A Picturesque Life

A quick FYI. This has been a post in progress for weeks now. If I said we did something today, today means the day I wrote it! I’m not going to edit it all, cause I’m lazy like that. And the fact that I’m posting at all is nothing short of a miracle. Just thought you might like to know…

**********************************************************************************************

Today was fun. My mother, sister, nephews, and my crew visited a pumpkin patch/corn maze. We walked circles in the maze (we were quite navigationally challenged), took a hayride, picked pumpkins, picnicked, rode tire horses, and admired the pigs, chickens, goats, rabbits, and ducks. Grand fun.

After several hours, the adults in our party were quite worn out. We took the littles to a play area, and let the biggies chose their activity as long as it was in our site. Some played on the playground, some went to the kindergarten maze (had no dead ends), and Shiloh, my animal loving girl, lovingly stroked the pony for ages.

While Shiloh was petting the much adored pony, she saw a little girl wearing a shirt just like hers (it happened to have a herd of horses running across the front of it…go figure.) There was also another lady standing nearby at the time. In a shirt that must have shrunk in the washing machine…cause it didn’t cover her middle.

Shiloh, my never meets a stranger personality (well, one of them), says to the little girl, “Hey! We are wearing the same shirt.”

The scantily clothed lady, wasn’t paying much attention and thought Shiloh was saying that to her. She looked down at her shirt, looked and Shiloh and very intelligently says, “Huh?”

Shiloh, horrified that someone might think she would wear something that (in her own words later) awful, quickly informs the confused lady, “Oh, I was talking to her. We have matching shirts. I would never wear a shirt that didn’t cover my belly.”

I love my kid!

***********************************************************************

Shiloh, as brilliant as she is, cannot spell. It drives my home schooled, spelling bee champion husband slightly insane. Landon, however, managed to get the spelling gene. And he loves rules. Phonics rules just make sense to him.

Well, Landon has been chosen to be one of the stinky, smelly, dirty, filthy shepherds in our children’s Christmas program this year. At the top of his papers with his lines and song he’s featured in, it says, quite plainly Shepherd.

He comes to me today, and asks me why his teacher spelled “shepherd”, “sheferd”. I didn’t know what on earth he was talking about until I realized that he was focusing on the “ph” in shepherd and thinking it should make an “f” sound.

Silly boy.

(Stop the presses! Good news! Shiloh, the non-speller has actually made it into the school spelling bee!! Wowie! I’m in complete and utter shock! )

***********************************************************************

Also, Landon is learning his books of the Old Testament right now. It’s easy for him to remember the book Joshua because that’s his dad’s name. He’s having a difficult time remembering the book Judges, for some reason. We recently did a pretty in depth family Bible study on this book, but I digress. He can’t remember Judges. My daughter told him that she helped remember it by making a sentence out of the books around Judges. Joshua judges Ruth.

Later he was practicing his books of the Bible, while cleaning up the kitchen after lunch. He says, “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers (I think I’ll like this book best Mom), Deuteronomy, Joshua…uh….”

Shiloh pipes in, “Remember…what does Joshua do?”

“He beats me up!” Landon yells enthusiastically.

Hehe. Yup. He’s goofy.

***********************************************************************

Oh, and look what my baby can do! Yay, in a bittersweet way!

It’s happening too fast!!

************************************************************************

One thing Kaylie was disappointed to find out was that we did not celebrate Halloween. She wasn’t excited at all about our church’s Fall Festival that we attend instead. In fact, she claimed to not want to go.

The day of the festival, we pull up in my church’s parking lot. The area had six enormous inflatable obstacle courses, slides, climbing contraptions…whatever! It was kid heaven.

Which Kaylie confirmed in her awed voice, as she saw the set-up, “It’s, it’s….paradise!!”

And really, it was pretty close. We had a great time!

**************************************************************************************

Speaking of Fall Festival and inflatable thingies. Here’s Landon showing off his climbing skills.

He was the only kid who could make it to the top of this ladder. He tells everyone he’s Monkey Boy!!

One day, after school, my children had gone ahead of me to load up in the van to go home. I was lingering behind to finish a conversation with a co-worker when another teacher walked in the building.

“I hope you have good insurance on Monkey Boy out there,” she said.

“Oh, no,” says I, knowing full well the trouble said Monkey Boy can get into. “What is he doing?”

“Hanging by his knees from the Magnolia tree, making monkey sounds. When I told him he better be careful he said, ‘I can’t get hurt. I’m Monkey Boy!!’”

My life is never dull.

****************************************************************************************

Not only is he Monkey Boy, but Landon is incredibly strong. He took the garbage out for me tonight and when he came in, he had some big time bragging to do.

“Mom! My little finger is so strong! You can’t believe this, but I slammed the door with my little finger!! Can’t you believe that??”

A regular He-man, he is. And he really does say “can’t you believe it?” all the time. It’s too cute.

**********************************************************************************

We often call her Bekah-billy goat. She has the cutest little billy goat laugh…everyone comments on it!

Well, here she is…and what do you know…with a billy goat!

***************************************************************************

And…just because I like these pictures, and I’m sure I haven’t shared enough already…here are a few more!

Enjoy!