Memorial Day 2009

Posted by Gabrielle

This Monday we celebrated a wonderful Memorial Day with our church, honoring the veterans who fought in WWII and several of whom were able to be with us for this event.

It was a mostly cloudy day, and a 20-minute downpour during lunch made it a day to remember.

Daddy, far right, looking over the tractor and hayride trailer.

Daddy drove one of the jeep rides this year for the opening of the picnic.

There was a canine show by the local police, which was fun.

Mommy and Benaiah

Listening to the speeches and singing in the tent.

Some of our speakers included Doug Philips of Vision Forum and Scott Brown, our pastor,
Mr. Philips, speaking on manhood during WWII and of two men whose 500th and 200th birthdays occur this year, and whose views have greatly influenced our culture, John Calvin and Charles Darwin.

Jim Tsantles, a dear man at our church.

Friends of ours, the Sterlings,

and the Smiths, also played and sang for the audience.

Uummm, Toby, you can't quite pull a jeep along! ;)

I bravely withstood the fire of a group of boys with guns in the jeep to get this picture! ;)

Elliot, top right corner, and his friends in the jeep. Only, it is curious why friends are shooting each other!

That's much nicer!

Arianne found her baby Liam! This was in the morning.

And this is what I found later in the day. Did the excitement overcome him?! ;)

Bill Brown, the father of our pastor, was one of the veterans to attend.

With all the things there were to do there, Tobias and Benaiah still had to play in the dirt with sticks and stones! Boys!
It was even arranged for a local fire truck to come in for a little while and they were handing out plastic firemen hats to all the children. Benaiah loved his, and still does!

Elliot's Latest 'Project'

Posted by Gabrielle

Elliot's latest project is a string ball, scraps of crocheted yarn and such all tied together. His goal is to make a ball that, when unwound, will reach downstairs, around the bottom floor and back upstairs.
So recently he decided to unroll it again to see if it was long enough and, through some involvement of other members of the family...

got twisted up in his ball and had to unwind himself! ;)

So he had to stand there with his legs tied together until he had extricated himself.

And the moral of the story is: Don't make a string ball to start with?

Our Sweet Buddy-Boy Outside

Posted by Gabrielle

Benaiah outside-with his banana!

Benaiah and the Green 'Fribee'

Posted by Gabrielle

'Ween fribee a bess'! Translation: the green frisbee is the best.

Benaiah has taken a strange liking to our green frisbee...

no, not the yellow one, not even the glow-in-the-dark one, but the green one. Whenever he talks about going 'walk-walk' outside (playing outside), he always mentions the 'green fribee'! Hmm... does that give me a birthday gift idea for our little 2-year old this summer?!

Brothers Outside!

By Gabrielle

Wonderful things happen when brothers have fun outside together!

Growing Caterpillars?

Posted by Gabrielle

As odd as it may sound, we do have 'caterpillars' growing in our yard. We had them on our NH property but hadn't seen them here for a while and I had forgotten about them. Consequently I was at first a little confused when I overheard the boys telling Mommy that we had caterpillars growing here too. This morning, the younger boys and I went out to take a look at them.

Elliot giving us a closeup view of a 'caterpillar'

Jedidiah, Tobias and Elliot gathering caterpillars

Upon an inquiry of what they should do with them, I suggested they use a tree to build a caterpillar colony. So here they are setting it up.
It was very creative; they had caterpillars sitting around a little table of green weeds, and caterpillars carrying along a leaf, swarming up the tree-trunk, resting on the leaves of the vine and hiding under the bark.

We watched this cute little lizard for a while.

Tobias and Jedidiah pointing out all the caterpillars they hid so I could 'take a picture of all of them'.

Benaiah did not fall down on the job but on the ...

Posted by Gabrielle

Noodles!

We did our grocery shopping this morning and Benaiah was such a good little helper by carrying in some of the groceries.

Unfortunately, he more often dropped them or fell on them than brought them faithfully to the garage.

Going to help beloved 'Beebo' with the groceries, not understanding that he had to bring the package of pasta that he had to the garage before he could get something else.

It's his favorite: Tortelloni!

He was just too cute and looked every inch the little man helping with the groceries.

As a bonus picture: Tobias helping too! Many hands make light work!