Falling Behind

We've been extra busy around here so I've had to let go of several things for the time being, one of those things being the blog.  I have a few quiet moments here while Charlie sleeps, though, so I thought I would finally update this thing.

Our most exciting news is that Charlie started to crawl about a month ago! He has already started to climb our treacherous steps so we will all have to get used to maneuvering around baby gates for the next year or so. He has also mastered opening all the kitchen drawers and cupboards and pulling everything out.  As an added bonus, he's great at smashing his fingers when the drawers slide back shut.

Seth's dad had his appendix out a few weeks ago. Of course, it landed right at the peak of harvesting time.  He is lucky to have 5 boys at times like this! Seth has been putting in extra hours out in the field; Sam and Elena are out with him now. It's nice for him to have work where the kids can come along. He asked me the other day if his being gone so much has been getting to me.

Fortunately, I haven't let myself get stressed about it.  I've found that if I can focus on the bare necessities (basically keeping the family fed) and let pretty much everything else go, we can all stay happy.  Sure, walking through our house is like going through a mini-obstacle course and I'm running out of clean clothes to dress the children in.  Also there are times when getting a shower in is next impossible. But I've learned to just turn a blind eye to the mess for now, throw my greasy hair up into a ponytail, and keep my head a safe distance away from heat sources. I'm sure in about 2 weeks when I try to "catch up" on everything, I may have a small breakdown, but that's what chocolate is for.

It doesn't help that in the middle of all of this, Charlie came down with a nasty cold and fever, requiring me to hold him for 2 days straight. Also my grandma had a heart attack so we threw a last minute trip to St Peter in this week and had a nice visit with her in the hospital. We maybe should not have made it a surprise visit, however. At one point, I was very seriously wondering if her excitement over seeing the kids was going to kill her.

Charlie's awake so I guess I'm done here. Here he is crawling:

Now that it's getting cooler...

Our house is filling up with flies.  Luckily for us, Charlie has made swatting flies much more entertaining for the whole family.

There's something about killing bugs that our boys seem to love.

First Day of Preschool!

Sam was super upset after his first day of preschool because he had to leave before lunch. "Everyone else gets to stay the whole day!! Why do I have to come home early??" We had signed him up for half-days mainly because I miss him and I thought a full day might be a bit long for him (and also I'm super cheap and considered it to be a little bit of a waste of money to pay for him to eat, run around outside, rest on the floor, and read stories since we can do all of that at home quite easily). 

I figured I would rather have him go a full day, however, than come home and sulk for 4 hours while he waited and whined for everyone else to get done with school. So we switched him to full days.

On his first full day of school, I came to pick him up and he was standing by his teacher crying.  I thought maybe he had been worried I wasn't coming (I was about 2 minutes late), although that would have been unusual for Sam. But, no. He was crying because "everyone else gets to go on the bus!!! Why do you have to pick me up????"

It makes me laugh to think of people who expressed concern to me in the past that kids who don't go to daycare will be clingy, shy, dependent and unsociable.  There's not much escaping the personality you're born with (actually, conceived with, to be more accurate) at that age.

Fun at the Fair

Thanks, Grandma, for our day at the fair!

Elena, Alex and Sammy rode this little roller-coaster again and again.  We were only able to get them off when the roller coaster had to be shut down for maintenance.



Charlie's first time on the Merry-Go-Round



Grandma and the kids at the end of the day.  



And, as always, the goofy shot :)

Milestones

Elena has been wiggling her loose teeth for the past month or two, and she finally had one tooth dangling, but couldn't quite bring herself to yank it out. The next morning, she woke up to find her tooth lying under her in bed. I'm not sure how she managed that one, but she has always been a restless sleeper.

Later that same day, Seth was rubbing Charlie's gums and his first tooth had popped through! We had told Elena she might loose her first tooth the same day that Charlie got his, but we didn't actually think it would happen.

"Toothless Wonder" as Elena calls herself.  She even made up a song with that title.

Later that week Elena finally taught herself to ride her bike without training wheels. She has been refusing to let us help her all summer, and we were starting to think she would be 10 before she could ride. But that's pretty typical of Elena: after watching other kids tie their shoes, she went off and taught herself, declining any offers from me to help.

Get ready to say, "Awwwwwww...."

Sam is not shy about asking girls to dance with him, but most girls his age are too shy to say yes.  Such was not the case with a little girl at a friend's wedding last weekend. She immediately agreed to dance with Sam.  After a minute of normal 4-year-old dancing, he started to spin her around a bit, and she love it.

For the rest of the evening, if Sam took too long of a break, she would track him down and drag him (sometimes literally) back out onto the dance floor. To make the evening even more fun, they had Minneota's jazz band - which is waaay better than you would expect a small-town community band to be - play for the dance. 

Here's the dance:

 

Here's Sam being drug back onto the floor for more:

 

Charlie is learning how to make people laugh

Going Tamales

The mom of the girls we have been watching this summer rewarded us by giving us homemade tamales.  I was saying how much I was looking forward to eating them, when I heard Sam say as though a light bulb had just turned on, "Oh! I thought we were going tamales, but it's tamales."

It took me a few seconds to translate that into what he was actually trying to say:
"Oh! I thought we were going to Molly's, but it's tamales."

Skipping Rocks

While Natalie's family was here, her dad taught Sam how to skip rocks.  He caught on pretty quick, and as long as he had a good rock, he could skip it pretty well.  Here's a video of him learning.  Seth has a few good ones here as well.

More German Visitors

Natalie and her parents came to visit last month from Germany.  Her parents stayed for 4 days, and Natalie was able to stay for 3 weeks.  It was wonderful to have her back with us and to meet her family. The more friends we make from Germany the more we want to go there to visit! Here are some  pictures from their stay.

Meeting our family.  Our "goofy" picture turned out about as good as any other so I put that on here. Funny story: when we started posing for this picture, John (in the red shirt on the left) started to flex his muscles, but accidentally punched me in the head - this picture caught both of our reactions. 

Natalie's mom, Bianca, with Charlie on the farm.

Natalie driving a tractor.  Natalie and both of her parents were able to drive this tractor and the big John Deere out on the farm.

Taking a walk around Minneota.

Natalie's dad, Steffen: the German Cowboy.

We brought Natalie camping with us at Storybook land in Aberdeen, SD.  Here she is go-cart racing with Elena.

Here we are at storybook land with one of the other girls in our group.  You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get everyone's heads looking out of one of these at the same time. There was another little boy in the picture, but every time I snapped a shot he would move. I ended up giving up on him, but cut half of Elena's face out of the picture.  Seth had to be the lady so he could hold pose Charlie as Jack Horner, in case you're wondering why he chose that spot :) 

Natalie's older sister used to watch Little House on the Prairie in Germany.  She happened to be here during the Laura Ingalls Wilder Days in Walnut Grove so we were able to see some of the sites where she lived.  We are now reading the book On the Banks of Plum Creek, and it's so fun for the kids to read about it knowing we've been there.