Staying with Jesus

 

Due to the excessive heat, we've had a whole lot of imaginative play happening indoors lately.

 

The other day Gabriel and Andrew were playing with the farm set when I overheard this conversation:

 

Gabers: Where am I going to sleep?

 

Andrew:  I don't know.  The barn is full.  Maybe you can sleep in your car.

(Such a nice big brother!)

 

Gabers:  Oh well, maybe Jesus will let me stay at his place.

Pictures from our flower gardens...

Photos courtesy of Therese!

Project of the Week

Looks like Big Sky Country, doesn't it?

These garden boxes were not the project from this past week.  Dan built them a few weeks ago but I never got around to posting pictures.

Then we planted three apple trees and a teeny, tiny plum tree (aka The Orchard). Now everybody has been taking turns watering them.

The happiest waterer of all.

OK, so now we get to the real project of the week...



 

 

 

Kid Pix

In my desperate desire for an updated family picture, to be taken before everybody heads back to school and of course, having waited until the very end of the summer...I have started taking

 random pictures of kids as they are goofing around. 

 Here's an end of summer picture dump of the dismal results...

OK, this one's pretty cute even though it's kind of blurry.

Check out the grin on Francis.

Notice I can't seem to find my oldest three offspring.  I'm thinking all bets are off when it comes to a decent family picture being taken in the next week.  Maybe this mama bear is gonna have to get grumpy!

It's not easy being 3...

Marianna at her best....NOT!

Wait a minute!  Who is that cool looking dude with the awesome new glasses?  Oh, yeah, that's my poor son who (I thought) never cleaned his glasses.  Then I discovered that the lenses were so scratched, we could hardly see his eyes anymore.  These are the hazards of living in a large family!

Here's another little anecdote to prove my point even further...

The other week when Clare had been gone for a few days on a trip to Lake Superior with friends of our family,  Stephen asks,  "Hey, when's Clare leaving on her trip?"  And my reply,  "Um... she's been gone for two days already."  Yep, we just might be from a large family around here. 

Making Pickles

Every year about this time, someone gives us cucumbers (way too many cucumbers to eat on lettuce salad), so we make cucumber salsa and refrigerator pickles....and give the pickles to Grandma for her birthday.  Here's a few pictures from the process...

 

Therese wanted to help chop.  So being the generous mother that I am, I let her battle it out with the onions. Guess she won't be volunteering her services again any time soon.

And here's a random picture of our garden produce from yesterday...

AND Gabriel wanted me to post this picture of his rocks (not sure why)....

 

He's very proud of those little beauties!

AND...one more thing....HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRANDMA!!

 

p.s.  tomorrow we will post about the newest pair of glasses in our family...and...psst... they don't belong to Marianna

Baby Love

 

Fish, Fish, and More Fish!

That's been the motto this summer and the past few weeks have been no exception.  We've had throngs of people out fishing at least 2 or 3 nights a week. 

But that means somebody has to clean 'em!

 

Now there's a fish,cleaning line-up...two priests and a couple of seminarians.

 

Something smelled kind of....hmmm....fishy this morning in the garage.  Oops, guess the garbage can didn't get emptied the other night.  Yuck!

Johnny at the Piano

Every few years, we have another little person who wants to join the ranks of musicians in our family.  I always try to put them off for a while. (The newness of lessons wears off so fast and I am left with another mini-maestro to prod along.)

Johnny has been no exception.  Finally, this past week, I asked him to pick his poison.  What will it be...piano or guitar?  He chose piano and had his very, first lesson yesterday.

Practicing how to position his fingers.



Linda makes it fun to learn line notes and space notes.

Marianna adds to the craziness.

We are so grateful for our awesome teacher, Linda.  What's it been?  Something like 11 years of  guitar or piano lessons.  (I don't know...is that at least 10,000 twinkles?)

Marianna modeling her full pontoon gear.

Backwards skirt courtesy of the mini-model herself.

The hazards of working on the farm...

Ouch!  These are Stephen's arms.  Not sure if this came from pitching hay (we initially thought it was poison ivy) or from mowing lawn at his job.  Turned out to be an excessive amount of mosquito bites.  Welcome to Minnesota!