Climbing Trees

The temporary lodging we are staying in is a little older and there are many mature trees surrounding the units.  Our house here and our house in Colorado were both in newer subdivisions and had no mature trees.  When we moved in and stayed in these TLFs Matthew found a rope swing on one of the big trees and was eager to find it again, and try his hand at climbing a few of the big trees.

We eventually found the swing tree (or so we think), but the swing was gone.  Just a frayed rope hanging from one of the branches.  Matthew wanted to climb this tree right away.  I have so much to teach him about climbing trees.  1.  Find an appropriate tree to climb.  This one was not a good climbing tree.

July 2013

Here is Matthew at that same tree two years ago when we moved to Illinois.

Matthew then tried this youngish tree.  A better choice than the last one cause the branches were lower.  But too small!  He still wanted to try it for a while.  So eager.

We found an interesting tree next.  Pretty good for climbing.

John and Grant wanted to climb too but were a little afraid.

 Matthew got up pretty high in this tree

 Anna gave it a try too

 She wasn't feeling quite as adventurous as Matthew

This was my favorite tree.  A large tree growing kind of sideways.  It looked like it had been partially blown over by a storm once, but just kept on growing.  It was very sturdy and a great climbing tree.  Matthew, Anna and Grant all gave it a try.

I was lamenting that I never see kids climbing trees anymore (possibly because I have lived in neighborhoods with no big trees) and wondering if someone would come get us in trouble for such an innocuous thing as tree climbing, when Grant fell part way off the large branch he was on and scraped his forehead on the bark.  He wanted to go home after that.

We will miss you big climbing trees!

Goodbye Eckert's

We love Eckert's Farm in Belleville (not too far from our house).  My favorite was the peaches.  Hopefully they have a good peach crop this year (last year they didn't because of a late freeze or something) but we won't be here for peach season.  Pick Your Own Strawberries came into season just in time for us to pick some - a week before we leave.  Scott was already gone and it was raining but I decided we could still try for one last Eckert's trip.  Here are some pictures of our adventures.  Grant shows us his empty basket while Anna feeds John berries.  It was raining a little, so it wasn't very crowded.  Most people there came prepared with rain boots and rain coats.  We didn't have any of that, just an umbrella.  We got a little wet.

 Making our way down the muddy rows

 Emma and I stayed driest

 There were lots of strawberries to be had...

 ...if you didn't mind a little rain.

Everyone is grimacing a little in these pictures.

Raindrops in the faces

We tried to pick only as many berries as we could eat in a week.  No jam this time.  Insufficient canning supplies in the TLF.  Goodbye Eckert's and Illinois strawberries.  I happen to know there are plenty of strawberries in California.  :)

Out of the House

The time has come for us to move!  Scott is starting his new job - he is at his first day at the new job as I type this!!  And the kids and I are finishing up the last week of school.  We decided it would work out best if we moved out of our house two weeks before school ended (for various other reasons).  So last week was our move out week.  The movers came on Monday (day one of the move) and started packing. Here are Grant and I by some of the boxes.  Walls of boxes!!  

On that first day we moved into temporary lodging (the TLF) because too much of the house was going to be packed.  Here are the kids with some activity books in our TLF room.  There is less to entertain them at the TLF.

 Day two - more packing of boxes

And kids eat free day at Chevy's

We eat out more while we are displaced

So many boxes

Day three is truck loading day.

Aww, goodbye house!  While we were loading up a couple drove by to check out the house.  Presumably to see if they want to move in after we leave.  Scott and I agree, it's the best house on base (or one of them).  Largest, newest house, best floor plan, best of the on base housing developments, nice location right by the bus stop. 

Day four was cleaning day.  We paid to have the house cleaned rather than clean it ourselves.  This meant Scott could leave and start work sooner, we could check out of the house sooner (saving us money there) and save some sanity.  Totally worth it.  And because someone else was cleaning, day four was also when Scott left to drive west to start the new job.  Here he is just before heading out.   He drove to Nebraska, then Utah, then California.

And day five was check out day.  I went and did the walk around and check out.  The cleaners did a tremendous job and the check out ladies kept raving about how great our house looked and how amazing  it was that we had five children yet it was still so clean.  Hooray!

 And now we are just counting down the days.  Five more days of school!!

There are playgrounds near the TLF and I drive the kids to other ones a lot just for something to do.

Here are John and Emma in the swing.

John and Emma have been the hardest to manage in the TLF.  John won't stay in bed.  He normally sleeps in a crib.

And Emma just wants to be held all the time.  I don't have any of her baby gear.  I thought I could get along without it for a few weeks, but its been a little rough.  Especially since Scott left and I have no one else to hold her.  Matthew and Anna have both stepped up and helped me hold her a lot.  But there has been a lot of this (see picture) going on.  Poor Emma!

