The boys have a bunk bed. That means two levels of sleeping, right? Not these boys. They’ve decided sharing the top bunk is the way to go. Thankfully they put Baby E against the wall because otherwise he would definitely roll out of that bunk and head dive to the floor.

When C was a baby, Tim brought her to work one day to visit me and while she was there, the professional photographer in the office did a photoshoot with her. She wasn’t much over a year old at the time. After the photoshoot, the photographer came in and told me that when he was first looking at the photos, he thought there was something wrong with the camera because C looked yellowish, but when he compared her to me and Tim he realized that was just her coloring.

We had noticed a few weeks before then that she was looking yellow. I had planned to ask the doctor about it at her one year appointment, but when he walked into the exam room he took one look at her and said, “I see you like your vegetables!” Puzzled, I asked him how he knew that and he responded, “She’s yellow.”

Apparently when babies eat a lot of vegetables it can change the tone of their skin. At the time, C’s absolute favorite food was squash and she ate it all the time: hence her yellow coloring. Over the following year as her diet expanded the yellow began to fade. But every once in awhile I will come across a photo of her ‘yellow’ phase and it makes me smile.

Nope it’s not the camera… it’s just my kid.

This picture pretty much sums up my day. It was the kind of day where nothing really bad happened, but a lot of little annoying things did. But instead of focusing on my lousy day, I’d rather spend a few minutes smiling over how cute and little my babies used to be. Wow, I miss them at this age!

When the kids were very little we took them to a county fair during a visit to Ohio. It was a fair that my husband had grown up going to and so for nostalgia’s sake we decided to go. Big E was only months old at the time and C was not yet two years old. It was the first time we had done something like that with the kids. We spent some time watching a tractor derby and then we wandered around the livestock buildings to see the animals being judged. C found the animals completely fascinating. She looked at chickens, turkeys, rabbits, cows, and pigs. At one point we walked into a building with sheep and goats. As we neared a pen, a sheep charged at the fencing, straight at C and made a loud baa-ing sound. This absolutely terrified C and she started to cry immediately. We explained to her that she was safe, but she wanted nothing to do with the farm animals after that.

When we got back to the great-grandparents’ house, C immediately started to tell them about the ‘goat’ that scared her. At the time she had a very limited vocabulary, so she was just rambling gibberish until she spit out the word ‘goat’ and ‘baaaaaaaaa’ with a look of bewilderment on her face.

This was her story and she told it all the time. “Gibberish gibberish gibberish GOAT gibberish BAAAAAAAA gibberish!!!”

It took quite awhile for C to start trusting farm animals again, but thankfully she finally came around!

Sometimes you just need a lazy day and today was one of those days.

When the kids heard that there was going to be a parade in town, they got so excited. Well, at least two of them were excited. Poor Baby E actually hates parades. You see, parades inevitably have emergency vehicles in them, be it a police car or a fire truck. He covers his ears whenever he sees them. Much to his disappointment, this particular parade had dozens of emergency vehicles. But excepting Baby E, the other kids had a blast. They collected candy and waved at all the people going by. They particularly enjoyed watching the horse drawn carriage and the John Deere Gator.

We ended the evening by sitting in our driveway watching our neighbor’s fireworks.

Yesterday evening the kids wanted something to do. I recommended that we all go into the back yard and harvest all the wild raspberries (also known as wineberries) that we could before the birds got them. We had noticed the bushes last summer, but they hadn’t produced very many berries. This year there was no disappointment. We spent the better part of an hour picking berries. Amazingly, more made it into the containers than into my kid’s mouths and when we were finished we had managed to collect a quart of berries. I looked online for a pie recipe and this morning my mom baked one for us. When it was finished it sat on the counter where I stared at it longingly whenever I walked by. We had it for dessert this evening and it was delicious!!

We can’t wait to go berry picking again. Next time we will make jam!

We went berry picking in the backyard this evening. We filled s bucket with berries and I’m hoping to make a pie tomorrow. This post is short and sweet because we have no internet from a storm that came through and my photos won’t load.

During spring I planted a bunch of plants in pots around my front flower garden. I planted tomatoes, beans, pumpkin, zucchini, mint, and peppers. We have been diligent to water them every day and keep the pots free of weeds. Today was our first harvest. We got a few tomatoes and a bunch of beans. Add in the berries from the backyard and we had such a wonderful, delicious, and colorful dinner. I absolutely love picking veggies that we have grown ourselves!!