Movies!

David's cool new camera can do movies with sound! So here are some of the things we've been doing:

Random pics...

...from David's camera.

Carver turns 7!

I can't believe how the time has flown by. It seems like yesterday we moved to Bloomington and he was a cranky 6-week-old. No more! Every day he gets bigger, and I marvel as I see God working in his life. We are always praying that Carver will grow in wisdom and understanding as he grown in stature.

This year, we decided to have a party for him. We've never done this, and it seemed like it was probably time. So we invited all the boys from his Sunday School class, and while a few couldn't make it, we had a great turn out of 8 boys (and Ellie :). We started off with the slip-n-slide:

Sad Rose only got to watch from the inside:

After a few more water games, we moved to a cup-tower building contest in the shaded garage. Here's Carver with one of his best friends, Samuel:


And Dad and Ellie really knocked out the competition:

After that was cake and presents (sorry--no presents pictures. I had to deal with sick Laura inside and missed that part):



And Spiderman tattoos:

Then, on to racing toy cars down the slip-n-slide:

Ellie had a blast on the slip-n-slide:

To finish the afternoon up, David did a quick devotional with the boys.

The most amazing part? Yesterday was David's birthday! He spent the whole day in preparation for Carver's party, and then running the party almost entirely on his own, since I had Laura sick upstairs. What an amazing dad! David and I had his apple pie celebration after the kids were in bed. I think this every year at this time, but I'm so thankful for my two boys!

Oh, Sweet Rose...

Here is a tiny taste of Rose's handiwork this afternoon.

Yes, that is gray paint on the carpet in the shape of her sweet little hand. I've been redoing our master bathroom, and had left some paint in a cup uncovered (stupid!). I have been really diligent to shut the door, but apparently not this morning. While I was cleaning up the kitchen after lunch, the kids were playing. I knew that Rose had climbed up the stairs and that Carver had followed her up. 5 minutes later, I heard, "Mom, Rose has blue paint all over her!" I went upstairs to find gray/blue paint all over Rose, the bathroom, and the carpet in our room. I threw her in the tub and had a complete meltdown. All I had to do was shut the door earlier! Or take the paint to the garage! What was I thinking? After calming down a little bit, I was able to call a sweet friend up the road, and she came down, helped me clean up Rose, and then started in on the rest of the mess while I put all the kids down for naps. Then she and I worked together on the mess for 2 more hours. Thanks to her paint-getting-out skills the bathroom is completely clean. The carpet still has a little tint of gray, but I'm hoping after it dries you won't notice. I'm sure that in about 10 years I'll look back at this and laugh. In the meantime, I'll never leave paint out in the open again!

Week with Joy

Joy is here for the week! We've been having tons of fun so far: swim lessons, jogging, painting Carver's bed, and Sam's Club on Wednesday; swim lessons, blueberry picking, picnic, and Mother's Bear's yesterday; and early birthday presents, blueberry pie and pool today! Tomorrow Joy's on her own while David, Rose, and I are off to a wedding, but she looks like she's going to make it just fine :)

I only got pictures of the picnic after blueberry picking yesterday. Sadly, I don't even have a picture of our insane blueberry amount: 20 pounds of blueberries!! We froze some, have been eating a lot, and will be making a few desserts this weekend.










We'll see how much more we can cram into the next few days!