First Birthday Party

Brooklyn's first, and the first one in this household with so much PINK!  Ok, with any pink for that matter! ;)

Dale decided to make it his job to bring Brooklyn out to greet her guests as they arrived.

What other theme would be more appropriate for our girl's first birthday than butterflies?

Never a shortage of helping hands around here.

Checking out the birthday loot.

Happy birthday, Miss B! :)

Thanks to Mimi for all the birthday photography!

Here kitty, kitty...or not.

We stayed busy this drizzly Saturday with little projects here and there all day.  Mid-morning found Greg in the van rearranging carseats.  Tyler and I went out to visit and admire his progress, and Tyler took the opportunity to step out into the driveway to play in the sprinkles and stomp in the puddles.

I saw him stop mid-stomp and mid-sentence to look over at our front porch and say, "There's a kitty over there!"

I stepped forward to see what Tyler saw, and what I saw was a grayish brown ball of fluff curled up on a rubber mat on our front porch.

In about a 3 second time-span, my thoughts went like this:
There is a kitty over there!
Oh my. Kitty looks dead.
Wait a minute...that's not a kitty.
That's a possum.

After we all took a look at the dead possum (after Greg had poked it with a stick to confirm its deadness), the man o' the house had the fun task of loading the thing up and hauling it off.

Any time Greg goes anywhere on a Saturday, it's pretty much a given 1, 2, or 3 boys will go with him. But this morning we both said, 'no'.  This trip just seemed simpler and more expedient without tagalongs.

And it's a good thing he went alone.

Before he'd been gone too long I got a phone call, and I could hear them before he even told me.

He had been instructed by the city to take the poor ol' possum to a place near the animal shelter.  And while at the shelter, he discovered a pet carrier full of wet, shivering, fussing....kittens.

Oh my heart wanted one.  But not five.  And not now.  But our kind Daddy contacted the folks that could get those kitties out of the rain and supplied with food and water.

And boy oh boy were we glad he ran that errand alone!

Can you imagine leaving with a dead possum and coming home with 5 kitties?  One for each kiddo, right?  Ha!  

We may be crazy, but we're not that crazy!

Weekly Wrap Up - Week 10

Another going, busy week.  Sometimes I wonder if we ever have a 'normal' 5-day stretch.  I think... as of right now... that next week is supposed to be that way.  We shall see!

For this week, Monday was another OB visit.  Afternoon this time, so we at least got our school done before then.

Tuesday was story time / library day.  Yay for fresh books!
In the afternoon we worked on a little craft project:

Wednesday was Miss Brookie's birthday!

And Thursday evening was her party!
With furniture pushed aside in preparation for that, we ended up doing some schooling in the floor.
I don't think anyone minded.

Party time!

This week's academics:
Dale: Began the 5 major time periods of the Old Testament, continued reading through Numbers, weighing solids with kilograms, blogged, journaled, covered action and linking verbs, copied poems for copywork/handwriting, took it upon himself to start learning a Christmas hymn, learned about our countries of the week, and only missed 1 on his spelling test!

Alan: Started the book of Acts, began the final review section of Explode the Code 1 (phonics), continued with subtraction practice, learned lowercase g,qu,c, n, and capital A in cursive, practiced his reading, and joined in our country study.

Tyler: Scissor practice, bug crafts & printables, stringing beads, got read to, and spent a good bit of time playing outside with his brothers!

Somebody's not camera shy...

These days any time we point a camera at someone, a little someone else is bound to pipe up, "Take my picture!"

And he doesn't look at the camera and say 'cheese'.

Ohhhh no.  Not this boy.  This boy, somewhere, somehow, has learned ....

....how to pose.

(For the record, the hats were for Brooklyn's benefit. ;) )

We better keep our eye on this one...

...and keep our cameras handy.

Happy Birthday, Brooklyn!

Our baby girl is 1 year old today!

 "Brooklyn" because we thought it was pretty and a fun way to use "Lynn", a family name.

 "Fayth" because she was born just months after the passing of my Grandmother, whose middle name was "Fay". 

 She has been our smallest for-her-age baby her whole first year.  Adored by her brothers (and her Mama and Daddy).  And maybe a few other people, too. :)

The only girl in a sea of boys, among both immediate and extended family.

 The party is still to come, but we had a birthday supper of pancakes tonight.

We all agreed if she could choose she would choose pancakes, so pancakes it was!

 I even chose my coffee cup in Brooklyn's honor:

A quiet day at home, but as usual, she was doted on by 3 big brothers, along with much singing of "Happy Birthday to you!!"

