Summer Catch

Summer in Arkansas is magical. The children spent the afternoon running around the island with nets catching huge butterflies. They came in around 2:30, wrote in their journals, and we read Meet Julie: an American Girl for the summer book club I put together for the girls and their friends.  

Later, Corbin joined up with his buddies Owen and Jacob and they took a turn bug hunting and ate Popsicles while I sat lazily on the porch swing with a pillow and visited with neighbors and Reese and Quincy went for a swim next door. Summer in my neighborhood is an absolute dream. 

Cookies and Toads

Today's excitements included the victorious climb over a mountain of laundry, a relaxing downpour of rain, baking chocolate chip cookies, books, and catching Todd the Toad with Kaitlyn and Skylar (neighbor girls). 

After taking this picture, Reese said to me, "Mom, I'm just like Violet Bouledaire from A Series of Unfortunate Events always carrying Baby Sunny around. Well except his name is Soren, not Sunny, and you guys aren't dead and there'sno one  trying to kill us orphans for our fortune." 

 Summer is here and our biggest trouble was running out of milk. (Hence the making of cookies to coerse Aaron into buying some on the way home from work. Success!)

The fedora is out and the new hat is in.

Corbin saw this trucker hat in the store today and it was love at first sight. He also picked out a shirt that says, "THAT GOOD" on it.  I asked,"That good? What does that even mean?" Corbin said, "It's me! I'm that good!" 

Aaron bought them both for him on the spot. 

Sister Love

Some probably wouldn't have busted out the camera at this particular moment, but I'm really glad I captured it.  Sometimes, you just have a meltdown, and that's when your sister swoops in and helps you put yourself back together. I think this photo is as beautiful as the subjects are tender hearted. They're so lucky to share the compassionate love that they have for each other. I feel thankful that this kind of pure and unconditional love happens generously in my home. 

Girls, don't forget to always be this careful and justified in guarding and rescuing one another's hearts with your Sister Love. 

Summer Kickoff Campout, Shareholder 2014, and Bucket List Journals

We let the kids "camp out" in sleeping bags in the loft last night. I think they were still awake at 9pm. Aaron kicked off the girls' summer break by quietly waking them up at 5am and taking them to the 2014 Walmart Shareholder meeting at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville. Harry Connick Jr hosted this year. The girls had fun and were excited for all the musical performances, their favorite being Happy by Pharrell.  Father of the Year Award goes to Aaron for teaching his daughters how to work hard and succeed in the corporate world. He is such a great example and provider for our family. 

Corbin slept in until 8:30 (sing it!) but was VERY distraught to find his sisters' sleeping bags empty when he woke up. He played quietly until Soren woke up and we enjoyed the dark and stormy morning snuggled up together. 

We met Aaron and the girls for lunch at the "new" McDonalds playground on Walton. The kids have been asking to check it out for months. The place was spotless. Immaculate. A germ-a-phob's dream. Kids played, Soren pounded like 10 or 12 chicken nuggets (he just discovered how to "dip" food. It's the cutest.), Aaron told me all about the meeting, and the rain poured down from the blackish green sky.  Today was a lovely, relaxing start to summer vacation.

The children are now busy working on one of my favorite summer traditions, summer journals. I make one for each of the children by stapeling copied sheets of age appropriate lined paper. They decorate the front and back covers with a checklist style summer bucket list. About 4 days a week they're given a writing assignment (usually to describe what they did that day or the day before) and they add an illustration. Reese writes a page on wide ruled blank lines, Quincy writes on school lined half sheets and Corbin writes the date, his name, and a title for his picture on two school lines. I have templates of the different kinds of lined sheets that I can email if anyone wants a copy. It's a nice way to keep their writing and spelling skills sharp.

 Here is Reese's entry with illustration in progress.

Quincy's entry today:

Corbin's entry:

I don't save every paper my kids bring home from school. I save hardly anything they bring home, actually. These journals do get saved. They are treasures and we have volumes of summer memories and traditions recorded in their cute child handwriting from the past few years. 

