A better one

Here's another shot of the strawberry face!

Farmer's Market

We went to the Farmer's Market today. The boys had a treat by getting a snow cone and I kept Lillie happy by giving her strawberry after strawberry. She was happy and sticky!

Saturday

The latest adventure the boys have earned for their reading was go-carts. The boys were pumped! Sadly when we got there they told us that neither boy could ride by themselves (something they don't post on their website). Isayas opted to go ahead with it and ride with Waymond. 

 Then we went to the beach to walk around and climb on things.

 Lillie had the best time ever, because rocks are one of her favorite things.

 She really wanted to get into the water, but its so cold and we weren't having Oklahoma weather on Saturday, i.e. not quite hot enough outside.

New skills

Waymond's been helping the boys learn to mow. Strangely, all three are super excited about it! At this point one person has to hold the cord (we have an electric mower), because they aren't skilled enough to not run over it. But, they are getting there.

Isayas has learned to put up our tent! He and Ermias slept in the tent in the backyard all by themselves this last week! I wasn't sure they were going to make it all night, but they did and had a great time. They probably would have done another night, but rain was in the forecast (as you can tell our grass needs it).

Garden

I think we are going to have to plant a fall garden. Lillie is now in the habit of eating right out of the garden! This morning Waymond took her out front for blueberries and later in the morning I was watering our garden and she was eating the zucchini I picked. She ate about half, along with some kale. She's going to be sad when she can't snack from the garden! 

It's going to be really bad when all our blueberries are gone. It's become quite a regular habit to go out, water and eat blueberries after breakfast every morning. She's probably eaten 75% of the blueberries and Ermias has probably eaten 20%. I did make blueberry scones with some!

It was a sad day when the raspberries were all gone!

By next year, Lillie will be able to hold the hose and spray the plants all by herself!

Here she is on another day sampling the garlic!

fyi, the root part isn't tasty!

Bike ride too

Isayas finally got his bike ride with Dad in this morning. They rode around a lot, but of course they stopped for coffee! Waymond said there was more bike riding than socializing, but still they stopped at a friend's house to say Hi!

Another

Waymond took this one of the light experiment. 

Mr. Wizard

Isayas is a lover of science stuff. It's what he talks about during school; that and PE. This last week we checked out a book from the library with electricity experiments. He's been having a great time.

This one he made a circuit to light a flashlight bulb. Then he added a paper clip switch to turn it on and off. I'm impressed with his skills. He has so so many questions about how and why things work. Uncle Ryan needs to live nearby so he can answer all the technical stuff...it's not my forte! 

Daddy's Home!

Everyone is excited when daddy gets home from work; they can't stay away from him!

Lil's puzzle

Lil has a new puzzle and she's getting really good.

Little helper

Waymond took some time off work the last week of school (in June) to do some work around the house. Lillie was quite the little helper! If she wasn't sleeping, she wanted to be where Daddy was!

Several weeks later Waymond found one of Lillie's toys in this gray bucket! She had dropped it in while "helping" him. She had a great week, but thankfully never learned how to use power tools!

World Cup

A lovely shot of the boys watching the World Cup a few weeks ago. Some day Lillie will find this picture funny! She's wearing the sweat band that Ermias got for Waymond for Father's day. 

Too hot

Couldn't resist taking a few photos of Lil & Waymond in their undies playing with Mr. Potato Head!

Summer reading

This summer the boys are earning some fun activities for reading. Today Ermias took bike ride with Dad and he got to go wherever he wanted around town! 

So, part of the bike trip was to Baskin Robbins because he won a gift certificate at a VBS he attended this last week! He won 3rd place in a Lego building competition.

They shared some kind of ice cream coffee shake. 

They also visited a friend's house and played for a few minutes and rode all around his neighborhood. Waymond said it was fully an Ermias inspired bike ride because it involved lots of socialization!

This is his winning creation. All the kids voted. I think we need to get him some road plates or something. It's about the only Lego thing we lack.

A few of Lil

Here are a few pictures of Lil from today. This girl tries to do all things like her "bubbas." Today she got out books from the book shelf and laid down on her belly to read them. Ermias is often in this position to read his Magic Tree House books.

One great thing about this age is that Lillie pretty much eats whatever we are having to eat. Tonight she ate her burrito all by herself; first time ever! Daddy had to step in a couple of times so she did unwrap it, but she did really well.

Big girl! 

She's pretty good with a fork and spoon too, but a utensil free dinner is the best! She just ate her veggies with her fingers tonight too.

18 months

Today Lillie turned 18 months old! She's a busy little girl. I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

Fine Motor Play

We've had some hot days lately. Some of the those days Lillie goes around in a diaper after her afternoon nap (she loves it). On this day she is having fun unloading the cabinet while I cook dinner (another love). Her fine motor skills are amazing, but I don't have another 18 month old to compare her to!

Singing

Lillie loves to sing. She's pretty much like her Grandma Jani; she is singing or talking to herself most of the time!

Play Dough video

Here's a little video of the play dough fun:

the Dark Side

The Dark Side never looked so cute!

This is one Ermias' old PJ tops; it's a little big, but it worked for nap time.

All in a day's work

Lillie got to play with play dough for the first time! 

She really loved it and of course wanted to eat it. I would tell her "not for your mouth" and she would  touch her lips with a small ball of dough and then put it back on the table. She wanted SO BAD to pop it in and chew!

After a little play dough fun the boys got out the photo album. Lillie likes to look at photos as much as her brothers do. This album has pictures of the boys when we visited them in Ethiopia the first time.

After a taxing time of photo browsing, the three went outside to finish off our "golden raspberries" we got at the Farmer's Market. I was in the kitchen and Isayas yelled in, "Is is OK if we just eat all of them?"

After raspberries, they got out scooters. If Lillie could ride a scooter, she would! She ran after Ermias for quite some time. Believe it or not, Ermias never ran her down.

And this was just the morning! Lillie is really enjoying having her brothers home for the summer!

Funny Lillie

Lillie found Waymond's wallet and thought it was funny. She carried it around and then card by card emptied the whole thing! I told Waymond that we should probably nip this in the bud so she doesn't make it a habit of going through his wallet and taking money out! :o)

Snack time

We brought up our small kids table from the basement and Lillie likes to sit and have snacks there. She's not quite good enough to get up and down in the chair yet, but it won't be soon.

Summertime

Lillie has loved having her brothers home for the summer. She tries to do pretty much whatever they are doing. In doing so she's had quite a few scrapes already (knees, elbows, hands). 

Here she scraped both knees and had to have her first bandaids! She was fine while I cleaned her knees; I gave her a cup of blueberries and all was fine!

 If only she could get out on the baseball field with them!

We took the boys to an amusement park. They had a great time. We found out that Isayas is a roller coater rider and Ermias isn't!

Ermias was a natural on the bumper cars!