First Family Photos

There are lots of firsts in marriage and parenthood, and sometimes you just never know how long certain firsts will take to happen. We had a phenomenal first for our family last month. Jocelyn, her hubby Brian, and their girls came out to see us. For the first time ever we had all 8 kids and all 3 grandkids together at the same time. It was frrrreeeezing cold outside, but I wasn't putting off taking photos of us all together another minute. Carpe diem.

I gave Brian a crash course in using my camera, and he took this one of the thirteen of us. I'm still not sure if the little bit of camera shake is just because he was cold or if my little pep talk included the phrase "Don't be nervous, but you better not cut anybody's head off!"

I was giddy as I took this one. I have waited so long to take this picture! Would it be a bit over the top if I turned it into an entire wall mural instead of just framing it?

The weather didn't allow for much time to play around with positioning, but Jocelyn and Brian have decided to stay a while. So as soon as it truly warms up we are going to find a lovely day to take pictures of us all again, and do some different groupings. That should eliminate the shivering and give us a chance to maybe get everyone to look at the camera at once. Chet... are you paying attention??

I remembered to take one of all the daughters and granddaughters.

And this one of the daughters. (Aren't they gorgeous?)

Then I snapped one of the sons, son-in-law, and giggly little grandson.

And one of this group of particularly handsome sons. Todd was trying to smile big enough the first time to not have to sit there for another shot.

I even got this momma and her baby,

and this pretty family...

and some couple shots of Jocelyn and Brian.

I must have had brainfreeze, though, because there should be a picture here of the 3 adorable grandkids together.... and I forgot to take it. The incoming snow clouds must have distracted me.

Then I handed Jessica the camera, and she took this one. Gads, I love this man!

So how is life, you ask? Well... it is busier than ever. It is noisy, and a little crowded, and a big change for everyone. But you know what.... I love being surrounded by talls, smalls, grands, and growns. Sure, a few more grey hairs are beginning to take hold, but I found the cure for that.

Clairol and highlights.

Life is full. Life is a wee bit hectic. And life is good.

The Coolest Blog

I am such a history nerd.

It is a deep-seated, ingrained nerdiness, and while I enjoy reading novels and biographies of nearly any era, I find the medieval Dark Ages to be near and dear to my nerdy heart. (I still hold out hope that someday there will be a Dark Ages Trivial Pursuit game.)

A few months ago I purchased a Kindle, and have been regularly downloading free books when they are available. One of my recent favorites was The Traitor's Wife by Susan Higginbothom. After I read the novel, I went back to Amazon to see what other titles she has so I can add them to my "have to read" someday list. That is when I discovered Susan's blog. It is chock-full of historical tidbits and links to other medieval treats. I cannot wait to read through it all.

I am experiencing a variety of technical difficulties lately that have seriously imposed on my online time, and it has hampered my ability to get photos edited and posted. That is all changing this week, though, and then I will be back to posting, browsing and feeding my inner nerd by adding this blog to my list of regular reads.

I can't wait. I'm sure all my fellow Plantagenet groupies out there can understand!

On My Mind ... Part 1

I was baking cookies with Ariel and Beth the other night. Baking cookies with a 5 and 7 year old takes a lot longer than doing it alone takes.

 

I could have the ingredients measured out in no time, but I have to be patient and let them learn to scoop and level the flour. They need to learn the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. They need to make sure they aren't adding 3/4 cup of salt instead of sugar, and ruining the entire process.

I don't need to read the instructions to know that the butter and sugars need to be creamed together first before adding eggs and dry ingredients. If I am baking with helpers, though, we need to go through the step-by-step process so they don't end up with butter chunks and flour lumps.

When I am baking solo, the cookie dough is scooped out on the trays quickly, minimizing the chances of it getting too soft to effectively scoop. Little hands take longer to figure out the mechanics of the scooper and where to place the scoops on the tray. By the time we reached the bottom of the bowl, our dough was getting pretty mushy in the warm kitchen.

 
I know it is going to take some time to see the final results when we bake cookies. These two hovered near the oven repeating various versions of "Aren't they done yet?"

I could bake the cookies on my own, but they get so much joy from being part of the process and seeing their efforts produce tangible results. Allowing them to help me brings reciprocal rewards. They love learning something new; I love watching them learn. It is a great bonding time.

It occurred to me that being a willing servant of God works much in the same way.

We have an all-powerful, all-seeing, and all-knowing Heavenly Father. He doesn't need us  to feed the hungry, comfort His children, heal the sick or anything else. He knows exactly what needs to be done. He knows exactly how to do it. He can do it better and faster than we ever possibly could.

