Things that have been keeping me busy...

Hello!

Hello?

Huh. People probably gave up on me. Not that I can blame anyone for not checking this since, after all, its been since February since I posted last.

...so, if anyone actually reads this after not posting for so long...

I've decided that the time has come to resurrect the blog. So many neat things happen with us and we have a great time...and I miss sharing our pictures and stories with everyone. I've been very busy lately, it was kind of a crazy summer...and thought I'd post quick to update everyone on what is going on with us!

So......

I feel like I should get a drumroll here....

The things that have been keeping me busy:

1. Poopy diapers. Lots of them. But I'll spare you the pictures.

You're welcome.

 

2. Homeschooling.

 

We decided about a year ago (I think?) to homeschool our kids. I have not actually been busy with homeschool because TODAY was our first official day of school! Hurrah!

But what I spent most of the summer (and lots of whiny phone calls to my mom) trying to sort out what what in the world to do. I had no idea the array of curricula, education approaches, materials...

It can get a little overwhelming.

We've been doing a little here and there...working on reading, some handwriting, some fun unity studies, etc. with Noah, but decided to offically begin Noah's kindergarden year and begin our first school year! It's kind of fun starting school in October....

3. Weddings.

Some of our best friends got married this year, and our little family was lucky enough to help out with both of them.

First in July, our friends Matt and Jess (Diers) Pauly were married. Jess, one of my best friends, and I went to college and were in Delta Zeta together. Noah was their ring bearer and I was the reader during their wedding mass.



Then in September our friends Alex and Nicole got married. We met them here in Salina, and they're pretty much become an extension of our family. Alex especially was a pretty regular fixture at our dinner table...at least before Nicole started keeping him so busy. Noah was their ring bearer, too, Bri was an usher and I was a cake cutter. And dropped frosting down the front of my dress.

Because thats how I like to do things.

4. Gardening

Of course, our obsession with our garden prompted another garden expansion this year. We unfortunately had a hard time with it, as we got hit really hard with the heat wave and drought that covered most of this part of the country. We had two weeks straight where it was over 100 degrees. Wait...it might have been three...anyway, we kept everything alive (yay for us!) but nothing has really been producing until now.

However. Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Mantis. We brought him back from my brother and sister-in-law's house in Omaha. He was sitting on their door knob and asked to come home with us, so we took him.

...at least thats the way Noah likes to tell the story...

Anyway, the kids LOVE to look for the mantis every time we're in the garden. So, almost every day. And he pops up in some funny places. Here is is among our sweet potatoes.

See all the holes in the leaves? There were tons of caterpillars in the sweet potatoes. I bet he had a nice snack that day....

5. Trying new things.

We always take on too much. Super-huge problem for both of us. Which probably explains why we have no logical way to get everything done that we want to do...

But among the things we tried this year/got more involved in/are doing more of:

• Church-Bri is on Parish Council, and I started cantoring
• Sewing. I made this pillow case dress for Bellini, and lots of other fun things.

•   A little bit of wood working stuff. Bri made me these shelves and is planning a few more projects for me. But he doesn't know that yet.

• Piano lessons. I played growing up, and we were lucky enough to score a free piano off Freecycle last summer. I started giving our neighbor girl piano lessons, and am thinking of taking on some more students.

6. Chickens.

Maybe its our new-found crazy hippy urban-farmer ways; maybe the economy; maybe our neighbor jokingly informing us that you can have up to 15 chickens within city limits...whatever it was, we decided to get a small flock of chickens this year.

And it has been a BLAST. We started off with nine chickens in February, after figuring out how many eggs we wanted, how much space, etc. We wanted to end up with 6 or 7 and were pretty convinced we were going to kill some since we didn't know what we were doing.

The dog killed one (while my poor sis-in-law was here to visit with her boys. Yikes.) and we butchered one, who was a rooster. You're not supposed to have roosters in town, and we were kind of trying to decide whether to get rid of him or not, and if so how, and he started attacking our kids. So he went to the soup pot. Which was not as terrifying an experience as I thought it would be.

Now, we have seven pretty chickens.

I absoulty picked our chicken breeds based on the kind of eggs they would lay. We get no white eggs, just pretty, mulitcolored surprises. Mostly brown...one lays a pretty robins-egg-blue egg; light brown with dark brown spots; tan with white spots...aren't they pretty?

7. Random acts of silliness.

Other than our few extra added busy-makers, it has been business as usual around here. Here are some fun, and some sweet, pictures of what we've been up to:

Haircuts, of all things, got to be quite the topic of conversation in our house this spring...probably because Isaac's and Bella's hair looked like this:

Isabelle's wasn't that bad. I had cut her bangs a lot, but had never ever trimmed anything off her length, and was pretty jagged at the bottom and needed cleaning up. But. Yeah. I can't believe that Bri let me get Isaa'cs hair that long...wasn't it beautiful??? Those curls melted my heart on a daily basis...but unfortunately they are gone. With family pictures and weddings on their way (ya know, events where people would actually see us) we figured it was time...or rather, I finally gave in to Bri's begging. And my brothers asking how my "hippy child" was doing.

Anyway, here's his hair now.

