Oh what do you do in the Summertime?

Hard to believe it, but our last Summer before Charlotte starts school is coming to a close.  They begin school this year on August 7th!  In just 2 weeks! *Gasp*  So how have we been occupying ourselves since we've been home from PA?

We went to "dress like a cow" day at Chick-Fil-A.  Yes, I helped the kids make these awesome costumes so that we could get free kid's meals. They loved it. 

On a more serious note, Rob's Grandma Anderson passed away and we attended her funeral in Atlanta.  I know we hardly look broken up about it in these pictures  She was very elderly and not in good health.  Her husband passed away nearly a year ago, and she was really very ready to go.  She will be very missed, but we are glad she is at peace. The occasion was a day to spend with family and remember her fondly, and I think she would have been pleased with our smiles.

Grandma was buried in the National Cemetery in GA along with Grandpa Anderson.  It is a beautiful place, and we attended the burial... however, we learned rather late that we could not go to the graveside until the burial was completed due to "safety concerns." We spent the 90 minutes (in the 100 degree heat) waiting under a pavilion and taking family photos and visiting.  It wasn't in the plan, but it all worked out.

Rob's Mom and Dad with 6 of their 11 (soon to be 12) grandchildren.

Jakey has been growing like a little weed!  Here he is eating pasta for dinner and bits of banana for dessert.  He is a tender-hearted boy, but does he ever have a temper! I need to try to get video of one of his tantrums that he now throws when things do not immediately go his way.  He's gonna have to get over that pretty quick.  ;) 

 I got Rob these resistance bands for Father's Day this year and Toby thinks they are the coolest toy ever.  Aside from wearing them as an accessory, he has connected them and stretched them the entire length of the house, and used them to slingshot himself in the living room.  We decided we'd better put them away up high before he injures himself.  Toby also will be starting Joy School this Fall. 5 other moms and myself will take turns teaching our 6 preschoolers 2 mornings a week.  I think the little man is going to LOVE it!

I'm a loser, baby

So, I wasn't going to blog this but I've been, ummm, enjoying some local notoriety lately (by enjoying I mean being completely horrified by) and I've decided that maybe if I put it all out there then people will stop asking me about it.  

See, here's what happened... Just after Easter my friend Kristin started a Biggest Loser competition. I was way excited.  I had just canceled my gym membership and I was looking for something to keep me motivated in trying to lose the baby weight and this sounded like it fit the bill perfectly.  We started with 25 women.  We each paid $20 and then $1/week at each of 12 weekly weigh-ins.  There were some minimal penalties to be paid if you gained weight, or stayed the same, or missed a weigh-in.  And, long story short, I won!  Normally, I would shrug and say, "oh it's not a big deal."  But not this time my friend.  This time I worked HARD.  You might even say I worked my butt off. (And other body parts as well.) 

Before & After photos

For those who want to know the details: I lost 28 lbs, 1.5 inches off each arm, 3.5 inches off each leg,  4.5 inches off my waist and 3.5 inches off my hips.  I reached a healthy weight for the first time in my adult life!  (And now I am just trying to stay here.)  I am genuinely proud of myself- which is kinda bizarre and kinda awesome.  And I know they always say this- but honestly, if I can do it, anybody can.  If you want to host your own Biggest Loser- you can get all the info here.

Sweet Home Pennsylvania

Last night we got home from nearly 3 weeks in PA visiting with my family. (Rob came up to join us for the last few days and help with the drive home.) Maybe you're wondering what we did during that time?  Here is a small sampling...

We hiked in flip flops. (My specialty.)

Charlotte took this pic- not bad!

We spent time with animals.

A certain horse named Simon even tried to kiss my baby bear.

Jennifer recognized a kindred spirit in Charlotte.  In her words- 'when we find one that seems to have the sickness, we like to encourage it.'

Even my serious little man took a ride on Simon.  

Look out Cowboy Woody!

Kaufman Kousins- most of them.

We went to gymnastics.

Charlotte got brave on the balance beam. (And yeah that's Jake buzzing by on the trampoline in the background.)

My sisters and I finally finished going through my mom's photos.

I really like this one of her from the 1960s.

We learned not to take a water gun from the baby.

(Jake took his first steps while we were in PA as well.)

We ate things that turned our tongues blue.

We celebrated!

We bounced!

(Ben and Toby may have had a wrestle-mania moment here.)

We drove things with motors!

And more things with motors!

We spent time just hanging out.

And helped build paths with 150+ lb. rocks.  

(Well, some of us did.)

We used fireworks to have tank battles and destroy toy soldiers.

Occasionally we slept.

But not very much.

  

Mostly, we made some new memories.

Thanks for the good time, y'all!

a child's prayer

Toby offered the following prayer at bedtime tonight:

"Heavenly Father,

Thankful for this day. Thankful for our chairs, and our pillows, and blankets, and the doors, and for the walls not falling down.  Maybe someday they'll fall down... but not today. * Please bless mommy for preparing it. ** Thankful for our family. Please we have a new baby BOY sister in our family. ***

In the name of Jesus Christ- Oh I forgot- thankful for our tables, and chairs, and blankets, and all, all, aaaaallll our toys. [silence] Please bless mommy for preparing it.****

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."



*I think this is fallout from a nightmare he had 2 nights ago.
** This is a common refrain at dinner, and Toby has adopted it at bedtime as well.
*** Charlotte has been praying for a baby sister for about a month now, I guess Toby has decided another girl in the house would not benefit him.  Also, no, I am not currently expecting a baby.
**** Now he's just procrastinating bedtime.

Happy Mudder's Day!