He already knows the outcome that will come from simple acts of service, and He knows how far that can spread, but in our impatience we don't wait to see what will happen. Worse, we tend to think we don't have enough training/experience/patience/(insert any other excuse here) to go through the learning process of how to serve others, and therefore find another way to be closer to God.

He doesn't need us to serve others. And yet.... He stands there with us, guides us through the process, and He lets us do it.

Jesus said the two great commandments are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and  to love your neighbor as yourself. To be a willing servant is to obey the two great commandments.

But I can't help but feel that allowing us to be a servant in His stead is more than a commandment.

It is a gift.

A wonderful, far-reaching, and if I know my Heavenly Father, reciprocal gift.

As a Crow Flies

I took my three smalls with me to run errands the other day. Todd really doesn't like being in the car for very long at all. On the way home, we had the following conversation.

Todd: "Mom, why do we have to take this road to get back to town."

Me: "Because it is the only direct road we have back to our town."

Todd: "Wouldn't it be faster if you found a shortcut that takes us straight to our house instead?"

Me: "If there was a road straight from here to our house it might be faster. The shortest distance between two points is always a straight line, but we can't drive in  a straight line from here to our house."

Todd: "You could if you would make the car drive the way a crow flies."

Me: "Maybe, but even if we drove straight through on a crow's path, we would have to drive up and down over the hills and mountains between here and the house and that would probably slow us down quite a bit."

Todd: "Not if you had crow gear installed in the car so we could fly over it instead of driving."

He makes a good point.What do you think the mechanic's reaction will be when I ask him to replace my 4-wheel drive with crow gear?
 

Happy birthday, Todd!

My baby boy turned 9 today. He woke everybody up saying,"You HAVE to tell me happy birthday!" I told him, "No! You have to stay little!" Somehow, I don't think I am going to win that argument.

We usually only have small family parties, but he really wanted to invite friends to his birthday this year. Despite the short notice, he had a lot of kids show up! They aren't even all in this picture. I think we were still rounding up some who were playing football in the field. 

Todd listened to everybody sing "Happy Birthday" to him with his usual personality traits shining through. I love this kid. I really do. Sometimes I think I should have named him Isaac since it means "laughter."

Then, being the well-trained child he is, he blew out his candles slowly to make sure I got the pictures. These candles are great for that, though, because although they aren't trick candles they are difficult to blow out!

After presents, cake, goodie bags, and hotdogs, the boys all went back out to the field to play football and have some swordfights on the hill. I had fun sitting on the picnic table and cheering for the littler guys. It distracted me from thinking about Todd only having 364 days left of a single-digit age.

Happy birthday, Todd! I love you! And for the record, I still think you should stay small for a long time!

A Rite of Passage

Something has been happening to Chet. His voice sounds funny. His shoulders are getting wider. And his upper lip has gotten hairy. So last night he asked Jack to teach him how to shave. Apparently the unbladed bubble bath toy razors I bought for him 12 years ago are longer sufficient.

So after showers, and in front of a very small mirror, Jack first showed him how to lather up.

Then Chet watched carefully as Jack said something about grain and rinsing the blade and a bunch of other advice that doesn't apply to me and I wasn't paying attention to. I was too busy noticing how dirty the mirror is. (This is Jack's mirror. My mirror is clean. Just so you know.)

Then Chet made me stop thinking about how big he is getting when he accidentally spread some shaving cream in his mouth.

He  got it all cleaned up, though, and was finally ready to rid himself of his fuzz.

So Jack carefully showed him how much pressure to use, how to contort his mouth to get to different whiskers, and how to avoid digesting anymore shaving cream.

So now my funny-sounding boy, with his ever-broadening shoulders, is clean-shaven and well-educated in the shaving process.

And I am feeling a little lost, wishing he was shaving with his plastic razor and bubbles again.

Todd wants to be a gummy bear....

I can tell you that Todd is funny, one of the funniest people I know,  but sometimes it is easier to show you than to tell you.

He is always cracking me up.

This weekend, he and one of his friends wrote new lyrics for the song "I Wanna Be A Billionaire." Then he and another one of his friends performed it for me today.

Here it is for you to enjoy! (Todd is on the right.)

Our jack-0-lantern pack

I haven't had time to post about it, but we had a big fire this summer. Our storage shed and their contents were lost. Part of those contents were our holiday decorations, so our home is woefully decorated for the fall. Brandon and Jessica took care of that, though, and came home with half a pumpkin patch and some carving tools. Last night the kids set to work giving them all some faces.

Beth liked cutting the cap off of her pumpkin, but she was less than impressed with the goo-removal process.
(She thinks this is gross, but manhandles frogs and worms all the time. Strange child.)

Soon everybody was deep into the process of de-gunking the pumpkins.

