This morning....

I walked out into the garage on this
lazy-nothing-to-do-but-laundry-
not-get-dressed-or-take-a-shower-morning
and what did I see but these staring me down.

Each summer, the local orchard that borders the farm gives us as many free peaches as we can use. We eat and eat and eat until we realize there is no way to eat them all and that leads to..... work. Lots of work. Chels will attest to this since last summer we spent an entire day with our arms covered with sugary, sappy, sticky peaches and 5 kids whining at us. We ended up with over 20 jars of peaches to eat all winter long and they were soooo good but the thought of doing all this work again now with 3 whining kids and no Chels totally overwhelms me.
Now I realized that many of you would be thrilled to have a ton of free peaches sitting in your garage and I'm not trying to complain (although John would say I am cause that's my nature) but does anyone want to come help me can peaches? Please? I'll give you all you can eat. Anyone?

If not peaches then how about nectarines?

Or more peaches? Oh well, maybe I'll get off the computer and start doing something. It's a good thing I didn't have anything planned this week anyway. And wanna know the best part? In the fall they give us just as many, if not more, apples. So it starts all over.....

But they sure are yummy in the winter.


Here's what I would like to be doing instead:

Wouldn't it be nice to be 4 again and not have anything to do in the summer but swim in a pool filled with dishsoap? Especially when you have all the juicy peaches you could ever want sitting in big boxes in the garage next to you. I think these guys ate 3 each but they kept spraying me whenever I tried to take a picture so I gave up.

I'd even take a naughty little brother who doesn't listen and sprays me with 40 degree well water when I tell him to stop.

But I think Elias is really the one who's got it made. Time for a nap again.

Lucky.

Thanks Auntie Sarah

My sister Sarah came last week bearing gifts for all. Ava got a cool bug catcher (and Sarah even helped her catch the bugs - major event for Sarah who is not a fan of bugs), Nathan got a bell to summon me from his bedside (and he's giving one of his famous looks), and Lias got a cool blanket to keep him cozy (which was loads of work on Sarah's part). They are all well loved and Sarah just may be winning the Coolest-Aunt-In-the-Eyes-Of-Ava-and-Nathan Award. That, or the one they've seen the most recently.

And now we're off to repay the favor. We're headed to my sister Laurel's for 2 days in West Virginia, then to Sarah's for 2 days in Pennsylvania. We're ditching John so he can finally get a night sleep and maybe some work done. Hopefully we all make it back alive. Wish me luck!

Westward Ho!!

Who: 175 youth and 50 adults descending on the farm

What: Fredericksburg Stake Youth Conference - Recreating the Mormon Pioneer's handcart trek out west

When: This Thursday-Saturday

Where: Eldon Farms (the far end of the farm)

How: Your guess is as good as mine.....

Look for more pictures next week. That is, if I get any while holding Elias and the infamous Carlos (for a demonstration of draft animals). Wahoo!!

Swingin' and Swimmin'

Last week were we treated to a little time with one of our best friends from when we were in Ithaca. Becky and I were office mates when I was pregnant with Ava and amazingly, she's still thinks we're cool enough to visit. She's listened to me whine and complain through each of my pregnancies. She's even dealt with the morning sickness and cravings for hot dogs and dough nuts I went through with Ava. And although she's a high powered PhD-DVM professional career oriented woman, she's cool enough to come play with my kids. And they can't get enough of her, as evidenced through the pictures.

She was in town (DC) for 2 weeks for a seminar to get ready to head to Botswana for a year. She's been picked to do research on the epidemiology of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa. How cool is that? She'll be blogging her adventures so make sure to check it out occasionally.



She came down to our farm for a half a day and we spent a muggy Sunday morning swinging and rolling in the grass. John showed off his garden, Ava and Nathan ate up the attention and Baby Lias enjoyed the extra arms to hold him. For a career woman, Becky is amazingly patient and sweet with babies and kids, which is probably why we are still such great friends.

Since we had such a great time with her on Sunday, we decided to crash her hotel on Tuesday night too. We spent a awesome night at her penthouse pool, while she and John played with the kids in the water and I nursed Lias. Then we headed home with 3 worn out kids. It was great.

Hurry back from Africa Becky- Ava and Nathan and Elias are counting down the days!!!

The Faces of a Four Year Old

Anyone remember my sweet little chubby baby that looked like this?

Ava - 2 months

Or this??

