Soon To Be Readers!

Let it be recorded that today Lincoln and Evan started the Headsprout Reading program. 

Their older siblings all learned to read starting with this program.

Family Fun

My cousin Ruth and her family came to town this past week, so we had a chance to get to know her children Cole and Ada better!  It was fun, and Sean (her husband) was a good sport and played many games with the kids.  :)

Everyday Life: More July

L&E playing with the Pez dispenser collection.

Lincoln adding some stickers to Cousin Katie's artwork.

Viva hanging out.

Happy Great-Grandma!

Lincoln checking out a birthday gift. 

Opa helped him put it together.

Bentley frying steak.

Lincoln drawing. Or is it doodling? 

He's been creating in this style for months.

More birthday gifts!

L and J checking out B's Lego robot.

Trains and Balloons and Boys

Lincoln's Lego Creation

I see that Lincoln was definitely the favorite in this set of photos. I'm going to say that's okay because it was his birthday in July!

Everyday Life: July

Kara and I have lost the battle with chaos. We cannot keep all our balls in the air. The past few months the blogging ball is regularly dropped. We are sorry for that, but on the plus side, we are keeping pace (somewhat) with the children!

Here are some activities they did in July:

Evan doing a ball maze. He's pretty good at it!

Summer Time = Playground Time

Checking out the lifeguard chair at Bentley's music camp.

Jake and Viva (never Bentley) visit JoAnn's with me.

Another day, another playground.

Ukulele Time

Trombone Time

(Jake got a plastic trombone for his birthday in June.)

Viva drying mint leaves to make tea.

Strawberry picking at the Bulkow's while they were out of town.

Group Photo at the Bulkow's

One more harp photo--the harp resides in the living room, so it's easy to get harp photos!

Cinnamon Swirl

Evan really, really likes the Cinnamon Swirl bread that you can buy at Great Harvest. I picked up a loaf yesterday after I dropped the boys at karate camp and he ate it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Given that we have ten people in our house, the loaf was gone by the end the day. So this morning after going to the karate dojo, I went back to Great Harvest and purchased another loaf!

Gardening Report.

Here is how two of Viva's three pots of flowers are looking. (I forgot to get a photo of the third one. It's in the yard against the fence because the plants were so tall they needed more support.):

By some odd coincidence, all three older children came home from church events with small containers of baby pansies. Bentley brought his home in May. I had to transplant the clump of small plants into a larger pot in June. The plants didn't grow at all (or die!) for the first month or more, but then they finally took off and now the pot is full of pansies that are blooming. Jake came  home with a container with a few small plants in it. And in July Viva came home with a small blue pot (maybe she painted the pot?) with a couple of small pansies growing in it. Jake and Viva's pansies have not yet bloomed. 

I am the one (with some help from Viva) who has kept the plants watered and cared for. Despite the boys lack of participation in tending them, they do get a chance to see how amazing it is that a very small plant grows big and blooms. The other plant in the photo is Viva's mint plant. It is doing really well and needs to be transplanted into the ground to see if it will survive the winter.

Jake, Viva and I were going to do more gardening together this summer, but we don't have a good garden plot in the yard so we didn't get our carrots and radishes planted. The lettuce we bought together I put in a pot and the aphids loved it so much we abandoned it. Only one zucchini grew on the zucchini plant--it's hard to fertilize blooms when you only have one plant. Gardening is a lot of work.

Summer Flees

This summer (as always) has been unpredictable. Starting back in April we had many, many days of above average temperatures. One day in July we even hit 81 degrees!! (That is a scorcher in Anchorage.) By the middle of July our lawn was looking very sad. We needed water and cooler temperatures. Despite all the fine weather, we only got the pool out once. Between our summer guests and the bee/hornet/yellow jacket problem it just didn't happen.

Then the rain clouds and rain came. It has rained 15 of the last 21 days. It is cold. It is damp. Our family has had the flu. The lawn looks great, but the flowers have drown. 

The forecast is for more of the same. ARG!

Girl Reads

Viva is the most voracious reader in the house. (I'm sure Bentley and maybe Kara would protest that they are, but I think Viva is and I am the one writing this post.) Viva keeps stacks of books on her bed. She takes books in the car. She reads new books and rereads old favorites.

Currently she is reading the Harry Potter series yet again. She doesn't read the books in order. I'm not sure how she decides which one to read, but she had me put book four back on the shelf and give her book two.

I love that she loves reading!

Boys Quilt

Earlier this summer when Viva was sewing her quilt, Jake decided he wanted to make a quilt, too. Viva's quilt has 5" squares and it's taking her a while to get it completed, so I decided to encourage Jake to make a quilt with much larger squares.

He looked through my stash of bold batiks and picked a few he liked. I cut them into squares for him. He arranged the squares on a design board. Then he sewed and ironed and he soon had a quilt top. I quilted the top on my longarm and then bound the quilt.

After Jake finished his quilt I asked Bentley if he wanted to make one. He wasn't very interested. A month or so later, the twins were at art camp and he was hanging out at home without them. He decided he'd like to make a quilt. He chose fabrics from my Kaffe Fassett fabric collection. I cut them into squares. He arranged them on the design board. He sewed and ironed them. I quilted the top on my longarm and then bound the quilt.

Viva has been distracted with other projects this summer and has not finished her quilt!

Air Show Adventure = Success!

Matt took Lincoln, Evan, and Viva out to the Air Show to see the Blue Angels this past weekend.  The newspaper said they were expecting 100,000 people per day on base to see the show - that is a HUGE number considering the population of Anchorage is only in the 300,000s!  Needless to say it was a bit of a challenge to get on base.  The little guys had a great time once there though, and a chance to see some up close fighter jets (and cool stunts in the show!) that they don't normally get to see.  So two thumbs up for a fun adventure day!

(Although I think they exhausted Evan, Matt reports he actually fell asleep during the Blue Angels show... I guess with the headphones it was nice and quiet and he needed a rest?!) :)

Basketball Camp

The older kids had a last minute opportunity to check out a basketball camp at UAA sponsored by Matt's workplace.  They've never played much ball so Grandma convinced me that that despite the early morning start time it would be a fun activity - and, so far, it appears to be.  Yay for new experiences!  :)

Even cooler?  The kids are now properly branded with ASRC shirts and matching socks.  :)

Game Time with Big Bro

It's the good life!

Bentley is a great older brother. (All of my sons are great older brothers, actually - but Bentley, in particular, is very patient.)

Today Bentley was hanging with Evan while the other three kids went to the dentist with me.  Evan has been a bit cranky lately (okay - more than a bit) and I'm blaming it on his cold.  If I don't blame it on his cold I'll have to concede he's a bit spoiled and I'm not ready to do that... :)

Anyway.  Opa came home at lunch and snapped this picture to send to me.  He tells me Bentley kept his little brother happily occupied and playing games for over an hour.  It's good to have an older brother like that.  And it's great to have a home where my children who are 6+ years apart in age enjoy spending time together AND have the time do do it.  Like I said - it's the good life.  :)

… Take Me out to the Ball Game!

My husband is a bucket list kind of guy, and he wanted to take the little guys out to see a proper baseball game this summer.  We had a great start to the summer but the last week or two has been rainy on and off.  The clouds cleared, however, and they made it over to the last game of the season.  Matt tells me that Evan was quite the commentator once Matt explained how the score board worked.  :)