the beach: my favorite field trip

the thought of september immediately conjures up images of backpacks, notebook paper, and pencils. (i would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if i knew your name and address...) we have begun our school year here at home as well, and i will most definitely be sharing more about that later. (later as in next week or as in next year... we'll see!) thanks to the lingering warm temperatures that are a trademark of living in the south, we still have the beach on our mind in september! we finished our school week last week with a great field trip to the surf and the sand. because it's been a few months since our last visit there, this was amelia's first time ever to walk on the beach! she was more perplexed by walking in the sand that i thought she'd be, and i enjoyed watching her take each deliberate step.


my favorite pictures from this day are these of all three of my babies. i think these are the first i have of all of them together at the beach. amelia is getting way too old too fast.


look at amelia in this next one. she has a lollipop for the first time (i think), and she knows she has arrived. i love how she is looking at ethan to say, "i got one too!"


she seriously giggled the whole time she gripped that lollipop stick...


ethan found a comfy spot to watch the storm brewing on the horizon.


after the kids finished their lollipops, they discovered that the sticks made great writing tools! i was tickled at ethan, who tried his best to get close to the sand without really getting close to the sand.


the beach spreads for miles and miles, and these cousins chose to draw on spaces less than 3 inches away from each other.


aaaaaand i'm not surprised....


in no time, the three cousins were happily frolicking in the water. we spent lots of time in the waves this day... the kids brought their boogie boards and had a ball!


when the thunder grew louder and the skies darker, we decided it was time to head home. we had no sooner gotten the van packed, the kids showered, and everybody loaded up when the rain came.


it has not rained a single day in september, and it would come down on the day we decide to go to the beach! but the looming clouds were a welcome relief from the sun, and we enjoyed our not-so-sweltering day. the temperatures are beginning to signal that it is sort-of-kind-of fall, but i'm hoping we can get back out there before we break out the pumpkins and candy corn!

the summer that got away from us...

this week, i've read several blog posts about the arrival of fall. they have fall wreaths, fall candles, and even fall crafts for their kiddos. well. they have something we do not yet have. fall weather. so... in honor of our 80+ degree temperatures, i'm gonna write about our summer. october may be quickly approaching, but august's humidity is right outside my door. and i cannot let the summers' events get away from the tenlittletoes chronicles!!!

our summer was full of days at home, being silly and playing at the top of our lungs...




sometimes friends joined in the fun!



we kept up five in a row for most of the summer, and the kids had a ball with the projects. i keep saying i will blog about each of the books we've done, but that's not looking very promising at this point, is it!? some of my favorite pictures from our five in a row books:

playing harmonica in the bathtub and tasting lemons (lentil)



running their own beachside diner (night of the moonjellies)


and this summer saw several firsts for us too.

i took my first trip without the kids! it was a quick college girls' weekend, and it was wonderful. some of us usually bring our kids, and some of us just can't make it every year... but this year everyone was there, and no one brought their kids! we stayed up way too late chatting, ate way too much dessert, and did not change one single diaper between the 8 of us. we celebrated babies on the way, swapped silly kid stories, and hit each other up for free professional advice (speech, medical, education). we cried, we laughed, we reminisced about anything and everything from our college days 10 years ago. i love these girls, and it is always a blessing to pick up right where we left off.



brian had a great weekend with the kids while i was gone, so i was told. when they all came to pick me up at the airport (as i was holding back tears from missing them!), brian looked no worse for the wear. he'd done a fabulous job holding down the fort. no major injuries, only a slight mishap with the ant farm, and the kids even ate their broccoli. at some point during our exchange of weekend stories, though, brian conceded with my favorite statement of 2010: "now i know why you need naps all the time!" amen.

ethan's first dentist appointment was not quite as exciting as my weekend away, but it was definitely a milestone not to be missed. it was really one small step for ethan, one giant leap for our family. we have been delinquent dental patients since saying "i do"... no particular reason other than um, we hate going to the dentist. so we put it off for a little while, and then it just got easier and easier to put off. till ethan's pediatrician tells us that we should take ethan with us the next time we go to the dentist. i nodded and said "mmmkay!" that was at ethan's 4 year well-check visit in 2009. so when his 5 year check-up was comin' round the corner in july, i knew i needed to have his appointment made! i was a good girl and made appointments for me and brian as well... but ethan's "happy visit" was first. this was a no-pressure visit to see how he'd do. if he was at ease and was willing, the hygienist would go ahead with a cleaning. if he was unsettled by the whole shabang, no big deal. well. that boy just hopped right up in the chair and did everything he was supposed to do. i think i was more nervous about it than he was!


as you can see, he was loving kathy, our awesome hygienist. she was so great to let him touch all her tools and feel the suction of the sucker-tool. he was thrilled beyond words to get to pick his flavor of toothpaste (mint! they had mint! he has no idea mint is the default flavor.), and the cool glasses he was given to wear were just the icing on the cake. (sorry, i guess i shouldn't use sugary analogies when talking about the dentist!!) he came away with a "no cavities" report and was happy as a lark.


this was pretty much a "happy visit" for me too. i must say that i was not quite so anxious about my appointment the next week after having met kathy. she did not let me feel the sucker tool or let me choose my toothpaste flavor, but i was a big girl. and i even made my 6 month appointment to go back.

