Catching up a little

I wonder how many other bloggers do something like this: in the midst of some funny/interesting/amazing event, she thinks to herself “I’m definitely going to blog about that!”  She takes several pictures and vows to blog about it as soon as possible. And then a couple of days go by, and something else funny/interesting/amazing happens, more pictures are taken, more vows made, more time goes by. And eventually, it all fades into the background.

So, I have a few quiet moments this morning (have to get up pretty early around here for that to happen) and I’m browsing through the photos on the laptop from the past few months and suddenly, this seems like the perfect time for a summary-type post.

So, while this may seem quite random, there is a common thread: all these pictures are from the laptop. How’s that for a theme? And before I start to feel too smug about getting this blog post done (finally!), I remind myself that there are actually lots more pictures on the other computer. Yikes! Oh well. Gotta start somewhere!

The Worleys visit the Worleys.

Back in April, we got together at Grandma Worley’s for a cookout. It was a mild, beautiful day, which is really amazing, considering the fact that 2 weeks before, we had a lot of snow! The kids had a lot of fun running around in the woods and playing in the little pond Uncle Rick put in.

What the girls probably remember most about that day was finally getting to meet cousin Nicole’s newest little one, Zavier. Sweet little guy who was happy to be held by all.

Back in the late 1970s, Mick’s dad bought this property from his parents that is located right next to theirs. He built the house just beyond some woods that separate the two properties. I took several of the kids on a hike through the woods and climbed up a little rise to show them this:

the beautiful pond that Mick’s Grandpa Worley put in decades ago. Mick spent many happy hours fishing on and around this pond. I went with him several times (caught a really big largemouth bass once!). I’ll never forget the time we were fishing and spotted a large, black snack slithering through the water in the general direction of our little rowboat!  For a split second, I didn’t know whether to stay in the boat or jump in the water and try to make a mad dash for the shore! We have great memories of being there, not the least of which were the many, many visits with Mick’s wonderful Grandma Worley. (Mental note: need to write a blog post about Great Grandma Worley!)

There’s nothing like visiting something from your past and finding that it looks exactly as you remembered it. I think that’s pretty rare.

Two Bruce cousins come for a visit – because six girls in the house just isn’t enough.

Back in April, Heather and Ron took a rare vacation, so two of the girls stayed with us. Anna divided her time between her caregivers and Mom and Dad.

They were here from Wednesday through Sunday, which meant lots of playing, giggling, late-night chatting and even quite a bit of work on a new production: a sequel to that great classic The Secret of the Vioin.

Alix and Kate joined the fun on Saturday night, so Sunday morning getting ready for church was fun. :-)  I really wanted to get a picture of the girls getting ready, but I was too busy and didn’t make it upstairs for a picture. Rachel said it was quite a spectacle to see everybody jockeying for position in front of the mirror.  :-D

Several nights during their stay, Erica entertained the younger girls with a show featuring many of their stuffed animals. The star was an interesting stuffed dog of Ellie’s named “Diddly” whose name, for some reason, was changed to “Old Joe Crotchety” for the show :-D This all usually started pretty late at night and went on for quite some time.

She had quite a rapt audience.

  

They spent a couple of days working on the drama, and I must say, as they get older, their costumes and props are getting much more elaborate and authentic-looking.

 

The acting ability is even improved: more dramatic.

 

The Bruce girls will be staying with us again towards the end of July, so hopefully they’ll be able to finish this elaborate production then. Filming delays are common in the industry, of course. I’m sure the final product will attract lots of attention and accolades at area film festivals.

Mother’s Day.

One of the fun things about this Mother’s Day was that all six girls sang together for the first time at Grandma Worley’s church. They sang “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” and did a wonderful job! Grandma was beyond thrilled and made us promise not to buy her any more Mother’s Day gifts. “The girls singing was my gift!”

One of these days, I want to go back through our pictures (yes, even the print photos <gasp>) and put together a collage of Mother’s Day pictures with Lois. We’ve been going to church on Mother’s Day with Grandma Worley since the girls were very young; I can’t even remember when we started doing it. I think it would make a fun collage.

And then it was on to Mom and Dad’s. I’m sure we were laughing at the kids in this picture.  :-D

That’s all for now. More to random, picture-filled posts to come!