Faith was the first one done scraping hers out. Please don't ask me why she has this expression on her face. She is about to become a teenager, and all kinds of weird things are happening with her lately.

Speaking of weird.... Kyle, why?

Won't do that again, will you?

Todd can't resist.... if he sees me aiming a camera at somebody and he has nothing better to do, he just has to make a Broadway slide into the shot.

Finally all the goop was disposed of, and the stenciling and carving began.

Todd wanted a werewolf, but upon completion he decided his looks like a Razorback. Woo Pig Sooie!

Chet had some kind of screaming face, but it fell off right after he stood up. It is now precariously balanced on the tips of its teeth. He is the only that actually modeled his pumkpin carving.

Kyle made his own pattern.

Beth's took a while to get done. I missed getting shots of Jessica, Brandon, and Faith with their creations.

In the end, though, Beth had a cute pumpkin.

We took them all out on the porch and lit up the night with them.

Then the best thing happened.... Brandon cleaned up all the mess, leaving nary a seed nor glop of goop behind.

Quality Mother-Daughter Time

My mom is here visiting us this week. At her request, we have kept our schedule light. We have only dragged her to 3 football games, 1 volleyball tournament, an Emmaus event, a couple of trips (or three or four) to the store, and to church so far. We have even fed her occasionally.

She told me while she was here she wanted to take me out to get a pedicure and manicure, so yesterday we were running some errands when she saw a nail salon and seized upon the moment of opportunity. I still had my camera with me since the kids participated in the See You At The Pole event, so I took a few shots.

It wasn't easy getting us both into the viewfinder when we were a couple of feet apart in massage chairs, but we finally got it done. (I am going to insert a PSA here. If your mom takes you to get a pedicure, don't wear a dress and open-toed wedge sandals. One can ruin your freshly painted toes and the other can make things uncomfortable for you and the nail technician. Thank goodness they keep towels in salons.)

Then the technicians got to work. I have never had a pedicure before, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. I knew the hot water would feel good on my extremely swollen feet. I didn't think of how ticklish my feet are, though, until Jaydon started buffing them. I tried to hold still, I really did, but occasionally he would hit a spot that made me jump and then he would look at me the way the anesthesiologist who was poking my ticklish spine did when I was having Kyle. (Which made me laugh more as I heard, "Mrs. Wellborn, if you really want this epidural you HAVE to sit still!" running through my head.)

Mom is a better customer than I am, given that she isn't ticklish at all.  She also didn't jump when they pulled our feet out of the warm water and suddenly dumped a very cold liquid on them.  I am sorry, Jaydon, I truly didn't mean to splash water all over your face when that happened!

In the end, I had ten very swollen piggies that were cut down and painted pink, and then adorned with flowers that Jaydon painted to match my tattoo. (Please excuse the picture of my ugly feet. I do try to keep it family-friendly around here and refrain from posting gruesome photos, but this one slipped in somehow.)

Thank you, Mom... it was a fun afternoon!

Tonight I have been thinking about what I can do the next time Mom comes to create another quality bonding experience, and I have found the answer. If we are going to let strangers color our body parts, we may as well make it a lasting memory, so I am taking Mom in to get a tattoo. I even designed one for her tonight that we can have wrapped around her ankle.  (Don't tell her, it is a surprise!)

After seeing it all typed out, though, it does look a little long.

I better shorten the "Jennifer" to "Jenn."

The Coconut Experience

A few weeks ago Todd  asked me to buy a coconut for him. Somewhere along the line he had read about drinking coconut milk from the coconut, and decided he wanted to try it. In fact, he even asked me to make sure it had "fresh milk" in it.

How does one ensure a coconut is fresh? I truly don't know, so I offered to go on a tropical vacation and pick him one straight from a tree. To my deep consternation, he didn't want me to do that. It would take too long.

So I went to Walmart and found my monkey a coconut. Then he had to wait three days due to back-to-back football games to try it. When we got home from his Saturday game, he immediately got his coconut out of the fridge and got Jack to drill it open for him.

Then he found a straw, and with every ounce of pent-up anticipation in his little frame, he took a deep drink of his coconut milk.

The verdict?

He wasn't impressed. So Beth tried it...

and wasn't impressed.

So Kyle tried it... and wasn't impressed.

This has me thinking I really should go on a tropical vacation and bring home a coconut with fresh milk to see if we might get better results.  I would make that kind of sacrifice for my children because I am a vacation-starved loving mom that way.

Don't worry about the rest of the coconut going to waste, though. After his initial disappointment, Todd perked right up. "Mom!" he said, "If you can find me some long grass to make a hulu skirt out of, I can turn this into a coconut bra and do the hulu dance for Halloween!"

On second thought, maybe I better stay home and make sure my boy isn't going out in public wearing a coconut bra.