The Happy Himstedt Home

October

2012-01-10T22:23:00.000-08:00

Welcome to October. Fall came once again to Cleveland, and the leaves and temperature were nice in north Georgia. Here's one of the leaf pictures I got.

Yeah, I didn't get any leaf pictures. But you can trust me. It was pretty.

I got a picture of Daisy though, now four months old. We thought we had lost her there for a few days. She followed the kids and I on a walk across the camp road and down the trail that goes to the blob from our house. When we were nearly to the lake we didn't see her with us anymore, and I didn't think anything of it since cats have such a great homing instinct. Except this one, apparently. Our walk was on Sunday afternoon, and by Monday morning she still hadn't shown up. By Tuesday morning I figured something had happened to her and started preparing the kids for the worst. Tuesday afternoon I was in the office and Rick, our terrific maintenance and grounds guy, walked in. I mentioned not being able to find Daisy and he said, "Oh, she's been on the front porch of one of the cabins for two days." Sure enough, she was on the cabin porch, hungry and wet (it had been raining all day), nearly within eyesight of our house. I'm thinking now that that Incredible Journey movie where the dog and cat traverse the entire country from coast to coast to find their people MIGHT have been exaggerated.

Well here's a familiar scene.

Eleven days after Avery's birthday is Shannon's birthday, October 4th. Mom was in town, helping me out with the kids so I could spend a little time at the office. We took him to the restaurant of his choice for dinner. Guess which one he picked!

Seven years old!

We finished out the school week as usual, then had a party three days later on Friday to celebrate both Avery and Shannon. There was talk about what kind of cake we should do for some time, but they both finally settled on a monster truck theme. Suits me, it's easy to frost a mud cake!

Each of the boys invited friends and we did dinner and playtime in the gym.

Andrew, Lydia, Trevor, and Shannon.

I love a soup buffet.

Avery invited Abigail. I had her every Wednesday in childcare at church when she and Avery were two-year olds, and now she's in my preschool choir. Such a sweetie!

Amelia and Sarah.

The boys, the cake, and a couple of dangerous objects on the table. A great combination!

The best part!

It was a fun party and everyone had a great time. We're very blessed with friendships and people who care about investing in the lives of our kids.

We spent the first part of the next week doing the usual thing; school and gymnastics on Monday, school work Tuesday, then Wednesday we left for a short jaunt to Chattanooga. Periodically James and I get out the calendar and map out family time when he can get away. Pretty much every weekend is spent taking care of groups at camp, so taking a few week days is generally easiest for him. (Thanks to the beauty of the home school schedule, it is for me too.) We had Aquarium yearly passes that were about to expire, as well as our children's museum passes that we could use at the Creative Discovery Museum in Chattanooga.

We got to the Tennessee Aquarium mid-morning and stayed until it closed.

They have shows with all kinds of different non-swimming critters.

James sent the older two kids and I on a behind-the-scenes tour. It was very cool. We got to see where and what they prepare for fish and critters in the different tanks, and genrally see what goes on behind the Employees Only doors.

We also got to feed the fish in one of the huge salt water tanks. They eat congealed green cubes of...I'm not sure what that is. It was some combination of grasses and nutrients those type of fish needed.

There was a giant sea turtle that lived in that tank.They taught him to come to the surface when they banged on the metal walkway over the tank to get a treat on a stick, so we got to see him close up. Divers were going down to feed the fish and he had to be out of the way because he posed a hazard to the divers. Getting hit by him swimming by would be like getting hit by a VW Bug.

He liked to eat broccoli.

I always wondered how they built such an impressive aquarium. They just pulled it out of a box. Voila, instant ocean.

We got to see the quarantine area where they keep the critters that are new or sick. This is an actual octopus. Did you know that octopi isn't actually the plural of octopus? I learned that on my behind-the-scenes tour. VERY useful information, now I can correct everybody. These things have creeped me out ever since Sesame Street days as a little kid. There was a Sesame Street segment with a live giant octopus that slithered and undulated its tentacles, accompanied by ominous pipe organ music. I think it was supposed to be fascinating and educational to little kids but it stressed me out every time I saw it. CREEPY.

There were plenty of other interesting, non-scary animals in quarantine. We also learned something about the filtration system at the aquarium, which is pretty amazing. Not that I understood any of it. Maybe that's why I found it amazing.

At the end of the tour we got to have a hands-on experience with a gecko.

He was pretty cool.

Then he asked me if I'd like to buy some car insurance. Just kidding.

After seeing the divers from above, we got to see them from below sea level once our tour finished. This one is wearing a Tigger hat. Our guide said that around 150 different divers volunteer their time at the aquarium to feed fish, and many drive a couple of hours to get there. They had a neat network of volunteers that took care of nearly every facet of the aquarium, with a relatively small full-time staff. Our tour guide was retired and volunteered his time one day each week.

Some of the tanks had jack-o-lanterns in them since it was only two weeks until Halloween.

Amelia liked hanging out with the penguins.

Hmmm, that's a strange looking penguin in khakis up on the rocks.

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

We enjoyed our day at the aquarium, ending it with a fun IMAX film about two animal rescues/reserves in Africa. One focuses on gorillas, the other on elephants.

We also walked around in the art district and tried to look cultured. There's a pedestrian bridge with its walkway made entirely of glass blocks, so you can see the busy highway below. If you avoided looking down while walking it wasn't too nerve wracking.

I liked this particular piece of art.

Sometimes art mimics life.

We enjoyed a yummy Mellow Mushroom dinner, then headed to the hotel. Elizabeth crashed and I took the oldest three swimming. It was more like a jump in/jump out though, since the water was freezing. I've yet to figure out why hotels bother to keep indoor pools open if they aren't going to heat the water. Even if the room is warm, underground is still a constant 50-55 degrees...which makes in-ground pool water COLD! There wasn't a hot tub to use as a countermeasure, so we went to bed.

The next day we headed to the Creative Discovery Children's Museum. It's the best kids' museum we've been to.

You have to love a place that lets you shoot water.

There was also a system that showed you how a lock in a lake works.

Perhaps some foreshadowing of things to come? Paging Dr. Himstedt...

We took a break at lunch to walk down to Chili's to meet our friend Alisa. She was a counselor and head counselor with us at Camp Skyline, then worked full-time with us there for a year. She is now Skyline's summer director and she and her husband live in Chattanooga.

She was also two weeks away from having their first child, Mary Margaret. It was terrific to catch up with her.

After lunch we headed back to the museum and stayed until it closed. I'm still not sure we saw everything there.

How a pulley works...

Hunting for dinosaur bones.

Shannon and Daddy had fun playing with the K'nex sets. They built vehicles they could run on a slot track.

Avery and Elizabeth had some fishing and captaining fun on the boat.

She's making this thrilled face because I wouldn't let her put on the rubber rain boots that were on board the ship. We were literally seconds away from leaving and I didn't want to have to tour the ship hunting for shoes and socks. Mean mommy.

We pulled out of the parking lot around 5:00 to head for home. By 5:02 two of them were snoozing, and we lost the other two by 5:10. A short but full and really fun two days. We'll be doing it again sometime.

The preschool choir I help with at church sang in front of the congregation for the first time that Sunday. Both Avery and Elizabeth are in it. Pictures are always bad in the sanctuary due to the combination of pathetic lighting and pilot error, but I did get a few while trying to help "direct" the singing.

Don't they look like they're "happy and they know it?" Bree, Aslyn, and Bella spent the first few minutes crying and snotting. Since they are all youngest siblings in their families, in line behind several brothers and sisters, their parents sat back and took pictures instead of rescuing them from the scary stage. Firstborns get snatched up at the first sign of distress, siblings on down the line get their distress captured by a camera for everyone to see and laugh at later. Not that I would know anything about that firsthand....

Cute, aren't they?

This is the only picture I got with both Avery and Elizabeth in it.

"If you're happy and you know it stomp your feet!"

Here's a random picture of Daisy up a tree. It was next on my camera, so here it is.

She was hiding from Daniel's dog Winston. Amelia worried about her since she was about 20 feet off the ground, but she eventually came down on her own. I didn't think anyone in our White County volunteer fire department would like to leave their real job to come rescue a cat.

The following Sunday the other two kids sang with their choir in church. You can just make out Amelia in the middle of the picture. Shannon is...somewhere.

That night we went back to church for the ordination of our youth pastor and good friend Carlton. He has pastored our youth at church for nearly ten years. He and Alison have felt the call to start church, and he officially resigned in October. They will be meeting with others in their home at first, and will be building small groups through discipleship and mentoring. I am really excited for them, and know it's going to be great! I'm particularly grateful that God didn't call them far away, as the selfish part of me would have kicked and screamed at having to let Alison and her family go. White county has a large percentage of unchurched/unsaved folks, and Carlton knows it's God's will for them to stay right here.

The ordination service was also a kind of send-off. It was a sweet time, and the words said about Carlton and his heart for ministry were right on.

They were prayed for by leaders and deacons, including our worship pastor James,

our pastor Levi,

and a BUNCH of other folks. A reception followed, and Carlton was showered with thanks and gratitude for his investment in the lives of so many. I realized I would now be flying solo in kindergarten Sunday School, as Alison had been the lead teacher. (I'm happy to report that it is going very well. I miss her though. :( )

October was a fairly quiet month, just plugging away at school work, feeding horses (unfortunately with very little time to ride), going to gymnastics and church, shopping for groceries and the other details that make life run smoothly, getting together with friends on Friday nights, and in general wondering where the time has gone.

The last significant October event was Halloween. The kids talked for weeks about what they wanted to dress up as this year. Amelia wanted to be a ninja and eventually Shannon decided he did too. Avery wanted to be a pirate since he's into all things pirate lately. (I can't figure out why we glamorize pirates. They still exist, and they still kill people!) Elizabeth wanted to be a cat, which worked out great since I could recycle Amelia's cat costume from last year.

This is the first year our church did "trunk or treats." In the past we've always had a fall festival but not with the free-for-all giving out of candy. Each truck or car with its trunk full of candy also had a game the kids could play, run by a Sunday School class or other sponsoring entity. There were also bounce houses and a raffle. It was a lot of fun, and we came home with a FULL bag of candy, probably more than we could have scored trick-or-treating. The kids managed to make it last until the beginning of December.

There's no telling how much candy they ate on site.