“Little Miss Spider at Sunnypatch School” by David Kirk

Many years ago, this was a well-loved bedtime story at our house. Sadly, it went the way of so many books these days: the binding quickly wore away, separating the book into several parts and we eventually had to throw it out. Sometimes, I can make adequate repairs to a book’s binding with packing tape, but often, it’s a lost cause. Modern-day book binding is one of those topics that I occasionally rant about. Like so many other products in today’s marketplace, it is very cheaply done with no concerns about how long the product will last. I think about how many great family books have been lovingly passed down through generations and I worry about this and future generations. What will be left to pass down? We have some very old books which have been graciously given to us or bought at antique shops and their bindings are almost always in very good shape. But many of the books we’ve bought new since we’ve started our family usually last just a year or two before the binding starts to fall apart. Frustrating!

Back to this happy picture and the book Sarah is reading. We found this copy at the library the other day. The illustrations in the book are very unusual – to the point of being distracting -- but if you look closely at them, they are actually quite clever and detailed. Trent probably just likes the fact that the story is about a spider. He likes bugs!

Thanks, I think.

I came across this text analyzing tool today and thought I’d try it out. I used 2 of the paragraphs from my latest blog post (the big one and the one that follows it) as samples. The results are in …

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

Surely there must be a bug in the analyzer software; I thought I was a shoo-in for Jane Austen! Looks like I might actually have to read my copy of Dubliners to see how I feel about this.

Tales from the Toddler Frontline

Look at this sweetie. Seriously, it looks like he was posed by a photographer. But no. The other day, while I was making lunch, I looked over and Trent was sitting like this. Patiently waiting for his lunch. So patient. So adorable.

My mom often tells people that we kids were so cute … and it was a good thing, because sometimes, that was the only thing that saved us.  :-D  I get that now. 

Last night, I had a toe-to-toe standoff with this little guy in the Burger King parking lot. He had been temporarily released from the strict confines of his car seat and he would not – would not – get back in. I tried all the tricks I knew – yes, I was shamelessly bargaining, bribing, nearly begging. In other words, totally throwing out all the strict parenting convictions I made before I had kids. Of course there were extenuating circumstances that parents with a little more experience know to take into consideration. It was late (past 10:00 – oops, don’t read this. Tee hee.), he had just spent 1.5 hours sitting pretty quietly on my lap at Rachel’s piano recital, another hour of driving back and dropping off cousins and a friend, and now he was just done with it all. I felt for him, but in the end, he had to get back into that seat for the 10-minute ride home. So, of course I had to end up manhandling him back into his carseat with him kicking and screaming all the while. He might have bested me if Rachel hadn’t been there to help hold his legs down. Strong little bugger! (Mick had driven separately and had already left, or else this probably would’ve been over in about 2.5 minutes.)  It was quite a lovely scene – straight out of Little House on the Prairie. ::eye roll::

What followed was several minutes of very loud protesting (read: shrieking and flailing) while I drove home as fast as I could, with many of the others plugging their ears. Suddenly, someone from the back of the van started singing “Happy Birthday to You.” Whoever that was deserves Sister/Daughter/Citizen of the Year awards. The others joined in immediately. This had an amazingly magical, gloriously quieting effect and there was an almost instant calm over the van. The girls sang all three verses and then jumped right into other toddler favorites. Peace was restored and everyone began relaxing … until Grant started crying because “Trent’s screaming scared me.” <sigh>

And then, I look back up at that sweet little face, and I’m in my happy place again.  :-)

"All Creatures Great and Small" by James Herriot

Wow. «««««!  I just loved this book! So much that I would rank it in my top 5. Some of the chapters were laugh-out-loud funny (e.g., the calving in Chapter 1 with "Uncle" giving his 2 cents, the Bramleys and their kittens in Chapter 58), and others were incredibly poignant (chapter 45 about John Skipton and his beloved retired work horses really got me). I re-read many sections of this out loud to, well, whoever happened to be nearby when I read something I especially liked.

It's interesting, when I browse through the comments for this book on Goodreads, I frequently see sentiments like this "If you like animals, this is a good book for you," but I really think Herriot's stories show us his warm feelings toward the unique people who owned the animals, rather than the animals themselves.

This was a library book, but it definitely deserves a permanent spot in our personal library. So incredibly wonderful.

Summer Reading!

