This is from a series and was by far the best photo of the group. He looks like such a T in these pictures! I can see some of my brothers in his face.Work for Rob
Rob has been working in Dr. J's lab now for 3 weeks and he's still coming home saying, "I'm stupid." :) Dr. J's lab is an immunology lab, and Rob hasn't been working in an immunology lab for the last 4 years, so he feels pretty far behind in terms of knowledge base. He's been on a mad dash to learn all he needs to know so he can run experiments well, and there's been a lot of time spent learning how things run in the lab.
Of course, Rob is not really stupid. I told him that if he were to start talking to Dr. J about the ins and outs of fibrinogen, Dr. J would be the one feeling "stupid". Plus, every lab does things a little differently, so there has to be some expected learning time. ... Pretty soon Rob will come home talking about his new knowledge and the experiments he's running, and he'll sound dang impressive.
... And it's been a transition to the word "work." The answer to "Where's Daddy?" has been, for years, "At school." And so my response now is usually, "At school.work," about that fast. Spit out 'school' and then correct with 'work'. :) It's nice that he's done with school. And Miciah likes to call him Dr. Thacker, which I think is cute.
Girls Camp
I went to Girls Camp for 2 days, which was fun. I love camping. Not that Girls Camp is really anything like Scout Camp (for you people out there who don't know that, I'm telling you now. Girls Camp and Scout Camp are NOT comparable), but it's fun anyways. Though I could do without the cheers every 3 seconds.Anyways. One of our jobs on set up day was to make sure the little bank of the river by the "water hole" was safe. I checked out this small piece of tin sticking out of the sand. I figured we needed to cover it up or dig it out. And digging it out sounded much more fun. So I started digging. And digging. And digging. Half an hour later, we pulled out a piece of tin that was a few feet wide and 8 feet long! So somewhere upstream is a shed missing a piece of roof.
Family Camp Out
After we got home from Carter Caves, Elijah asked where we went. I told him we went camping. He wanted to know where. To keep it simple, I told him, "In the woods." He said, "I want to go camping in the woods, too!" Then Rob went on a camp out with the Scouts. And then I went to Girls Camp. He was feeling terribly left out. I looked at Rob and said, "You are not allowed to go on a camp out with the Scouts until you take this boy camping!" I would LOVE if Rob were able to take Elijah on the Scouting outings (tee hee: Scouting outing. Say that 10 times fast), but alas it's not allowed.
So we went on a family camp out. Just one night at Miami Whitewater, a campground about 20 minutes from our house. It's in a nice park and the kids loved it. On Saturday, as we were prepping to go back home, Elijah said he wanted to stay another night. Camping 2 nights in a row! Crazy fun! I told him we had to go home. Camping out on Saturday night and then getting ready for church on Sunday morning? No thank you. And then it hit me. I asked him what camping was to him. He said, "A tent and marshmallows." :) I told him we could do that 2 nights in a row in our backyard. So that's on the schedule for sometime in the near future.
I really do love camping. This weekend we're going down to Mammoth Cave and we'll be camping overnight Saturday to Sunday. I asked Rob it if it would be okay if we took a break from church for one Sunday. :) Sometimes his calling feels like a job. ... The other thing Elijah wanted to do, when he heard about our fun trip to Carter Caves, is go inside a cave. Rob and I have wanted to take the kids to Mammoth Cave for 2 summers now, and we're finally going to do it when C, my brother, comes in town. That'll be an adult per child, and that sounds totally managable. So C comes in town on Friday, and we'll leave early Saturday morning for Mammoth. ... We figured it'll be a fun trip, and relatively inexpensive. Mammoth is only a 3 1/2 hour drive from Cincinnati. And the camp site we found is an out-of-the-way place. I think it's just some guy who owns land near Mammoth and lets people come camp on it. Our choices were this nifty backwoods place or Jellystone. If you've ever stayed at Jellystone and enjoyed it, I'm sorry. Jellystone goes against everything I think is good and right in this world. :) Okay, not quite, but close.
You can't take baby backpacks inside the cave. Which is a bummer, cause we had one lined up for Teancom. As it is, I guess we'll be carrying him most of the time, and Elijah some of the time. Fun!
A Swingin' Good Time!
For my belated birthday gift, my Mom sent us money for a swing set. She said she figured it was as much a gift for me as it was for the kids. Perfect! We found the set we wanted on-line and had it shipped to our house. It arrived last Wednesday and the kids were excited. I asked Elijah, "Elijah, what is it?" With excitement in his voice he said, "It's a big box!" :) Guess we could have paid a lot less for just a box and he'd have been happy.