Camp has a (somewhat) portable archery range that makes an appearance at schools and fall festivals, or anywhere else we want to teach kids to shoot a bow for fun. James set it up and also had a camp video playing with brochures to hand out. We only live 20 minutes from church, but it still surprises me how many of our church folks have never seen camp. They just know we disappear every summer.

Pirate Avery with Karina. I'm still trying to figure out a way to get her to live with us full-time. If only her parents didn't love her so much.

Looky, I did it, I finished another post! I can move to November now! Don't you want to re-live the holidays since they were such fun? We will, and soon....maybe. As soon as possible, anyway.

First, a few things I thought were humorous this week. Avery continues to work on drawing, and usually his stick people have scary teeth and faces. I'll try to post one sometime. He drew two people, me and himself, with the signature pointy teeth and said, "I just love vampires. I love all monsters, really." What does this mean?

Today Shannon asked me if I was going to the store later. I told him I wasn't, and why did he ask? He said, "Oh, I just wanted to do some window shopping."

The scenes that follow are my favorite. I couldn't wait until the December post to share, though I took the pictures on December 31.

Amelia likes to dress up in this dance costume my mom got from a friend whose kids were in dance. (It's made an appearance on this blog more than once.) You can see what sort of mild winter we've had by the fact that she's in no sleeves or shoes and is plenty warm. Anyway, I asked her if she was a princess and she said, "No, I'm a siren." (She's really been into mythology lately.) I said, "Don't sirens get sailors into all kinds of trouble?" "Yes," she says, "they have to do whatever the siren wants when she sings." I thought that was imaginative and let it go at that.

A few minutes later I hear her singing, and Shannon is moving towards her. I get a little closer, and hear her say, "Siren says, wave your arms." He obediently waved his arms. At this point I was stifling laughter.

"Siren says, jump into the sea!"

The siren is off to find her next victim.

Run sailors, run!

Cats are not charmed by siren song.

Nor have they any reverence for siren apparel.

Amelia told me not everyone thinks it's still okay to pretend, as a girl at the park that was her age told her it was too babyish when Amelia asked her to play. Amelia told her having an imagination is a good thing. I have to agree.

A day to remember

2012-01-10T22:01:00.000-08:00

Looks like I'll never get around to the next month's post...unless I stay up super late tonight. We'll see how I'm doing after this one! I can't NOT write about an exciting happening in our lives, the baptism of our oldest, which happened this past Sunday, January 8.

Last February Amelia told us she asked Jesus into her heart, sitting on her bed in her room. We never doubted her sincerity, and she understood the decision as much as a seven year-old could. We hesitated to make it public at church until we were sure she really did get it, and until she said she wanted to. We didn't want to push her into anything.

Through this past fall she asked several times when she could go forward at church and tell everyone, and then get baptized. Most weeks James isn't there with us since he's takes care of groups at camp, or I have to leave early to get to my kindergarteners. On New Year's day we were all in church together (including the youngest two, since there was no childcare that day), and she leaned over before the invitation and asked, "Can I do it this week?" I told James, who was ready to put her off again- I'm not kidding when I say we really did want to make sure she understood it- and then he said, "Should we go?" I nodded and he walked with her to the front to talk to Pastor Levi, appropriately to the tune of "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus." I can't think of anything better to do on the first day of a new year.

The next week was her baptism, and she was one of the first to try out the new baptismal at church. For years at church we've used a huge water trough, no kidding, draped with white cloths with ferns and plants set all around it to disguise its "troughness." It seemed befitting of a rural area of the state to me, but it was a bit impractical for tall or big folks (they had to turn themselves into a ball), and it's general ~~tackiness~~ charm finally got to the powers that be. So they cut a hole in the wall and put in a tub.

Shannon and Avery surveyed the scene before the service began. It's obviously not a finished product yet, but it was a lot further along than when I saw it the previous Wednesday. Somebody did have a sawzall going on the steps just before the service started.

Amelia and Daddy just before.

James had the privilege of baptizing her. I love that our church has a practice of letting daddies baptize their kids.

Nobody besides God knows a kid's heart better than her parents. Not too many dry eyes in the house that morning.

This decision impacts forever.

My folks drove up that morning to be there at the 8:30 service with us. It was a long, rainy, foggy drive, but they wouldn't have missed it. I'm so blessed to have such a Godly heritage on both sides of my family, as is James, as are our kids. Generational blessings can be traced over and over again throughout our families' histories. My heart overflows with gratitude to my Savior.

Afterwards we headed to El Campesino with friends and grandparents to celebrate.

The girls' table. No photo of 6-10 year olds is complete without at least one set of bunny ears.

Boys' table, plus two big boys.

"Hey, could somebody get a picture of me with Amelia?"

"Want a second one?" "Sure." We had no idea there was a creeper behind us. At least she's flashing the "I love you" sign. No, actually, I think that's the sign for the devil. Either way, "AAAAHHHHH!"

And then someone got the bright idea to tell them it was Keith's birthday the next day.

Lucky Keith!

How's that fried ice cream smell?

The Jennings family, post ice cream attack.

James thanked our friends and family for the care they've shown and influence they've been on Amelia. We've been so blessed with friendships and people who genuinely care about us and our family. Amelia's face looks like maybe she's afraid they'll assail her with a fried ice cream. Or maybe it's creeper phobia.

The family with Grandmom and Grandad.

All in all it was a very special day, one which marks one of the first grown-up, and easily most important, decisions Amelia has made. There's nothing better than seeing one of our kids choose God's best. Heartfelt thanks to all of you who love her and have been an influence in her life.

Click below to see the video.

Amelia's baptism

The end of September

2011-12-26T21:25:00.000-08:00

On with September! When we left the lake house (September 13) we went back to Mom and Dad's for the night. My cousin Luke was getting ready to head off to Marine boot camp the next day, so we had a congratulations/going away/we're really proud of you party.

Luke, just a baby at 18, with my mom. He's my mom's brother's youngest kid. They live next door to my folks. There were lots of proud people at this get together!

Uncle Don (Luke's dad) and Uncle Ned (Mom's older brother) frying a ton of fish and hush puppies. The Davis side of the family celebrates every occasion with a fish fry.

Kids played in the driveway at Nanny's house. Princess Jordan.

Amelia and Jaidyn, Uncle Don's granddaughter.

Reagan and Jaidyn. Casey, her mom, says this is Jaidyn's classic "cheese" face.

A random kitty cat in Nanny's bird bath. Maybe he ate the birds already.

Who can understand this child?

Here's a cool dude. I have a prediction about Shannon. He will grow up to like and purchase gear, stuff, and things. He loves sunglasses, gloves, watches, wallets, and pants with pockets so he can carry around all his gear, stuff, and things.

Luke, his recruiter, and a buddy of his. His recruiter worked with him for an entire year before he left, getting him physically fit and ready to go to boot camp. He invested a lot in him. I didn't know recruiters did anything besides hand you a pen.

Aunt Jackie and Uncle Don. It has to be really tough to have your son go into the military. You're so proud of him, but also afraid for him, knowing how tough it's going to be and how much you're going to miss him.

Aunts have a tough time balancing that proud vs. missing him thing too.

Lisa and Jonathan.

James and Nanny.

Told you we were proud.

We had an additional cake as well, since it was also Lisa's birthday.

Twenty-five again! We didn't finish all that cake. Or the fish, or the hush puppies, or the slaw. But we did our best.

We headed out the next morning and stopped by Imagine It in Atlanta on our way back to Cleveland.

The kids enjoyed showing Daddy around. We've been there countless times without him so it was fun to have him with us.

This thing was cool. It was a virtual ride on a snowboard using a green screen background.

Amelia enjoyed dancing in the dance studio in a dress she made from a wrap.

Gigantic Tinker Toys.

We walked over to Centennial Olympic Park to look for a brick that was given in honor of us the year we got married, which was also the same year the Olympics were in Atlanta. There are only about a bazillion bricks with names on them making up the sidewalk there, so there was no hope of finding it!

We made it home and got back into the swing of school and work. Recovering from a vacation is hard work. The kids and I headed up to Blairsville later in the week to Young Harris College to see a show at their planetarium. We met up with a few other home schoolers we knew and went to a nearby park for a picnic lunch afterward.

Fall is a birthday time of year for us, between our own boys and our friends' kids. We celebrated Tozer and A.J.'s birthdays at the Hicks' house mid-September. My favorite type of racing has always been chocolate sprinkle track.

Speaking of birthdays, here's Avery on September 23rd, his fifth birthday. It was quite a low-key day, a Friday, and we celebrated big by...doing school and making cookies. It was exciting.

Here he is looking all cute and five.

Here he is looking a weird and five. His vampire face, he says.

That evening we headed to Vogel State Park because several people from our Sunday School class were camping there. We once again enjoyed camping without actually camping. We love Vogel. It's such a great place for the kids to play with friends and we always have fun there.

Ruth, Amelia, and Kendyll.

This boy loves a bike. This one's not even his. Wait, where's your helmet, kid?

A.J. and Avery.

Trevor and Shannon.

Riding in the creek.

Dinner was low country boil, yum. I took these pictures as a character study of my friend Jenny.

Perhaps she was channeling the potatoes' feelings as they hit the boiling water (?) Or maybe she was just being weird. It's been known to happen.

He's feelin' the potatoes too, I guess! There was definitely a humongous tub of cheese puffs on the table in front of him.

She ate her share of glorious, cheesy goodness as well.

Claire and Kendyll.

Nom nom nom...mmmm...

We headed home that night to our comfy beds and left warm thoughts with those friends who were sleeping in chilly tents!

The next day we took Avery to the standard birthday celebration restaurant in Cleveland, the Sunflower, for a slightly less lame acknowledgement of his birthday.

I'm not sure if they like to eat there more because of the food or because of the fish tank.

That afternoon the kids and I headed back to Vogel for some more pretend camping fun with our friends while James worked at camp with a weekend group.

The creek stays cold year 'round but the air was still warm enough for water fun.

Amelia and Maggie had a little trouble moving the boulder, so naturally I stepped in picked it up for them with my pinkie.

It's amazing how many hours of fun rock rearranging can provide.

Elizabeth picked up a rock and immediately acted like she was eating a chicken leg. It did look like one.

Want some?

Boys in the creek again.

Another facet of Jenny's personality. She is DISTURBED! (Apparently Avery is too, he was laughing.)

Okay, she has her redeeming qualities.

There's not much better than chili with friends by a fire.

Or chilly friends by a fire!

The gratuitous "crazy shot."

The next week was pretty quiet...as I remember it, anyway. The end of September was over eight weeks ago now, so who can remember? I took a few pictures of boys looking studious.

Shannon working on his quiet time.

Avery has surprised me greatly with his interest in learning to write. I didn't know how teaching a lefty would go. I was even more unsure of how teaching a person who tends to be less-than-motivated about things that are hard would go. He asks me on his own how to form and write letters though, which is great.

He was super gung-ho about reading too, until our book started getting harder. (We're on lesson 60 out of 100.) Now he balks at sitting down to it, but once he's started with it he does very well. The other two kids started that around the same point in the book, and both of them have ended up being terrific readers. I'm just using the same strategy with him that I did with them. It's called "Suck It Up and Do It Anyway." He's
trying to learn how to spell "Mississippi" since it's a big word and a fun word, and this week spelled it for me: "M-My-S-S-My-S-S-My-P-P-I." The ending cracked the other kids up. Potty humor is everywhere, you just have to look for it.

I don't have anything funny to report that the kids have said since the last post. I'll tell on myself instead. Earlier this week Amelia was saying to Avery in a loud voice, "Go away, you are SO annoying!" I heard it from the other room and found myself snarling, "You WILL speak to him nicely!!" I believe in setting stellar examples for my kids to follow. I guess all parents do, if we didn't there would be a lot less funny stuff for our adult children to talk about one day. I always remember my mom saying, with food practically spilling out of her mouth, "Don't talk with your mouth full!" I can hardly wait to see how the Himstedt kids will have fun at my expense around Thanksgiving dinner one day.

Merry Day After Christmas, everyone. I'm sitting at Mom and Dad's, with no ability to tackle my to-do list at home (yay!) so I've been able to get one more month on the books now. On to October!

September at last

2011-12-13T20:24:00.000-08:00

The beginning of September brought Labor Day weekend, and the Labor Day weekend brought Strong Rock's Second Annual Family Camp. Families come and participate in camp activities together from Friday to Sunday, including evening games and several classes like horseback riding, canoeing, riflery, archery, climbing, arts and crafts, and more. Several summer staffers come in for the weekend to help out. It's a lot of fun. I wish I had pictures but I only took a few at the barn, and unloaded those on camp's computer. Rebecca took them all throughout the weekend, so they exist out there somewhere.

I have a few pictures at the barn after the last family camp horseback class. Amelia stayed around with me to ride for a few minutes, then my mom showed up. Naturally, I put her on a horse. :) I'm not sure how many years it had been since she's ridden, but Teddy is a sweet horse and was a good boy for her. He's really big (he's half Percheron), but has the most comfortable trot. You hardly bounce.

I think she looks nice on a horse.

You go, Grandma!

Amelia on Romeo.

Amelia on Teddy. Her leg only comes halfway down his side. He only outweighs her by about 1200 pounds.

Elizabeth may end up being another horse buddy some day. She loves to ride. Here we are setting a stellar example with no helmets. I don't trust many other horses besides Romeo for riding double with a three year- old. She told me the other day, "I don't like to get off." Neither do I.

Wonder what she's thinking in this one. It might be that in spite of the fact that we're sitting on a pad on Romeo's bare back, he still has quite a pointy back bone!

This one put "a pony of my own" at the top of her Christmas list this year. I've been telling her to pray for God to send one. That's what my parents told me (not at the time knowing that God was actually going to send me a free horse via a friend from church). I don't think we could have searched for and found a more perfect first horse for me. God had her lined up for me at the age of eleven. I told Amelia it might be a few more years before we get serious about her having a horse of her own. (Unless God sends one first!)

The day after family camp ended (Labor Day) we headed to the lake house on Lake Oconee for our end-of-summer vacation with Mom, Dad, Jonathan, Lisa, Jordan, and Reagan. Sadly, we lost my uncle John, one of the owners of the lake house, just a few weeks after our stay there. He battled aggressive cancer for four years, and it was a miracle he was able to fight it as long as he did. I know I have other pictures but I can't find them right now. This one is from December of 2009.

He was positive until the very end, and trusted God entirely. The day before he was admitted to hospice (which he was only in for a few days before passing on), he went to see a lady in the same hospice care facility who was at the end of her journey. He told her to go on and then hold the door open for him to come in. That's pretty much how it happened. It's such a privilege to be a part of a Christian family. We are sure of things to come after this life.

We stayed at the lake for four days, and unfortunately it was rainy and chilly for most of that time. Thankfully the hot tub was nice though, and the pool was bearable as long as you didn't get out!

Kids don't notice cold water.

Shannonball!

Shannon can walk on water. It's cool. This is his fountain impression.

Grandad and Avery getting a cold shower under the waterfall.

Grandad IS actually wearing swim trunks...

The tube took up nearly the whole hot tub, and the kids took up nearly the whole tube.

Yay for warm water!

Man eating pink tube. Mom looks worried.

He walks on water and levitates too. (The wheels aren't on the ground.) Now if I can just get him to telepathy his clothes up off the floor and his Legos back into their containers at home...

There's a great place for riding bikes and scooters all around the front of the house. Elizabeth doesn't like to ride the "baby" tricycles anymore. She'll probably be riding without training wheels by this time next summer.

Kiddos stuffing their faces. We try to do a lot of eating while we're on vacation. It's a goal.

Dad and Jonathan spent some time working as well. They were able to bid on and buy property at an auction without actually going. I wonder when you buy land online if you can use Paypal for that.

Lisa started reading Jordan and Reagan a book, and then all these Himstedt kids started creeping in on them.

Jonathan has a little old boat (literally) that he was able to buy for $50! It was fun to take out and tool around the lake in.

Our last day and half there the sun finally came out. Avery caught a monster fish. If you look really close you can see it.

Grandmom got out face paint at some point during the day.

Mmmm, worms!

Grandad and Reagan.

"I have a cricket!"

"See?"

"Bye, cricket."

The back of the shack, looking up from the lake. What a dump.

Jonathan and Jordan.

It was a fun and enjoyable time, as spending time with family always is. I don't know when we'll get to go back to the lake house. Aunt Angela has kept it rented out for weddings and such. It really is a beautiful place and we always have a good time there.

That concludes our post-summer vacation. It doesn't finish out September, but I WILL GET THERE! Right now I'm off to bed. I have horses to feed in the morning, kids to school, and I hope to get in a run on the treadmill. We have Christmas parties and get-togethers four out of the next five days, and mom is coming up to keep kids so I can finish Christmas shopping on Thursday. I'm already wondering what it will be like to go through a store at a leisurely pace without once saying, "Didn't I say no touching?"

August

2011-12-12T13:10:00.000-08:00

Well hello, strangers. In the tradition of keeping a 3-4 month back order on my blog posts, I will now write about August while in the month of December. Taking pictures as I go is the only way I can remember what goes on in our life, and thankfully the date they were taken automatically attaches itself to each photo. Otherwise I would be lost. Who the heck knows what happened way back in August? My swiss cheese/doily/colander brain doesn't hold onto much.

The last post had Mom H. here visiting. While she was here we went to the Women of Faith conference in Atlanta. Aunt Sherry picked her up the night before so they could work at a World Vision table (as is their tradition), and I rode the scary church van with some ladies from Concord. (Anything above 50 mph made it shake like it was going into warp speed. She can't take much more, Captain!) I roomed with Jenny D. and her mom again, which is always a treat. Mom rode back home with us in the scary van Saturday evening, stayed over Sunday, and we had to tell her goodbye on Monday.

We started our new school year the next day, Tuesday the 15th. I spent all day Sunday, Mom's last day here with us, getting our first week down on paper. I was also acting like a crazy person, pretty much scowling the entire I was working on the schedule and school plan, and I'm sure she feared for my sanity. I've always considered myself a pretty go-with-the-flow person, but the transition from summer to fall/school year has always been a difficult one for me. It started way back when I was a kid having to start a new school year after a summer of playing outdoors, didn't improve any as a college student coming off of an awesome summer of camp and going back to school, and has YET to improve even now as an adult, again coming off of a summer of camp and fun, again going back to a school year! The amount of planning involved with home schooling is vast, and I had all summer, but I ~~just didn't want to do it because I was playing with the kids~~ was so busy with summer responsibilities I just couldn't get to it. This summer I will do better, and I'll also try to remember the degree to which I usually kick and scream going into fall and prepare myself for it a little more. (I may as well since it's inevitable, huh?)

All that said, I really do love home schooling and spending so much time with the kids. Once the planning is done and it's rolling, it couldn't be better. I am extremely blessed to be able to do it, and thank the Lord every day for His blessings of these kids and the privilege of being their mom.

Amelia made a sign for each chair. The first day of school is kind of a low key affair around here.

Officially a third grader.

Officially a first grader.

Got a Pre-K'er too, if that counts as a grade. Avery is learning to read this year. I've found that teaching them to read their pre-k year makes Kindergarten a breeze.

Here are the people I get to spend my days with!

I am still piecing a curriculum together instead of ordering one pre-packaged. I've found programs I like for math, science, and history, and for language arts we use a variety of workbooks from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever else I can find them. We also do a lot of reading, both independently and aloud together. It's time consuming to plan each week, but the freedom is nice. The oldest two are continuing with piano, and we've just finished the fourth and final book in the Music for Little Mozarts, a great series for beginners. Now we'll move on to another series for older kids. They haven't out-learned me with piano yet, which is good news since we're saving money on piano lessons. I'm sure the day is coming when they'll need to move on to a "real" piano teacher! I plan to start Avery and Elizabeth on piano together next year.

When our school year started we were part of the home school co-op we participated in last year. Every Thursday Amelia took ballet and drawing, and Shannon took Art and Karate. It was a good time for me to sit for two hours in the nursery of the church it was held at and work on reading with Avery and on this blog, and the kids enjoyed their classes very much. One week in October I got a call from a friend who was a part of it telling me not to come the next day...the co-op had imploded and no longer existed. What?! I'm still not exactly sure what happened, but apparently it had something to do with poor leadership and an accusation against an unsupervised teen. So...we stay home on Thursdays now. Days are full and busy enough without going somewhere all the time, so for now it's okay.

