Hodgepodge

I downloaded some pictures tonight from my camera and my phone and wanted to post them. The following photos are in no particular order, just a hodgepodge of stuff from the past month or so. 

We canned pears last month in Wayne's basement kitchen (aka the Sullivan Sweat Shop). Thanks to our friends that live on a huge chunk of land that just so happens to house an amazing orchard. 

Pear sauce! 

I captured this sweetness a couple of days ago. Lindy will be one year old next week and I hardly take any pictures of the girl. She's sitting on my unmade bed so it must have been one of those days.

Blurry, but too cute not to post. We joke that all we'd need to do is paint Lindy's face orange and she'd make a perfect Jack O' Lantern for Halloween.  Those teeth!

Lindy out on the driveway hanging out with the cool kids. She's making her own chalk drawings these days.

Hallee was obsessed with drawing cows one day and made several all over the driveway. Check out that incredible udder. 

Apparently the chalk is edible too.

Sophie Gene.

On our way to Home Depot one day, we drove past a preparedness fair and had to stop. Zeke loves motorcycles. (Where does he get that from?) He often talks about being a "motorcycle guy" when he grows up.

Checking out a fire engine.

This photo needs no caption.

Sean and Kim let the kids pet-sit Serious Black one weekend.

Lindy in the mother's lounge at church. I will confess, I've fallen asleep in that same place before.

Zeke doing his man-stuff.

Happy Lindy.

The kids constructed these temples with Legos. Check out that landscaping on Hallee's model.

 In August, the kids took private swimming lessons with Rachelle and each of them, in turn, swam their first unassisted strokes. They all wanted to learn to swim forever, so this was a big deal.

Lindy, hanging out poolside.

More cuteness.

I made two Oreo cheesecakes on my birthday. As a mom, sometimes you just have to make your birthday awesome yourself.

Look closely and you'll see Hallee down on the balance beam. She loves gymnastics although we did have an incident last month. Hallee told me that there was a girl in her class that was being mean to her. She said the girl told her that she had a "smootchy face" and that she looked weird and would push and poke her during class and suddenly Hallee didn't want to go to class anymore.  I talked with Hallee's coach, but things didn't seem to be getting better. We were brainstorming ideas as a family and came up with this: bring the girl a treat and write her a note. Hallee wrote the girl a sweet note and brought her a treat and after class the girl apologized and gave Hal a hug. That day Hallee came home and told me that this same girl was nice! It's always encouraging when people respond to niceness.

Casey says, "Now there's a smootchy face!"

More rickshaw. Hallee pulls all three of her siblings in this ghetto apparatus.

Last week we walked to a nearby park to launch some rockets for Sophie's rocketry class. My mom stopped by so we took her along since she's the rocket expert in the family. Lindy was fascinated with the ducks at the park.

Both of our launch attempts failed. It was a fairly windy day, so maybe it was for the best, especially since my mom thought the engines we'd brought along were too big for the park.

After the failed launch attempts, we wandered down to the spring and the kids played in the water, chased water skeeters, and did what kids do when you release them. It was a full time task to keep Lindy out of the spring.