'Tis the Season...

...to pick cherries! I don't like cherries and I certainly don't like cobbler but since Father's
Day falls at the opening of cherry season and Erik actually likes that stuff, we picked cherries. And I was reminded of the concrete thinking process of the children as I peered in their buckets to find that they interpreted my "Try them first to see if they are good!" comment to mean "Take a bite out of EVERY cherry before you put it in your bucket." I am again amazed at my ability and gift with words to motivate.

Libby of Green Gables

After calling Libby "Adelheid" for a while we have finally retired the moniker, to her delight, and have decided she must be a kindred spirit with Anne of Green Gables. I've been torturing the boys by reading the Anne books for a couple of months now. They scowl and fuss, the 2 year-olds roam about like scavenging wolves on a seek and destroy mission and Libby sits primly in her pearls and smock dress with contented sighs and dreamy eyes while she imagines herself with puffed sleeves.
Our Libby-girl has been growing again and has decided to turn 4 even though I ordered her not to. But as Anne says, "You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair...people who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is." I've also decided that I cannot handle 6 birthday parties a year and we will be substituting a special "birthday date" for the lucky child according to their particular interests in lieu of a party. When asked what she would like to do, Libby decided a fancy dinner at a restaurant was in order. And not only that but she wanted both of us to wear jewelry and a fancy dress and she wanted Daddy to wear a suit and "shave his pokies (beard)."
And that's what she got and he did pass her thorough inspection, although she told Erik he looked funny as soon as he shaved.

Someone else was a bit jealous...

Another Year Down

We have officially survived Year Two of homeschooling and still like it. Jacob finished up first grade by showing us how to diagram a sentence while Dan finished kindergarten by explaining some intense math facts and both demonstrated their mad geography skillz. Next year we add on Libby and I double my Starbucks budget.

We help Daddy

With Mommy away, everybody has to pull their load. Just like in the book...


And helping Daddy means that you get to do a lot of things...
Like laundry...

Or getting dressed...

Or cleaning up around the house...

And that can be exhausting!

So come home soon Mommy!

Disclaimer: No children were harmed in the filming of this blog post. But a woodpecker was defeathered.