Why our neighbors don't like us

Some of you might not know that Gabriel has been asking for a drum set for the past two years (that would be half his life) even going so far as to tell me one day, "If you would only get me a drum set I will never ask for anything else." If I believed that this was really true then we might just get him that elusive drum set, but unfortunately I don't think the never asking for anything else would last very long. All that to say when I saw the idea for a "banging wall" in this book I knew it was something that our kids would get a lot of use out of. We've been collecting our "instruments" for a while - scouring the thrift stores for suitable items and today Nae got the whole thing built. We are very pleased with how it turned out, and despite what you might think it's not really that loud and in fact we can barely hear the banging when inside which I don't think we could say of a drum set...

I also had to post a couple of cute Alena pictures that we've taken this week. I would like to report that she has finally decided it might be a good idea to walk after all and while she hasn't just taken off, she has begun taking a few steps at a time. I've tried to get a good video but haven't succeeded yet. I'll keep trying, though.

A camping we will go...

So, this is where we spent our weekend: and we actually had a good time. Gabe had been talking about camping for a while and because we hadn't been since he was about 18 months old and I was pregnant with Mya, we decided that Memorial Day weekend would be a good time to try it out. We picked Percy Priest Lake as our camping destination because (1) it's only 15 minutes from our house and if I decided to bale out home was very close and (2) it's on the lake and although our particular campsite wasn't on the shore, sand and water were only a short drive away. I should also mention that the tent was very waterproof as it rained our first night and even if I thought we were going to be carried away like Noah in the ark, not one drop of water got inside.

Alena probably had the least amount of fun on our little trip. I kept telling her that if she'd pick her little self up and walk life would be much easier, but she insisted on crawling and this is how she looked at the end of the FIRST day.

You can imagine what she looked like at the end of day 3. Alena, actually did better than I thought she would especially since we were all sleeping in a very small space, but no naps and no place to play eventually caught up with her.

Mya and Gabe had a wonderful time and Gabe told me, "I like camping so much I wish we could stay 80 days!" They played the entire time - never once telling us they didn't have anything to do - with their favorite activity being making "recipes" which are concoctions of water, dirt, bugs, grass, etc mixed together. They made these for hours.

When Alena wasn't on the ground getting absolutely filthy, she had this viewpoint.

We spent a good portion of every day at the lake enjoying sand, sun and water. Gabe kept saying, "I think the tide is coming in." but we assured him it was just the waves from the many boats that were going by.
One afternoon Mya made friends with a little Hispanic girl and they were so cute to watch since neither one could understand the other, but they played so well together. Mya cried when we had to leave because, "I want the girl in the pink shirt to go home with me."
We don't usually let Alena have her pacifier out of the bed, but it did help with the sand eating for about the first fifteen minutes then she decided that the sand/water tasted better.

This is just so Gabe.

We actually had the campsite reserved for three nights, but we chickened out and decided yesterday evening to quit while everyone was having fun and come home early. I'm so glad we did so that today we are all recovering, doing laundry, etc. I don't know when a shower and clean bed have felt as good as they did last night, but our first camping experience as 5 was good and I think we'll do it again when I forget about how much work this weekend was...

Metamorphosis

Five or six weeks ago a friend from church gave us 10 tadpoles. The kids were very excited about this and I just prayed they wouldn't all die the first week. The little things proved quite hardy, however and were very fun to watch. We fed them frozen lettuce and at first had them in a large Glad container. As they grew, however, we moved them into a dishpan and added some large rocks so they could get up out of the water as they began to grow legs. You've never heard the noise like we had at our house one Sunday morning when we woke up to discover those little tadpoles had legs! Two of the tadpoles made it all the way to frogs and the rest were somewhere in between with two not having any legs, and just one died and it actually was a fully metamorphed (if that's a word) frog as well. After we had real frogs I began to fear waking up one morning with frogs all over our counter; I certainly didn't want any hopping out. Also, I had read that once they loose their tails they need some type of meat (bugs) to eat or they will begin to eat each other. We certainly didn't want to witness that so we took them to our local green way today and let them go in the creek.

Here's what they looked like at first. Here's one with two legs.

And here is a little frog. From the picture you really can't get a perspective of how tiny these things are - it's not even as big as the tip of my finger. What is really amazing is how any of these little things survive in the wild - God is certainly a wonderful creator . I couldn't believe that they knew to get up on the rocks once they had their legs and lost their tail other wise they would have drowned.

Here's Mya releasing a tadpole.

Gabriel doing the same. They insisted on catching them in the little net and releasing them one at a time.

Goodbye little tadpoles - you provided us with something to look forward to every morning, but I won't miss cleaning out your nasty water!

Birthday Celebration (part 1)

I've divided all the pictures up into two separate posts just because I know everyone wants to see lots of pictures from Alena's big day. I promise after this to not have anymore birthday pictures for a while. Also, a big thanks to Carrie who took most of these pictures throughout the day.

