Can You Stand Anymore Cute Baby Photos?

This baby never stops the onslaught of adorableness, and is so easy to take photos of!

ZB is 5-1/2 months old now. She is super strong and can (slowly) crawl! She's only been doing it a few days, and I think she'll get quick pretty soon. My boys didn't crawl until 8 and 9 months old, so this seems so young to me. Just today, she also figured out how to sit up on her own... big stuff!

Patient, patient Bear:

One of the cuter photos of taken in a while (crawling around the porch) :

A good shot of all the youngins!

Dinner Time! Freshly harvested (by a friend) Chicken-Of-The-Wood wild mushrooms (SO good!)
Served the mushroom and garden veggie casserole with potatoes from the garden and pasta... on my new stove! woo-hoo! I didn't want anything fancy, I did want something that wouldn't spontaneously catch fire (yup, that wasn't fun).
And as long as I have the camera out while making dinner, I may as well photograph what's going on under-foot...
The day is coming to an end now, and we thought ZB might like to try some food! We thought all was going well... some was swallowed, a lot was on the face...

And right after I took this photo, she vomited it all up... oh well, maybe the food can wait a bit longer!

Wonderworks

Homeschooling has so many benefits - a fun one is all the random discounts we get to places! This week there was an amazing discount at a science museum in Pigeon Forge, TN. It's called Wonderworks, and they offered 2 homeschoolers to get in free from each family and only $10 for each additional person. Normal admission is $17.50/person! We went with friends and had a blast!

The museum is designed to look like it was grabbed up in a tornado and landed upside-down on top of another building...

The boys loved proving their strength (helped out by the pulleys ;)

It had a ropes course that was SO cool! And also very hard to photograph. All lit up in neon, it was overhead, and went up 3 levels! Both boys did it a couple times, but it was too dark to get any good photos of them doing it - this is the view looking up from the ground:

This is a giant replica of one of those handheld toys with the little plastic pins that you push to the other side to make imprints of your hands and such. Pretty fun in 6' tall size!
By this point Blossom was sound asleep all cuddled in her sling - so sweet!
Clay in the Bubble Room:
Took a picnic break outside (or a wrestling break as the boys would call it):
Went back in to do the ropes course again and check out a few things we had missed the first time through. Blossom was super cute in the astronaut suit ... until she started licking the inside :)

Looks like my Facebooking days are coming to an end. There's some glitch on my end that doesn't allow me to do much on there - can't read messages or check event invites, etc. So I guess I'll have to go back to good old-fashioned email :) And try to update my blog regularly so friends will still know what we're up to!

Have a great weekend, y'all!

A Little Catch Up

It's been a while since my last post, and I don't have many photos to show for it. We've just been busy, I suppose! Homeschool Co-op has started Fall semester. We meet every Monday, there's 30-something families participating this semester. I'm teaching a class on fruit! It was Reed's idea, and it's actually pretty fun - trying new fruits, making fruit recipes, fruit crafts, you get the idea :) From our first class we tried Scuppernogs and Figs, and have carved apples drying to make apple-head dolls with!

Reed is taking my Fruit class and also an Outdoor Games class. Clay is taking a Duct Tape crafting class, and a class called "When Zombies Attack" - which sounds weird - but is actually pretty neat - they are faced with the challenge of recreating society after a zombie attack nearly wiped out civilization. They've already researched various kinds of government and selected how they want to run the country. They are going to make new kinds of communication, even do some dissection!

Blossom is 5 months old now - she's really trying to crawl! She can squirm all over the room (backwards, though), sit up for quite a while and laugh and make all sorts of sounds. She's totally fun to be with right now! Here's a couple 5 month photos of B-girl. She LOVES her excersaucer - it's her favorite big toy so far! This day she actually fell asleep in it - still holding the toys :)
And I had to do a re-shoot of the DJ Z.B. shot now that she's sitting up!