Rob has been working in Dr. J's lab now for 3 weeks and he's still coming home saying, "I'm stupid." :) Dr. J's lab is an immunology lab, and Rob hasn't been working in an immunology lab for the last 4 years, so he feels pretty far behind in terms of knowledge base. He's been on a mad dash to learn all he needs to know so he can run experiments well, and there's been a lot of time spent learning how things run in the lab.
Of course, Rob is not really stupid. I told him that if he were to start talking to Dr. J about the ins and outs of fibrinogen, Dr. J would be the one feeling "stupid". Plus, every lab does things a little differently, so there has to be some expected learning time. ... Pretty soon Rob will come home talking about his new knowledge and the experiments he's running, and he'll sound dang impressive.
... And it's been a transition to the word "work." The answer to "Where's Daddy?" has been, for years, "At school." And so my response now is usually, "At school.work," about that fast. Spit out 'school' and then correct with 'work'. :) It's nice that he's done with school. And Miciah likes to call him Dr. Thacker, which I think is cute.
Girls Camp
I went to Girls Camp for 2 days, which was fun. I love camping. Not that Girls Camp is really anything like Scout Camp (for you people out there who don't know that, I'm telling you now. Girls Camp and Scout Camp are NOT comparable), but it's fun anyways. Though I could do without the cheers every 3 seconds.
Family Camp Out
After we got home from Carter Caves, Elijah asked where we went. I told him we went camping. He wanted to know where. To keep it simple, I told him, "In the woods." He said, "I want to go camping in the woods, too!" Then Rob went on a camp out with the Scouts. And then I went to Girls Camp. He was feeling terribly left out. I looked at Rob and said, "You are not allowed to go on a camp out with the Scouts until you take this boy camping!" I would LOVE if Rob were able to take Elijah on the Scouting outings (tee hee: Scouting outing. Say that 10 times fast), but alas it's not allowed.
So we went on a family camp out. Just one night at Miami Whitewater, a campground about 20 minutes from our house. It's in a nice park and the kids loved it. On Saturday, as we were prepping to go back home, Elijah said he wanted to stay another night. Camping 2 nights in a row! Crazy fun! I told him we had to go home. Camping out on Saturday night and then getting ready for church on Sunday morning? No thank you. And then it hit me. I asked him what camping was to him. He said, "A tent and marshmallows." :) I told him we could do that 2 nights in a row in our backyard. So that's on the schedule for sometime in the near future.
I really do love camping. This weekend we're going down to Mammoth Cave and we'll be camping overnight Saturday to Sunday. I asked Rob it if it would be okay if we took a break from church for one Sunday. :) Sometimes his calling feels like a job. ... The other thing Elijah wanted to do, when he heard about our fun trip to Carter Caves, is go inside a cave. Rob and I have wanted to take the kids to Mammoth Cave for 2 summers now, and we're finally going to do it when C, my brother, comes in town. That'll be an adult per child, and that sounds totally managable. So C comes in town on Friday, and we'll leave early Saturday morning for Mammoth. ... We figured it'll be a fun trip, and relatively inexpensive. Mammoth is only a 3 1/2 hour drive from Cincinnati. And the camp site we found is an out-of-the-way place. I think it's just some guy who owns land near Mammoth and lets people come camp on it. Our choices were this nifty backwoods place or Jellystone. If you've ever stayed at Jellystone and enjoyed it, I'm sorry. Jellystone goes against everything I think is good and right in this world. :) Okay, not quite, but close.
You can't take baby backpacks inside the cave. Which is a bummer, cause we had one lined up for Teancom. As it is, I guess we'll be carrying him most of the time, and Elijah some of the time. Fun!
A Swingin' Good Time!
For my belated birthday gift, my Mom sent us money for a swing set. She said she figured it was as much a gift for me as it was for the kids. Perfect! We found the set we wanted on-line and had it shipped to our house. It arrived last Wednesday and the kids were excited. I asked Elijah, "Elijah, what is it?" With excitement in his voice he said, "It's a big box!" :) Guess we could have paid a lot less for just a box and he'd have been happy.
Elijah and Miciah playing in the box and with the paper that came in it:
It just so happened that Wednesday our Home Teacher called and asked if he could come by that night. I told him that was fine, so long as he wanted to help put up a swing set. I lured his wife into coming, too, with the promise of ice cream (which we forgot about in the end--we'll have to make up for that), and they were tremendously helpful! The directions were pretty lousy, so D had a full-time job interpreting them (seriously, the directions weren't even in the right order. Our first directions went from step 1 to step 6 and then backwards from 6 to 1) and arranging the hardware. The rest of us put it together. B came home and walked out to the back to help saying, "I walked in the house and the kids said, "You might want to go back there, B. They need help."" I thought that was funny. So the 5 of us worked and got it together in one night! By the end Rob and B were out with a lantern, finishing the last of it, until 10 p.m. 
Teancom "helping" with the wrench.The kids have been super happy to have a swing set. And it's way nice to say, "Go outside and play on the swing set" and to have them answer, "Okay!" and then run outside to play. The first day, Teancom stayed out there for almost the whole day. He gets on the lawn swing and he'll prop his feet up on the seat across from him and sit that way for a long time. That day he had a bowl of cereal that he ate at a leisurely pace while he sat on the lawn swing. ...
Teancom on the lawn swing.
Otherwise, he'll get on a swing and ask me to push him. I have a low endurance for swinging my kids, unfortunately for Teancom. I'll push him for a while and then go do something else. Then, when the swing comes to a stop, he'll say, "I'm done." Then he'll take a few steps over to the other swing and demand to be pushed on THAT one. :) I try to tell him that it's the same thing, but he doesn't believe me.
Miciah hanging from the trapeze bar. The other day Miciah said, "Mom, was I meant for the circus?" I told her I didn't think she was, but I didn't know. She said she felt like she was, because of all the acrobatic stuff she could do on the swing set. Funny, I remember thinking that when I was her age.
Miciah hanging from the trapeze bar. The other day Miciah said, "Mom, was I meant for the circus?" I told her I didn't think she was, but I didn't know. She said she felt like she was, because of all the acrobatic stuff she could do on the swing set. Funny, I remember thinking that when I was her age.
And since the swing set is outside now, we moved the smaller slide thing downstairs. It required us to take away some toys from downstairs. We decided to rotate them through. Our toy room just isn't large enough to keep all their toys. ... It's funny. I suggested to Rob that we could just get rid of most of those toys. And even though he's always bugging me to get rid of more toys, he wasn't okay with getting rid of them on a large scale. They're still good toys, sure, but do they need so many? No. The rotation thing, though, sounds great. And they think having a slide inside is really cool.
Cleaning and Scrubbing
The whole swing set venture prompted a huge organizing and cleaning effort by me and Rob. On Saturday we cleaned out the garage, the back shed, the downstairs play room. Plus we did all the laundry and dishes. We did several small projects that have been on our list for months--mulch rings around our bush and tree, the pipe under the kitchen sink. It feels NICE to have these things done. I've gone through almost every corner of my house, throwing away or giving away things that aren't needed or useful, and then re-organizing the things that are left. It's amazing what we don't need but that we've kept around anyways. :) And Rob finally replaced the serpentine belt on our van. Though the guy that helped him do it said we should get a tune-up on the van as soon as possible. Figures.
And that's life here.
Rob and I have been working hard to make things run smoothly around here. His calling, though lovely, is time-consuming and stressful at times. It's interesting the process we're going through to make everything go right. We have different expectations and we're having to compromise. Someone compared it to marriage, and I think that analogy is dead on. You compromise and work together towards a common goal to keep each other happy. So we're working on that with his calling in particular. We've come a long way in just identifying what it is that's not working and coming up with a game plan to make it better. So far it's working nicely. So we'll hold our breath a little and pray it continues in that direction.
Miciah
Cleaning and Scrubbing
The whole swing set venture prompted a huge organizing and cleaning effort by me and Rob. On Saturday we cleaned out the garage, the back shed, the downstairs play room. Plus we did all the laundry and dishes. We did several small projects that have been on our list for months--mulch rings around our bush and tree, the pipe under the kitchen sink. It feels NICE to have these things done. I've gone through almost every corner of my house, throwing away or giving away things that aren't needed or useful, and then re-organizing the things that are left. It's amazing what we don't need but that we've kept around anyways. :) And Rob finally replaced the serpentine belt on our van. Though the guy that helped him do it said we should get a tune-up on the van as soon as possible. Figures.
And that's life here.
Rob and I have been working hard to make things run smoothly around here. His calling, though lovely, is time-consuming and stressful at times. It's interesting the process we're going through to make everything go right. We have different expectations and we're having to compromise. Someone compared it to marriage, and I think that analogy is dead on. You compromise and work together towards a common goal to keep each other happy. So we're working on that with his calling in particular. We've come a long way in just identifying what it is that's not working and coming up with a game plan to make it better. So far it's working nicely. So we'll hold our breath a little and pray it continues in that direction.
