Happy Birthday Ruby and Eliza Claire

I can not believe Ruby and Eliza Claire are four!  Wow! 

Ruby loves life.  She is an all or nothing girl.  She is funny, opinionated, loud, silly, a bundle of energy, and sweet.  She is an act and ask questions later kind of girl.  If she is unhappy the whole world is going to know.  She will eat anything.  She is a light sleeper. Her favorite color is pink.  She likes dolls, dress-up, pretend play, princesses, and anything crafty.  She is Ruby!
 

Eliza Claire loves routine.  She is a cautious child.  If she had her way she would be an only child.  She needs her space and her time to herself.  She is a think of every outcome and then maybe act kind of girl.  She is sweet, loving, stubborn, demanding, silly, and funny.  She is a sound sleeper.  She will eat most things but not quite anything.  Her favorite color is blue.  She likes cars, legos, balls, and electronics. She is Eliza Claire!

It is funny, they are so different.  One is natured like Rehm, only more extreme and the other like Charlotte, only more extreme.  I can not imagine life without these two amazing girls.  They are the best!  I am so luck I get to be their Mom.

Happy Birthday girls!
Jenn

PS Pictures from their actual birthday will be up next week.  I'm too tired tonight to upload them.

A Lovely Lady with a Wonderful Dessert

Michael's parents invited our family and a couple from church, the Eubanks, over for dinner on Memorial Day. Mrs. Eubanks volunteered to bring dessert. She produced the most kid friendly dessert of all time. I would have never thought of this idea but will be stealing it in the future. She brought a bakery cake that had been iced but not decorated and then frosting and other decorations. She asked the children to help her decorate it. Since it was Memorial Day she had them make the US flag. They had so much fun and were so proud of the end result.

Retalliation

He refers to his sisters repeatedly as "The Furies"

The Furies strike back

Ruby's shirt says My Brother is a Grouch

 

Charlotte's shirt: I'd Trade My Brother for a Cupcake

Eliza Claire liked Charlotte's idea

The moral of the story...Don't mess with The Furies!

Thanks, Go Fish!

Today we were listening to Go Fish Kickin' It Old School in the van while running errands.  The song This Is My Father's World came on.  At the beginning of the song there is talking, honestly I've not listened to the talking too closely as the kids are usually all talking and I can't hear it all.  It sounds like news audio from after 911 and other catastrophes and a child saying the Lord's Prayer.  Rehm made the statement, "Mom, why did God make all those bad things happen?" 

I got the privilege to take 10 minutes to share part of my faith and my beliefs about God with all four of my kids.  Partially because Go Fish sparked the question in Rehm and partly because I had a captive audience.  We talked about things like free will and omniscience and omnipotent and how they all work together.

I explained that while God knew  those bad things would happen and he is powerful enough to change them that he gives us free will.  That He wants us to choose Him and to choose good. We also talked about how sometimes there are good things that come out of bad things.  And how those good things don't make the bad things OK but allow us to find hope and peace. 

This is a conversation we would not have had today had it we had not been listening to Go Fish.  Once again, I say thank you for the great music and the great discussions (the discussion I'm referring to is about halfway down the post). 

Jenn

PS.  I love this new CD.  It is mostly remakes of good old hymns.  I had a conversation with a homeless man today after he chuckled watching me grooving to I'll Fly Away. And those of you who know me, know I'm not the type to be grooving to anything.  I have yet to hear a Go Fish CD that our family didn't love.  And no, they are not paying me or giving me free CDs to say it.

Three Year Old Convesation

Ruby was talking to me. Eliza Claire interrupted her and asked, "Ruby,
what did you say?" Ruby responded, "nothing you need to worry about
Eliza!"

Jennifer Maham
(512) 431-6999

Theology and the Six Year Old

Coming home from lunch following VBS today, Charlotte and I had the following conversation.

Charlotte:  Mommy, was Jesus married?

Me:  Charlotte, the Bible does not say anything about Jesus getting married so we really don't know.  Many people believe that he wasn't married because they think that would have been important enough to mention in the Bible if he had been.  Other people think he was married, but we really don't know.

Charlotte: Well, I think I'm going to live a happy life and not worry about all that kind of stuff!


I think maybe I should have named her Scarlett...It was definitely a much shorter conversation than I would have had with her brother had he been the one to ask the question.

Jenn

Not all comments are useful

Over the past few months I've had several comments not written in
English. Since I don't know anyone that actually speaks these
languages nor can I read the comments I have been deleting them and
hoping it was a fluke. Since these comments have continued I've been
forced to go a step further and implement comment moderation. I know
it makes the process a but slower but I do not want things on my blog
that I don't know what they say.