Have I mentioned how happy I am that school is out and my children are home? 

Garden update

Yay for tomatoes! I still haven't caged them and it's probably too late now. Any tomato control suggestions for me? My dad always built a giant wood cage around ours to hold them back and it worked well. I might do that but I'm a little worried about too much moisture between plants without cages to hold up limbs. I guess limbs weighed down by excess tomatoes is a good problem to have! 

Peppers are looking weak sauce this year. Good thing my neighbor grows a mean bell pepper. We can trade ;) 

It's too late for the peas and I can already tell they'll dry out before I can harvest any pods. Butternuts look good. I'm tempted to rip out the peas now and start two more butternut vines.

Beets are up and ready to thin again.

Basil is happy and attempting to go to seed so I pinched it down tonight. We used some fresh cilantro with diner tonight. Carrots are up and ready to thin. Spinach is up. Cucbers are small now but will hopefully find their way up the trellis. Thyme and onions are greening up. 

The melon patch is taking it's sweet time. I don't think I'm watering it enough. 

And here's our starter garden, beginning it's harvest phase. Strawberries are about done, spinach is starting to bolt, broccoli is ready this week, and squash fest has just begun!  Green beans need another 14 days. My guess is they'll be in peak harvest for Fourth of July and we'll be eating them wrapped in bacon and brown sugar like last year (yum!). The tomatoes are much larger than they appear I just never caged them so they look small all flopped over each other. I need to do something about that soon. 

I also noticed an aphid problem on the squash, which I've never had before. I'll order some ladybugs next week. 

Some of our first fruits other than herbs and spinach. 

And finally, the tick count. I've lost track of how many I've pulled off of myself and the children but there were 3 in the last week and 4 or 5 before that. Gross. The things we endure to spend a little time outdoors. 

Special School Days with Quincy

First Grade's Fun and Field Day with Quincy was a lot of fun. The local fire department parked a truck and two firefighters spent several hours hosing down squealy children. 

Corbin spent a good hour in the water on Reese's fun and field day, but when we visited Quincy's, they linked arms and spent our entire visit in line and racing through the inflatable water slide obstacle course over and over and over again. Quincy bought Popsicles for herself, Corbin, and a few of her friends. 

It rained and rained on Quincy's scheduled picnic so blowing springs unfortunately got canceled. I went to the school and we ate lunch together then had snow cones (notice her ponk teeth) with the rest of 1st grade and visited her classroom for a bit while her sub (her teacher unfortunately took a leave of absence the last 3 weeks of school and the children wasted their days watching tv indoors with an uninvested substitute) looked for a movie for them to watch. After 30 minutes of that I just checked her out of class and we headed to the cafeteria and had lunch with Reese. By the time we finished, the sun was out and first grade headed outside for play.  I asked the girls if they wanted to be checked out of school early but they both wanted to spend the last day of school with their friends. It's ok girls, we have the entire summer to spend together!  

I came back 2 hours later and picked up two very smiley girls. Summer is finally here and these sweet children are mine all mine. 

Special School Days with Reese

I went to Reese's Fun and Field Day last week and to her class picnic at Blowing Springs, this morning. 150 3rd graders = some very fun times! 

Reese has some cute friends. It makes me happy to see her cheerfully surrounded by love and smiles as bright as her own. They watch out for each other, help each other, and when one girl gets hurt the others immediately become a nurturer to help her feel better. 

We really hit the jackpot with Reese's teacher this year. Mrs Ulichnie is the best of the best and thanks to the loop program, Reese will keep Mrs Ulichnie as her literacy teacher in Fourth Grade as well. Score! This woman is dedicated, hard working, thoughtful, patient, and very talented. 3 cheers for good educators! 3rd grade has been a wonderful experience for Reese. 

Hands free sandwich stealer

I respect the kid for just going in for the grilled cheese face first. No mess, no fuss.