Swimming

Many of you know that our family loves swimming.

Cheri remembered the camera last night, we got

some video, and I thought we should share. Enjoy.

She's a maniac!

Amelia is certainly not known for her timidity, but come on!

A moment ago I called her for lunch and heard her feet pattering down the hall upstairs. I walked over to the bottom of the stairs as she was heading down. I said, "Lady love!" and held out my arms. She was eight steps from the bottom and she LEAPED into the air and down. I lunged forward and caught her about stair four just before she broke both ankles on the edge of stair three. WHAT?!? No way.

As I carried her to the table, shaking my head and laughing in disbelief, it came to me that we have spent hours with her jumping off the edge of the pool to us. Which - following the maniac theme...the girl can't stay out of the water. She is all over. No kicking or strokes yet, but she loves to be pushed under and to someone else. She wears goggles and strains to go over to the diving board with her brothers. This little lady is not going to be left behind.

And just because I always laugh at this picture, I must share -
introducing "Power Pump!"
(Pump-pump, pumples, and pumpadumkins are a few of her nicknames, hence the Power Pump. And I have NO IDEA where we get all the strange, endearing names we have for her. )

A little bit of this, little bit of that...

While Mike was out mowing the lawn he spotted a very cool beetle. We all ran out to see it, and I caught this sweet moment on camera. All the children are in poses that so well capture their personalities. Jake's back on his haunches, elbows resting on his knees, checking things out, Andrew has got the gumby body hunched down low, (aaaa! this pic was pre-haircut. His hair was driving me nuts!!), and Amelia is matter of factly showing Mike the mail. Mike is a good dad. I love him!

Here Amelia is humming Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and doing the hand actions. I'm not sure if the sweet potatoes run through the hair enhances her onstage look or not....

Jacob finished up his first soccer season. The lower picture shows him on one of the days he was goalie. He was awesome! A lot of balls were shot at him and he stopped them all. He was such a hustler. The minute he would stop the ball, he was alreading running to throw it back into play. He would toss it far over the other players, and one time he threw it so far, the other teams' goalie had to stop it from rolling into their goal. He was so proud of himself and told us that Coach Pat remarked- after he dove on a ball to stop it- that he did it just like a "PROFESSIONAL!!" (: He was all smiles. We are excited to have Andrew start as well.

And one last little bit: The other night the boys and I were entertaining ourselves by looking through a cake decorating book my mother in law gave us a LONG while back. As we looked through the wedding cake section, the boys started deciding what cake they would have at their wedding. I mentioned that their choices were nice and all, but they would have to see if it would be something the girl would like as well....

Jacob: Ok Andrew, let's look again and try to get something with a little more girly in it, but not too much girly.
(they look for a while, hemming and hawing)
Andrew: Here's a good one. It's pretty pretty, and I like it too!
Jacob: Yeah, that's good. Mom? Do the girls get to choose the other things for the wedding?
Mom: Jake, the girls traditionally get to plan the entire wedding.
Jacob: WHAT!? No fair! I want to plan my wedding!.........Well, if she plans the wedding, how could I help?
Mom: Maybe you could offer to go pick up the flowers from the florist, or get the tuxes, or (I can see that he is not listening to me and is thinking hard)
Jacob interrupts: I know what I can do! I'm really good at spreading out the table cloth at our house, so I will tell her that I am going to put the tablecloths on all the tables!!! (is very excited)

Brilliant!

And of course, as we sat looking through the catalog, I was reminded of the last time we sat down and looked through it.

Here's an update. My sister Lindsay made it for Jake and did such a cool job. So funny. (Okay, so I'm like a year behind in posting about it.) Still such a hilarious cake for a seven year old. He thought it was awesome.

(child's voice) All Done!

Jacob is through with second grade! Here he is with his teacher, Mrs. Garrett,
at the end of the year class party. He loved being in her class and finished out the year with a bang!
Jacob had a different teacher for the majority of the year and he really struggled. He was quite stressed and acted out often, but it took a lot of time for Mike and I and Jacob to pinpoint what was leading to his tough times. We met numerous times with the teacher, counselor, assistant principal, and then principal....and finally I just pulled him out of school for a bit in March. Thanks to a great principal and impressions I recieved after much prayer, we put him back in with a different teacher. The environment was just what he needed. Lots of greens and gold stars followed! Way to go, Jacob! We love you so much and are proud of you for all your hard work!

Andrew participated in a little preschool this year and enjoyed himself immensely. He was the oldest one and became the "helper" for all the other children. His favorite lessons included dogs, lemonade stands, making all things pumpkin, and learning about the sea. This little puppy is excited for kindergarten to start. As soon as school was out, the boys and I made goals for summer learning. Two of Andrew's goals were to be able to count and recognize his numbers to 30 and to write and recognize the lower case alphabet. (Just because it's easier, I've only taught him the upper.) ANYWAY - this goal oriented, determined boy mastered the numbers almost up through 100 in the first few days. He is going to do great in school!
We love you, Andy Doondy! RUFF!!

Summertime is here

Yes folks, long active days and bellies full of watermelon occasionally lead to a face down/in the plate/early bedtime.

Beware the woken child. (This picture kills me!)

Oh, wait. She's back down again.
Her shorts were soggy with watermelon juice and stickiness was everywhere! Jacob picked our first watermelon of the summer and it was a winner. Huge and delicious. We'll probably be working on this monster melon for a week!
*After typing that I realize it may sound like we picked it from our garden, but alas, not this year. We picked it straight from the boxes at the supermarket. (: