I'm behind, so this is a catch-up post.
The one thing I wanted to do before Nathan left for the summer was have pictures taken of all the kids at Portrait Innovations. For some reason, it was really important to me to have a group shot of all of them to match the ones I have of everyone else, and I also really wanted a baby picture of Verity to match ones of the other kids.
I really wanted to capture her before she got much hair! Her hair is finally starting to come in, and she has these adorable curls on the side of her head, which you can even see in this picture!
The actual taking of the pictures went surprisingly well. We drove 2 vans, so after the pictures were taken, Nathan drove everyone else home, and I stayed to pick out the shots I wanted and wait for the pictures to be printed. I read my book in a comfortable chair and was happy as could be! But no one wants to repeat the process anytime soon, lol. Hopefully the next pictures we get done will once again be outside with one of our friends taking the pictures!
Swim season started last Wednesday. We have 6 people on the team, from Caleb down to Micah, which means we have swim practice every weeknight from 5:30-7:30. This makes dinner tricky!
Micah has been doing much better than he did last year, when he was recalcitrant and mulish, refusing to get in the water half the time. He can swim, but he doesn't know how to breathe well, so he swims a few strokes, then lifts his head and doggy-paddles to the side where he breathes for a second or 2. Then he launches back out for another several strokes. Repeat the entire length of the pool. He's cooperative, though, so I'm confidant he'll get it down!
Verity has enjoyed the pool. Sometimes we takes her and Drew to swim while everyone else practices. She will only go in the big pool with Caleb (she hates her floatie), but she loves the baby pool. Drew does too!
Jonathan turned 13 last Thursday! Now I can say we have 4 teenage boys! With swim practice, it made celebrating more difficult. He picked enchilada casserole for his birthday dinner, and he, Caleb, Luke and I enjoyed that while the younger kids swam, and then I brought Caleb and Jonathan to practice and picked up the youngers.
After everyone else got home and ate dinner, he opened his presents. His siblings had spent all afternoon doing mysterious things in the garage, with much giggling.
They found an enormous gift bag in my closet and put a piece of bubble gum in it, hidden by a ton of plastic bags and tissue paper.
They also wrapped up nail clippers in a whole ton of progressively smaller boxes. (That's a joke because Jonathan has nails that grow at super-human speeds, and he constantly needs to clip them.) Jonathan is a lot of fun to have around!
He also got some normal presents, like a book, an "as seen on TV" flying saucer, a very difficult book on folding money into cool things like battleships and tanks, and candy.
Thursday afternoon I decided to make a giant chocolate chip cookie cake, and I wrote on it with a can of frosting. That didn't work so well, lol, and no one likes the taste of canned frosting, so I could have saved myself the trouble! We were going to make a cake on Saturday, but Saturday ended up crazy--helping friends move, a pool party, a double-header softball game for Faith--and no cake got made. Jonathan said he doesn't even love cake, so he was fine with it, but I was glad he had the big cookie and ice cream Thursday night. Saturday he picked mint frosted brownies to take to the pool picnic, and all the kids had a ton of other snacks and goodies there, so no need to feel sorry for his lack of cake!
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