I keep debating about making the blog private. I don't really want to
as I have lots of readers that I would not have had if I had limited
the blog to private status from the beginning. I'm sure over the next
few months I'll figure out a solution that works for me, the family
and the readers. In the mean time I appologize for the comment
moderation.

Thanks for sticking with me.

Oh, in case you haven't put it all together yet, if you don't want
your comments to be automatically deleted they need to be in English.

Thanks,
Jenn

Patriotism

I just had to stand in my driveway in my pajamas and recite the pledge
of allegiance with the kids. Rehm insisted on putting the flag up
today and insisted on flag ceremony complete with pledge. As a good
citizen and parent I couldn't possible say no, even if I did look like a complete and total dork.

Summer School

Everyone is working away on their summer school work. Hopefully we can
stick with this habit all summer.

Fun at School

Tomorrow is our last day of preschool.  It has been a great year with two great teachers.  It has been so good for Eliza Claire and Ruby to each have their own classes.  They have really blossomed.  God placed each of them with just the right group of children and the perfect teacher.  We could not have had a better year!  

Heard around Mayhem Mania plus Random Pictures

 A few weeks ago we were leaving the preschool when Ruby said, "look Mom, a mini ambulance!"  I looked all over the parking lot and the street and couldn't find an ambulance anywhere.  I kept asking her where and she kept insisting she saw a "Mini Ambulance!"  Finally, I realized that what she thought was an ambulance was a white Scion xB that belongs to one of her classmate's family.  I have to give it to her, it is white and very boxy in shape and if you added a few lights and stripes to it would look just like a miniature ambulance.

I got the privilege of attending a baby shower recently for one of the ladies from my Pregnancy and Infant Loss group.  Ruby and Eliza Claire helped me pick out the gift.  They did not understand the concept of a baby shower at all!  They of course kept getting stuck on the name of the event.  They also kept referring to it as "your baby shower, Mommy."  I was waiting for rumors to start that I was expecting - I'm not!  One morning after the shower Ruby wanted to know, "who got wet at the baby shower, mommy?  The baby or the Mommy?"  Obviously they still don't get the concept.

Eliza Claire pointed to a mole on Charlotte's neck and announced, "Charlotte, you have an ankle!"  Eliza Claire now knows where her ankles are and what the brown spot on Charlotte's neck is called.

 Charlotte asked me if "stars ever go away."  I explained that they do but that it doesn't happen often and wasn't something she would probably ever witness.  Then she said that her teacher had a "star" on her shoulder.  I was confused.  I asked her if her teacher had a tattoo of a star on her shoulder?  I couldn't really imagine her teacher with a tattoo but couldn't figure out what else she could be talking about.  That is when she said, "not stars, Mommy, stars!"  And that is when I remembered that my daughter is incapable of pronouncing s blends.  She had been saying "scars" all along and I had misunderstood her.  Maybe it is time for speech therapy. 

********************************
Michael was doing tongue twisters with the kids the other day.  I think "Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore."  He said "that is a tongue twister."  Charlotte responded, "No it isn't, Daddy! That is alliteration!"

Independent Study

Rehm and Charlotte both had to do Independent Study this year for school.  Rehm's class had each student pick a country to research.  Charlotte's class had each student make up a bug to do a model of and write a book about the bug.

Once again, Rehm procrastinated (I wonder where he gets that from?) until the last minute and I thought I was going to do him bodily harm before it was all said and done.  But just like last year he pulled it all together at the last minute and had an awesome presentation - his board could have been much neater and more detailed but I refused to make suggestions or help unless asked this year.

Rehm is such a natural public speaker.  He did a 20 minute presentation on Italy.  He was an italian chef and explained how Italy was a pizza, where each ingredient represented a different part of Italy - the geography was the crust, the sauce was the government, etc.  He had great audience participation and while his facts could have been more in depth he really did do a great job.

Unfortunately, he has still to learn the value of planning and actually doing the four month project over four months instead of two weekends.  His excuse this year was that he was a "slow typer ."  I tried to explain to him that he actually had to open a word processing program and have something he wanted to type before his typing skills were the problem.  His real problem is doing the actual work and producing actual work product is boring to him as it does not involve playing video games.  He is great at reading the information and presenting it but I can not get him motivated to actually turn that research into tangible results.  I guess that will come, or there will be two weeks every year that I want to wring his neck while he complains about losing privileges while getting his project done.

Charlotte's project turned out adorably.  She did all of her work at school.  She did a wonderful job presenting about her bug LeeLee.  She is also a great public speaker.  I just love the story she wrote about LeeLee.  Hopefully, she will learn the value of planning and I won't have two children driving me crazy every spring.

Water Day

Getting washed off

Covered in Shaving Cream

Yummy Watermelon

Bubble Fun

Water Day Rocks

Love all this messy fun!