Family Reunion III: Downtown DC

On Monday the all the big kids went downtown. I stayed home with the two youngest cousins, baby L and cousin L. These are all the relevant pictures from hubby's phone. 

 The boys went to the National Air and Space Museum. The girls went to the American History Museum.

 

  It was a very hot day.

They wanted to go to the Museum of Natural History (my kids' favorite), but there was a line out the door of people waiting to get in.  Some people came home after that some stayed to walk around the monuments.

Family Reunion II: Fun and games

Cousin J brought this great foam plane to the reunion. People had hours of fun throwing it back and forth from the deck to the yard. 

 Boys hanging out in the gazebo:

 "Exploding Kittens" was the hit card game that the kids kept playing again and again.

Cousin L and others had fun playing with clay.

We had a lot of fancy desserts, like these root beer floats.

 The kids had lots of popsicles.

Hubby set up an archery range.

All the cousins lined up by age to participate in archery.

Grandma S made a slideshow of family photos from hubby and his siblings' childhood. We transformed the library into a movie theatre for the evening.

We had a campfire, small (legal) fireworks, and saw some bigger fireworks from a distance.

On the last night we let all the kiddos have one big slumber party together.

Family Reunion I: Sharing the farm love

Lots of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents joined us last week for a family reunion.

 We had fun time sharing a few of our favorite things.

 Turkey poults were one of the visitors' favorite things (a surprise to me). People were entertained by their perching habits, cute noises, and tendency to follow people around.

 Finding and collecting eggs was this cousin's pride and joy. It's a lot harder than usual since the hen house has been turned into a brooding house for egg setters, young chicks, and ducklings. None of the laying hens can lay in egg boxes so they are laying in the grasses and bushes instead.

 Young duckling. We think he/she is a muscovy!

Here she is with her mama:

During the reunion, on Sunday we went to church. While I was sitting in sacrament meeting I found this on baby L's head! uggh. We are checking everyone every night, but it is still scary how many of these we have found. 

My Dash: Funny Phrases, present day

Baby L is a big talker lately.  She has conversations with her babies and stuffed animals. Many of them are hilarious.   I just heard her say, "Holy Ghost!" several times instead of "holy cow!".
When she says her prayers she says, "Dear Father Father" instead of "Dear Heavenly Father".  We talk about going pee pee on the potty a lot.  And when I am at my pottery class she says in her prayer, "Please bless mommy at potty", instead of pottery.   I asked her the other day whether she wanted to try to sit on the potty again.  She said, "No. The marshmallows are all gone." Of course I told her that we could get some more, but she does not really want to use the potty yet anyway.

Farm Fresh: Wild Things

 We have a beautiful family of Eastern Blue Birds nesting in our bird houses. On Saturday I saw what looked at first like a toad hopping in the grass -- it was a little fledgling. I had my garden gloves on so I picked it up to look at it.  It was uninjured, but I was not sure where his nest was.  The mama and dad started swooping at me. They obviously were watching him.  Then I found another fledgling, this one with a compound leg fracture of some kind, badly twisted and bloody.

  We googled it and learned that the parents would continue to care for them, even though they were on the ground.  We put them by their tree. But then hubby saw one in the mouth of our cat and we decided not to leave things entirely to Mother Nature.

  We brought the healthy fledgling (rescued from the cat) inside.  He is in the brooder box. Big sister A is carefully hand feeding him chicken food.  We need to figure out which bird house contains his home. We did not see the injured one... maybe he was already eaten?

 In other news, a large and skin crawlingly scary black widow was spotted on our exterior window sill just outside the back door.  She was loading her egg sac with babies.  Soooo scary! But I was glad that we saw it and could get rid of it quickly.We watched her sticking her butt in the sac over and over from inside the house.  Then when daddy came home from work he used the spray to kill her and the babies. Uncle P happened to be there and lent a hand based on his experience with them.

Last but not least, I thank my 5 rodent wranglers for being such good hunters. This is the biggest kill I have seen them have...  A young wild rabbit.  I would be horrified if they bothered my farm rabbits. But these wild ones will eat my garden and I have to say that it is for the best. I see them killing at least 2-3 rodents a week. I believe they kill a lot more than those I see. This gal in particular, Sapphire, is the most feral and seems to be a skilled hunter.  Luckily I have an excellent zoom on my camera or I would not have been able to take any of these photos.

Family Fun: Father's Day and Art Projects

Breakfast in bed (crepes and peaches) for daddy on Father's Day. The kids and I made cards and had some "useful" presents for him.

Daddy has been working in the yard, "clearing the Amazon" we call it, getting the huge pile of logs and brush chipped or chopped. So he needed a bigger water bottle and some popsicles to keep him cool.

Big sister A made this apron as her sewing club project for June. She and little sis were just about to start making some whole wheat pumpkin cookies.

I have  been updating a patio set that some friends gave us when they moved away.  I was not sure what to do with the glass top table. I don't like it much and would like to have hubby make a nice wood top for it at some point. A brilliant friend suggested that I have the kiddos paint the underside and then spray paint it the same color as I am doing the chairs.

 That way their designs come through the top.

 

Some of big sister A's summer artwork:

My Dash: Missionaries over for dinner

We recently had the missionaries over for dinner. They taught a great lesson about the 5 parts of a testimony. I try to have them over about once a month. I know that they always bring a good spirit into our home and especially are excellent examples for my kiddos. I am glad that my parents have always been very enthusiastic about missionary work and invited the missionaries to our home regularly. I remember having the missionaries over when I was a little girl too. They shared the plan of salvation lesson with us and some church videos. That is also how I remember hearing my parents' conversion story for the first time, over dinner with the missionaries. I think that it helped build my testimony and encouraged me to want to be a missionary when I grew-up. We had one missionary from France and I was so interested to hear what things were like there and to learn more French words. (I started studying French in fourth grade because dad said that he would take me there when I learned to speak it fluently).  I remember sitting around that huge heavy dining room table that belonged to my ancestors and telling people about the button in the side that was used to call the servants.