Chloe's wish list

Chloe told me this moring that she's added a few things to her christmas wish list:

an iphone
$1,000
a wallet (to hold her $1,000?)
and some make-up

She couldn't understand why i was laughing so hard at her request.

New hair!

Chloe got her hair cut this morning!

Before:

After:

i think it's darling... not so sure what chris will think!! :)

The Wedding

Last summer, Chloe fell in love with Heather's son, when they were visiting us. Chloe & Josh decided to get married & even began planning their wedding. Heather & i figured it would wear off, & they'd forget all about it by the following summer. Well... this summer, when Josh came to visit, they were even closer than before! The other day chloe drew this picuture:

This is her & Josh at their wedding. :)

My Crazy Kids

Thought you might enjoy the latest photo of my kids. :)

ber mam idoo Not wot too bo skool

The other day, Chloe wrote me a note informing me that she didn't want to do school that day. So, like the good teacher that i am, i showed her how to write it correctly. Then I had her trace what I wrote. Then copy it. Then I made her write it two more times, until she could do the proper spelling without looking.

Hey, if she's gonna be writing me notes about not wanting to do school, she's going to write them correctly! :)

I'm such a mean mom. >:)

Chloe's birthday

Soooo much to say! so little time.

We had people at our house every day last week. God's been doing a lot in our hearts over the last month. i'll try to write about it soon, but it will be a LONG post. For now, Chloe's birthday:

Chloe turned SEVEN on saturday. so fun!! After going back and forth all week, we finally just decided to do the jumper & hope for the best. It worked out perfectly, and there was no rain. Yay!! ...thank goodness, because we had 20 kids and about 10 adults. it was CRAZY! and would have been even more crazy if we had been inside.

I had planned on taking tons of photos, but it was so crazy that didn't even think about it. i'm glad a couple of my friends picked up my camera a few times. :) Here's a picture of the kids right before we had cake. There are a few missing, but i'm impressed we were able to get that many kids to be still at all. :) Chloe's the one in the orang shirt. And that's my Grandma in the background.

Hair day!

Last week, we all visited our hairstylist. What fun! Chris, & Evy got the usual; I got a new color (which is "the usual" for me.) Gideon wanted "spikey" hair, so she did her best for him; Zachy got a mohawk; and chloe wanted a new look, so she got her bangs cut. It's amazing how different she looks! It took me awhile to get used to it. :)


A funny story about Zachary: while we were at the salon, i was looking through magazines, and found some pictures of a handsome blond guy, who looked very much like zachary. So I showed him the picture and said, "Look, Zachary. This is what you're going to look like when you grow up." He looked at the picture, & said, with an appalled tone of voice, "no, mom! I'm going to be a dinosaur when I grow up!!"

Hat fun

Tut-tut, it looks like rain...

it never rains here, which is very unfortunate for Chloe, because she love to play with her umbrella. This day, she got all dressed up in her rain coat & umbrella, so she could go play in the sun. :)

"Isn't it fine?" Shouted Winnie-the Pooh down to you. "What do I look like?"

"You look like a Bear holding on to a balloon," you said.

"Not--" said Pooh anxiously, "--not like a small black cloud in a blue sky?"

"Not very much."

"Ah well, perhaps from up here it looks different. And, as I say, you never can tell with bees."

There was no wind to blow him nearer to the tree so there he stayed. He could see the honey, he could smell the honey, but he couldn't quite reach the honey.

After a little while he called down to you.

"Christopher Robin!" he said in a loud whisper.

"Hallo!"

"I think the bees suspect something!"

"What sort of thing?"

"I don't know. but something tells me that they're suspicious!"

"Perhaps they think that you're after their honey."

"It may be that. You never can tell with bees."

There was another little silence, and then he called down to you again.

"Christopher robin!"

"Yes?"

"Have you an umbrella in your house?"

"I think so."