We continued to enjoy swimming and playing outside all we could in August, and pretending it wasn't really the start of a new school year. Weekends since camp has ended have fallen into a pattern of James riding his bike most Saturday mornings, then heading in to work with groups at camp for the rest of Saturday and Sunday until lunch time. That's usually when they check out. Sunday afternoon is finally family time, and one Sunday afternoon toward the end of August we headed to Lake Lanier to join part of the Davidson crew on their boat (Jenny and Lydia skipped out on us due to headaches/needing naps/etc.). We had one last hurrah before the fall weather set in, and it was a lot of fun.

Ring Around the Rosy in the green lake water.

Bennett and Shannon tubing. Apparently Shannon was taking a floating nap.

Whoo hoo!

Snack time.

Avery's first ever tubing excursion with James. He thought it was a blast.

Ruthie and Amelia.

Maggie and Amelia.

Getting brave..

Look Ma, no hands! Eventually Maggie stood up.

She could use a couple of phone books to boost her up. Drivers too short to see over the front are a hazard on the lake.

Curtis had bought a pair of tiny skis so the kids could start learning to ski, but no one had tested them out yet. Nor had he ever pulled a skier. So, having the month before proven that I could still get up and might not embarrass myself too badly, I gave it a go.

Big ole wide skis make it easy! They were let out on the last setting and I wondered if I would go head over heels since they were so short. (Since clearly that is the only reason I could possibly fall.) :) It was a lot of fun. If we weren't in the camp business with full summers I would love to have a boat. I love being on a lake.

Bein' stoopid.

August moved quickly (and warmly) into September....and hey, looky, I finished another month's worth of blogging!

Following are two things I heard from boys in the last week. Both are representative of how each views the world.

Avery drew a picture of our family, all stick figures, and then he explained it to me. "Here's me, the king, and Shannon, the prince, Amelia, the queen, and Elizabeth, the princess. Daddy's the knight. And here's you, Mommy, the servant." (Jesus did say the last will be first....)

Most days the kids get short writing assignments to work on their writing skills. I have a book with several writing prompts to get them thinking creatively. Shannon is and has always been a very literal and concrete thinker, and he sometimes has trouble coming up with imaginative things to write. I think he may write instruction manuals some day. Last week one of the prompts said, "Imagine you were walking to school and saw a house made completely out of candy canes. You knock on the door. What happens next?" I was thinking this one had a lot of creative and fun possibilities. My literal thinker immediately responded, "It falls down."

Look for a little boy to turn five and other exciting happenings in the next installment of The Happy Himstedt Home. (I've always kind of thought my name choice for this blog was kind of dumb. Anybody got any better ideas?)

The rest of July

2011-11-22T21:24:00.000-08:00

Now that we're into November it moves me that much further away from July, where I am in my posting...and makes me despair of ever catching up with this blog! Stuff just keeps happening, I keep taking pictures, and I keep NOT blogging about them. I'm amazed at how busy this school year has been so far. There hasn't been a spare moment to sit down and blog...or even sit down at all, really! That's not a complaint, just reality at this point in life. I shall do my best anyway.

I believe we are up to horse day camp, which happened July 18-22. This was the seventh and unfortunately last year I got to do it. It served to fill a gap in the summer when the horses weren't being used during retreat groups being at camp the last few weeks of the summer, and it has been a lot of fun for me. A lot of work as well, as some summers spots were easier to fill than others. I ran two weeks until last summer, and the past two I've just done one week. Next summer we are adding a two week overnight camp session, which will kill the week I've been doing day camp. The fun part about this summer is that Amelia was finally old enough to participate. She had such a good time she still regularly says how bummed she is that it's not happening again. She learned a lot that week too, just from having a solid week of hands on with horses (sans little brothers and sisters).

Maverick was her horse of choice for the week, an old guy who is a treasure for beginner riders. He's older than dirt, which is perfect for teaching kids on. He's past the silliness (and energy!) younger horses sometimes still have.

There were 11 kids that week, and I included a few of their pictures below. We have a nice herd of horses.

This is Kelsey with Reggie, who is a little horse I've had about three years. He's been my personal horse of choice to ride for the past few years, and I worked and worked him to get him camp worthy...and he just wouldn't do it. He's too smart and tricky for most beginner riders. Kelsey has been doing horse camp with me and coming out for lessons periodically for four years, so after kicking the idea around for awhile I offered her and her family Reggie. The date I talked to her folks about it just happened to be Kelsey's 13th birthday. This is a horse crazy kid, pretty much exactly like I was back then. I think that was the best day of her life to date. They are a good match, and he still gets to live with me, I can ride him whenever I want to, but I don't pay his bills. Now if I could just get the rest of the horses that way!

We teach the kids everything we can during the week, including grooming and tacking their own horses, horse and stable care, and of course, riding. On the last day we have a horse show for the parents to show off what we've learned.

Maverick doesn't seem to know he's in a show. He looks more like he thinks it's nap time.

I love looking official.

Maggie D. got to do horse camp this week, so Lydia came to support her at the horse show. Or she got dragged there. Whichever.

Maggie

The horse crew with Kelsey. Abby is on the left, my friend and horse pal, and she runs the riding program during the summer for me. Next is Sammie, a local gal who went off to UGA this year for school. If I could clone her as an employee I would. I'm praying she wants to come back next summer!

Horse camp ended and we had several more groups use camp through the rest of the summer, though none of them used the horses. They finally got a much deserved break.

The week following horse camp we FINALLY got to see Mom. H. She spent the summer in Texas, except for the nearly two weeks she and Dad went to Hawaii and cruised around the islands. We missed having her with us during camp. Every other year there is a reunion for missionaries who have served in Peru, and this year Aunt Sherry planned it and they had it at camp. She also attended the Women of Faith conference while in Georgia. Right after she got here we went to Senecca, SC and got to see a lot of family. James' cousin Christy's little boy had a birthday party, which was a great excuse for a bunch of us to get together.

There was a transportation theme.

Amelia and second cousin London.

Nolan turned two. He's a happy kid, and it's amazing how much he looks like James' baby pictures. Even more so than our kids.

I thought this pictures was funny. It shows how much Elizabeth loves cake. Notice there are no other kids near the table.

Then Tyler and Christy threw him into the cake.

Jason, Grandpa Lee, and Mom. H.

Jason and James.

Blue mustaches are all the rage these days.

James' first cousins, Aunt Sherry's daughters, Christy, Lisa, and Tracy. Lisa and her husband Eric were visiting from California and we got to meet their one year old daughter Olivia.

Now for the nightmare picture, where we try to get all the great grand kids in a picture with Grandma and Grandpa Lee. The odds of getting that many little people to look at the camera and smile that close to nap time were about one in two billion.

Included are: Elizabeth, Avery, Shannon, Amelia, London, Harper, Olivia, Nolan, and Ridge.

Aunt Sherry and Uncle Denny's family.

My latest Facebook profile picture.

Then along came this guy selling balloons.

After the party we went to the Sailing Club on nearby Lake Keowee where Uncle Denny keeps his boat. What a fun afternoon!

We enjoyed the beach area.

Lisa and Olivia.

Tyler and Christy have a boat, so the boys and I, along with Jason, Tyler, and Eric went out on the lake for a little while.

Jason and Shannon went tubing.

Shannon's first real tubing experience, besides a few times behind a wave runner when he was younger.

This is probably the first boat ride Avery can remember. He was a fan.

It's been a few years, but I wanted to give it a try.

Just like riding a bike, I guess. LOTS of fun!

Jason showing off on Tyler's wake board. I've never gotten up the nerve to try one of them. I'm afraid it'll be like it was for me trying to go from snow skis to a snowboard. I've never had so many bruises on my derriere!

Eric showed us both up.

The sailing club has a nice kitchen and eating area.

You can never have too many cooks in the kitchen. ('Cause the more cooks, the less I have to do by myself.)

James, Grandpa, and Sharon.

Girl cousins!

Uncle Denny's sail boat.

A little known fact about James: He loves sailing, and was even a certified sailing instructor during college. If he had unlimited funds and time he says he would sail around the world.

Some family members going for a ride. I couldn't help but sing the Gilligan's Island theme song. Their tour started innocently enough as well. Thankfully we saw our folks again within the hour. It was great to see everyone, and we were glad to get to go.

We went home that evening and got up the next morning for church. Mimi snapped a picture of the girls.

Monday the kids started a new gymnastics class. The older two had been doing the one in Cleveland for a few years now and I thought they were ready for something more challenging. I also wanted Avery to be able to do a class as well, and the gymnastics school in Gainesville offers a boys' class. It's a further drive, but they are having so much fun with it that it's worth it. I got a few pictures of their first day.

Look excited, don't they?

He can do the back bridge all by himself now.

Their teacher is a firefighter. That scores cool points with the boys.

Since beginning classes nearly four months ago, this one has learned to pull up out of a back bridge and do front and back walkovers all by herself.

During Mimi's visit, camp hosted a reunion she was part of for missionaries and their children who served in Peru. They do them every other year, and this year Aunt Sherry was the organizer. This meant we got to see Grandma and Grandpa Lee again. They were missionaries to Peru during several of Mom H.'s and her siblings growing up years.

They live in San Antonio, so to get a visit from them is a special treat for us.

Following are several other random photos from the rest of Mom H.'s visit.

Daddy playing four-wheeler.

What happens when a boy is too big for the little kid training wheel bike, but too short/unmotivated for the bigger kid no training wheel bike.

Little Daisy (four months old).

The Cardboard Armada.

Elizabeth and Avery getting ready to spend the night at Mimi's (the cabin across the driveway).

Chillin' in the driveway. (Does Strong Rock Camp have a pool, you ask? Here it is!)

There is an excellent swimming lake though.

The surf was down that day.

Trail ride!

Daisy gets a ride.

Going to church again. Mimi made this dress.

And that, my friends, is a wrap on July. In late November. (Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and Mimi and Papa are here again!)

Before I sign off I have to share what the Himstedt kids have been saying lately.

Amelia is learning to write in cursive and was practicing her handwriting the other day, and Shannon was singing the ABC's. He looked over at her work and said, "Hey, can you sing the alphabet in cursive?"

The boys took some of their money to Walmart the other day. On our way out they stopped at the big contribution bucket that supports a childrens' hospital and said, "Wait Mom, we want to put this money in the offering."

We had a family festival at church for Halloween, complete with blow up moonwalks. When we pulled into church Wednesday evening Elizabeth said, "That's where the jumpy things were. Then they died."