My friend let me borrow her bumbo seat.  I never had one of these, but Emma likes it a lot. Somewhere for her to sit at least other than her car seat.  I miss our house.  I miss the bus stop too since I now have to go pick up and drop off the kids at school.  But its only a week.  Well, now its only four more days.  Almost there!

Emma's First Solid Food

Emma just turned six months old and she's ready for solid foods.  She's been eyeing our big people food for some time now, enviously.  All the kids came over to watch her and help her eat her first solid foods.

Anna really wanted to feed her.  Emma thought it was weird and spit out most of what we fed her.  Pretty standard. 

 She kept trying though.

Hooray Emma!  It's just rice cereal for now, but other things soon enough.

I've got a video too that I'll add here sometime.

School Life

School is rapidly wrapping itself up here.  We have one more week of school!  Here are some pictures from a few recent school activities.  Anna's first grade class learned about eggs and egg laying animals in the month of April.  Anna would always come home and report new information she had learned.  They also took care of some eggs in their classroom for the month.  The culmination of it all was when the eggs hatched at the end of the month.  Parents were invited to come into the classroom and see the hatched or hatching eggs on that day.  Here is Anna with one of the chicks (yellow-ish still in the incubator).  They later named this one "Sunshine."

Here is Anna's teacher letting the kids hold the chicks.  This was after school and we had Matthew with us, so he got to hold the chicks too.

 I even got a chance to hold one (while Anna's teacher held Emma).  It was very exciting.

On that same day (earlier) I got to see Anna take her gym running test.  The gym class had been working on running all month and the test at the end of the month was to have the kids run for 8 minutes non-stop.  If they had to stop they got credit for all the minutes they ran up to that, but that was it.  They couldn't start running again.  The parents were all invited and a few other parents were there with me.  Here's a blurry Anna running by.  They ran laps around in their gym for the test.

I was very proud of Anna because, at about 3 or 4 minutes in, she tripped, fell all the way to the ground and her shoe fell off.  I thought she might be disqualified, or stop because she was sad about falling, but she quickly scrambled to get her shoe on and got up and started running again.  Crying and running.  The teacher didn't disqualify her since it was an accidental fall - she didn't stop on purpose.  We all tried to cheer her on and she kept running, crying a little less with each lap.  She made it to the end of the test and even ran an extra two minutes.  Their grade level was allowed to try for 10 minutes, the time for the next grade level up, although they would have still passed if they finished only 8 minutes.  So Anna ran for 10 minutes non-stop!  I don't think I did that until I was in high school and ran on the cross country team.  So I was impressed.  Especially since she fell down and had to get back up.  About 2/3 of her class passed the test.  Way to go Anna!!  She was very happy at the end and not at all sad about falling anymore.

Later in the week I went to see Matthew's running test.  His test was for 10 minutes.  His entire class ran for the whole 12 minutes they were allowed to try for - passing the test for the next grade level up.  So that was very cool.  Here is a blurry Matthew running by in orange.

The school had STEM night (STEM = Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) a couple weeks ago.  They had a reading night and a math night earlier in the year, so now its science time! Grant found duplo blocks.  One of his favorite things.  We have a big bin at home and he plays with them all the time.  

Anna with her teacher walking over eggs.  This was to show how strong eggs are.  They also stacked books on top of four eggs and other things to show strong eggs.

 Making pretzel and marshmallow structures.

 Then eating them

We also played with dominoes a lot

There were a ton of different activities including an egg drop competition (optional participation).  Matthew had to leave in the middle to go to scouts.  But we had a great time!  Go science!

STEM night inspired us to make lab coats/doctor coats from Scott's old shirts.  These shirts were part of the PCS purge of 2015.  I guess we won't call it PCS anymore (Permanent Change of Station or military speak for moving to a new base/assignment) since Scott is no longer on active duty.  But this is a permanent change of station for us, and Scott will report to a new base out there for the reserves, so why not.

A lab coat looks good on her.

And this sort of has to do with school.  Anna has gone to a couple friend birthday parties recently. Here she is at a build a bear party for her friend.  Anna is very sad about leaving her school and neighborhood friends when we move.

 She really loves her build-a-bear

One more week of school.  I'm counting down.

Sisters

I read a statistic recently that said people who have at least one sister are happier (all other things being equal) than those who have no sisters.  We love brothers too, of course, but sisters provide a different kind of emotional support.  For lack of a better way to say it, sisters are just special.

Anna is, and always has been, a tough cookie.  But I'm glad she has a sister now to navigate the world (her brothers already had a sister, but Anna didn't until Emma was born).  Here are Anna and Emma together.   When I was little my dearest wish was always to have a sister.  And when I was about eight years old, I finally got one.  Thanks Ruth for being awesome and making my life better just by being you.

Me and my sister, Ruth, and two of our little ones.  These "little ones" both just turned four years old.

 And here's a bonus family photo from circa 1986

This was before my brother Dave was born so he is noticeably absent.

Tallest to shortest: Matt, Emily, John, Will and Baby Ruth