"I wish you would bring it out here, and walk up and down with it, and look up at me every now and then, and say 'Tut-tut, it looks like rain.' I think, if you did that, it would help the deception which we are practising on these bees."

Well, you laughed to yourself, "silly old Ber!" but you didn't say it aloud because you were so fond of him, and you went home for your umbrella.

"oh, there you are!" called down Winnie-the-Pooh, as soon as you got back to the tree. "I was beginning to get anxious. I have discovered that the bees are definitely Suspicious."

"Shall I put my umbrella up?" you said.

"Yes, but wait a moment. We must be practical. The important bee to deceive is the Queen Bee. Can you see which is the Queen Bee from down there?"

"No"

"A pity. Well, now if you walk up and down with your umbrella, saying, 'Tut-tut, it looks like rain,' I shall do what I can by singing a little Cloud Song such as a cloud might sing...Go!"

So while you walked up and down and wondered if it would rain, Winnie-the-Pooh sang a song.

From "The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh"

by A.A. Milne

summer photos

well, i've finally gotten around to going through some photos from this summer. I took all of these at swim lessons one day.

chloe does the backstroke:

Chloe swims!

Gideon LOVED his new goggles! he said he liked to look underwater at all the pretty bathing suits. :)

Zachy goes under

Zachy loved making big splashes!

girls' room

i told you awhile back about the new bunk bed that chris put together for the girls. finally... here's a picture. :)

Back from the Summer abyss

well, my life is somewhat settling down. Heather left yesterday BOO-HOO!! We had a blast together. And last week was the final week of my photography class. I really learned a lot!

I'll try posting my portfolio tomorrow, but today, you can see my photos for the "Alphabet assignment." We were to take the 3rd letter of our last name ("N"), and think of 3 words to photograph that started with that letter. I'm only going to show you 2, because I did "naked" for the 3rd. It was completely innocent, but wouldn't be appropriate to share in a setting like this. anyway.. here are the others:

This is one of my favorites from the entire class. Incidentally, I think Chloe looks *JUST* like I did at that age, in this picture.

Naughty

Nutritious

something funny, the teacher thought my letter was "B", and that my photos were "bad, banana, and butt" :)

Chloe's Top 20

The kids are eating lunch, and Zachary just spilled his milk. Chloe and Gideon were discussing how beautiful the milk was when it splashed on the ground. ("It looks like crowns!") Chloe said that it was number ten of the most beautiful. --Made me wonder what else is on her list. Here is what she told me.

Chloe's 20 Most Beautiful things:

1. Rainbows
2. Shining stars
3. Family
4. Bracelets and necklaces
5. Colors
6. soft music, like lullabies
7. sparkley purses
8. sunsets
9. roses
10. splashes in spilled milk
11. waterfalls
12. beautiful ribbon
13. the world
14. beautiful plates
15. pretty costumes
16. beautiful pictures
17. shining metal
18. colored lights
19. strawberry crabs
20. evy's pajamas

Pretty Posy

Chloe had her ballet on Sunday. She was a Pretty Posy, not to be confused with the some of the other children who were Precious Petals and Petal Pixies.

body parts

awhile back, chloe asked me why boys and girls had different "wee-wees". I gave her some very basic answer about making babies, and she was satisfied with that. Out of curiosity, i asked some other mothers what they would have said. The answer i liked the best was, "so you can tell them apart." of course! how simple is that? Well, Chloe asked me again, a couple days ago, "mom, why do girls' wee-wees look different from boys'?" This time i used the simple answer: "So you can tell them apart." And chloe said, "but we always keep them covered so no one can see them." Sheesh. I guess it wasn't such a simple answer after all. So, I went back to my first answer, and told her that boys use their wee-wees to put something into the girls' so that she can make a baby. Chloe liked this answer better, and added, "but they don't get stuck together" (Remembering the butterflies, and how they took hours to mate) :)

That explains it!

