homeofthebudds

you just can't beat free food.

Tonight we had homegrown mashed potatoes.

I can not tell you how beautiful these little (free!) potatoes were.

little cricket

Impromptu is my middle name

This morning we got an invite to a friend's impromptu birthday party. I love impromptu anything. It's my favorite. Luckily for us, we had an open afternoon and we could go. Also luckily for us our open afternoon meant Ellen got to make her friend Aviana a birthday present. She decided a skirt would be just perfect.

This is a more realistic picture - the solo sewing made me nervous.

Aviana's only request was that people dress fancy. So fancy we were. See Brennan's tie? He's borrowing it from Isaiah.

Brennan loves to hang out with Alidia, he talks about her and he plays with her too!

See? Fancy. Like the bbq sticker on the tie? He transfered it from what he'd been wearing earlier in the day since it was fancy too.

This was the best I got of the three of them - Ellen directing, Zaiah thinking about something and Brennan fussing that I wanted him to stand somewhere other than...

here.

The birthday girl. Happy Birthday Aviana!

Slides are fun.

After we found the frogs yesterday we of course needed to try out the slides.

check out that hottie

Dave tried some bridge jumping.

Ribbet

The other night we had some friends come to visit us from LA. We took them on a walk around the neighborhood and visited a new (to us) park that we heard had tons of frogs.

We were not disappointed.

There were little tiny frogs everywhere.

fast little tiny frogs (see its legs in the upper left?)

See that little guy blending in there?

I even caught one for a quick little second.

The kids and Dave and Jenny went looking for the frogs water source and were brave souls traversing the blackberries and swampy water.

There were also these birds walking around that we all thought were quail, but they look too big to me to be babies, and they don't look like the adult quail I've seen before. Anyone know what they are?

4th of July

On Saturday we went over to the Steele's where we celebrated an early birthday.

Mmmmm

Cindy has completely mastered the whole multi-tasking picture taking thing.

And then, super exciting fireworks!!! Woohoo!!!

I asked Emily what she had. "I've got fire!" she told me.

Ellen thought the beginning of the sparkler was super exciting.

Dave got to launch a couple of flowers.

Wooo sparklers!

The Ellens hung out a bit.

And of course we (Chris) were responsible citizens.

Happy birthday America!

Today

**Today I taught an elective class for the K-5th graders at church. We made smoothies. Pretty fun. We made 5 different smoothies, seeing how our fruit choices changed the color, taste and texture. We talked about all the possible ingredients and their potential benefits. Spinach was of course one of the options and the kids thought that was straight disgusting. For the first two smoothies we stuck with the fruit, but by number three I asked how many would try a smoothie with spinach in it. Half the kids raised their hands and then the others who had been most vocal about thinking it would be nasty said they would to. So they all figured out what to add and lo and behold they all dug it. The most vocal anti-spinach girl even asked for seconds! And they even requested we add more spinach to the last smoothie we made. And then, to top it all off, I saw the vocal girl in the hallway after class talking to her parents, trying to remember what was in it. She saw me and asked what the ingredients were. Her parents were in shock that she ate spinach and asked how much they should pay me. :)

**Today, Megan brought us a humongous box of cherries. Which were super good.

**Today Dave and I noticed the potato plants in the garden had been laid on by some random animal. I decided to pull them up and see if I was going to get any potatoes. See these beauties?? There's a good 30-40 of them. These all came from some old potatoes I found in my pantry that I decided to bury in the dirt instead of throwing in the trash. Nice. Super nice.

Open gyms are a good thing.

The kids and I went back to the open gym this week. They love this place.

Brennan's favorite thing is to run toward this trampoline at top speed and then sit on it. Sometimes he gets off for the kids waiting behind him.

Ellen mustered up the courage to try the rope swing and fell instantly in love. She swung (and waited in line for the swing) for the rest of the hour.

growing things

I love when things just start to grow.

It makes me happy.

A few more

I breezed through that Family Fun Center experience rather quickly don't you think? You knew all along I had more pictures to post, didn't you. You smarties, you.

You knew that sometimes the pictures just don't fit with the way you're writing up a post, but they still shouldn't be neglected. Of course you did.

Take for instance, this one, of a little boy waiting just as patiently as you please for his turn to ride in the race cars.

And this little boy, completely oblivious to the fact that some distant day he'll get a turn in the race cars, too.

"Hmmm this is interesting. My thumb fits right in there!"

This little race car oblivious boy was NOT oblivious to the wiles of golf. No siree - he was very much interested in that little ball, and whacking it - or not - toward that little hole.

Dave worked incredibly patiently to teach him some semblance of the game. First, point to the ball.

Next, point to the hole.

Then whack it good,

and watch it....watch it....

then run after it as fast as you can! But wait! Don't touch it!!!

Now we start again. Isn't this fun??

Isaiah had his own style,

complete with his own "I did it!" victory dance.

Woo! Go Zaiah, go Zaiah!!

Which of course comes with its very own sit in the shade period.

And when Ellen and Brennan had had enough, Dave got to work on his own unique style also.

And by then, we were all hot and done with golf and there was only one thing left to do.

Whack-a-mole.