The week of Halloween Amelia came down the stairs after we had put them to bed to find James pawing through one of their candy bags. She said, "Daddy, am I going to have to set a trap?"

Elizabeth got a glow stick necklace that same week, and came down to my room early one morning. It was still dark and the necklace wasn't glowing anymore. She said, "It was glowing in my room. It's too dark in here."

The kids and I went to a wedding recently, (Bailey and Jesse, if you know them), and their kiss at the end of the ceremony was rather exuberant. Avery whispered very loudly as he covered his eyes, "Eww! Tell me when it's over!"

I've been putting quiet times together for the kids to do each morning. I've been known to use illegible writing sometimes, or just flat write the wrong book of the Bible or verse down so they get confused about what the follow up questions are asking. The other morning Shannon yelled from the other room where he was working, "Mom! You spelled Galatians wrong!" I asked him to spell the word he was looking at and he said, "C-o-l-o-s-s-i-a-n-s."

Avery's been practicing bigger words in his vocabulary lately, and the other day told us something was "despicable." I told him there were other words that started with the "de" sound that meant nearly the same thing, and threw out "detestable." He countered me with "detergent."

I'm off to bed now, we'll be up dark and early to leave for a race in the morning. James and his brother Jason are running a half marathon in Atlanta and I'm running a 5K while Mimi and Papa chase the kids around. We're then heading to McDonough for turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving!

While we're celebrating birthdays...

2011-09-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, go put on some flannels or sweats or something, turn on the closest space heater you can find, and turn a really intense spotlight on yourself. Make sure you have a big lemonade or sweet tea or something. Alright, now we're ready for a middle of July post. Kinda brings summer back, doesn't it?

Here are a couple of random pictures from one of the days we had friends over this summer. It's easy to have kids over to play during camp time since there's so much going on here all the time, and I'm not doing meals at home. We had several friends over during the course of the summer, including Violet (Elizabeth's age), one or more Davidsons, Abigail and Andrew W., the Hicks boys, and the Sumptions. This particular day we had Kory over and Amelia went to play with Sarah at her house.

Afternoon swim time! I believe this game is called "Shove Your Friend Into the Lake."

Boogie boarding is a little more difficult without waves, but it didn't stop the kids from taking them to the lake every day.

I had to take this picture, regardless of the fact that Elizabeth will probably one day dislike me for it, because it's representative of her swimsuit style for the entire summer.

We also visited a class that was skeet shooting that day. Kory and Avery got to pull the skeet thrower. This made them super cool dudes. Kory wasn't sure why he couldn't shoot one of the shot guns, since he had some past experience with a BB gun.

Random pictures of Shannon getting ready to lose his second top front tooth.

The classic Bubba tooth pose.

Another Grandmom on the four wheeler moment. The kids spent a lot of time arguing over who got to ride with her to meals, to the field, back to the house, pretty much everywhere. The golf cart is way slow. The four wheeler can pass the golf cart on the road to dinner at a high rate of speed, much to the delight of its passengers.

We celebrated the third birthday of the summer on Saturday, July 16. Amelia turned eight, somehow, in spite of the fact that she was just this little person last week:

She shared a party with Elliott, whose birthday was in January but there never was an actual celebration for it. Alison had been saying she wanted to celebrate it but the timing kept being off. His birthday is January 2nd, poor guy, so hardly anyone is in a partying mood after the crazy Christmas season. So we celebrated Amelia's 8th, and Elliott's 7 1/2th. We crammed it in between the ending of overnight camp and closing banquet for the staff on Friday night, and the beginning of horse camp and hosting of a group on Monday. (A more diligent person would have pictures from the staff banquet. It was very special, a fun time of sharing memories from the summer and celebrating the staff and the great job they did.)

Amelia wanted a flip flop cake, and since she is a Waya and Elliott is an Awahili we decided to make a red pair for her and a blue pair for him.

One day I will get adventuresome enough to try my hand at writing on a cake, maybe something crazy like "Happy Birthday." My actual handwriting is so bad I just hate to ruin all the hard work by blobbing something unintelligible on the cake in icing.

We played at the lake for awhile before moving to the dining hall for dinner and cake. We didn't have the rain like we did at Elizabeth's party, but we did have the cold. It had rained the day before, and brought with it a very uncharacteristic and weird 20 degree drop in temperature. The evening of the party was cloudy and barely 70, kinda cool for swimming. It only stopped the adults, of course.

Sarah and Todd.

Some Hickses, paddling out to watch the blobbers.

Maggie

Bennett

Meg didn't have an ideal landing off the blob tower, but somehow managed to save it. The blob was behaving a bit oddly with the cooler temperature. We're used to having it huge and puffy, filled with hot July air. It was a little smushy that day.

Ready, set...

Boing! Doesn't look like it's going to be too comfortable of a landing, does it?

James' hi-yah move off the blob.

This graceful person in flight is my bro-in-law Jason, who moved to Marietta this summer from Austin, TX. He's a counselor at an elementary school. We're really glad to have him on this side of the country now only an hour and half away instead of 17. That's one Texan east, six to go!

Curtis

Shannon likes to kayak around the lake. He also likes to pretend like it's a floating recliner.

Some Knotts

Chilly girls!

Dinnertime, complete with leftover bouquets from the staff banquet.

Jason and Jen. His birthday was just a few days before.

Happy 7 1/2 and 8th birthdays!

Maggie's prepared for the cutting of the cake, plate in hand. This is how I sing Happy Birthday too, prepared and ready. :)

Serve it up! I'm not a good cake cutter/server. I have always wondered why it's considered an honor to be asked to be the cake server at a wedding. What a stressful job! Those darned things are always round and tiered, and there's no way to cut them to get the pieces the same size.

The best part of the party.

Looks like they've resumed that former game of Shove Your Friend, only this is the dry land version.

You never count your money, before you leave the table...fireplace? There's a song in there somewhere.

Love this shirt. Thanks Knott family!

Happy birthday, sister!

It occurred to me earlier that I once again escaped being in a single picture. The biggest reason I'm doing this blog is so the kids will have a record of growing up years. I should try to be in more pictures so they'll know I was really there, and what I looked like when they were this age. That's my October's resolution.

Another snaggletooth....

Told you it was loose. I see orthodontia in our future. He gets that from me, lucky guy.

I've stayed up way too late to finish this post, so it's about time to end it and go to sleep like the rest of the world is at this hour. Days are just so full there's no time for fun like this during normal hours. I've been using the two hours during the kids' co-op classes each week to work on the blog but we don't have classes this week, so no blogging this Thursday.

I have yet a few more Elizabeth quotes to share again before I sign off.

Lately for some reason she's had an opposition to having her teeth brushed. I called her into the bathroom a few nights ago to brush, and she said, "I'm a hamster. Hamsters don't brush their teeth."

Last night we were on our weekly Skype session with James' folks, and she asked when we were going to Mimi's house in Texas again. James was joking and said, "But I don't want to go." Without missing a beat she looked at him and said seriously, "Well you don't have to go."

This week Elizabeth was watching me make her a grilled cheese sandwich and as I spread the butter on the bread she said, "I don't want that!" I explained that I had to put butter on it so it would cook on the griddle right, and she paused, then stuck out her chin and said, "Whaddya thinkin', dude?" I might have considered it disrespectful if it wasn't so darned funny.

Today the kids were kicking around Halloween costume ideas, and said I should dress up as Super Mommy. I asked them what special powers Super Mommy had (I was really liking this idea), and Amelia said, "She can change everybody's attitude." Avery randomly said, "She can spit fire." I'm a little afraid his might be based on some truth he's witnessed around here, though I liked Amelia's super power idea much better.

The kids and I were driving back over the mountain Saturday night from a faux camping expedition to Vogel State Park (more on that later), and everyone was in high spirits. They were all taking turns doing their best animal impressions, and I even got in on a few of them. Most of them were dead on. In the darkness Avery said, "Want to hear my kitten cry?" All of a sudden he produced the loudest "PPPPPPHHHHHTTTTT!!" noise on his arm I've ever heard. It was over after that, since none of us could top his kitten cry, and we were all laughing too hard to do any more anyway.

We're still in July. Are you still in your sweats by the heater? Go take a break for a few days, and I'll try to have another post up before too long. Stay tuned to read all about horseback riding day camp and Mimi's visit.

Later.

Six decades

2011-09-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

Welcome to July! I knew you were missing the hot weather so I'm here to give you a reminder. July 2nd was my dad's 60th birthday, and it happened to be on a weekend between sessions. He came up for the weekend, partly to see us, and partly to work on my great aunt's house which is about 8 miles north of us. Her house was damaged in the tornado that came through that night back in the spring when we were running for cover in the basement in the middle of the night. My uncles and cousins came to work on it as well, so we kind of made it a family hangout/work/birthday party Saturday.

The kids and I were on our way to see the progress that was being made on the house, and we got a call saying my Uncle Doug (Dad's youngest brother) had slid off the roof and was on his way to the hospital. That put a damper on things, particularly for Doug! Thankfully he was just badly bruised, it could have been a lot worse. I went on over to the house, and what was left of the family that didn't go to the hospital was scheduled to come to camp for lunch.

Here's Dad on his 60th birthday. It's a shame an old guy like him still has to do physical manual labor. Actually my crazy dad works for fun. He says it's a welcome break from office work.

My cousin Jesse, whose dad was on his way to the hospital. Nothing stops progress!

Cody, Jesse's brother. He also a Strong Rock camper, I might add. We were blessed to have their sister Sarah as one of our very first junior counselors at camp this summer.

Trees through the roof aren't a good thing.

Uncle Danny. My cousin Gary was on the roof somewhere, trying not to slide off, I imagine.

Taking a break.

Jesse teaches the already crafty, sometimes naughty Shannon how to shoot the lid off of a water bottle. I'm sure to hear that gunshot sound sometime in the future when a sneaky kid knows I'm not paying attention. It'll probably scare me to death.

Some of the Adams crowd trickled in for lunch and a low key birthday party. Looks like Grandad had to sit at the kids' table. Or maybe this is kids sitting at the Grandad table.

That mysterious pole sticking up in from the table is the Golden Plunger, the award cabins earn each day for winning cabin clean up. I love eating with a plunger on the table with me. As long as it's golden, and not brown, that is. I digress...

Maybe not quite the pomp and circumstance a celebration of six decades deserves, but the cake was tasty, anyway!

Sixty candles would have been a fire hazard.