Chloe is learning letter combinations in one of her reading workbooks. Her latest lesson is with "nd" as in, "wind". For her most recent lesson, they showed three pictures. The first was a picture of someone holding a blue ribbon (the word would be "win"), the second was of wind, and the third was of a window. Then they showed the written word, "wind" and asked her to circle the corresponding picture. Chloe circled the picture for "win." I asked her to read the word to me, and she read it correctly, so i showed her how she should have circled the picture of wind. On the next page, they showed the picture for win, and they asked her to circle the word. This time she circled the word, "wind." I was a little frustrated that she made a mistake with the same word right after I explained it, but I began to explain it again. I pointed to the picture and said, "Chloe, what is this a picture of?" and she said "Someone who winned (wind) something."

last night I was the tooth fairy

Chloe's a very odd child. Most children get excited about their loose teeth. They find joy in twisting and turning and torturing adults by showing us how they dangle by just a thread. Not chloe. She does get excited about her loose teeth, but she can't stand them being out of place. Once they become fairly loose, she can't stop complaining. "I can't eat. It might hurt." "It's sticking out too far." "it won't go back where it's supposed to." "When is it going to come out?" Last Thursday, she spent her entire lunch time crying, because she "couldn't" eat her peanut butter & jelly sandwich (no matter how much I told her she could chew on the side of her mouth.)

The first time Chloe lost a tooth, she cried, because it felt funny. What kind of child cries when they loose their first tooth?

Sunday, at 2:00 in the morning, while I was sound asleep, Chloe came into my room, telling me, "I lost my tooth! I lost my tooth!" I was so groggy that i thought she was saying she acutally *lost*it. It tooke me a few seconds to realize what she was saying. :) Hooray for chloe! i'm so glad it finally came out. and now she's got that adoreable smile, and that cute little lisp. :)

My tooth ith loothe! My tooth ith loothe!

I can't go to thcool, thath'th my excuthe.

I wath fine latht night when I went to bed,

But now it'th hanging by a thread.

My tooth ith looth! My tooth ith looth!

I'm telling you the honetht truth.

It maketh me want to jump and thout!

My tooth ith loothe!...Oopth! Now it'th out.

~George Ulrich

She told me all day, sunday, "mom, don't forget to be the Tooth Fairy tonight!"

Grace

Awhile back, chloe got in trouble for something, but i wasn't able to discipline her right away. So i told her that she would be disciplined when we got home. Once we got home, i was really busy with other things, and, to be honest, just didn't feel like going through the ordeal of disciplining. so i decided that this would be a perfect time to teach Chloe about grace. :)

I took her aside, and reminded her of what she had done, an that she should be getting in trouble for it. She was very sober, and i could tell that she was dreading the consequences of her actions. I said, "but today, you're not going to get in trouble for what you did. Today, I'm going to show you grace." And I continuted to explain what grace was. What a beautiful thing it was, to watch her eyes light up, and fill with joy and relief. She gave me a HUGE hug, and thanked me profusely for showing her grace. And then she left.

A short while later, she returned with a gift for me:

This is one of the most beautiful pictures i have ever seen, because it's a picture of grace. Me & chloe, smiling together, surrounded by her favorite colors.

i love what she wrote on the back, too. on the left, in pencil, it says, "Thank you mom for giving grace." And at the top, it says, "i love you. YES"

the birds and the bees...and the butterflies

four of our butterflies came out of their cocoons while we were away on vacation. Here's a photo of 2 of them.
well, the kids had their fist sex ed. class today. in our science book we learned about how butterflies mate. A few hours later, we got to witness it first-hand! Chloe is ecstatic! She can't wait for them to lay their eggs, so we can have more caterpillars, and then more butterflies. She's getting a little annoyed, though because they've been together for a good hour, now. She told me, "i think they're stuck." :)

Chloe

I took this picture of chloe the other day. I *love* how it turned out. :) so cute!