Mya helped me make the cupcakes that morning . She told Uncle Nee, "We put the cupcakes in the oven and when they came out they had bees on them." (She was napping when Mom and I did all the decorating.) Believe it or not, this was in the afternoon before she had her cake; her Daddy decided she needed a Kit-Kat before all the festivities began. He, of course, had to do all the cleaning up from this little incident.

In addition to my family that was visiting, Pa thu, Ma thu, Nee, Teng, and Savannah came over. Here is the "kids table."

I love this picture of cute little Savannah or "Nana" as we all call her.

Daddy and the birthday girl (after he had cleaned her up and changed her clothes.)

Carrie and RuthAnne.

Birthday Celebration (part 2)

Alena's all ready for the cupcakes!Singing, "Happy Birthday" with Noi singing via the telephone. I had to hold her hand to keep her from touching the candle.

I really thought she'd be all into eating the cupcake after the already mentioned Kit-Kat incident and she is usually a messy eater. She wasn't crazy about the cake, though and mostly just ate the icing which made clean up a lot easier.

This is about the only shot of Alena opening presents by herself. She had several willing helpers (ie Gabe and Mya) who were much more excited about everything than she was.
After all the celebrating was over, everyone was ready for a good book and off to bed. Good thing birthdays only come around once a year - I don't think we could stand any more excitement.

Happy Birthday Alena!

Today our little Alena Noi turned 1. None of us can imagine the past year without our little firecracker. She makes us laugh one minute and chase her the next. She stands her own with Gabe and Mya and has no problem letting us know what she wants. We love to hear her declare, "All done!" and "ank ooo" and are just waiting for her to take that first step. What a wonderful blessing you have been to our family, Alena. Happy, happy birthday!
More birthday celebration pictures tomorrow...

Family Visits

We've been having a lot of fun this week with Grandmama, Aunt Carrie and Cousins RuthAnne and Will. Here are a few pictures of our week thus far.

Whatever we were doing in this picture, it must have been really boring - look at Mya's face. The boys enjoying each other.
A picture of Mya taking a picture.
Love this of Will with a cute little smile.
This is apparently how they eat mashed potatoes in VA. It was actually more affective than you might think.
Alena does NOT like sharing her Daddy - even with Cousin Will.

First taste of sand

So the blog has been kind of short of pictures of Alena lately. Not sure why that is - I guess she's been napping during picture time. Anyway, I made sure to take the camera today when we were outside. A few weeks ago, Alena hated even having her feet in the sand or grass but she has really warmed up to the idea and today had a great time exploring the sand. She did ingest a small amount, of course, but quickly learned that it didn't taste that great and instead started to throw it. Enjoy the pictures.

The construction site

Our street dead-ends into a large dirt area were for over a year they have been blasting, moving rocks, and hauling away dump truck loads of dirt. I believe eventually they will be building houses in this area but until then my children call this "The construction site." There used to be a lot of heavy equipment to look at but now it's huge mountains of dirt and rock. One night this week Nae was gone and so we hiked over to the construction site in an effort to wear everyone out before bedtime.

We first found this poor little guy - which looked kind of like a fossil it was so preserved and dried up. I'm not sure what these yellow "strings" are that Gabe and Mya love to collect. I have a feeling they are something used for the blasting because they're partially buried in the ground. I'm assuming it's nothing dangerous since they just leave them up there for children to randomly pull up and then cart back to the house.

Gabe took this picture of me and Alena. Even though Alena looks like she's being choked she really isn't and she enjoys riding this way.
As an aside, this morning Gabe said something I didn't think I'd ever hear from his little mouth. He got up around 7 which is a miracle in and of itself and comes into my room stretching and yawning. He then says, "I'm still tired. I think I'll go back to bed." I was sure that I didn't hear him right but sure enough he goes running back to his room...and stays there approximately 2 minutes before feeling very well rested and becoming his normal, active self.

This is what happens when...

"you think the frisbee is going to hit the ground but instead it hits you in the eye." This was not a good start to our church picnic yesterday, but today it makes for a really ferocious looking superhero.

My-My says she's a superhero too.
Alena is an egg roll eating superhero.

A giggily video

Mya and Alena had me cracking up tonight playing this little game. Mya was stacking up these cups, calling it an ice cream cone and Alena would then knock them over with much laughing in between. I couldn't really get Alena's face in the video but she was up on her knees and she was so excited to knock the cups over she would just rock back and forth with her little hands open so anxious, but she wouldn't knock them over until Mya said to. Also, Mya is calling Alena, "Baby" which I haven't noticed her doing before, and towards the end Alena is saying, "Na, na, na!" That would be, "No, no, no!" Which she hears quite a lot of over the course of a day.

Cold treats

My kids have been really wanting popsicles lately. I think it's because there are several ice cream trucks that come through our neighborhood many times a day and hearing the ice cream truck music reminds them of what else - ice cream and popsicles. So, instead of paying for one popsicle what we could buy a whole box for, I pulled some out of the freezer that I believe we'd gotten earlier this year when the stomach flu hit. They had a great time eating them even though I don't think much ended up in their mouths; at least they were outside. I don't know if you can see , but in the first picture, Mya's hand is covered in red sticky syrup. Enjoy the pictures.