So happy birthday, Miss B.  You are most definitely loved and adored!

Country Study - Switzerland

Food and leisure were our main topics as we spent a week highlighting Switzerland.

After we covered the basic geography facts, we did some reading about the Alps and Alpine skiing.

Even though it's set in the U.S. - obviously not Switzerland - we still had to include an old favorite picture book:

Since Switzerland is famous for its chocolate, we also checked out and read books on where chocolate comes from and a visit to a chocolate factory.

Know what else chocolate-related Switzerland is known for?  Fondue!
We obviously had no choice but to have our own fondue party, just our big boys and me.  (And Tyler got some, too... later.)

 We used this recipe...

 ...and cut up pound cake, strawberries, apple, banana, and marshmallows for dipping.  Yum!

When we started I laid out all the ground rules for courtesy and non-germiness.  I also told them the tradition I had read that if a man lost his bread in the fondue he bought everyone "a drink" and if a woman lost her bread she gave her neighbors a kiss.

Guess who lost his pound cake in the chocolate and decided to go get everyone a glass of water? :)

On Friday we went ahead and completed the week with the original, traditional cheese fondue for supper.  Found another simple, yummy recipe online and had sausage, bread, and veggies for dipping.

Since we read Heidi as a read-aloud within the last year or two we skipped it and Dale read another Johanna Spyri book, A Little Swiss Boy.

And, even though it has very, very, very little to actually do with Switzerland, we used this week as a springboard to get us back moving on our current, very long-lasting, read-aloud, The Swiss Family Robinson.

The only thing we didn't get to that I really wanted to was another culinary venture: Muesli, which as I understand it, is basically the same thing as... granola!  We love homemade granola, but I just didn't get to it.

Overall, a very simple, yet yummy week!

Around the House Monday

In my fridge - 
I think I need to take this little category out.  Tuesday has turned into our grocery day, so any Monday I do an around the house the fridge is empty, lol!  I other fridge news, after several weeks off, we are back to drinking orange juice again in the mornings and we're all enjoying it so much!  We also have salad stuff on hand again (lettuce, spinach, veggies, etc), which has been a nice addition to some meals lately.

On my nightstand - 
Another reason Monday might not be a good day for around the house: Tuesdays are not only our grocery day, they are our library day, too!  At any rate, I finished The Scarlet Pimpernel last night and loved it!  
Also on my nightstand is the perpetual sippy cup.  For a while Tyler got in the habit of showing up at my bedside in the wee hours of what seemed like every. single. night! whispering "I'm sirsty!"   I got tired of heading to the kitchen in the wee hours and finally wised up and started bringing water to bed with me.  He doesn't visit as often now, but I never know when he'll come in thirsty.  Sometimes I don't even wake up until I hear him slurp slurping next to me. :)

In the school room - 
Not doing so good with my bug unit for Tyler.  I need to get my act together and get serious about preparing some cool bug activities for him.  There are so many possibilities!

I decided to take a break from character studies with Alan and go through the book of Acts together instead.  We started that today, and I'm looking forward to the next month or so of learning together!

On the menu - 
Breakfast for supper (pancakes, sausage or bacon, eggs)
Tacos (boys been requesting for a while)
Pintos and garden veggies from the freezer
Chicken and dumplings
Something with rice, but I haven't decided yet what :)  Suggestions?
Edited: I'm thinking Swedish meatballs to go with our country study of Sweden/Finland/Norway this week! 

In the baby's room - 
I emptied, moved (don't panic - it's super lightweight and Dale helped), and reloaded (again, with boy help) a little bookshelf in our bedroom this weekend for the start of a bit of furniture shuffling to come in the next few weeks to make room for our new little man.  

That's been about the only baby prep I've done this week.  I'm making every effort to balance getting ready with not getting ahead of myself.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I started looking for Brooklyn way too soon and drove myself crazy!  So I'm doing my best not to rush things this time.

I spy with my little eye...a little boy that fell asleep waiting for Daddy!

County Fair, Take 2

Greg and I decided this was a good year to take the boys back for a little extra fair fun.

After checking in at Mimi's booth to say 'hi', we set out for one of those top kid-enticing places... the midway!

A few rides followed by local bbq and burgers under the lights made for a full night of fun and 3 smiley, gushing boys.

The frugal side of me had to swallow hard and look away, but seeing how much our sweet boys enjoyed themselves, I came home with a full heart!