Miciah
This is from a reading time night in July. It was late-ish and Rob told Miciah that, even though she's a night owl, she wouldn't be able to have that much reading time because it was late. And she wrote us this note:
She has written us several other notes during reading time, which she takes on our bed (3 kids in 1 bedroom means we put our kids to bed in shifts, and using our bedroom, too). She isn't allowed to come out of the room once she's in there unless she has to go potty or get a drink. (She routinely breaks all bedtime rules or abuses all bedtime priveleges we give her.) One night there were 2 notes waiting for us.
The first:
On the front of the card: "To Mom and Dad"
On the inside of the card: "I went in the dinning room last nitte to get the pappr." Then in a box: "Sorry" signed "Miciah"
The second note:
On the front of the card: "You'r loved giis. Miciah"
On the inside of the card: "nuthing to say"
Miciah is bored out of her mind and SO ready for school to start. She'll have a friend over almost all day and then fall to pieces when the friend has to go home. I told her one day that she should take some quiet time to cool down. She replied, "I want to take quiet time with a friend!" :) She's lonely and ready to see her friends again. I remember feeling like that at the end of summer when I was a kid. ... I'm happy that C is coming to help her be happy for a week plus. It'll really be a blessing to our end of summer.
I got her a 1st Grade workbook to try to help her be less bored. I brought it home and for a moment I was the best mom ever! It's amazing to me how much she likes to learn. And she wants to do things perfectly and hates making mistakes.
I've been working on getting a lot of Miciah's artwork scanned in to the computer. I'll post some of the best stuff eventually.
Miciah recently lost her other front tooth! So she's now got the cutest smile ever. Here are 2 pictures of her with the tooth so loose it was almost gross. I remember when I was a kid, being able to gross out girls at school by turning my loose tooth in circles and pushing it so far and then making it stick that way. That's what Miciah's tooth was like.
I got her a 1st Grade workbook to try to help her be less bored. I brought it home and for a moment I was the best mom ever! It's amazing to me how much she likes to learn. And she wants to do things perfectly and hates making mistakes.
I've been working on getting a lot of Miciah's artwork scanned in to the computer. I'll post some of the best stuff eventually.
Miciah recently lost her other front tooth! So she's now got the cutest smile ever. Here are 2 pictures of her with the tooth so loose it was almost gross. I remember when I was a kid, being able to gross out girls at school by turning my loose tooth in circles and pushing it so far and then making it stick that way. That's what Miciah's tooth was like.
Miciah, unprompted, did that face. She called it her pirate face. Arrr!
And the side view.
The day after these pictures were taken, the tooth fell out. Thank goodness. It was driving me crazy!!
Elijah
Elijah is a good kid. He is still into clothes. I swear I wash all of his clothes in a week and a half. :) And he's funny about what he wears. He'll insist on wearing pajamas all day (and sometimes want to stay in the same pee-soaked pull-up, and that's just gross). Or just underwear and a T-shirt. Or it'll be blazing hot and he'll be in a sweatshirt. Don't ask why. There is no reason that I can tell. It does crack me up, though, cause people will think that I dressed him that way. And I'll say something like, "Yes. In 95 degree weather I thought he might be a little cold." :)
He is learning a lot of his letters and actually repeating them correctly to us. On the camp out, for instance, I put EZ cheese on their Ritz crackers. I spelled out their names, one letter per cracker. Elijah recognized all the letters of his name, which kind of surprised me. I think he knows more than he lets on. Same with counting. I KNOW he can count to at least 12 because I've heard him do it. But if you ask him to count to 10, it'll usually be something like, "1, 2, 3, 7, 5, 1, 10!" I don't get it. I am certain he is not stupid, though, so I don't worry much about it.
The other day Miciah asked how to spell Elijah's name. Before I could answer, Elijah said, "E-I-P-T." And that cracked me up.
Teancom
Teancom is still the world's happiest, easiest child. I count my blessings every day. He's a cuddle bug and needs a lot of down time, which is really really nice. He's not the off-the-wall 2-year-old that he should be, and I love the calmness. He listens when I speak, and that's just weird. He does what I ask him to, and that's even weirder. ... I should sing that song. You know, the one from Sound of Music: "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could. So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good." Probably not, though. God is just a very very very merciful God.
Teancom is a very sensitive soul. He still cries when Rob raises his voice, even if it's directed at the other children. He also cries at any ogre or giant in any movie. Even in Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus where the giant is funny. Or the ogre at the start of Enchanted: animated, kind of cute-ish. And he cries hysterically. Cute, cute sensitive child.
No taxation without representation!
We've been paid for 4 years through non-taxed means. We have forgotten what it feels like to have the government take your money before it's even in your hands. :) The first instance felt like a punch in the gut. But we're recovering. Slowly. And without much bitterness.
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