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.

you know you're a floridian if...

totally stole this off a friend's facebook page (hence, all the capitalizing)... but i had to share it. it cracked me up. if you're from florida, you will know what i mean.

You Know You're a Floridian if...

* You never use an umbrella because the rain will be over in five minutes.

* You think a six-foot alligator is actually pretty average.

* Every other house in your neighborhood had blue roofs in 2004-2005.

* “Down South” means Key West.

* You know that anything under a Category 3 just isn't worth waking up for.

* You know the four seasons really are: Hurricane season, love bug season, tourist season and summer.

* Your winter coat is made of denim.

* You can tell the difference between fire ant bites and mosquito bites.

* Anything under 70 degrees is chilly.

* You've driven through Yeehaw Junction.

* You know that no other grocery store can compare to Publix.

* You recognize Miami-Dade as 'Northern Cuba'.

* You dread love bug season.

* You've worn shorts and used the A/C on Christmas and New Years.

* You are on a first name basis with the Hurricane list. They aren't Hurricane Charley or Hurricane Frances. You know them as Andrew, Charley , Frances , Ivan, Jeanne & Wilma...Irene...Cheryl...Rita Mary... Alison.

* You know what a snowbird is and when they'll leave.

* Flip-flops are everyday wear. Shoes are for business meetings and church, but you HAVE worn flip flops to church before.

* You have a drawer full of bathing suits, and one sweatshirt.

* You get annoyed at the tourists who feed seagulls.

* A mountain is any hill 100 feet above sea level.

* You've hosted a hurricane party.

* You can pronounce Okeechobee, Kissimmee , Withlacoochee , Thonotosassa and Micanopy.

* You understand why it's better to have a friend with a boat, than have a boat yourself.

* You were 25 when you first met someone who couldn't swim.

* A good parking place has nothing to do with distance from the store, but everything to do with shade.

have a great weekend! looking forward to another floridian (translate: sweltering) soccer game tomorrow!

just keep swimming... just keep swimming!

before the summer gets too far away from us, i have to share ethan's swimming breakthrough! a month or so ago, i bought the kids their own lifejacket floaties, called puddle jumpers. cousin karina and all her cousins on the other side of her family had them, and i'd seen the kids use them all summer, swimming away... meanwhile, my kids were in their humongo floats way too far above the surface of the water. not exactly encouraging swimming! it finally hit me that ethan and caroline would benefit from the same floaties! i was so happy to find them easily at target, and the next day, we joined the crew for a day of swimming! couldn't this picture be an advertisement for puddle jumpers?!

the swimming epidemic all started with karina learning to swim (in no time) from her momma. look at this little fishy go after just a couple of lessons! to say that i was one proud aunt would be quite the understatement.


well. ethan was not going to be showed up by his younger cousin. his exact words were, "a three year old?! swimming?! so with just a little prodding by aunt kristie and mommy, ethan was swimming with his face underwater. success #1!


he was on a roll, so why not jump off the diving board!? success #2!


and before i knew it, my boy was swimming to and from aunt kristie with no help! success #3!


this day was a busy one in the pool! ethan has loved swimming with his friends and cousin!


i am so happy to say that ethan is completely comfortable in the water and with his face underwater... so pretty much these days, this is all i see of ethan in the pool...


unless he's asking me to watch him go to the bottom (of the shallow end) to get a dive stick or to jump off the side doing some silly trick. he is loving it. and i'm loving that he's loving it.


after we took the pictures on the diving board, we told the kids they could jump in one at a time. so here they go! it started off with two year old ishen, who shows no fear...


annnnd caroline causes the traffic jam.


she has no desire to go underwater, though she is getting more comfortable jumping off the side of the pool in her puddle jumper. she will do it a couple of times per visit to the pool, but then she's content to swim around in her floaties and play on the steps. a few weeks ago, she jumped into the pool and went all the way to the bottom (shallow end) before coming back up. her eyes were HUGE when she came up, but she was excited that she touched the bottom! so that is major, major progress. she'll be swimming next summer. i'm not too worried about it right now. caroline also spends half of our pool time snacking...


i'm hoping to get amelia used to going underwater at a young age... here she is with aunt kristie for her first time "swimming"... after i snapped this picture, kristie took amelia underwater and let her go for just a second.


amelia really didn't mind it too much but felt the effect of keeping her mouth open underwater! she'll figure it out!


we've gone to mrs. nancy's pool with kristie and karina at least once a week for the last couple of months so that the kids can stay comfortable in the water. we also met tammy and her kids there one afternoon after naps. natalie has become quite the swimmer too, and joseph is getting there! i snapped this picture of the kids playing and then laughed so hard at joseph... you can hardly see ethan and natalie because they are making faces at each other underwater, and there is joseph in his floaties plus the baby float. :) he thought he was pretty funny.


on this day, sweet claire (2 1/2) decided she'd stick her face in the water too. she continued to do this the entire rest of the time we were at the pool. she was SO proud of herself and is now doing great in the water!


it's been quite a summer for these little swimmers! and with the temperatures staying (very) warm around here for several more weeks, the kids are happy to have more time in the pool before fall arrives!

in the meantime...

hello august. i'm emily. nice to meet you. i'm stuck way back in july with all the posts i've been meaning to write and all the pictures i've been wanting to share. what's that you say, august? you're already half way over?! aw, maaaaan. i guess it's time to admit that things are not looking good on the catching-up-front. the overflowing laundry should've been my first sign. i am determined to catch up. i am determined to write individual posts about the last month of our life. i will not merge my girls' weekend, ethan's swimming success, his first dentist appointment, all the things amelia's doing at 18 months, ethan's first soccer games, our five in a row fun, how we're starting kindergarten this week, and how we finally got around to painting the rest of our kitchen all in one post. i just won't do it. but the next two weeks are bu-sy. till i can slow down for a minute, here's a couple of pictures to sort of tide you over..

caroline insisted on taking this picture when she and amelia were matching. amelia has really perfected the cheese... and she will not leave a barrette in her hair. no neglected child comments, please.


and here's my soccer man. i could just eat him- he is so cute out on that field. and if he ever has a game at midnight, we will not need lights thanks to his crazy bright uniform. it is truly blinding. and i'm thinking that ethan actually missed the ball in this picture, but his form looked so good i just tried to overlook the soccer ball on the ground that should actually be in the air. :)


i bet your august is flying by as quickly as mine. check back sorta-kinda soon for more. at least we can hope.