Elias on his birthday...

Tonight Peter was helping Elias pray for dinner.
Peter: Thank thee for the food.
Elias: Food.
Peter: Thank thee for my birthday.
Elias: CAKE!


Elias has become a little obsessed with Peter helping him rather than me helping him lately.  He pretty much just loves his dad and thinks he's the bee's knees.  So..

The kids were thanking me for making dinner.
Benton: Thanks for dinner, Mom.
Irene: Thanks for baking this, Mom. You're a good baker.
Brita: Thanks, Mom.
Mima: Thank you, Mom.
Elias: Thank you...DAD. *impish grin*

He's a pretty great kid.

Swimming

Tonight Brita and I came out of swim lessons and couldn't get in the car because the doors were locked.  I double-checked that I had hit the unlock button on the key and then started to get embarrassed because we were obviously trying to get into the wrong car.  Then I double-checked the inside of the car and realized it really was Peter's car, but I was using the van key to try to open it.  I felt stupid on so many levels. :)

Brita took a swim test about a month ago for Activity Days camp and couldn't pass it.  We took her to the pool first so she could see what she remembered from last year and it wasn't much.  She could do the backstroke a bit, but she really hated putting her face in the water.  On the test she barely made it to one minute of treading water and she swam half of the distance she needed to before she just couldn't swim any more.  She was really, really disappointed that she couldn't pass the test and said she didn't think she'd be able to move up to swim team at all this year and maybe even next year.  I was so proud of her for trying, though.  I don't think I would have.

We then spent a week in Pennsylvania with the McNabb family and she worked with her grandma on swimming a few times.  Then we went to North Carolina and got to go swimming a few times and Brita pushed herself and pushed herself until she was swimming freestyle with her face in the water and getting close to taking breaths to the side.  We missed the first week of swimming lessons because we were down in NC at a science camp.

After the first day of swim lessons when we got back Coach Brandon said that two of the peer coaches said that Brita was ready and that she could move up to the team!  She's doing so good.  And I'm seriously impressed by  her persistence and hard work.  Her first meet should be this Saturday.

Benton and Mima are both in the first developmental lessons.  They're getting better as well.  Mima no longer tries to climb to her peer coach's shoulders when they take her out in the water.  Most of the time.  And the look of terror is gone.  She always says how much she loves it and how fun it is after it's over.  It just doesn't look like it watching.  She says her favorite part is sitting on the steps holding her arms up in streamline position. Benton's swallowing less water these days and putting his face in the water for a long time.  It's fun to watch them all.

Oh deer!

At least the deer stayed out of our garden.  Irene asked if we could watch it forever. I told her we could watch it as long as it was there.

Rewarded

This picture is our reward for finishing cleaning the living room.

This kid

We have a box of ash in our garage that we haven't taken care of yet. Tonight I cleaned out the car in the garage. The box of ash if a little less full.

EAT GOATS

So this is from a while ago, but I was so impressed by Benton's ingenuity.  He built the big blue monster from The Princess in Black out of Legos.  Complete with goats.  

He's built a bunch more cool Lego things since then.  They've done lots of factories and space vehicles.  I totally don't have a Lego mind, so I'm always impressed by what they can come up with.

Helpers

We were doing laundry--they were all folded and we were putting the piles away, I was doing mine and Peter's.
Mima: Mom, do you want me to help you?
Me: Yeah, that'd be great!  Can you grab my socks and put them in my drawer for me?
Mima: Not right now.

Um, thanks for the offer..

Stone house

We were playing game at dinner where people had to come up with something in a category and if it was original, they got a point.  Some of the categories were: foods, vegetables that start with a 'p' or 'c', occupations that start with a 'p', etc.  For every category Irene's answer was "stone house," as in, the stone house that served as a hospital around the battles of Manassas.  It got pretty funny by the end.

And who knew that Brita knew what wisteria was?  She cancelled me out on "flowers that start with a 'w'."  I need to stop teaching her stuff.

Foxy

This post brought to you by my frustration in coming up with pants for Foxy.  Luckily Brita changed her mind and decided we could just do a shirt for him.  Happy day.

Brita's birthday and baptism

Elias just deleted everything I'd written here.  Here are some pictures.  You'll just have to guess what happened because I'm not retyping it right now.  Grr.

And it's perpetually centered.  I kind of hate you right now, blogger.  Stop the centering.  That's how we got in this mess in the first place.

I made this dress for her the day before and day of her baptism.

 

We didn't get pictures of her in the dress the day of her baptism; we got them on Sunday.  We actually forgot on Sunday until after she had changed, so we made her change back.  And Elias was sleeping, but we figured we should take what we remembered to get.  Irene was making crazy faces in every picture.
But look what a cute family I have!