brimming over

The cutest smile

I adore this toothless grin.

I don't think either of the boys were missing both top teeth at the same time so I'm enjoying this sweet little smile as much as possible.  It melts my heart.

Darby had a party!

I had the pleasure of attending a birthday party for Darby, the chihuahua, this week.

"Please come to Darby birthday party.  Bring a present."

A sign points the way.

Darby's large group of friends were all in attendance...mostly her Webkinz buddies but a few others were allowed to join in.  Amy Grace dressed "fancy" for the occasion.

All the friends gathered in a circle with Darby in the middle.  An excited Darby was presented with her gifts!

Zip gives Darby her present of a lovely puzzle piece.

Darby loves Amy Grace's gift of an Animal Cracker card from Heifer International.

"I'm so excited about all my gifts," squeals Darby. "I just love having a birthday!"

The only slight sadness of the day was when Darby reminded us that her real birthday is "whatever day Amy Grace's Daddy can be home from work all day."  She did sweetly tell us that it was still wonderful to have a party, though.  :)

Christmas wonder

 
  

A little overboard?

We participated in a Living Gift Market at our church recently to raise money for Heifer International.  The LGM is a wonderful event with booths "selling" the different animals that Heifer provides to families and communities in need throughout the world.  Folks are encouraged to purchase animals or shares of animals in honor of loved ones as Christmas gifts. 

Our adult Sunday School class was selling pigs.  Parker's youth class was selling llamas.  Other available animals included bees, heifers, water buffalo, goats, chicks, and rabbits.  Each booth had information about how the animals are used for income and food as well as crafts, food samples, animals to pet, and more. 

If you ever have the opportunity to attend a Living Gift Market, be sure to go!  They're a blast!

One of the little food "gifts" was baggies of "droppings" (ick!).  Really it was just a candy assortment...tootsie rolls, chocolate chips, sugar babies, raisinettes, and whoppers.  Yum!!  Toward the end of the evening, one of the teenagers handing out the baggies came over to me and asked, "Miss Denise, can Amy Grace have this?"  After confirming it was just candy, I gave the okay.

And then the girl replied, "Well, she said she isn't allowed to have corn syrup so I thought I should check."

Whoops.

I guess my crusade to rid the house of high fructose corn syrup may have gone a bit too far.  Um, we do still eat candy. 

Frankly, I'm just impressed that Amy Grace realized that the candy probably had HFCS in it and thought to mention it.  But, really, there isn't any HFCS in candy, right? :)

Paper dolls

One of my favorite things about Amy Grace is how she can take an activity, book, or game, and expand it into something new and fun that will occupy her for hours.  :)

My sister-in-law, Caren, always picks out really fun gifts for the kids and she chose a great paper doll set for Amy Grace a while back.  Amy Grace has played with it a lot and tends to get it out for a few days and then put it away for a while.  Recently, she got it out and spread the dolls and clothes out everywhere to play and then told me she wanted markers to draw faces on the back side of the dolls (one side already has faces).

Next thing I knew, this was the scene at the kitchen table:

She was using the paper dolls as patterns to create her own set out of construction paper.

Hours of fun (and a big mess to clean up).  But she is so content just to work on it for the entire afternoon.

 
  

Countdown to Halloween

Because today is the first day of the beginning of Halloween week...
And because my children love Halloween...
And because Amy Grace has been dreaming up possible Halloween costumes (even to the point of drawing instructions for me to make them!) for at least a month...

I bring you a blast from the past:

Emily and Amy Grace on Halloween 2006.  Aren't they too cute?  Note that Amy Grace is wearing her dress backwards for some unknown reason. 

And while the picture above is the cuter one because they are both smiling and happy, I have to share this one so that you can get the full scope of Emily's "costume" created by Amy Grace, complete with wand:

Em, you're such a good sport!  Amy Grace would dearly love to dress up with you this week!  We miss you. 
  

Bubbles

Remember how much fun it was to take a bubble bath when you were a kid? 

Oh, the joy! 
  

Snaggletooth

After many weeks being just a tiny bit loose, one of Amy Grace's bottom teeth finally worked its way to being truly loose. 

One recent afternoon in the car, she asked me how the Tooth Fairy gets into the house.  And after a short discussion about how the TF might gain entry into the house, Amy Grace declared, "I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy, Mama."

Oh, geez.  I figured we had a long time before this happened.  After all, she hadn't even lost her first tooth yet!

So I asked, "Why not?"

Her reply:  "Because she's a fairy and fairies are not real."

Well, duh!  I guess all this time answering questions about whether elves, monsters, mermaids, and fairies are real or not has backfired!  Whoops.

I decided that although she was using very sound logic, I wanted to keep the magic alive.  So I posed the questions, "Well, who else would want your old teeth?  And who else would give you money for teeth anyway?"  Of course, she didn't have a good answer to those questions.

The tooth finally came out about a week later at our family reunion, on July 10th, while she was eating a piece of cinnamon toast. 

 

And after the Tooth Fairy gave her $5 that night, I'm pretty sure that the magic is still alive.  Or she's at least forgotten her unbelief for the time being.

Moving on up

Our homeschool group held a Kindergarten Graduation on May 9th.  Amy Grace did have fun even though she looks rather unnerved by the whole thing.

 

 

 

Curse of the strays

I don't know what it is about us but somehow we seem to attract stray dogs. 

Well, I know that part of it is that we're one of the only families in our neighborhood that spends any time outdoors at all.  That means we're the only ones who actually notice that there's an odd dog coming around.

I think another possibility is that we live near the border of our county, which does have leash laws, and the neighboring county, which has no leash laws at all.

In the last few months, we have probably called Animal Control to our house to pick up a dog no fewer than 6 times.

One repeat offender is a large black lab who is rather aggressive.  He loves to run around our yard, marking all our shrubs, rolling in the flower beds, and generally harassing us.  He's a real nuisance.  We call to have him picked up and a few days or weeks later, he's back again.  He somehow manages to escape his electric fence over and over.  I'm pretty sure he's immune to the shock collar he's wearing. 

Poor guy.  I feel bad for him.  He's hot and miserable.  But I don't feel bad enough to let him hang out terrorizing us.

And then there was this little gal.

 

She hung around the neighborhood for more than a week.

At first she had a collar but it had no identification on it.  After a bit, the collar was gone, lost in the woods we think.

She was so sweet and precious.  She loved to be petted and the children adored her.  But she wouldn't come when you called to her and wouldn't stay put for even a short time without a leash. 

She spent days and days roaming the woods behind our house.  And running up and down along the treeline, howling. 

Howling at dusk.  Howling at 10 p.m.  And worst of all, howling at dawn.  Argh!  We started calling her "Rooster".

Finally one day she came back up to the house and right up onto the deck where Amy Grace and I were reading a book.  So we got the collar and leash and I called Animal Control.

In the meantime, we gave her food and water.  And Amy Grace went from calling her "the Beagle" to giving her names. 

Sarah.

 

Sparkle.

 

The kids all begged for us to keep her.  And she was such a sweet pup.  But without a fenced backyard, there was no way we could keep a wandering beagle.

By the time they came to pick her up, Amy Grace was a puddle of tears and misery.  "But Sparkle needs me, Mama!  I won't ever see her again!"

Geez, talk about ripping my heart out.  Sweet pup, we hope and pray your real owners got you back and you are happy at home now.