more pictures

Rob, Ben and Grace at 'Fridays after 5'. At breakfast on Sunday we were waiting for Rob and Grace to meet us and Ben started saying some thing that sounded like "I want waffles and cheese." It turned out to be "Where are Robert and Grace?"








Ben trying to get stuck in the banister.




Rob and Ben. All the boys had fun being the tallest one on Rob's shoulders!
Ben likes to make up little songs about people he's with and things he's doing at the moment. He made up a cute song in the car about Robert. "Waboo, Waboo, I yuh Waboo!" Translation: Robert, Robert, I love Robert!


The boys enjoyed the USS Wisconsin. Especially, all the guns and this giant bullet.











Chicken fight.

Meet Virginia

Keely, the boys, and I set off of Virginia on Thursday afternoon to retrieve Steve from his hike through part of the Shenandoah National Park and made pretty good time. There was minimal complaining, no major fighting and the boys did pretty well too.
We arrived at Robert and Grace's house later than expected due to a long dinner and 4 wrong turns - during which Jakob said, "I hope we get there." To which I replied, "Me too." Then he amended his statement with, "I hope we get there before we crash!" I thought I was doing a pretty good job, but what do I know?!
Friday, we drove around the UVA campus, then Steve and I checked out a few local wineries while Grace and Rob braved the babysitting task. In the evening we went to downtown Charlottesville to check out 'Fridays after 5' where there was a free concert - the band was 6 Day Bender, and then we had a delicious Italian meal and enjoyed the atmosphere of the outdoor seating. Jakob tried ravioli for the first time and loved it!
Saturday, we woke up at an ungodly hour to drive to Norfolk to go sailing. We set out on the boat and got about 100 yards out of the slip before Jakob noticed smoke coming from the engine compartment. That put an end to our sailing adventure. So we went to the Naval Museum and toured the USS Wisconsin.












We had a great time in Virginia with Rob and Grace and hope to visit again soon - only in DC next time.

Tree Planting

Jakob brought a tree home from school yesterday. We planted it in the yard near the tree line of the woods. It should get enough sun out there to thrive. Jakob's job is to remember to water it when it's too dry outside. Let's see if he does better at that job than his first job of setting the table for dinner every night! :}
The kids have planned to be good little conservationists to save the natural resources of the country.

pretty flower

I just like this like this picture. I took a bunch of pics of the flowers outside and a strange flowering tree that is in our yard. I am going to do an art project for above the fireplace. I can't wait to get it started. We have almost no decoration in the living room and it is bumming me out.

The boys had their awards ceremony for soccer tonight. They got medals and certificates for playing. The winning team got a trophy. Maybe next year.

Ben speech has been evolving nicely. Meoooo (milk) has evolved into meooo-k-k-k-k. It's great.

Steve finished his AT hike tonight, and when we got home from the ceremony we got to talk to him. Yay!! We're gonna go meet him and Rob and Grace in a few days. WooHoo. Mini vacation.

Happy Earth Day!!

Happy Earth Day to all! We have been trying to do our part to change the world. Reduce, reuse, recycle should be added to the other 3R's that kids are taught at school. Jakob said that they have recycling bins for paper.
I like to recycle, I enjoy doing my part to keep some trash out of the landfill - which, by the way, I heard the one where our refuse goes is almost full.
I had a tour of the Juvenile Court recently, and the judge said that he is working on getting Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer, and probably biggest employer in town, to start a cardboard recycling drop off area to go with the aluminum, glass and plastic receptacles they currently supply. Many of the women on the tour agreed that we would support that program. We have a lot of cardboard that I am trying to find uses for, but a lot of it just ends up in the trash any way. I dropped off our recyclables yesterday, and for the first time the bins were full! Unfortunately, I can't help but think though, that it may have only been because of the focus on recycling that have been going on recently in the media. That's depressing!
It was amazing how much trash floated to the roads all over town when we flooded last month. A community service crew came around last week and cleaned up, however, the trash bags the filled are still sitting on the side of the road. :(
Buying and growing locally helps, too. I try to do that as often as I can. It is a little more difficult in our current location where people aren't as environmentally conscious as they are in Cali. As far as I know, there is no local farmer's market in the area, so we would have to drive to each individual farm store to get what we need. That seems to defeat the purpose a little, doesn't it?

berries

We're getting ready for the sweet sweet strawberries to start growing in the garden. There are 10 strawberry plants already in the garden. I checked on them today and they are beginning to flower! I have only tried growing them one time in KC and there were only about 3 berries on the plant, which were promptly snatched up by birds so we never got to taste them. :{
I'm still waiting for my basil, lavender, marigolds, cherry tomatoes, and bleeding hearts to sprout. Seeds take too long to grow. I'm too impatient. I saw some beautiful flowers at Wal-Mart today, but I avoided buying them. I had never seen them before. They had huge purple flowers on them but I don't remember what they were called. It was difficult, but I restrained myself.
Also, there has been no sign of critters in the garden since I put out the cayenne pepper. I am so happy about that. Keely has been barking a lot less at night, presumably since nobody is out there feasting on the compost. Yay!

