Joshua is FIVE years old!

Here are the pictures I promised from the splash pad we went to with our friends the Hamstras! The kids had a blast ~ and the adults too! :) I'm too lazy/busy to do a link right now, but you can check out more pictures of these adorable children at the "Michelle H." link to the right. ;-)



























Dominique and Adeline are five months apart and played so nice together! (Dominique is older.)


























Israel and John Michael are also five months apart and don't really "play together" yet, but they were interested in each other! (John Michael is older.)


















One hot day a few days later, we played in the hose after being inspired by the splash pad above! It was almost just as much fun....


































I took this pic of Israel while I was holding him so that I could make a debut in the photo album! I am usually behind the camera, but I do want my children to remember that they did have a mother all those years!













Another morning at the forest preserve at 8:30 am. We are trying to take in as much nature as we can. We didnt see a whole lot, but we heard a bullfrog and a woodpecker, and also spotted some turtles floating on a log on the lake. And lots of mosquitos, of course!








The children and I have befriended this sweet lady at a local nursing home. We are enjoying spending time getting to know her and I think she enjoys seeing the children and hearing them sing for her when we come! She is 95 years old and sharp as a tack! She was born in Yugoslavia and came to the States in 1925 when she was 14 years old. We have much to learn from her....






I just thought this was funny. I went out one night to get groceries and when I came home this was on the garage wall in front of where I park the car. Joshua had drawn it and put it there to scare me! What a scary face!














Remember those cicada wings from my last post? Well, one of them got eaten! I suppose now I will have to put that in Israel's baby book as his first food! Mmmmm... protein! Here is the rest of it stuck to his face. He is all over the place these days and giving me a time trying to keep up with him and keep the other kids' mess picked up before it gets eaten!













JOSHUA'S BIRTHDAY


Joshua's birthday was last Thursday and since that is the night we have Bible study at our house in Spanish, we decided to have a shorter than usual study and then do a pinata and cake for Joshua.

Here is Fabio with the kids, stuffing the pinata.










Finished stuffed product.











Whacking the pinata.
















Collecting the booty.


















Pin the tail on the donkey.









Blowing out candles.

















Those present.









Then on Saturday, we had a family party for all of the July birthdays: Joshua, Suzy and Dillon.













We grilled chicken and corn-on-the-cob and when Aaron later requested a toothpick, I told him that I was out, but offered him dental floss instead! Here he and Mom are, putting it to good use.










Amanda and baby Moriah.






















The birthday people.












After blowing out candles.













As you may remember from a few posts back, Joshua was pretty sick for a good week. He never had been sick like that before, but he did finally get over it.
However, a couple days later he got a fever again which was really bizarre, so I took him back to the doctor again, and they said he looked perfectly healthy! (The fever was gone by the time I got him to the doc the next morning.) But... he kept getting fevers at night for the next couple nights, but would be fine by the next morning and all day. Friday I called the doc again to see if he wanted to do bloodwork, and he ordered extensive testing. I am presently sitting on pins and needles waiting for them to call me anytime now with the results. Anyway, he didnt enjoy either of his parties as much as he might have, because both times he got a fever and petered out, even though he tried hard to act like he was doing fine. This picture was toward the end of the party. He had just been asking if we could play pin-the-tail-on-the donkey, but then when I went in to see if he was ready, he said, "No, I just want Grandpa Howard to read me a book." So, Grandpa Howard did!





And one last pic for today. This morning I heard a LOUD chirping outside my window and saw this baby robin on the ground. I though it was hurt or something, so I grabbed the kids and took them out to see. When we got within about a foot of it, however, it flew a little ways with great effort. I saw the mama and daddy robin nearby and figured out that this must have been the day the babies got pushed out of the nest to learn to fly! It was fun for the kids to see, since we could get pretty close to it before it would fly a short distance away. We talked about how little the egg was that we found in the last post, and how much this little guy had grown up now to be able to fly away on his own! It was a neat science class!

More Summer FUN



YAY! Joshua is finally feeling back to normal! The dark circles under his eyes are gone and he seems to have regained the weight he lost while he was sick. Now hopefully we can enjoy the rest of the summer. :)

































The rule seems to be that I have to take about 25 shots in order to get ONE worth keeping! Here is Dominique sitting in a tree and this is the shot I loved! It shows her personality so well. :)

















Here are a couple of others that I liked too.








































I finally got Israel to sit still long enough to get him to smile for a picture! This hat was Joshua's when he was a baby and it is still a little big on him, but served the purpose of keeping the sun out of his eyes!














He loves to be outside now that he got used to the feel of grass. He is so used to it that he now enjoys eating it and has nearly choked on it several times. :-/ It has also been seen in his diaper, TMI, I know! :-?


