The guys headed back to work on the house and kids, moms, and grandmoms stayed at camp to play in the lake for awhile. I took the girls to the barn to ride when they got tired of swimming. Gracyn and Bailey came to camp first session and love horses, so the two of them and Amelia rode in the arena for a little while.

This is the day I decided to officially retire Taffy. We hadn't been using her for classes because she had a terrible itching problem all winter and it still hadn't cleared up. I changed her feed and tried all kinds of topical treatments. The vet even did blood work and couldn't figure it out. She had also developed a heart murmur over the past year, so at the young age of 36, she's "out to pasture." This day I thought maybe she'd be in good enough shape to carry Amelia around for a few minutes since we we hadn't been using her and her itching seemed to be improving, but the heat was too much and she was stumbling a bit. That was a pretty clear sign she was officially done. Since then she's been happy coming in to eat and going back out with the herd. She follows Maverick around the pasture because her eyesight isn't what it used to be either, and he always waits for her. She deserves a rest after teaching countless kids to ride. I need a barn full of Taffys, then our riding program would be perfect. :)

Amelia rode Stormy instead, a pony I borrowed for the summer.

Gracyn practiced cantering on Maverick.

Bailey took a turn too. It started raining towards the end of the girls' riding time, so we brought the horses on in.

The following pictures are some I took of Amelia while she played in the rain at the barn. I think they're really cute.

I might have to actually develop some of these. It's rare that any of them ever make it off the computer.

A few days before second session ended, James came home with a new ride for Shannon. He got a good deal on a Shannon-sized mountain bike, with real gears and hand brakes. This kid is one with his bike.

He's probably put a couple of hundred miles on it already. He rides a bike better than I do. Maybe he got the cycling gene from James.

I'm going to end this post (that bite-sized pieces thing I was talking about before), although this one doesn't get us even close to the end of July.

I don't want to sign off without sharing a few more Elizabethisms with you. It's fun to witness a little person's mind developing. Last week she accidentally dropped the entire box full of colored pencils and crayons on the floor. I was in the other room and she left them there. I called her back in after awhile to clean them up, and she immediately responded, "Mom, they're sleeping!" I said, "Who's sleeping?," and she said, "The pencils and crayons are sleeping." She didn't want to clean them up and that was her out.

This morning I was driving the kids to our home school co-op classes and told them I had to put some gas in the car. I drove by a station to find one with a better price, and Elizabeth says in an animated tone, "Mama, you just passed gas!" I'll leave the ruckus that ensued to your imagination once the other kids heard that.

This evening she cracked Amelia and I up. I was fixing Amelia's hair because we had pictures for the church directory tonight, and she said, "You look like somebody else, Amelia." "Who?," we both asked. She cocked her head to the side and said, "You look mah-velous!" No idea where she got that. (Bet you're wondering if we pulled all of our hair out during the photo session. That's usually how it goes. Not this time though, because after spending all that time coordinating outfits, getting everyone ready, and driving 20 minutes to Clermont, we found out there was no power at the church, and therefore no photos. AAAAHHHHHHHH!)

Today Shannon spent nearly an hour talking on a Lego cell phone he created out of a flat Lego piece and several small pieces that looked like buttons. He was even texting, and "called" Maggie D. to see if she would take down some pictures she had posted, I assume on Facebook (?) All of the kids took turns playing games on his phone. He even had a Candyland app. Avery asked if he had Angry Birds, and he said he had a game just like it but that wasn't what it was called. I jokingly asked if it was called Frangry Frirds, and Amelia said, "No, it's Tangy Turds." That was funny. All of this took place while we were walking around in JC Penney's and Kohl's. I wonder how many people thought I had really gotten a six year old a cell phone. He says his next one is going to have a section that flips up and down.

Tomorrow Avery will be five. Impossible.

Until next time, peace out.

Hiking in June

2011-09-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

Here's some more end-of-June fun. It's rare in the summer for us to get to do something together as a family besides sit at the same table in the Dining Hall. If you've never had a meal with us during the summer you may not know that the volume level combined with the five second echo from the concrete floor and wood walls and ceiling makes conversation nearly impossible. Maybe that shouldn't count as family time.

We did have the opportunity between second and third sessions to spend most of a Saturday together, so we opted for hiking at a nearby trail we haven't been on before. It was 2 1/2 miles to the waterfall, making the entire hike five miles. (I learned that from teaching a second grader math last year. Those word problems are tricky.) I'm not sure how many steps that is for short legs, but the kids all surprised me and did great. Even Elizabeth walked about three miles of it, and we only had to piggyback her part of the way.

Love it when random strangers walk out of the woods just in time to take a picture of all of us together. As a general rule I don't exist in family photos.

A hole in a tree shaped like a heart. It must be the squirrel honeymoon suite.

I love rhododendron/hemlock/white piney forests. They're always darkish and smell like damp earth and rotting leaves. That smell ranks right up there with fresh cut grass. I've yet to see a candle in those flavors, but if they made one I'd have it.

Let me help you tie your shoe, Amelia.

About two miles in there was a smaller waterfall. A perfect spot for stopping to contemplate life.

Getting a little tired!

Finally, after much pressing on, upward and onward, after resting and even a bit of bellyaching, we finally reached it. The pinnacle, the crowning glory of the hike, the...trickle.

Just kidding, there really was a big waterfall but it was hard to get a good picture of it.

It was so dark in there my camera couldn't figure out what it was seeing. There's a big cleft the water comes through and falls for 60 or more feet. It's behind the tree in the foreground. It really is there, I promise. Every time I take a picture like this I think about how learning to use my camera for real would be nifty.

Pretending to be a lizard.

They are shy creatures, yet on high alert when a threat of danger is perceived.

The adult of the species takes on a curious orange hue when feeling mischievous.

A young female strikes an intimidating pose, using the weight of her stare to frighten off predators.

There was a treacherous hike up to the previously mentioned waterfall that my camera can't take a good picture of.

Elizabeth and I decided to skip the impossible-for-short-legs portion of the hike in lieu of a snack.

It was a fun afternoon, and the kids were troopers. Elizabeth keeps asking when we can go for a hike again. I wonder if she wants to hike on her own feet or go for a ride again.

During third session there was a tragedy. Mom brought the youngest kids home early from the evening game, and I brought the oldest two home when it was over. I came up the basement steps, opened the door, and saw a lake in the floor, liberally peppered with tiny blue gravel. The fish bowl was in two pieces. Mom said she was sitting at the counter and noticed there was some moisture under the bowl, so she picked it up to move it over so she could wipe it up. The bowl separated from its base, emptying its entire contents in one gush. Mom threw Lightning in a cup of water, which had earlier belonged to one of the kids. (Good thing it wasn't juice or milk!)

The cleanup took about 45 minutes. It's amazing how far teeny rocks can travel, and there was a pond on the floor on every side of the island. I dragged out the small fish bowl and got it ready for Lightning. When I put him in he didn't look too good, kind of swimming sideways. We left him that way when we went to bed, and by morning he had gone to the big aquarium in the sky. We had a proper funeral, and his burial plot rivals that of royalty.

R.I.P., Lightning.

We are now out of June. Look for July in the next post. I'm now officially only two months behind!

I love camp

2011-09-10T20:20:00.000-07:00

How do I love camp? Let me count the ways. Or maybe perhaps not, since there's no real way to document all the ways I love camp. Let me just start by saying I believe we really do have the best life. We are so very blessed to be able to do what we love and to do it by the power of and for the glory of our Creator. I love camp because it's an awesome environment where kids can play outside and develop relationships with big people who love God. I love it because they gain new skills, independence, and practice putting other people before themselves in a community living situation. I love watching the staff interact with them and each other. I enjoy the general ridiculousness that surrounds us at evening games when they dress up, do somersaults and play leapfrog in front of their tribes during songs and cheers, and generally act the fool. Pretty much everything I loved about camp when I was a summer staffer 15 years ago I still love about it.

This was our seventh summer, which is kind of hard to believe. Two blinks ago we were up to our necks in mud and silt fence, looking at the scarred earth where the lakes, pasture, and building sites were going in (and tons of trees were going out), knowing the facility was going to somehow turn out great in spite of the mess in front of us. All the while we were planning and plotting, trying to figure out the details of the program and how best to market something that didn't yet truly exist.

Then there were babies. Little babies that took up lots of time on the home front. I got pregnant with Amelia while we were in the midst of putting in roads (after the trees out/silt fence in years), and clearly remember driving the loader, filling the bucket up over and over again with large rocks, and lining a drainage ditch beside the main road in with them so it wouldn't wash away. I was having 24/7 nausea. And it was snowing that day. The next week I was filling in at our church while they looked for a full time secretary. I have always liked hard work and loved being outdoors, but the combination of outdoor work's downsides with pregnancy made me really glad the church needed a temporary position filled!

Watching the place come together was amazing. By the time we opened in June of 2005, Amelia was 22 months old and Shannon was 8 months old. We received the certificate of occupancy for the Lodge in April, right before our very first Open House. Prior to that I walked around our house with three phones on my person; my cell phone, the house phone, and the office line we had at the house since we weren't in the office yet. You never could tell when I might need to answer one of them but was in the middle of nursing a baby or changing a diaper. (I was always thinking, "If only the person on the other end of this phone could see what I'm actually doing right now!") Not that the camp line was exactly ringing off the hook. It was quite a challenge to get folks to send their kids that first summer. Or really even the second or third...still a work in progress, actually.

I had personal struggles during that time, trying to figure out how to let go this huge dream in lieu of the ministry God had given me at home. It was impossible to be as involved in camp as I wanted when I felt called to be mostly at home raising kids. I did as much as I could from home to be helpful, but toddlers, babies, and pregnancies take up a lot of time and energy. It felt all wrong to send them off to let someone else take care of them and be their surrogate parent. Still, it was an internal struggle for a long time. I'm proof that God can change a heart and give contentment though. I'm not only content, I'm fulfilled. God sent us Daniel at just the right time too, in the spring just before we opened. He has pretty much every skill James and I lack, plus he, too, is a fellow camp junkie. The circumstances and timing that brought him to Strong Rock couldn't have been orchestrated by anyone but God, and we are grateful for him every single day.

Now, to fast forward (then rewind!) back to June and July. I have a few random pictures from this summer, though not nearly enough to be representative of it. I took quite a few pictures to help out with the daily photos we post to the website. Parents enjoy seeing what's going on at camp while their kids are there, so we take no less than 150 each day. I had an ailing computer at the time, so I didn't save many of them to my personal one. There are some from all of the sessions, I think.