The Sound of Silence

Could you hear it?

All three boys were quiet for about 30 seconds tonight! After pounding on the table, math problems and 2 spilling of Ben's water, they were all chewing the food at the same time. It was music to my ears! No complaining, fake burping or other general mayhem! It was amazing. Then, just like that, it was shattered by duh, duh, duh, duh, da duh, duh, da duh (the Darth Vader theme song) and Take me out to the ball game.
Oh, well. It's a start anyway.

And, now it's all "me poop" and hearty laughter.

Such is my life.

Wasps

So we have wasps and carpenter bees. Ever since we moved in we have had wasps flying around in the house occasionally - usually they come in when it warms up in the winter (I guess they thaw out and get confused or something). I actually stepped on a wasp in the house with bare feet , and my foot went numb - wow did that hurt! We knew we had carpenter bees, too because of the inspection report before we bought the house, but we hadn't seen any until last week.

The wasps started coming out again - inside and outside - when the weather warmed up for spring. I also saw 2 carpenter bees flying around. The last straw was when Noah went into his room and freaked out because there was a "long thing in my room that flies and walks too" Sure enough it was a wasp. I killed it, finally, after missing a couple times because it saw me coming. I called Orkin and they came out the next day.

Thinking that that would be the end of it, we were playing outside again. Then the wasps came back. The kids are afraid to get stung and don't want to go outside. I called Orkin back today and she said that sometimes it gets worse before it gets better! I can't believe it. We had 6 wasps in the breezeway at one time, and the 2 carpenter bees were back. Luckily they will come back between scheduled sprayings for free.

Keely is trying to control the population by snapping at them, but I'm afraid she'll get stung. It seemed like the bee was just teasing her by dive bombing and then hovering just out of her reach. What do you do for a dog that gets stung by a wasp or bee? I don't want to find out. Can dogs be allergic or go into anafalactic shock? I hope not.

2nd place

Beginning the game down 2-0, the purple team rallied back to a 2 all tie, then it went downhill. The purple team did a great job and really worked together - something that was a little bit of a problem at the beginning of the season. The final score was 2-6.
They had to deal with a lot of dirty tactics on the part of the blue team. There was a lot of pushing and tripping going on, and Jakob and his teammates were getting frustrated - not to mention hurt. Boy, were the spectators ever upset! Many of the parents were yelling at the ref (who was only a high school kid) about the calls he wasn't making against blue. There was one really big boy who would knock the purple players out of the way for the smallest (and best) player on the blue team so he could take the ball down the court. I don't know if their coach was condoning their behavior, or if it's even legal in the game, but he certainly wasn't doing anything to stop it.
Jakob played defender for most of the game so we don't have any videos of him scoring any goals. :{ Oh well, they all did a GREAT JOB and all improved throughout the season. They are all winners to me! We'll get them next year!

2 goals!!!

I am so proud of my boys! Not only did Noah have a great soccer season, Jakob did too. Despite having double ear and sinus infections and a major headache for a few days, Jakob made 2 goals in his tourney game last night! After more than one quarter of no score we thought we were in for a long, boring game. But then, Jakob scored the first two goals in the purple team's 9-7 victory over yellow to move on to the championship game tonight. The game after that was so exciting!! Scoring went back and forth until the end of regulation, ending in a 6-all tie! And in an unprecedented (at least at the Y) shoot out, purple won 9-7.
Now, it is on to the championship against the ever-feared blue team. Blue has gone undefeated and is very intimidating to the other teams. (In one game they stopped adding the goals to the scoreboard, because they were running it up. But the kids all knew the real score.) Although Jakob's team has gotten better over the course of the season, they are still positive they will lose tonight. While celebrating their victory at DQ last night, they all expressed their fear of losing and a lack of confidence against the blue team. We all tried to reassure them that if they played like they did tonight they would win, but the kids weren't having it. They don't understand the concept of mind over matter, but we'll see if they can overcome tonight.

Jakob - we are proud of you. Keep up the good work!
Love you!!

GOOOOOOOAL!!!

Noah scored an awesome goal last night in his last soccer game of the season. Here's the quick clip. (It's a little loud, so you might want to turn the sound down before you play it.)


Jakob has a tournament tonight to determine which teams will play for the championship on Thursday. After that he will begin baseball! He's excited for that.
We are very proud of both boys for an excellent season. We weren't sure if Noah would want to play if he wasn't on Jakob's team, but he knew a couple of the older kids on his team and he had a great time. Jakob even congratulated Noah again on a great game this morning.
Ben still wishes he could play, maybe next year he will.

Critters

Well, Steve let the possum go yesterday because he doesn't want me blogging about it (and we don't know what else to do with it exactly), but here goes one more . I found an article online that says animals like raccoons and their critter friends don't like cayenne pepper, so I thought I'd give it a try. I thought it could be a cheap fix to a potentially costly problem. Hopefully, that will keep them away and not keep drawing them to the garden so they won't be tempted to eat the good food I hope to be growing soon.