Of course, he needs another hair cut in this picture. But I firmly believe that funny faces could save the world...

...they at least make it 300 times happier...

Bella: "Momma, look at us! You should take a picture!"

Noah: "Yeah. It actually looks like we really love each other."

True story.

Love me my morning cuddles...

...and the look on Isaac's face. What a goofer.

Playin' with the neighbor girls...in the closet...because apparently that's cool.



One of hundreds of photos that melt my heart. During a picnic at Kanopolis.



Whew! That was fun!

Hopefully I'll get some time to do that more often...again...I am thinking about "privatizing" the blog, and making it password protected. Just so I know that its a somewhat controlled group of people looking at our blog and pictures. Not sure on that one though....

Anyway. I hope you enjoyed :)

Woah...I haven't posted since September?

Scary! Just a quick bout of pictures to make Jess happy....happy February, Jess, per your request! Love you!

I'll *try* to get a bigger, more newsy post up later this week. But since all Jess requested for February was more Ring Fam blog-age, here ya go....on the last day of February :)

Looking through pictures, I realized that I have LOTS of pictures of Issyboo and Noah from last fall that make itlook like they actually like each other. Which, if you have ever spent time with my kids, realize is not actually the case.

Birthday boy! Isaac turned one in November

His drum set from his birthday. Isaac is very musical. Most babies dance, but Isaac REALLY dances. If you've ever seen the movie Happy Feet and like the tap-dancing main penguin Mumble, you'd REALLY love watching Isaac dance!

And...if you look closely at Bella's hair...she is definately rocking a topsy-tail. Woohoo!

Bella and our cute little neighbor girl Brenna were both ladybugs for halloween! Super cute :)

I loooooooooove pictures of the kids cooking. But this one reminds me that I need to put NOah to work in the kitchen more often! He made these whole wheat and honey biscuits almost entirely on his own...and used his train cookie cutter set from Grandma to cut them out! He is a very good cook.

Loooooove those baby blues!

Christmas cheer...

Isaac loved wearing this halo at Christmas time! Noah and Bells thought it was really funny to put this on Isaac--who had just started walking at the time--and watch him toddle around with it on. And he would leave it!

Random acts of silliness...

Yeah. Not even sure what to write about this :)

I've been doing a lot of sewing lately, and the kids things its really funny to run around with my measuring tape and measure each other, the couch, the dog...whatever they can. I was changing Isaac's diaper and looked up to find Noah getting "measures" to make Bella a "real real REALLy pretty diaper."

Not the most flattering picture of me thats ever been on the blog...but its kind of funny so I thought I'd put it up. The kids like to swing on their tummies and Noah asked me to try it...anyone who is laughing at me, you should try this! It is REALLY hard!

I've been wanting to try cloth diapers for a while, and found some relaly good (and easy..and FREE) patterns to make them myself. Here is the first cover I made for Bells. The front looks good....

..but the back is more than a little big! Still pretty cute, though!

Snuggly boys :)

Mmmm...bananas.

One busy daddy!

Bella found Noah's PJ's on the floor. So she put them on over her clothes, grabbed Mikey Bear, and climbed up on the couch to read him a book.

You look like a monkey....

Happy birthday to Noah!

It's hard to believe that he is already four.....

Where did the time go?

Noah's birthday was pretty low key this year. . Mom and Dad had a family brunch party for him last time we were up in Wahoo, and then we didn't do a big party at all. We had presents and cake on Saturday night, then on Sunday, his actual birthday, we packed everyone up and went to the zoo in the morning and the Pumphrey's farm in the evening. Which I forgot to take pictures of. I left my camera in the car the whole time we were there! So June, Katie....share some pics with me!

But here are the pictures of the zoo!

Probably one of the coolest things all day--feeding the giraffes! There is always a giraffe feeding station there, but it has been closed every time we've been there. We got there as they were opening it for the day, and also as they were having a "Keeper Encounter", when the zoo keepers come and answer questions about that particular animal and talk about their daily routine with the animal. The picture above is Noah feeding the giraffe....

And this is Bella feeding it.

Random bit of knowledge: Did you know that giraffes actually moo?

Noah crawling through the bear tunnels. These go under the pen and there is a little peephole/house thing you can stand up in to look around the pen. But there isn't anything in the pen that we can see.

The kids still have fun crawling around in it, though.

Okay, look at the llama's lips. Their top lip is actually two different pieces. Isn't that crazy? I was worried about how the poor llama was going to get his little food nugget through the cage, and then his lip split open and he used it like two fingers to grab the food and put it in his mouth! It was so cool. I didn't know they could do that.

Noah thought it was pretty cool and kept asking me to feed the llama so he could see his "funny lips"

Hm. The kids seem so excited...

Apparently if you don't take a nice picture with daddy, he tickles your face off.

The kids get soooo heavy! I have no idea how Bri carries them around like this all the time.

Picnic lunch!

Protesting about the picture taking.

Like usual.

"Look, Momma's a flamingo!"

I wasn't going to put this picture up, but Noah saw me uploading the pictures and told me he wanted Julius and Jonah to see me being a flamingo.

So, boys...what do you think of Aunt Duh, the flamingo impersonator?