(In case you haven't seen my facebook profile, I thought I'd blog about the Marine Mud Challenge that I did on Saturday.  Besides, I want to remember some of these details, so this is also for me personally.)  

First let me say that I had no intention of doing this.  A week ago a friend of mine posted on Facebook that someone had dropped out of her team, and she needed a new member.  On an impulse, I signed up.  The team was called "RMFAO" which stood for: Running My Fat BUM Off.  Since I have been trying to get to a healthier weight, this sounded like a good workout for me.  :)  And, well, it was.

The course is 5 miles long.  We started out running up a mud bank where a very nice Marine then shot us with a fire hose.  Then we had to run through some muck, up this mud bank, slide down the other side under the cargo net, and crawl out through the tunnel.  5 minutes in, and I was wet, muddy, and scraped up.  Fun!

The course had a lot of challenging obstacles... especially for a girl like me who has no upper body strength. I managed to do them ALL, except this one.  With some team assistance, I got my bum up onto the lower bar, but I was too scared to go up over the top bar and then drop down.  That bottom bar is about 8 feet high.  (I had to jump up to grab it.) I went over much higher things, but they all offered a little more to hold onto.  I was shaking like a leaf on this one, and it was the only time on the whole course where I was freaked out.

This was the first of many walls to climb over.  I had never climber over a wall before in my life and I was so proud of myself for getting up there!  Little did I know there were like 4 more walls to climb on the course.  Nathan and Eve were spotting me on my drop down, but I still managed to scrape up my knee on the wall and land on my bum in a pile of pine cones.  Also, a teenager from our church was racing just behind us and broke his leg coming over this wall.  He's having surgery on it today.

This was the taller of two sets of "stairways."  No problemo.

This was the beastliest thing, that I actually accomplished.  The tire wall was very high (15 feet?) and you climbed it like a cargo net.  That was tricky enough, but then you had to go over the top- and my legs weren't long enough to be holding onto anything as I scooted over the top, so I held onto that chain for dear life.  Then you had to climb down the other side.  

Running down the sand cliff. 

Wading through the "big pit" there were I think 5 of these logs that you had to climb over... funny that I don't remember exactly, but I was just very focused on whatever was directly in front of me. 

I'm in the foreground here getting ready to climb over yet another wall out of the last mud pit.  Eve is behind me.  The Marines were yelling at us to belly crawl through this mud... it was so thick and deep, it was hard to lift your feet out of it.

Go team!!  

I'm so glad I did this.  It was HARD, but it's great to feel like I can do hard things.  Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.  ;)

When i got home I was welcomed by 3 beautiful roses from my 3 beautiful babies.  Thank you sweet Rob for encouraging me and supporting me in all my dorky plans! 

After a long, hot shower we headed out with a picnic dinner to Lady Antebellum Amphitheater to hear the Symphony Orchestra of Augusta.  The kiddos danced and played to the classical tunes.

It's a lovely venue.

And I am a lucky momma. 

Best. Mother's Day. Ever.

boys and girls

These kids crack me up.  

Here Charlotte and Toby are modelling some pajama pants that I made them.  Charlotte's have pink and white stars and Toby's have pirate ships.  This dynamic duo can be unstoppable when they work together, but when they fight with each other, watch out!  I love seeing their relationship evolve as their individual personalities become more and more pronounced.

Toby is ever the engineer.  

We have these foam letters to play with in the tub.  Toby uses them to build interesting, and always symmetrical, towers and shapes on the tub wall.  Some of them have been very elaborate.  He will take anything he can find and use it as a building block.  I love seeing his ideas take shape.  Right now he is fixated on college.  He talks about going there every day.

Charlotte is the imagineer.

In this instance polar and lady bug were set up on a dinner date in her bedroom.  Charlotte comes up with elaborate play-acting scenarios with her brothers and her stuffed animals and can be very entertaining.  She also recently told us that when she grows up she wants to live in Paris and be a cook.  Guess we should start saving now for French culinary school?

 Even dress-up is like two sides of a coin around here.

Toby suits up in his Spiderman costume (over his swimsuit,) accessorized with a sword, shield, and a belt tied around his head.

Charlotte dresses as a princess and accessorizes with everything girly she can find.

I love their differences.  And I love that they find ways to play together while still being themselves.  I hope their special relationship continues throughout their lives.  :)

A Jakey update

Jacob is 8 1/2 months old now!!  If I haven't blogged in a while, it may be because this baby boy is keeping me quite busy. He is a speedy crawler, and a mischief maker.  He can also pull up to standing and is cruising around the coffee table everyday building up those muscles to take off running. 

Jacob is now self-feeding with little puffs, soft fruits and veggies (like bananas and peas,) and drinking from a bottle or sippy cup.  He is all about meal time and gets very cranky if you don't feed him fast enough or the spoonfuls are perceived as too skimpy.  

I like how his pinkie finger is raised in this picture- such good table manners.  ;)

One of his very favorite things right now is a tasty door stopper.  As soon as he hits the floor in the morning he makes a beeline to the nearest door stopper and either flicks it around to make a noise, or rips it off the wall and sticks it in his mouth.  I have a pile of them sitting on my nightstand right now.

He also has a taste for paperback fiction.  I've had the pleasure of fishing many book pages out of his slobbery jaws this week.  This is one subject that Rob and I disagree somewhat on- Rob thinks we should relocate things for the time being (I know this is traditional baby-proofing philosophy and would protect our books better.)  I prefer to leave things where they are (our every possession can't be out of children's reach) and work with Jake on a case by case basis... "no, no," take it away, relocate the baby, repeat.  We're doing a little bit of both.  

Jakey is still my cuddly Little Bear.  

He is such a happy boy.

I am so thankful for his sweet spirit in our family.