Ava - 4 months

Or this chunky, drooly, curly, girly toddling thing??

Ava - 13 months

Well, as of July 1st, 2008, I have a big 4 year old that looks like this:

And can dance like this:

And be impish like this:

Wow, how do they grow up so fast? I don't know exactly, but they do and now she's way into dinosaurs, dirt and drama.

Ava's Cake - Take 1 (family party)







Preschool Present (Upside down)

For months she's been obsessed with anything dinosaur - books, songs, drawings, toys - and, although I'm not sure I won't burn out from too much dinosaur things with 2 more boys coming, I've tried to support her in her habit. We now know the difference between tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus and brontosaurus, can quote many lines from "The Land Before Time" and even Nathan knows that there are such things as duckbilled dinosaurs that had funny diets of pine needles. Who knew a 4 yr old could impart such wisdom?

Needless to say, we had a dinosaur party for her birthday complete with digging dinosaurs from the creek:

Off to the digging site

Finding dinosaurs stuck in the mud

Future Paleontologists

dinosaur races to see who was the fastest and:

Which dinosaurs float and which sink?

dinosaur cake made out of marshmallow and sugar fondant (a concoction only 4 yr olds would eat).

She loved it all. Maybe a little too much since for the whole week before and after all we heard was "Is it my birthday today? Are we having a party for me today? Who's coming today?" etc. She obviously felt like she was the most important person in the world for a few weeks, but isn't that what we all want?

Of course, being a 4 yr old's party, there was a little drama but what else would you expect? Short little legs don't mix well with trying to run very fast....

It's my party and I'll cry if I want too.....or because I skinned my knees


Luckily, Dada's can still make everything all right.

Happy Birthday until next year Ava Mava.

TURTLES and TOADS......MUD and MESSES

Finally an update- (Just for you Chels, since you so politely asked)


What have we been up to in the past 2 weeks? This:



John came home with this the other day telling the kids he had caught a monster. Unluckily, they believed him.



Ava wasn't actually traumatized by the turtle. It was the other way around. She had just thrown a ball at it and hit it in the head and we got onto her about being mean to the turtle. She bawled, we realized she probably didn't have that good of aim to actually mean to hit it, and besides, the thing had just been run over by a baling machine in the field- did we really think a neon pink soft football was gonna hurt it?



Nathan obviously didn't think so. For those of you that may be wondering what this really is, it's some sort of snapping turtle. I'd never seen one up close, let alone this big, but John definitely had. He grew up not only in the country but also in Florida, where he wrestled gators and such.



The turtle wasn't too impressed with us though. He had had a rough life since his back was all gouged with marks and he had scars all over. John figured he was pretty old since they don't usually get this big. We finally let him go, but not before Ava asked repeatedly if we were going to eat him. Where does she get these things? (oh yeah, I forgot that that guy I married has told her many stories of eating turtles. yuck.) The turtle was lucky to get away with only a football to the head.


And that night when we tried to put Nathan to bed he kept talking about the "mun-store" that Dada caught. We finally convinced him that we got rid of it but when you live out here, you may really find something like this under your bed.....



Or if not that, then definitely something like this:


We found a hatching of these down the road the other day on a walk and they were quickly adopted by Ava.




Toads seemed a nice reptile after the turtle so we let them stick around for a little while. And besides, they do cute things like this:


And little girls who play with them do not so cute things like this:


We found her like this about 15 minutes after she had come in and after she had attempted to wash her feet off in the bathroom sink. I didn't take a picture of the sink but it looked worse than the feet. And my kitchen rugs didn't fair much better. I think I'm done with turtle and toads and messy little girls. And I still have 2 more boys to deal with. Oh yeah, and her:



Who isn't allowed inside but still finds ways to make my house messy somehow. Lovely.


But for now, this little boy isn't too messy and is just getting cute and fat enough to try to photograph.



A few shots from my failed photo shoot to try to get a birth announcement.










Ok, so I did wake him up 10 billion times to try to get him in the right spot and it was over 90 degrees outside but really.....


I did get a cute one of his dimple that's popping up. He's also dimpling in quite a few other places since he's plumped up to over 12 lbs in 3 weeks.



He's actually a really good baby, but he doesn't like to sleep anywhere but in arms, which really doesn't fit into life with 3 kids. Life is settling into a rhythm but it's not there yet and we're still not out of bed before around 10 in the morning. Give us a few weeks......