the next event is not really a first as much as a finally! (and a key player in my lack of blogging in august!) we finally got around to painting the rest of our kitchen cabinets!!! remember when we started these way back when?? seriously, it was 2007. life with little ones just does not leave much time in the evenings to fix up your house. end of story. after filling our evenings with dinner and baths and legos and dress-up and stories, wow. you just want to get yourself some oreos and an ice cold glass of milk (brian), prop your feet up, and waste 2 hours on facebook (me). but we got a wild hair and thought, "hey! let's make our cabinets all actually match!" so we took a couple of weeks in august and got all the insides painted. and as we painted, i'm almost sure i saw a family of pigs fly by my kitchen window. here's the cabinets with the blue-gray primer on them. apparently, this primer helps the color of the paint stick better?!?!!?? it also makes three coats of white paint a necessity. i am still not sure why we used it...


all my pretty glasses and dishes survived several weeks on our kitchen table. i just about went crazy with nowhere to eat... the kids had to sit waaaay too close to one another through all of this.


and here are the white shelves i've been waiting for!!


we're all pretty happy about them.


and now we just need to get the doors finished (as in... start them). one of these days. :)

the end of august was our 6th anniversary.the day started off with beautiful flowers and a surprise present from my sweet husband: a cafe frappe' maker i really really wanted but had only mentioned one time. wow, i was excited!! brian snapped some (silly) pictures of me opening it, and those would have been perfect to include in this post.... had i not deleted them off our memory card. :( yes, we tried recovery software. there were 500+ deleted pictures that could've been recovered (including ones from last thanksgiving)... but the ones i really needed were nowhere to be found. yes, my IT-genius brother-in-law took it for a spin. no such luck. so i'm trying to get over it. just know i was excited about my cafe frappe maker, and the flowers i took lots of pictures of were just beautiful. our anniversary was off to a great start.

the actual day of our anniversary was filled with ethan's soccer game and plumbing problems, so we did not end up with a date night as we'd hoped. the plumbing problem turned out to be a major problem that only got worse over the next couple of weeks. we knew we eventually needed new sewer lines out to the road, but we did not realize that needed to happen sooner rather than later. the combination of repeatedly backed up toilets, contemplation of finances for the new sewer line, and recent family events was plenty of stress for one week. (and the kick-off of our church's wednesday night program and our homeschool co-op... just to throw a couple more things in there.) so really, it's not all that surprising that pictures got deleted off my camera the following week. i'm sure some brain cells got deleted as well!

so while i don't have any picture from our anniversary, here's the ending of our plumbing issues, which reared their ugly head on our anniversary. for better or for worse, for flowers or for plungers... right!? one guy... yes one guy...dug a trench for 70 feet of piping from our house to the street. he worked all day by himself. the same guy came the night of our anniversary. i told him he was nice, and he did great work... but that i never ever wanted to see him again. check out those roots. they really like eating through cast iron pipe.


and we'll end this post with brian's birthday... 'cause who wants to end on an expensive plumbing note!? we celebrated brian's special day with cookie cake, which is no surprise to anyone who knows him. here are the cousins helping with the candles...


i surprised brian with david barton's american heritage series dvd set, which our church is doing on wednesday nights. i miss it because i'm busy with the kids' program then, but brian has just raved and raved about it. i found the dvd set for an amazing deal over labor day weekend, and i could not wait to give it to brian for his birthday!! he was so excited about them... and even more thrilled that i got them on sale! here's our very tired family celebrating brian's birthday.


ok, so this post doesn't really seem very "summery", i know. i already wrote about our love of the pool this year, and we took a break from the beach for most of the official summer (intense heat+crowds=we'll come back in september, thank you very much.). i am happy to announce that our 3 month beach hiatus is coming to a screeching halt tomorrow!!! we are looking forward to a beautiful day at the beach... a smidge cooler and hopefully not many fellow beach-goers! i think we can squeeze in a few more beach days before fall officially takes over. but fall can come...now that i've caught you up on our summer. :)

what a week!

last week was a long one for our family. shocking. surreal. sobering. that was the vocabulary of last week around here. our priorities were most definitely realigned, and all the material things in this world did not seem nearly as important as the precious, precious people that we call family.

last week was a roller-coaster of emotions... one minute we'd be pulling out the kleenex, knee-deep in the reality of the day... and the next, we were laughing and enjoying the fellowship of brothers and sisters by our side. i can't tell you how many times i said, "wow, it feels so good to laugh." God shouted His goodness and His blessings loud and clear to us last week. the phone calls, the help (the help!!!), the love, the prayers, the support. we are humbled beyond words at the way that our friends, church family, and people we hardly know have rallied around us during this challenging time. we have been encouraged. thank you.


i love this picture of brian, his brother, and their mom and dad. it's a great picture of all of them, but the reason i really love it is because this was taken last thursday, and they are all smiling. these folks experienced what was possibly the worst week of their lives, and look at them. they are smiling. and this is why...

God has promised that He will never leave us or forsake us. my mental itunes library has been shuffling through several songs over this past week that focus on that central promise of the Bible. He will never leave us. nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. i have believed those verses to be true, but now i know them. "blessed be your name" has been the theme song in my head, coupled with my one of my mother-in-law's favorite hymns, "o rejoice in the lord". i love the first line: God never moves without purpose or plan. that needs to go on a pillow, don't you think!? the other song that has tended to refrain in my brain is chris tomlin's version of "all the way my savior leads me". take time to listen to it if you don't know it already... i can't listen to it without a kleenex.


we can truly feel God carrying us close to His heart. and there's nowhere else i'd rather be. His goodness and mercy have followed us... to Him be the glory.