Canoeing classes like swamp the canoe day. We had so much footage of kids paddling swamped canoes in our session videos that it looked like we didn't know how to teach them how to canoe properly!

Thank goodness somebody figured it out.

Soccer. Duh.

Riflery.

Climbing and belaying.

Older classes get to skeet shoot as well. James usually teaches skeet shooting.

Rambo's Angels (?)

I never mind taking pictures at the barn.

Here's Karina on Kiefer. She came to camp 4th session and we were glad to see her! Still trying to get her folks to let her move in with us...

Maggie D., who came to third session.

And now, a moment to salute our staff. You never know what you're going to see around here.

Sometimes there are no words.

Not sure what's up with all the dresses on the guys. I apparently have no pictures of any girls' staff in wacky dress saved on this computer. There was definitely plenty of it though!

Everyday during 6th period kids get to choose what they want to do for the last hour. Most swim or blob, but several choose to come to the barn to help clean, turn out horses....and have a shavings fight! Good thing they're clean shavings.

All I can think is "itch itch scratch scratch ."

Awahili cheers!

Waya cheers! Cheers happen from both sides at every evening game. Amelia and Shannon played every evening game, all summer long. Avery and Elizabeth mostly ran around the field the entire time, every evening, all summer long.

On Saturdays during two week sessions we a have special carnival-type activity on the field. This year it was a luau theme. Notice the creeper sticking his head through at the top. That's Ty (aka Buzz), who was visiting for the weekend and helping out during Daniel's absence. He had a wedding to go to out of town, and went though he begrudged the timing. No one ever thinks of us poor camp folks when planning a summer wedding!

Little people and big people alike lined up to dunk Rambo.

Score!

Gotta have some face paint.

Lose the flour game and pay the consequences!

Shannon didn't take fishing class during his session but James took him fishing one day during a class.

Success!

The kids and I block out 4:30 to 5:30 everyday to join the campers for free swim. The lake is warm all summer, especially on the top layer. You hit warm spots all the time. I don't trust them, but I like them.

Hi-yah!

Ultimate Frisbee.

Hugs (aka Priscilla) and some ladies from the oldest cabin.

Outdoor Living class after a day of geocacheing.

Had to be there to understand this one!!

Rambo in action at an evening Lifeline. Stretch and Pepper were visiting that weekend, a treat for us since they were WAY BACK from summer number one! Having met my husband at camp, it's pretty cool to have had that happen at Strong Rock too. They're expecting a future SR camper. :)

Here's a huge reason why I love camp. This is where friendships happen, where relationships are built. Friends James and I made at WinShape and Skyline 15 and 20 years ago are friends we still have today. God made us relational creatures, and if relationships weren't important to Him, He wouldn't have gone so far out of His way to offer a way for us to have one with Him.

Did I mention that this is a fun place too? Summer 2011 has now been over for nearly two months and already I'm counting down the days until next summer. I miss it! We will be adding two weeks to next summer for a total of eight weeks.It's exciting, and yet a huge responsibility to make sure we have it filled.

Since camp has been over we haven't lacked for folks being there. We've hosted several retreat groups, and then had Strong Rock Family Camp last weekend (Labor Day). More on that in a future post.

And now I shall close this post. But I can't close it without leaving you with a few Elizabethisms from the past two weeks.

We were just on vacation this past week (again, another post, another day...or year), and the older kids and James and I were going to play Bananagrams, a word game played with Scrabble-like tiles. Elizabeth wanted to play but I explained that she needed to be able to spell before she could play that game. She said, "I can spell. I can spell three." I told her to spell "three" for me, so she held up three fingers and said, "That's how you spell it!"

In preschool choir (I'm helping out with it this year, both Avery and Elizabeth are in it), we sing a few silly songs including one about dinosaurs. Part of it says, "We are the dinosaurs, we make the earth flat. We make the earth flat." She was singing it at home a few days ago and sung "We are the dinosaurs, we make the girl flat. We make the girl flat." Misheard song lyrics, if you don't know, are called "mondegreens." Check out kissthisguy.com for all kinds of misheard song lyrics and a few minutes of time wasting fun. (For example, Away in a Manger has some verses that include, "The cattle are blowing the baby away," and "The little Lord Jesus was eating the hay.") **Disclaimer: The writer of this blog is not responsible for the personal offense any reader may take to the misheard lyrics on kissthisguy.com, as all of them are not, ah, exactly G rated.

My mom tells me when my grandaddy was first saved they were singing the old hymn Without Him, part of which goes, "Without Him I would be drifting, like a ship without a sail," and he proudly sang "Without Him I would be drifting, like a fish without a tail." Same idea, I guess!

I may have posted this before, but this is a song which has resurfaced at our house lately. A couple of years ago the kids came up with this little tune when the movie Cars came out. "Piston Cup, Piston Cup, everybody wants a Piston Cup." Now sing it to yourself pronouncing "piston" like they do. "Pist-in cup, pist-in cup, everybody wants a pist-in cup." Cracks me up every time.

Now the question I know that's on your mind. What will the next installment of The Happy Himstedt Home have in store for me? Upcoming posts will include: A family hike, Amelia's birthday, horse day camp, and the Himstedt/Adams family vacation. See ya in a few weeks/months/years!

She's three!

2011-09-01T07:42:00.000-07:00

I'm back! As promised, with Elizabeth's birthday pictures from way back in June. We had her birthday party June 11, the Saturday after first session ended. Anne and Keith once again graciously agreed to host it at the Windmill subdivision pool, and the Davidsons once again allowed us to make it a joint party with Lydia, who turned six. May as well when you're both going to invite most of the same people anyway!

Maggie made Elizabeth a party hat.

We had a gloriously hot and rain-free first session of camp, but the weekend that followed was rainy and cold! I drove us to the party watching the Weather Channel on my phone to see if the severe thunderstorm warning was going to end before we got to our SWIMMING party. I hate electricity at a swim party.

The first part of the party it rained and thundered some, but it let up for the second half. We ate and enjoyed boring old adult chatter until the rain stopped.

Ruth, Elizabeth, and Sydney. Elizabeth was psyched about her birthday party. She's been asking pretty much every day since June when she can have another birthday.

Amelia, Maggie, Dillon (bunny ears in the background), Kendall, Carsen, and Meg, posing and waiting out the rain.

We had to have some adults to hold down the picnic table. Chris P., Grandmom (who spent all summer at camp with us), Grandad, Keith, Chris B., and a blurry Mrs. Davidson in the background.

Jill, in a stylish towel for the purpose of staying warm, Anne, Rhonda, and Mrs. Peacock (yes, really, Peacock- the Hicks' Grammie, visiting from Ohio).

The goofy hot dog griller people.

Love to get people stuffing their faces in photos. Big people, little people, all are fair game.

My kids love parties and events where there are Cheetos and cheesy chips. I don't do cheesy chips at home, partly because I can't find the motivation it takes to keep a damp paper towel after the cheesy fingers and faces, and partly because I've never seen that florescent orange color in nature. The Red No. 5 and Yellow No. 7 it takes to make the bright orange are probably found in a million other things I feed them....so yeah, it really is more about the cheesy fingers and faces.

For some reason I failed to take any swimming pictures. Now everyone is in a stylish towel wrap. (Me included.)

This year we did a butterfly cake. I opted for the butterfly on top instead of the more creative, more time consuming butterfly shape.

Yay for presents!!

Lydia got some presents too.

Another successful birthday. It's hard to believe the baby is three now. Life is easier in a lot of ways, now that we don't have to travel with a diaper bag everywhere we go, and we can skip naps altogether now when we need to, and people can feed themselves and put on their own shoes. At the end of July Elizabeth announced one day, "I will sleep upstairs now. You can give away my crib." And so she does, and we took the crib down, a previously irreplaceable piece of furniture that's been part of our lives for eight years. I'm always surprised when people who only have one kid consider not having any more because the baby years are so hard. They're also so short. What's a couple of years in the grand scheme of things? A breath, a mist, a distant memory in a lot of ways, even though I'm really only a year or so removed from it. And then, Lord willing, you get to enjoy them for the rest of your life!

Next post, more of camp. Have I mentioned that I miss it?

Camp!

2011-08-24T19:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome to June! In August!

A LOT happened in June. June 5th (also Elizabeth's birthday) was the first day of first session 2011. The week before that was staff training week. It was a week filled with learning, bonding, preparing, practicing, and crazy antics. The usual staff training week.

That was also the week we finally finished school for the year. The kids' teacher decided to promote them both to the next grade- congratulations to our big 1st and 3rd graders! Here is where you would see a cute picture of them on their last day of school...if that dumb black hole that swallowed the rest of my May pictures hadn't appeared. I hope someday it decides to cough them back up, because I'd really like to have them back.

Because I know what you're going to ask next- how was the school year? As always, my reply is, "Great, as far as I can tell." With no former teaching experience, and no one to compare the kids to, I think we're doing just fine. They can both read fluently, and I realized at the end of the school year that Amelia's a little ahead with math, so we'll be using this first semester to review what we learned last year...and what we forgot over the summer. I have always understood why so many educators are all for year 'round schooling. Then there's no learning loss over the summer and no need to spend weeks reviewing and re-teaching. Understanding it doesn't mean I'm all for it though, since I believe there's more to becoming a well-rounded individual than the stuff you learn in school. A little learning loss is worth what is gained from other summer pursuits. It was a bit tight getting in those last few weeks with camp stuff coming up so quickly, but we did it. It's hard to believe we're already on to the next year!

I've decided to try to break these blog posts into bite-sized pieces. Perhaps then I can get them caught up! (I keep making these promises to myself. Like the one where I said I was going to catch them all up before we started our school year, which was now almost two weeks ago.)

June 5th was the opening day of first session this summer. This was a terrific summer. The staff bonded really well and it was awesome to see so many returning kids. Some have been with us all seven summers! A tremendous testimony to God's work here. Amelia and Shannon went to first session, which was a week long. This was Amelia's second summer, and Shannon's first.

Amelia was in Rock Creek, the cabin she was in last year. Bubbles (Angela) was one of her counselors last summer, and was in her cabin again, though Willow (Rebecca) was actually her counselor.

Meg got to come this summer too, and was one of Amelia's bunkmates.