Here he was about to fall asleep!















Who can resist these cheeks ~ even when he's crying! I just kiss them all day long. :)


















And then the comedy act of trying to get a decent sibling shot! It does feel like a hopeless cause at these ages, I tell ya. They are often funny, though, even if not exactly what I was hoping for.
I did get a few acceptable ones, at long last
I love Israel's mouth. This is so typical of him!









This one just makes me laugh ~ Dominique pulling on Lincoln's neck to get him to look at the camera! He has learned to take a lot in stride, but just after I snapped this one, she took it a little too far and he started crying....










Friday night I babysat for my brother's four lovely children and we had a great time! They had watched our two older ones the week before so we could have a date night, so it was our turn to return the favor! It was nice to get some time with my neice and nephews, because when we get together with the whole family, the adults are busy talking and I'm busy keeping track of my own kids and I dont always get a lot of chance to interact a lot with my neices and nephews. So, it was fun!



After a pizza picnic in the yard, all eight of us took a bike ride to the park! Then, back to the house for ice cream, playing with bunny, legos, books and before we knew it, their mama and daddy were back already...










Lastly, some specimens for our nature notebook: a lightning bug.











Things we collected on Friday: 17 year cicada wings (see the "W" mark on them?), a robin egg (spotted by my nephew Colton), and a bird feather.








We tried to put out pool up yesterday, but there must be a hole in the ring! Ugh. Not sure what we're going to do about that....
More pics to come of the splash pad we visited with the Hamstras the other day!

Our
Fourth
of
July



Well, as I mentioned, our 4th of July was festivity-free this year due to Joshua recovering from a lingering fever.
It was not all bad, though, and we got to enjoy some quiet family time here at home. Here's the synopsis:

Israel is getting used to crawling in the grass. He cried the first time or two and didn't like the feeling of it, but now he is fine and even seems to rather enjoy it! He especially likes getting handfuls of grass and then mouthfuls! ;-)











Family Dinner on the Grill. Yum!











You can tell how perky Joshua wasn't feeling, even though he no longer had a fever finally. He was just puny still....












He did cheer up later, though, when Fabio got the hammock out! He kept making goofy faces to make Dominique laugh, and it worked!






















































And remember those seeds we planted a few posts back? Here is the progress report! Unfortunately, the cucumbers and beans never did come up. I think maybe a bird got to the seeds? I was already pushing it with planting time, so I decided it was a little too late to re-plant. We will try for those again next year. ;) The other plants are doing well, though! Yay! It is so exciting to watch things grow! The kids are enjoying it too. What a great science project!






Yellow squash.











Peppers.














My first tomato!









We let the kids stay up late because we were hoping to catch some fireworks from the parking lot, but unfortunately the numerous trees were blocking our view from both of the closest towns' displays.... We still got to see some, though, and I think the kids were plenty satisfied with that! We also had fun collecting lightning bugs ~ for the first time, I think. Definitely the first time for Dominique. It is so fun to discover things like lightning bugs all over again through the eyes of a child. What wonder!


Well, between Joshua being sick and then a holiday in the middle of the week, I feel like Im just getting started on my week now, and it's already over! I did take a bunch of cute pics today too, though, but I decided to post them separately one day soon so as not to overwhelm you. :-)

Sickie, Owie, and Active

Those words could describe my three children in this post!
First, here is Joshua, the "sickie". He came down with a fever on Friday evening and is just NOW getting over it! He has never had a fever for more than 24 hours before, so by Monday I was worried and took him to our doctor. Thankfully, he seems to be fine, but was just having a hard time fighting off some kind of GI infection.
Today he is finally coming back to life a bit, although still a bit weak after being down for so long. So, our 4th of July will be a quiet one this year. :)




And then just an update on Dominique's owie!
The fingernail finally came off, and after three and a half weeks, it is *still* sensitive. The good news is that she is still not sucking on it, so I think at this point it is safe to think that that stage of her babyhood is happily behind us! :)







And here is "Active"! I probably took at least 15 shots to get this picture and it still isn't very clear! Unfortunately, our camera doesn't do very well with action shots, and he is in constant motion! He is 6.5 months old now and officially crawling and starting to get into everything. The fun begins... again! :)







This is one of the things he is always trying to get into... literally, the bunny's cage! LOL. He is SO intrigued by Rabby he can hardly contain himself when he sees the bunny and goes after him for a fistfull of that soft fur! Funny thing is, Rabby doesn't seem to mind a bit and actually comes close to Israel for some loving, whereas he sometimes avoids the other two who can be a bit overbearing with their well-intentioned affection.....


So, just a quick update from our corner of the world! Until next time!