photos, photos, photos

Saturday was both a baseball day and Angel Food day. I got up at 4:30 to go to Harrison to help pick up the food. Jack took Kyle and Todd to their practice and game. Angel Food went well, and we had it all distributed by 11:00. My Beth loves to play with this Beth. She even knows how to spell her name.
This was Todd's first baseball practice, and coach told them all that he wanted them to run around the field, but to take it at a jog and not sprint. Todd pipes up and asked, "We have to run in this game??" Coach James told him he had to do what his coaches tell him to do or he will have to do push-ups. "Do you want to do push-ups?" he asked Todd. I don't think he expected Todd's answer. After a thoughtful pause he said," I could do a hundred." He would rather do 100 push-ups than run around the diamond at a slow jog. I can't wait to see what happens when he is on a team full-time.

Although my garden is a comedy of errors again this year, the flowers that Faith planted are blooming beautifully. She and Matt come home next weekend. I can't wait. I miss those two.

Among other events this last week, Chet was advanced in rank in the Court of Honor. He also received some of his merit badges. Matt is still a traveling man, so he wasn't here to receive the ones he has earned. Man... that is one good-looking kid. Pale, too skinny, and not feeling so great lately, but still gorgeous none-the-less. Once I got past crying everytime I shared the news with somebody that Todd was indeed an HLA match for him, I spent the rest of the time smiling a really big smile that doesn't begin to match the relief I feel in knowing that Chet really has a good chance of being cured of this ugly disease.
Over and over again my kids confirm a simple fact of parenting; expensive and complicated toys are not necessary. For my kids, nothing, and I mean nothing, beats a pile of brand new cardboard boxes for sheer imaginative and jolly fun.
Beth and Kyle used some of the cardboard to make phones so they could call each other. I walked out of the house and heard Beth saying, 'Brother? Can you hear me now? Helllloooooo.... James, are you here???" Apparently they use their middle names when they are playing. Or at least when they are calling each other.
Oh... let me tell you, taking the kids to somebody else's VBS was as wonderful an experience as putting one together myself. In fact, it may have been a slightly better experience for me simply because I wasn't in charge of anything other than talking to the kids one night about the food pantry our church has and the volunteer work I do with the Tuesday Night Dinner Program.

Churches and other groups really do like it when Josh and Mystery and Jack and I all bring our kids to their activities. Between their 8 and our 6 numbers can't help but get a huge boost! See..... add one Wellborn and one Anderson, and they make up 2/5 of the class.

Or add one Anderson and one Wellborn and you get 100% unpredictable hilarity. Either way you do the math, it all adds up the same...lots of kids, lots of noise, and you never know what any one of them will come up with next.
Like this. This was fantastically funny. Bug must have sensed that her parents were hiding in the back row, because she stood up during the quiet time and hollered across the mostly quiet chapel, "Hi Mommy! Hi Daddy! Come here! Come Heeerreeee!" Who knew Josh could melt into a pew so easily?

The best part is that they are all attending another VBS this week. I could get used to this! Summers will never be the same again. From now on they will all be scheduled around the local churches VBS schedules. I was talking to another mom today who was bringing her kids to their 4th VBS this month. I love small town life. Between VBS-hopping and library events, the kids have so much to do! It has actually been good to get to meet and talk to some of the other church secretaries and children's program leaders as well, and the kids are enjoying getting to know each other as they all go around to the different programs. It's good for everyone involved.

We have spent as much time at the library events as possible. Where else do you get to pet dead animals on a stick?

This desert tortoise was great. It walked around with all the kids' prizes as they played Bug Bingo. I have to share this story too. The teacher asked the kids if any had ever been to the desert. Helllooooo..... Wellborn children... you were born in the desert! And I know you all remember it (except for maybe Beth) because you talk about it all the time. So the teacher asks who has been to the desert and Todd raises his hand and says "I think we drove through Arizona once." Okay... I guess I should be impressed that he knows that Arizona is a desert. Maybe he just doesn't correlate big casinos in a valley with the cacti he has heard about in school.

Now,moving on to the latest issue of our Backyard Wildlife, let me show some kind of bug I almost walked into the other day. I have no idea what this is. I don't really want to either. I find those scale things on his back deeply, deeply disturbing. Did dinosaurs interbreed with insects somewhere along the way??
Henry the freakishly long-legged garden spider (or one of his/her descendants) has returned to hunt the fertile fields of our storage shed walls. The kids love to catch grasshoppers and throw them at Henry's mercy. Henry really doesn't have much mercy. He/she/it gets them spun up into a webby sack in seconds. I personally prefer to see nature in action by watching the eagles fly overhead, or hearing the treefrogs sing at night. How did my kids come to find this particular form of nature-watching so intriguing? Ick.
Poor old decrepit Red. He is still following us all around, but his many years are beginning to take their toll. I like all of our animals, but it is really going to make me sad when this old guy leaves us.
Beagle had just woken up from a nap when I took this one of her. I think she was drifting back off to sleep as I snapped the shot.
Our grass has grown really, really, I mean really tall. It chokes the motors on our mowers, and it has been too wet to get too much mowed down in a timely matter. So Jack asked one of our neighbors to bring over his big tractor to knock it down. Carroll showed up and decided instead of just mowing it he would bring over his bigger machines and bale it as hay. It is a long process. First he brought one machine (I don't know what the different heavy machinery equipment is called.) and knocked down the hayfields. Then he got that big machine stuck inthe mud, so Jack drove him home to get a bigger machine to get it out. Then he finished knocking down the rest of the grass. After it dried on the ground for a few days, he brought over a big machine with a bunch of comb-like implements on the back and he brushed and styled all the dry grass into pretty, fluffy piles. Then he brought this machine over (I think it is called a baler... see, I am not completely clueless) and he rolled it all up into big rolls all over the property. The baler gathers it up as he drives over the piles and then literally spits the roll out of the tub-thing on the back.
Then the bales sit for a few days longer before they are bundled up by presumably another big machine (if ladies really do think tractors are sexy, than Carroll has it all over some of the young-uns around here). I don't know why the haybales have to sit there before they can be completed. Maybe they need to dry a bit more. Maybe the snakes need more time to get burrowed in nice and deep. All I know is that I am thrilled to have all the grass down, and I am going to have to find time to get pics of the kids on top of one of these before Carroll hauls them away for winter storage for his animals. Trading the hay with Carroll in exchange for the work he has done is fair because my animals won't eat hay. Neither will my kids. All of them are picky eaters. As always, there is another full week ahead of us. I will be back when I can!