Pretty cloud pictures

Here are some interesting shots I got a couple of nights ago:

And here is a bonus shot by a guest photographer, my seven year old son Josiah. He took this photo with my digital camera without permission one morning. It's lovely even if you can see his Tonka truck in the grass. ;)

Bedtime

Grace loves bedtime stories, of course, and also loves "reading" to her baby Emily (sometimes as a stalling tactic when it's bedtime).


Last night she fell asleep with a book...again...

Most of time these last few weeks, Grace has been sleeping on a pallet beside my side of the bed. Because really, why sleep in a comfortable bed in your own room when you can sleep on the floor?

Oh, yeah...I remember now...because she doesn't mind sleeping on the floor...See?

This is her pallet beside our bed, where she ends up most nights now.

Confession time...Actually, she gets this honest! I often slept as closely as I could to my mom when I was little, sleeping beside her bed and even sleeping on the kitchen floor sometimes while she was still awake watching TV in the den. I eventually slept with my pillow just inside my doorway for a while before I figured out that my bed was a fine place to sleep. I just hope Grace outgrows it faster than I did!! :)

I also walked in my sleep (Robert does this, too) and talked in my sleep (all three of the kids do this. Come to think of it, I still do sometimes...poor Jason). It's a wonder we get any sleep around here. ;)

So, did you--or do your children--do any of these kinds of things when they should be sleeping peacefully in their own beds?

Overheard: The Long and Long-Overdue Edition

I’ll start off this long-overdue edition with an old conversation from August:

Jason [watching pre-season football on TV]: Grace, I don’t like Jon Kitna as quarterback. He gets rid of the ball too early and he doesn’t spend enough time in the pocket.

Grace [leaning in, confused, with a bewildered tone of voice]: Are you the same person?

This was Grace’s first experience with the foreign language of football. Jason does this to me, too--I (usually) politely play along and agree with whatever he says, although sometimes I'll get a little sassy with him...as though I know anything about football. ;)

~~~~~

Me: You are so sweet, Grace!

Grace [hugging me]: Yes, I am. I am sweeter than you.

Me [laughing]: You’re sweeter than me?

Grace: [seriously]: Yes. And you are sweeter than me, Mommy. [Hugs me again]

~~~~~

During a trip to Zaxby’s, there was a toddler screaming his head off in regular intervals…Grace looked at me, sighed, and voiced her typical matter-of-fact comment:

Grace: Dat baby's gonna get lots of spankin's.

Can't you just see her shaking her head while saying that?

~~~~~

Josiah ate pineapple upside down cake recently and loved it. He didn’t remember eating it before, and declared it the best cake in the world. Jason related this conversation…

Jason: Grandad’s mother made pineapple upside down cake, and lots of people said it was the best pineapple upside down cake they’d ever eaten.

Josiah [with genuine astonishment and total wonder at this thought]: Wow…my head would explode.

~~~~~

One night while leaving a baseball game…

Josiah: Are there people with two heads?

Jason: No.

Josiah: Some girl I was talking to said that there were. I didn’t think there were. It sounds like evolution.

~~~~~

After some of her lunch dropped on the floor, Grace hopped down from her chair to pick it up and pop it into her mouth.

Me: Grace, you shouldn’t eat off the floor. It’s not that clean.

Grace: But it’d only been there five minutes.

Me: You mean five seconds?

Grace [slight hesitation]: Yeeeess.

Me: Do you even know what “five seconds” means?

Grace [counting a little slowly]: One, two, three, four, five!

So, yes, she has seen the complete demonstration of the “five-second rule” by her brothers.

~~~~~

Me [urging Robert to hurry up and get to bed]: Hurry, Robert! Faster!

Josiah: Boy, I bet Robert’s glad he’s not one of Pharaoh’s slaves!

His Bible lessons have been on Moses. That, along with Grace’s continued fascination with the “Prince of Egypt” movie and children‘s book, means that all of those details remain fresh in his mind.

~~~~~

Jason [shushing Grace]: Shhh! You’ll wake up the brownies!

He meant to say, “You’ll wake up Josiah” but apparently brownies were on his mind…So I made brownies that night.




And, may I add, I think it's definitely a turning point in our marriage that Jason wouldn't even wonder why I was standing on a chair in our kitchen to take a picture of brownies...or, at least, he wouldn't say anything out loud about it...

