first loved me…. I like feeling special. I like being me….  And I like to give God’s love,I want to live by giving love,  I want to love my friends an family so they will know that God is love.”

and “Oh, how I love Jesus…because he first loved me.”

Now the love songs make me cry!!!  Thanks for the refresher, Kiefer! I love that little boy!  (all of them, of course, but especially the way the love songs make him cry.)

Kiefer! Lives with his heart!

Chasing two butterflies

Inside the deck “helping” Daddy do a boy’s only project

So the Mama Robin is back.  She nested in our blue spruce tree outside the living room window this time last year.  This year, she tucked her nest up in the pear tree outside our sunroom window.  It was Griffin who noticed her nest for the first time this year.  It’s quite camouflaged up there, by design.  But sometimes it takes a two year old to notice the little things.  So we watched her from the sunroom as she snuggled into her nest. Then we got the arial view from the upstairs bathroom window.  I cranked open the window to try to get a shot of her nest and only then did I realize how quickly one of my birds could fall out of the nest so I quickly cranked it back shut and told them the view was better through the window.  For the last few weeks we’ve watched her sitting there as I reminisce about this time last year… she and I were both waiting to hatch.  I remember last spring I would serenade her on the piano while she sat atop her living room view nest.  Then we could see hungry little mouths crank open at 90 degree angles waiting for their mama to return.  We talked about how their daddy had to go to the grocery store early in the morning for fresh worms and we’d watch the mama and papa take turns feeding their babies.  About this time, her serenades stopped as I was the one doing all the baby feeding around our nest with our new baby bird.

Just the other day I looked up into the tree from the porch below and asked her if she was ready for four babies?  Four can be a nest full, you know.

Just by chance we peered out the upstairs window this morning and instead of seeing her collection of bright turquoise eggs, we saw three pink puff balls and one remaining turquoise egg.  I’ve never seen such tiny creatures!  They must have just hatched! But their mama was anxious to see us so she took off to try to distract us.  Instead, we had more pointing and peering as my three oldest baby birds take in the science lesson right outside our window!

 I hope her last egg hatches soon!  Maybe it will be a blue puff ball? We mama’s of four have to stick together!

See it?

See the nest?

“It’s right there!  I see it! I see the nest!”

Don’t fall out the window!

See the turquoise eggs?

How Griffin noticed this is hard to understand!

Now we see the puff balls!

See the pink puff balls?  One egg yet to hatch

Last summer she made her nest outside the living room window

Here’s Carter watching in the morning

There she sits on her living room nest

Signs of spring around the Jays…

Like that feeling you get when it’s been raining for weeks and then the sky suddenly clears and the sun bursts through -that’s how it felt when all of a sudden, after eight and a half months of constant spit up, Fletcher finally outgrew spitting up.  The end to the urping has finally arrived!  You don’t realize how accustomed to it you become until it finally stops!  Suddenly I don’t have to launder 20 burp cloths a week or change shirts three times a day (mine- cause why bother changing him!?) The sheets, the carpet, the mopping up urps off the floor, his carseat… everywhere! (and everyone because he doesn’t discriminate who he urps on!)  And just like that, the clouds part and the sun peaks through.  Fletcher’s growing up, no longer throwing up!  Thank God for small miracles.

See the spit up down the front of my jammies?

See the spit up on his chin?   The things you don’t even notice when you’re in the midst of it… it just becomes a way of life.  All I see is that he’s looking at me and holding on tight! 🙂

Why cry over a little spilled urp?  Hey – totally organic, dude! 🙂