Happy Birthday Aragorn and Pippin

Happy Birthday Aragorn and Pippin!  Pippin turned 7... Aragorn turned ... older.  Pippin chose corn dogs to eat.  For his dinner out we took him to a local restaurant.  There he had... no kidding... a 1/2 pound hamburger with a large bun, a huge pile of french fries and 1/2 a bottle of ketchup.  No kidding.  The ketchup came in one of those old fashioned type bottles (not the new fangled squeeze bottles). He asked, "Is this like Ma and Pa Kettle's house?"

Happy Birthday Eleanor

 Happy 10th Birthday Eleanor!  (Now, I don't know how she got to be TEN!)

 Since there were funeral arrangements for the family to make at the funeral home today, Eleanor ended up with some of the cousins over for the afternoon.  Birthday parties are rare here.  Just not something I want to do every month of the year minus October and November!!  So this year she got the royal treatment with Pizzas and Cake and Cousins.  Cake was celebrated also with Grandma and some of the Aunts and Uncles as well :)

 They spent a good portion of the afternoon sledding and snowmobiling in the snow.

 The end of the day was in building a rocket...

 which actually turned out to be a ... something ... for measuring the weight that a popsicle bridge can hold.... or something.  (it is obvious that we've got 2 very different gene pools going on in this house?)

Other pics on the camera....

 Turkeys in the back yard.

 Marigold was walking around with this bit of board shooting... orcs... I suppose!

 I came home from somewhere-or-other last week to find the yard a-clutter with various animals... frozen animals... not edible frozen animals.  But I thought they were awfully cute.

 Ice cubes are.....

 cold.

 We did slightly celebrate Valentine's Day. Frodo made me a pumpkin bread heart.  Well, what he actually said was, "I made this heart for myself but then I thought of you." How sweet to be right up there with what one thinks of himself :)  We also had heart-shaped pasta with dinner and Aragorn brought home *the* most yummy, non-lenten pastries I've ever had.  Since he bought them at the PDQ bakery (that's our idea of romance) I thought it might be a good idea to fill up the car and get some more!!

It might be noted that we think that Bilbo has a strong resemblance to his grandpa when he was a boy. It will be interesting to see what grandpa's siblings say when they see him on Thursday.

Happy Birthday Frodo

 Happy 13th Birthday, Frodo!  That brings the count to 4 teenagers:  16, 15, 14, 13.  Frodo opted for Eggs Benedict for breakfast, Vintage Brewery for lunch and pizza for dinner.

 I have so few spots for taking pictures because we have so many windows (that wasn't a complaint, I love windows, just mentioning from a picture-taking perspective which is why we commonly have a lot of glare!) anyway, one of the few spots happens to be in front of the bathroom door.  Odd.

 Marigold's ultimate favorite book is The Three Little Kittens... it is now on the top list of least favorites for Galadriel & Eowyn who could recite it in their sleep.

I never would have thought that 400 planks were so few.  But what kind of castle only has 2 towers?  (And don't say "Two Towers"! ha..ha)

*** Please note any new funsies at Trinity Acres blog is the talent of Lady Modesty!  ***

Happy Birthday Bilbo

 We celebrated Bilbo's 5th Birthday.  Costco cake strikes again!  This begins  the next round of our birthday celebrations for every month (two in March, May and September, no one in October or November).  Next month I'll have 4 teenagers. In case you were wondering how *I* am doing! haha

We took him out to eat at Denny's over the weekend to enjoy a Hobbit Meal. It was our "lucky day" as kids eat free on Tuesdays and Saturdays.    That nifty cup he got to bring home.  And so you ask what is that thing on Biblo's thumb?  Sam was working on getting Bilbo to stop sucking his thumb and he came up with a brilliant idea to put an old bullet shell... perfect fit afterall.  I don't know why he keeps it there but he isn't sucking his thumb so that's all that matters.  You don't want to know what kinds of collections the boys have, obviously one collects "shells". I have heard that there is a collection of cream cheese boxes somewhere.  Really?  

One of these days I'll catch up on the birage of "what have we been doing?" pictures.

Happy Birthday 14th Eowyn

 Happy Birthday Oompus Loompus!  (AKA Eowyn)  She was so plump when she was a baby she looked just like an Oompa Loompa... in case you were wondering. Do you have odd names for your children?

 Our sweet potatoes are doing quite well.

 So far the largest one is 2 pounds. I know a 2 pound sweet potato. 

 A very large cabbage did well. It is probably the size of about 6 regular heads maybe?

Galadriel made a doll dress.  She did  a great job but I'm not a good seamstress tutor.  I think even "easy sewing" is a language all it's own. Is it me or do sewing instructions miss some key sentences, even paragraphs?!  And Lady Modesty... don't turn our dresses inside out, they aren't masterpieces inside like yours :D

FYI:  If you don't homeschool, I'd like you to know that you don't know what "noise level" means.  If you do... then you know what I mean without my saying any more :D

Happy Birthday Poppy

 Poppy celebrated her 3rd birthday.

 Pippin lost his first tooth.

 Ok, now we have never done the tooth fairy (mean mother award... first I can't afford it, second I don't need fairies visiting us in the night, I'm sure they'd be to blame for the messes that appear out of nowhere that nobody did).  But oddly Pippin put his tooth under his pillow and someone gave him a gold coin.  Where do kids come with these things?  Have we ever discussed the tooth fairy?  I'm sure after my kids read this they will come up with miles of stories about conversations about tooth fairies and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. 

 Sam taking an on-line hunter safety course.  Frodo still has yet to start his.  Then they will do a field day somewhere.

 So we were just nonchalantly driving into our driveway after Mass and lo and behold we had flamingos.

 I was never into plastic lawn ornaments, we tend to stick to metal, like 80 year old tractors, but times change sometimes. *chuckle* 

 When we were harvesting weeds we found a semi-decent sized pumpkin.  I mean it won't become the 1203 we had a couple years ago but it's a pumpkin anyway.

 I could just eat that baby up.

 It's been an awesome summer for swimming.

 Now, I got this swim chair for Aragorn and it was nice until the kids tore the arms off it and you simply can't balance on the thing (as I took a picture of 2 children perfectly well balanced on it).  I sat down to read some Anne of Green Gables and promptly flipped right over into the pool.  Don't they make swim floating chairs that don't pop?

 Weeds are pretty.

 Sometimes.  Poor St. Francis and St. Claire  are lost in the plethora of lambsquarters. I will admit the month of 90-100 temps was not conducive to my bothering with weeds.  St. Francis did desire a solitary life so I guess the weeds protected him from a plethora of children!  (good excuse?)

 Our cow finally had her calf. Unfortunately born breech so died but we have milk again... or will tomorrow after the yellow milk wears off. This was only 2 months worth of moola caps and doesn't include all the other brands that aren't collected at our homeschooling group.  I think it was about $200 a month just on milk and believe me, I knew where to find the cheapest whole milk and Kwik Trip loved us so much the price went down 60c a gallon in town hahaha

 I don't know but what will become of Frodo someday. 

Science experiments.