Playing Dress-Up

I think I don't want to see my sewing machine for at least a month! That's probably not reality, but it has done it's fair share of work lately. I love creating funky stuff with it, and was luckily asked to come up with a "Rainbow" costume for a sweet friend of mine who is headed to the oh-so-funky desert festival, Burning Man. I thought and thought and couldn't figure out how to actually sculpt a rainbow short of old-skool cardboard fashioning. So instead, I made a rainbow-themed outfit. This was 99% fabric from the thrift store bins down the street ($1.10/lb!).

I'd like to mention that just after I took this photo of the fabric sorting, Blossom, being oh-so-helpful, burrito-rolled herself into that purple fabric she's lying on :)
I even found a green tinsel wig to go with it!
So, I made the basic skirt, and it still needed something. Perhaps some "clouds" under the rainbow? A thrift-found wedding dress will do just the trick - and keep the baby entertained in ruffles...
Then to make the top and have the Burning-Man-bound mama come try it out...
She likes it! And those ruffles gave it excellent twirling weight! Yay!

Okay, so that was a project over the last couple of weeks, with most of the actual work being done in the last couple days (procrastinators unite!). This morning I woke up and had to make two more costumes!

The kids were invited to a Harry Potter-themed birthday party and asked to come in costume. I altered Clay's grim reaper costume from a couple years ago, added a white shirt, clip-on tie and magic marker on the forehead, and Reed was transformed into a fantastic Harry Potter!

Blossom was a bit more complicated. For her, I found a long-sleeve onesie, cut a huge heap of triangles out of an thrift-found towel and hoodie, and made her into Hedwig the owl. It would have been a LOT cuter if I had made a little hat with cute ears, but time was short at this point, the party was also today! Turned out pretty cute though (and the insta-fraying on the unfinished edges actually looked kinda neat)...
I wanted to share some photos from this birthday party, too, as it was easily one of the most fabulous I've ever attended! Cassandra, I am infinitely impressed by your party-throwing skill!! Here's Reed getting sorted by the Sorting Hat (rigged with a cell phone inside the hat, that had a parent inside the house talking through it ... "You seem brave... Gryffindor!!")
Potions Class:
"Did everyone measure out their Peruvian Beetle Extract??"
"Now you must stare menacingly at your potion for 30 seconds..."
Thanks for having us out, and Happy Birthday G! And one more pic of my cute little owlet...
Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Happy Mornings

It seems finally our morning routine is a little bit normal (knock on wood!). We had lots of adjustments when I ended the daycare - like do we even have to change out of pajamas?! Haha! Or the boys waking up early just to watch their allotted 1/2 hour of netflix (which meant knocking on *my* door in the wee hours of the morning to get the computer). ugh. We've seemed to hit a smooth time now where the morning flows along, everyone gets dressed and fed within a reasonable time, noone is getting frustrated for being woken too early, etc. I think this working from home thing could work after all :) This morning Reed was teaching Blossom to read via the refrigerator magnets... pretty cute!


It's at least a start, and definitely still a work in progress. If anyone has great tips or routines to share that make for a smooth morning routine when you don't actually have to *go* anywhere, I'd love to hear it! Peace y'all!

Water Baby

Lots of photos, but not many words! Too tired tonight!

Here's our sweet smilin 4 month old!

Reed working on his spelling (it's Anakin Bananakin :)

Today we went to swim in Lake Eden for a homeschoolers "Not-Back-To-School" fun day. Blossom loved the sand and water!

Got some fun photos of the boys diving in the lake...

Blossom is learning how to sit up!!

4 Month Old Cutie

I got a new nephew today!! Little Hudson was born in Charlotte early this morning. I can't *wait* to see photos of the lil' sweetie!! Congratulations to Scott and Julia and new big brother Corrin :)

Besides the monumental occasion of a new LIFE being added to the earth (!!!), our day was pretty non-monumental - nothing very photo-worthy - and of course Blossom filled the day with love and even let us take video after video of her sweetness! I ended up choosing this one to share, since just in the last couple days she's figured out how to stick that tongue out, which is pretty darn cute. She's also started to laugh - I'll have to capture that on video if I can remember!