Gotcha!

Well, whatever Keely was barking at every night for the last couple weeks has been caught. I thought it was nothing, but I noticed that an orange I had put in my compost pile had been moved and Keely cannot get to the garden. Steve had the bright idea to put our cat trap out there and see what would be dumb enough to wander into it. Sure enough, we caught a possum! Gross!!!!!!! It was trying to play dead when I checked to see if we had gotten anything, but I could see it moving. It was nasty. I guess Keely is not so silly after all, and she's not just barking at her own echo. Now, what to do.....

Yep, that's Steve way up there!

It's that time of year again - Steve's birthday. We spent the day doing some of Steve's favorite things. We watched Noah play soccer - he is a really good goalie. Then we went to Columbus and Steve got to climb the rock wall at Dick's. Every time we go there he has to climb, and he's even gotten Jakob to do it a few times. Then we went to eat sushi and then it was home again. Tomorrow - fish tacos and strawberry pie!! Two of his favorite dishes from two of his favorite places - Moundridge and SoCal.
Happy Birthday, Steve!! Love you.

Report card

Jakob brought his report card home the other day and I was so proud of him. He was above grade level in every area of reading, writing and math. And he was at grade level for Science and Social Studies - but this is the first quarter that they did and Science and SS. So I think that's remarkable, but hey, he's a remarkable kid. Not to brag, or anything, but he really excels in everything he does. He really keeps us on our toes with sports and especially math. He comes up with random equations and figures out the answer in no time. He is currently reading The Wizard of Oz and is taking it to school to read when he finishes his work before the other kids. I still can't believe sometimes that we are so lucky to have him as our own!! Love ya, big guy!!!

Meeooo

WooHoo!! Ben said milk a few times for the first time today consistently!! Well, it really sounds like Meeooo, but it's closer than the last word for it which was Yuh - I guess that's how you'd spell it, it's not really a word is it. His new favorite drink is ot-la-meeooo - chocolate milk, and he makes sure Noah gets some too when he does. Ben's language has come so far since he turned two. It is so great that he can talk but now he sounds just like Noah, it's confusing a lot of the time but we manage.

It's finally Spring!

It finally feels like spring! We had stunningly beautiful weather today for the first time since.......we left California! After church, we headed out to Lake Katherine to do some hiking. We're lucky to be just a few miles away from some great hiking. The trails were still a little wet, but we made it through ok. There was a lot of moss on the ground and the trees, we saw many deer trails and the waterfall was flowing rapidly. It was a beautiful day for a hike and we took full advantage of the day.

Jakob says, " the hike was fun and took an hour and thirty minutes. We saw two geese, a squirrel, and a snake."

Noah says, "I knew way before dad that there was a waterfall there." He liked the big waterfall the best.

Ben liked the "waaa", translation: walk. "Ya waoofaw ya yow" - "the waterfall was loud." He held his ears the whole time we were at the waterfall.

We really enjoyed getting out to nature and getting some great exercise too.

Amazing Wildlife

While Steve is out hiking some trail training for his Appalachian trail hike in a few weeks with Rob, Keely discovered and chased away a herd of 10-14 beautiful deer in the woods behind our house which were taking advantage of the cool, cloudy spring weather. I have been worried ever since we moved here that she would try to run after the deer and other wildlife she sees around the yard, despite her underground fence unit that is supposed to keep her in the yard. She hasn't tried to go after any of the deer yet, even though she's seen a lot. They must be too big for her to think she can catch. She really doesn't even run after the dogs that come near. She just barks furiously at them. The only animal she has really followed out of the yard is a squirrel that I think we saw last week squashed on the road. That should take care of that!!
Now we can't wait to have the rain and clouds go away and let us have some beautiful weather to go with our beautiful wildlife.

Scaredy-dog

We have a scaredy-dog! Keely spent about 2 hours outside last night barking at nothing but maybe her echo. She thinks she's big and tough, but she's not. Very early this morning it was raining and thundering and she got scared and came in our bedroom to hide! She's also afraid of our neighbor's tiny pug! That is unless she gets too close to the boys, then she gets tough and protective. But we love her for trying!!

Soccer Night

Noah had a soccer game last night. He did amazingly well. Unfortunately, they decided to shorten the quarters to 7 minutes from 10, so we were out of there pretty quickly. Noah loves to play soccer. He gets a little distracted with one of the kids, because she is cute and doesn't pay attention to the game. Otherwise, Noah is doing well and his favorite position is goalie.

Ben thinks he gets to play sometimes, too. He even has a team shirt. Last week, Jakob had a game and Noah had practice afterwards. Every time I would remind Noah about his practice Ben would say, " Ah Ben-Ben too!" It was too cute! Luckily for Ben, the coach let him practice with them too! He's a good little striker. We rented a instructional video this week, so look out Beckham!