Photo Story Friday...Baby Bonding!

(baby being fed by big sis...big sis was all dressed up and entertaining baby!)

I've been snapping pictures and snapping pictures and snapping pictures...then, when I started to look back on all my pictures, one thing stood out to me. This baby of ours sure gets a lot of attention...from everyone in our family!

(One proud sis showing off The Queen Bee lounging in The Little Queen Bee chair...she helped set baby up in chair...in case she's hard to see, squint and peer at the lower right corner of pic..Little Queen Bee is there, gazing up at her big sister!)
(Two proud sisters showing off The Queen...This was one of many locations Baby Queen Bee was set up in her lounging/director's chair)

(And The Queen, complete with flower behind her ear)


















(Baby Queen)

(Miss Former Reigning Queenie reading to The Little Queen...)



















(In for a quick Eskimo Kiss...)



















(Little Queenie even has Daddy wrapped around her little finger!)



















(The First Ever to hold Little Queen Bee title happily caring for her little sister, The Little Queen Bee)

My Story

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

As I previously mentioned, after paging through all my recent photos, I noticed that an awful lot of my pictures are of someone in the family spending special time with Baby. My mind immediately went to a common thought that I have heard voiced time and time again by those who are not from big families and don't have big families. The concern has been this: There is no way that you can give adequate attention to all of your children when you have so many. First, I always find it interesting and slightly amusing that those who are of that frame of mind are those that have absolutely no experience whatsoever in this area of life. Gotta love those who are automatically superior in the knowledge of The Right Number of Children to Have just by the mere fact that they were of a teensie-weensie family and were showered with The Right Amount of Attention, therefore their knowledge base on the subject is much broader than One Who Is From or Has a Larger Family. I am from a family of eleven kids. I have memories of growing up that are rich, rich with love. I am still very close to my entire family. I think that it is so precious to have SO many people you are just so close to.

Alright, stepping down from my soapbox....In conclusion: I just so love how each child actually gets more and more attention. A comment from one of my Babes today sums it up nicely. We were sitting together on the couch, kind of amused by the three-year-old's spunking about someone having to accompany her to the potty each and every one of the at least 100 times/day she goes potty. My lovely eight-year-old said, "Well Mom, at least we've learned one very important thing from all of this! We need to remember never to spoil the baby of the family ever again! (she must have decided that we spoiled the three-year-old while she was the baby)"..and she chuckled and snuggled in to my shoulder, not at all too perturbed by the spunking going on.

One funny story I love to tell pertaining to big families: We on occasion get some really peculiar comments from people when they hear we are from large families. One of them was directed to my husband one time at work. The guys were sitting around at break one day when the attention turned to my dear hubby and he began to get a little grief about the fact he hopes to have a big family someday and that he also comes from a big family (he's from a family of ten kids). One genius snorted and chuckled a little bit, feeling mighty wise and exclaimed, "Har, har! Can you imagine how many times your parents had to do "it" to have that many kids?" Without missing a beat, my husband simply answered, "Yeah, ten times!"

For the Love of Sisters!

The bond between these two is incredible! I guess the bond between most of them is incredible!

Our Summer In Color

He! I Graduated!

I actually am conquering this computer! I have now successfully linked one of my posts to someone else's blog for Photo Story Friday and I have added a Blog List!!! Yikes! Like I mentioned in my post, "A Man and A Dog," I have thusfar refrained from linking this blog to anything or anyone elses, although I have regular blogs I read and love my visitors! I guess I'm a little bit of an old-fashioned blogger! :) This has been my little hermit hangout up to this point... I have such of an unhermit-like life otherwise that I've kind of reclused myself to an extent in blogland. I have to admit, I feel kind of blog-savvy having a "Blog List"!!!! I suppose the next thing I will get involved in is labelling my posts!!! I still don't really get what that means! Does that mean people may find me if they Google those label words??? Maybe I will have to Google "labelling my posts" and see what I find. :s

The Beginning of The End

Here's Holli holding her lumber...she was splitting wood at karate class the other night. As part of her black belt testing requirements, she needs to break three boards using three different techniques. She broke 'em! Now next week it will be Olivia's turn! Then next week the girls plan to do their 66-move Kata that they need to perform for part of their testing. In two weeks they need to spar for 5 minutes with 5 different black belts (I get to spar them:) ) each rotating in for a minute each. The following week they will be tested on their strikes, blocks, kicks, and escapes. They are required to know 81+ moves (there are some new moves now that have been added to the list of formerly 81 moves) and will be randomly tested on about 8... Then they have to hand in an essay and then they will have completed their requirements and, if they passed all these areas, they will be black belts by mid-August! They're pretty excited!!!

Celebrating The Beginning of The End

That night of Holli's board breaking, the girls all went home to continue to practice breaking boards using different techniques they've learned. I had to leave to work that night and while I was gone, the girls all dressed up goofy and did fancy hairdo's. Olivia posed for me the next morning after I got home! Looking lovely, Livi! :)

A Man and A Dog

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

Okay, I've stepped up this bloggy thing to trying my hand at linking my post (did I say it right??) to someone else's! Scary! I am used to this place being my own little recluse that, although I love having visitors, I kinda like being a little hermity since my real life is so un-hermity!!! But this Photo Story Friday thing sounded kinda fun, so....here goes!

My story: These are my men! In a household of 10 (8 of the people variety, 2 of the canine sort), there are 8 filled with estrogen, 2 with testosterone! Here are my two hunky men, male bonding! (By the way, as of 7/15/08, Mac is officially an adult...he just turned two. I wish he would start acting like one already!)

Let me tell you a little about Mac (the Dane). He follows Mom's house rules better than any of the kids...or my husband! I give him a "look" and he knows what to do! BUT, when Dad's around, AND Mom's not "looking" or looking (giving "looks" or just not around to look at what's going on), these two horse around! The problem is, when a Great Dane with humongous paws...pretty much like horse's hooves...and a very bony whip-like tail starts to horse around, Mom always hears the horsing around and steps in, gives the "look" and peace (and safety, I might add) is restored once again to the household. Now, since Mom was right behind the two offenders, there was nothing but pure obedience going on! Can you tell the male bond that they share though?

Square-Foot Gardening?....Sterilite Gardening!

My big project for this mid-summer was going to be square-foot gardening, after reading a little about it on a couple of my favorite blogs I read, when I read blogs (Little But Loud and The More The Messier). I started out building a compost myself..that would be the picket-fence-like structure. We had to dress it up a little by putting flower boxes around it, just in case it stunk like crazy, any neighbors coming to investigate would never suspect something so lovely would stink so bad. Turns out, it doesn't stink so bad! Then, I got all the components I needed for my project, the garden, and a former farmer told me that some good old black dirt mixed with peat moss and sprinkled with a little cow manure was my best bet. He said he's heard that vermiculite is possibly a carcinogen. That was all I needed to hear and I decided a good old fashion garden would be my garden of choice. Then when I got home, I could find two different drills, several drill batteries, and one battery charger...none of which went together! This botched my idea of cutting the board I had found to make a perfect 3'x3' garden. I found a bunch of Sterilite containers we had been using to collect rain water to use for watering our flowers and tomato plants, punched holes in the bottom, and planted my little garden in Sterilite containers!!! The plants are growing, so what more can I ask for? :)

While We Were Outside...Haircut Going On Inside!

Little Miss decided to give herself a haircut while the rest of us were outside...some were jumping on the tramp, one was swinging, one was missing, and I was out stirring my compost and taking pictures. When I got inside I noticed right away the new 'do. Kaisa tried to cover up her work by pulling the longer hair from the back to cover the bangs...or lack, thereof! I had just gotten my hair cut a bit earlier that day so I think she was inspired by that! The first thing I thought of when I saw the clump of hair on the floor was, "I wonder if I should compost that (I know! Kinda "Ew!" but you can compost hair!)." But then I saved it in an envelope, like I have for each of the other girls, labelled, "Kaisa's first self-haircut 7/16/08."

Sandbox Art

Mall of America, Nickelodean Universe