The summer reading programs are in full swing around here, with big prizes up for grabs. Our local library is offering, as one of its prizes, free tickets to the State Fair! We love going to the Fair and try to make it at least once each year, but at $8 per ticket, it can get pricey for our family. So, the tickets are at the top of our (my) prize wish list.  ;-)

Erica is reading “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen

The library’s book criteria is pretty attainable: just read a book a week and come in each week to pick out a prize. For middle-schoolers on up, any chapter book qualifies. Kids younger than that can either read a book themselves, or have a book read to them. Claire has been really enjoying “Charlotte’s Web” and asks anyone and everyone to read a chapter whenever they can spare the time. Usually, others within earshot end up listening in, too. :-)

Also, Veritas Press has a summer reading program with prizes. Their requirements are a little more lofty: for 7th-12th grade, you must read 25 books at 200+ pages. Rachel, Courtney and Erica all have summer reading lists to prepare for their Fall classes, so we’ll probably kill two birds with one stone. 

Brooke is reading “The Happy Hollisters at Lizard Cove,” by Jerry West. A little while later, she was spotted sitting next to Mick so she could also enjoy “Charlotte’s Web.”  :-)

For their reading program, those who finish get a $10 gift certificate to be used to purchase any of their books. Also, there is a random drawing for cash prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. Like most kids, ours don’t have to be “bribed” to read. They just consider the prizes the icing on the cake.  :-)

Courtney is reading “A Wrinkle in Time,” by Madeleine L’Engle

Erica and Courtney, July 2012

We’ve been browsing through pictures in our Picasa photo albums and there are so many pictures that we go back to again and again. More often than not, my favorite pictures seem to be the happy result of great lighting, great composition and great subject matter that seem to come together at just the right time. So, periodically, I want to try to remember to upload these favorites to the blog and give a little background on them. I tend to think of this blog in terms of recent, up-to-date news on what’s going on, but I need to remember that the main goal is to document our family through the years – even those pre-blog years.

This picture was taken one warm summer night when Mick made this two-seater swing. Mom’s cousin, Suzy, spotted the plans for it in a Lowe’s flyer. She gave them to me because she thought it was something Mick could easily do. She was right: he put it together in an evening and the girls had to try it out right away. The sun had just set and I really didn’t have enough light left to get this shot. So many of the other ones I took were blurry, but again, somehow, everything came together at just the right moment: the lighting, the tall corn as a backdrop, the girls’ bare feet and joyful, carefree expressions that kids so often have in the summertime. I love it!

“Parents, it’s 10:00. Do you know where your children are?”

Most people in my generation will remember hearing this on TV at 10:00 in the evenings. The voice was a deep and authoritative one and always made me feel glad I was at home when I heard it! Of course, that was a couple of decades ago - well before cell phones, which most parents probably use now to keep tabs on their kids. At any rate, this came back to me last night when, at 10:00, I looked around while I was whipping up a batch of Peanut Butter Oatmeal cookies. (Strange time of day to be baking? Not if you grew up a Griffin.  In fact, my dad still does this.  :-D) I saw such a variety of things going on at that late hour and it made me smile. Now, understand this was a Friday night. On any other night of the week, all Worley kids would be tucked sweetly in their beds by 9:00 pm, freshly showered/bathed and sleeping peacefully or reading.  Mmmm-hmmm. That’s how it goes every night.

But last night at 10:00, things were different.

This one was shopping online for her 4-H scrapbook project. (Yay for Joann.com sales!)

These 2 were finishing up a Wii game:

These 3 were chatting and giggling in a bedroom:

This one was practicing her State Fair competition pieces:

Weren’t any of the kids in bed yet??? Well, thanks to Daddy, this one had just been laid down. But was he asleep yet? Don’t think so.

In fact, there were severe storms forecast to hit around 2:30 am, so most of the girls decided to camp out in the “quiet” bedroom – quiet because it faces the east, rather than most storms, which come in from the west. So, the “quiet” bedroom had a bunch of chatting girls in it even past midnight!

So, 10:00 on a Friday night was hopping for the Worley kids. Consequently, nearly twelve hours later, most wouldn’t let me near them with a camera, because they’re all still in their pajamas!  :-D

Summer Evening Walks

 

This week has slowed down just a bit – at least in the evenings – since ballet ended for the summer. Next week, Courtney and Erica will start taking Stay in Shape ballet, but that only meets one night a week. So, this week, we had free evenings, which was wonderful! On Tuesday, we actually finished dinner early enough that we were able to go on a walk afterward.

So, Courtney took along the camera and got some nice shots of everyone.

Here is our Little Ham, doing his best Courtney imitation.  :-D

 

Grant took the opportunity to inspect the field corn, which has just started coming up.

Usually, this grass on the side of our road is kept mowed (see the above picture), but I think it looks so pretty when it’s long like this:

 

So glad our summer evening strolls are back!