~~~~~

Grace [looking down at her feet as she walks to the car to go to church on Sunday morning: Mommy, I have the most beautiful-est shoes in da whole wide world!”

~~~~~

Grace: If I was in jail, and my mouth was closed, I’d still be Grace.

Me: Why would you be in jail?

Grace: ‘Cause a bad guy put us there.

She went on to discuss various other jail scenarios; one was similar to the story of Daniel in the lions’ den. All were more than a bit odd.

~~~~~

Grace: Before I was born, God decided to create a girl named Grace, so He made me! And God decided to create a mommy named Amy, and He made you!

~~~~~

Grace: Mommy, does this make me look like a boy?

She had just put on a Georgia basketball outfit that both boys had worn when they were toddlers…not a bit of pink or purple on it. But, even so, I doubt she would ever be mistaken for a boy. Especially since, as she asked this question, she tilted her head with her bouncy curls in a decidedly girly way.

~~~~~

Josiah [excited and a little annoyed]: Stop it, Grace! I’m trying to get on the blog!

Robert [from the next room, in a tattle-tale kind of voice]: Mom, Josiah’s just trying to get on the blog.

This is what he came up with…after I stopped him from wrapping a rubber band around his nose and ear…

The Lord's Prayer

After I posted the last video of Grace, I remembered that the Pledge of Allegiance was not what she first memorized...it was the Lord's Prayer. So I had to record that, too...

Enjoy! She gets a little, um, excited and emphatic at the end. ;)

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
Matthew 6:9-13 (NIV)

Grace learned the Lord's Prayer the same way she learned the pledge--simply hearing me repeat it every night during her bedtime routine. I'm taking my friend Christi's advice and teaching her Psalm 23 now. Maybe she will spend more time repeating that rather than singing "Yankee Doodle" about a hundred times each day--that's something else she has recently learned.

You Capture: The Feeling of Fall

Ahhh...The feeling of fall. That is the theme of this week's You Capture blog carnival hosted by Beth over at I Should Be Folding Laundry . I love fall--we just don't typically get a very long fall around here. Oh, sure--we get the look of fall; we just don't get often get the cooler fall temperatures. (It was around 80 degrees today.)

But we do get the beautiful windy days where the clouds can't seem to make up their minds on what they are going to do in the sky...

The leaves starting to change colors

and then falling to the ground...

The rain...

Lots of rain...

The evenings spent at the ballpark...

Robert running across home plate.

Robert got the game ball after getting an awesome hit!

That's Josiah in blue.

Going home from the ballpark in the dark...

The ragweed... (UGH)

This is in a neighbor's uncut yard. I can last about 5 minutes outside in our back yard. Nice, huh?

And I have to include a photo of my fall wreath on the front door. I just love it! :) The maple leaves remind me of the big maple tree I climbed in my front yard when I was little.

Check out I Should Be Folding Laundry for more You Capture participants.

This week’s winner

Kathleen is the winner of the 18” x 24” poster print from my recent giveaway!

Congratulations, Kathleen! I can’t wait to see what you have printed from your Israel trip!

Um...Invisible?

Did you enjoy Grace's last video? If you haven't seen it, click here and see it now. Go ahead--I'll wait for you right here. :)

I recorded this next video immediately after she did her Mayor of Whoville impression. She still had the Mayor on her mind, and began with "So..." She quickly remembered what she was supposed to say, though, and began reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. She gets the majority of the words correct, with the most noteable exceptions of "plublic" (republic) and "invisible" (indivisible). Cute!!

And, no, I did not coach her to say "The Pledge of Allegiance" first before she began reciting it. She's simply a natural. ;)

Grace learned the pledge because I recited it while brushing her teeth each night for a few weeks. It's a (fairly) good way to keep her still enough long enough, and she learns lots of things very quickly, very painlessly, as a bonus!