Awwww.....Pictures....

My husband is the greatest. On one of our computers we have hundreds of pictures. We kept saying how we better back up those pictures or we'll regret it if the computer blew up......Finally, it got done. Cortney sat down and saved and saved and saved. That was cool. These were from when we were back in Wisconsin and had just gotten our first chincy little digital camera that stored, at the max, 17 prints. WooHoo! But I take pictures like crazy, so digital over film makes sense for us.

Then, he was even cooler and went to get a few hundred printed. He came home, and we sat down and stuck them in albums. (I still have packages of prints in our basement that aren't in albums!) Anyway, he printed off a portion of what he saved, I wrote basic information on the back of each picture, and now we have some of our memories catalogued.

Above is one of my very, very favorite pictures of Rachel and Melchizedek. Isn't that precious? He was under two weeks old, she was almost five----I still remember her sweetness toward him--this picture captures just a glimpse of it.

Go here to see a recent picture of Mel, Rachel, and Isaiah.

Relaxing

Don't let their cute faces fool you.....

These two are trouble in 3T clothing. (I wouldn't have it any other way.) :)

Clean Up Day

We live in such a beautiful area and we haven't shared enough pictures of what we get to see almost every day. We are a hop, skip, and jump away from Lake Michigan. Isn't it pretty?

Today we spent our fourth year cleaning up part of the shoreline. Originally, I was invited to help by my family doctor. In turn, I invited the homeschool group to join in as a community service. This year the weather was perfect. It was windy, but not too cold and not too hot. We picked up over 80 lbs. of garbage in a one mile area of shoreline. (What a bunch of pigs we all are, eh?) To be honest, about half of the weight was some sort of trap thing that nobody recognized. Whatever it was, it was very well built and heavy. We also found a rimmed tire and large boat seat cushion.

We pick up along an area that isn't open to public access, so the items we find are what comes in from the lake itself.

The trash items we found the most of were food wrappers and balloons with ribbons. The first year we found a ton of cigarette butts, but this year we only found about 5.

Blackberry picking

Hali took this picture with her camera phone.

Dad is walking with two of the boys.

First Day of School

I set my alarm for 6 a.m. I told the kids I'd start waking them at 7, which would give us plenty of time to get out the door by 7:40.

I had programmed the coffeemaker last night to brew at 6 a.m., so I woke up to the wonderful aroma of coffee. Mmmmmm.... I grabbed my Bible and journal, anticipating that I will be able to do some reading after I get pancakes going. Well, that didn't happen.

As soon as I got the blackberries out of the fridge, Rachel showed up by the stove. "I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't fall back asleep, so I figured, 'What's the use!'" She shrugs her shoulders and has a huge grin on her face. She is tickled pink that she is going to school--"going" being the key word. She understands "going"---to her that means, "not here, at home where it is SOOOO boring." She understands "school"---that would be defined as "work". But I don't believe she understands "going TO school" means that she will be doing SCHOOL AT SCHOOL. She'll fathom that concept soon enough.

Jadon was equally exuberant--he just woke up a bit later. Eli and Solomon did what they had to do to get ready. I looked everybody over to make sure they would give adequate first impressions to the teachers and other kids. I don't care for any of my kids to be slaves to fashion, but I don't want them to look like they got dressed from the dirty laundry basket either. I had them take a Vitamin C and brush their teeth. After they passed inspection I told them we'd be leaving in about ten minutes.

That was all it took for some of them to run out to the vehicle. Here they are, waiting for me.

Solomon waited for me---Cortney took this picture:

After dropping them off and getting them settled into their areas, I took another couple pictures of Jadon. (I spared the other kids the embarrassment.)

Isn't he just adorable?