Google (Aaron) was here for his second summer of hanging out with little guys, and was Shannon's counselor. Elliott got to come to camp this summer too, and the two of them had a fun week together.

A.J. wanted to stay too. Maybe next summer!

Bye, Mom!

They were in....

Tozer was a helpful mover inner in the cabin.

And now for a picture of one of my favorite young ladies of all time...Karina!

She is the daughter of friends from church, and has been coming to camp since our very first summer. She helped me out with the kids for a week last summer, and this summer traded out some camp tuition in exchange for nannying for THREE weeks. She stayed at our house, and was pretty much my right hand for the first three weeks of camp while we got things up and running. She is wonderful and responsible, and is 15 going on 20. I've had the privilege of knowing her since she was younger than Amelia, and even got to keep her some while her mom worked. I couldn't talk her folks into letting her move in and stay all year, though I tried.

One of the privileges of living at camp is being able to take pictures of your kids during camp activities. This summer Shannon chose archery, climbing, horseback riding, arts and crafts, and outdoor living skills as his skill classes.

Amelia chose arts and crafts, dance, archery, fishing, and drama.

Shannon even got a skill award at the end of the session in arts and crafts. Notice the blue bandana. We are now a house divided. He is an Awahili, Amelia is a Waya.

Elliott picked canoeing as one of his skill classes.

Here's sweet Leah, one of Amelia's friends from church, who came for the first time this summer too.

Climbing suits Shannon very well. He's always doing Spider Man moves at home, scaling the door frames and climbing the stair rail.

My mom worked at the barn that first week since they were heavy on beginners and light on enough help. Here she is with Bailey, one of my cousin Gary's daughters.

Barn crew!

Meg works on baiting her hook.

Gracyn, Bailey's sister, and Alex Anne, Meg's sister. Week one was especially fun because there were so many kids we knew well.

A mid-week I-miss-my-sissy hug.

Amelia in dance class. I had to get a copy of the dance performance songs. This many weeks later she's still doing the dances at home. Quite well, too, I might add. She gets that from me.

Pistol (Whitney) and Amelia share a book during free time before lunch.

Part of the way through the week Alison, A.J., and Tozer came to visit. Elliott nearly forgot to acknowledge their presence. The fun of camp erases some kids' memories of their families. (Like mine, for instance. I barely got a high five all week!)

We rode around and watched some skill classes in action.

Elizabeth and Tozer had some sort of three year old squabble. They pushed each other back and forth saying, "MY seat." "No, MINE."

"Looky here, Elizabeth...bossypants..."

At church I get cracked up in the three year old class when a kid picks up a toy no one is playing with, looks at another kid and says, "MY toy." Usually the other kid picks up something else and says, "MY toy," then it turns into a squabble over nothing anybody cares anything about. Actually, I can think of quite a few adults that do similar stuff...

Eventually they got over it and Elizabeth allowed him to take her for a spin on the four wheeler.

Avery ended up going home with A.J. for a sleepover. This was his very first one by himself!

Shannon has been dying to give the blob a try since he first saw it two years ago. I haven't been keen on him doing it before now because I wanted him to be big enough. His very first go he ran off the end of the blob tower without stopping. That's not an easy feat, because it's pretty high up, and in my opinion, kinda scary!

A successful landing.

Ready...

Aim....

Fire!

A successful blob.

Daddy and Shannon watch other blobbers and contemplate the finer points of takeoffs and landings. He did it another time or two, then started to think the better of it and decided it was getting a little scary after all. It really does only take one or two bad blobs (i.e., painful landings!) to make a person think twice about doing it again. That was my experience anyway, since the first time I ever blobbed was at Camp Skyline and my wonderful husband who at the time outweighed me by nearly ONE HUNDRED POUNDS was the one to send me flying, after assuring me that the jumper would be a counselor who was close to my size. I did not appreciate the trickery, especially since I landed badly after a high altitude launch. That nearly cured me of blobbing forever, though I have had some fun blobs since then. **I just wanted to see if it was possible to use the word "blob" as a verb, adjective, and noun, all in one paragraph. Yep, it is.

Fisherwoman Amelia.

Here's what lives in our lake.

Amelia didn't choose horseback riding this session, mostly because she didn't want to have to keep up with her long pants all day! This is Olivia, daughter of Abby who runs our riding program in the summer. She learned to jump her horse Sophia this summer.

The Grandmommymobile, complete with a Grandmommy on it.

The last night of camp is Tribal Council, a series of silly games and tribal cheers and songs, the last time tribes compete for points during the session.

Amelia helped represent the Waya of Rock Creek in a balloon in the air game.

Wayas!

First session went really fast. The kids wanted to move out of the house and into cabins for the entire summer, but we were mean parents and made them come back home. They did play pretty much every evening game for the whole summer though, and we all participated in as many things as we could during the day as well.

I miss camp. :(

Next post, more of June. We celebrated Elizabeth's birthday the weekend first session ended, so that's what's up next! Bite sized pieces still seem to take me awhile to put together. I can do this!

Bye!

Run, Forrest, Run! (and bike and swim)

2011-08-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

May. That was many weeks ago. Well, months ago at this point. It was a busy month for sure. I still took the time to take several photos, but I can't find them to save my life. :( I don't know why I would have erased them from my camera without loading them to my computer first, but I can't find them anywhere. That's very disappointing, but not terribly surprising considering how air headed I can be when I'm busy and overwhelmed. May was pretty overwhelming, and probably always will be with camp just around the corner.

In May I was attempting to finish school with the kids, help plan staff week, get together two horseback riding certification clinics, and a variety of other things both important and not that took up the rest of my time. I'm always amazed at how the little things eat up so much of each day. They are usually things that can't be scheduled into a daily planner (which I use religiously, of course...cough, cough, ahem). Things like spills that can't wait, forty bazillion toys in the floor that took 7 seconds to get out but 45 minutes to put away, wet pants (usually not mine), and general directing of foot traffic (size 13 and under). Sometimes I think it would be cool to be super organized and schedule each day on paper....then I think of all the unknown variables that would get me so far off track and frustrated that it would end up being a curse to my sanity rather than a saver of it. Perhaps I need a life coach. Nah, probably just a maid and a cook, that would do it.

A few things that did happen in May are sinus infections for all (except James and I, thank goodness), and recurrent nose bleeds for Amelia. She's had them before, but with the onset of the sinus infection she ended up with there was a period of about two weeks where she had no less than 15. It was crazy. I mention it because of how thoroughly it messed up her performance of Welcome to the Jungle (not of the Guns 'N Roses ilk for those of you hard rockin' fans out there). It was a short musical her choir class at our home school co-op performed in May. She had been practicing for weeks both in class and at home, then five minutes before they went on stage....yep, a nose bleed. The entire performance only lasted 20 minutes, which is exactly how long it took us to get it stopped. There would have been pictures of her onstage, but she never got there. We did get to watch it from the back of the room, tissues in hand. Fun!

Here's where you would have seen pictures of Amelia's end of year ballet performance, also through the home school co-op. The girls were cute and danced a few excerpts from the Nutcracker. It was awesome- full of stage whispers to each other about where each girl was supposed to be standing and what they were supposed to be doing. We got the idea anyway, and it was fun to see what they had learned going from clueless beginning ballerinas to slightly less clueless slightly more experienced ballerinas.

May 18-20 I ran a horseback riding clinic through CCHI (Christian Camping Horsemanship International), an organization I have been involved with for 13 years. A co-instructor who we imported from Colorado for part of the the week helped me run the clinic, and we put 11 people through it, all going to work at various summer camps. Clinics are always fun but labor and time intensive. I ran a second one at Camp Skyline in Alabama where we used to work full time the following Monday through Wednesday. Mom helped with the kids during the Strong Rock clinic, then went home that Friday to finish planning my Nanny's 85th birthday party. In the true Himstedt spirit of probably trying to do too much, our family spent Saturday evening with the Davidson family at Vogel State Park where they were camping. This is where you should see some fun pictures of kids playing in the creek. Except you can't, because I don't have any. We like to camp vicariously through our friends instead of actually camping ourselves. Someday we'll pack everybody up and give it a try.

Sunday morning I helped with Sunday School (did I mention I was the second teacher in Kindergarten Sunday School all year?), then loaded everybody up for the drive to McDonough. Except for James, who naturally had to stay behind with a group at camp. We went to Nanny's birthday party at Uncle Ned and Aunt Dawn's house. The pictures I took there that I can't find are truly the ones I'm most bummed about. A person doesn't turn 85 everyday, especially not a sweet and precious one like my Nanny. To have those pictures poof into thin air is depressing. The party was fun, and the kids enjoyed playing with second cousins they don't get to see much. That evening I kissed the kids, put them to bed at my folks' house, then got up and headed off to Alabama about 5:00 that morning. It was weird driving away without any of them, not something I've ever done before. God's teaching me a thing or two about faith. Turns out they can live without me, and even have fun. I know, I was surprised too!

The clinic at Skyline was fun as well. I stayed in the house James and I lived in for nearly four years, and aside from fact that they've remodeled pretty much every building in the 11 years we've been gone, it's exactly the same. A lot of the people we worked with are still there, so it was a terrific time of catching up. Again, it was really weird being kidless for two and a half days. I didn't know what to do with myself that first evening after we finished with the clinic participants for the day, or that first morning when I woke up bright and early after trying my dangdest (a word, no?) to sleep a full nine hours, without success. So I went for a walk/run, then came back and drank coffee in a rocking chair. By myself. Then I had breakfast. With adults. Who served themselves. And cleaned up after themselves. And didn't leave a pound and a half of breakfast on the floor when they were finished. I'm tellin' ya, it was WEIRD. It was also quite enjoyable, though I tried not to let my mind fast forward to the day when I can do that every day because all the little people are now big people who are no longer around. (Cut! Remember, I don't want to think about it.)

I got back to mom and dad's in time to put the kids to bed, then we got up Thursday morning and headed straight to Murrayville so Amelia could do her ballet performance, which I already talked about. I got a little out of order there. Staff training week began the next day. I'll save pictures of it and others from camp for the next post...which I plan to have all caught up before we officially start school back week after next. I am prepared to suffer the consequences of your wrath (all two of you reading this) if I don't follow through and do it.

Now I'm going to get out of order again and explain the following pictures, which are the only ones I have from the month. Mother's Day weekend we went to Panama City so James could race his first ever half-Iron Man distance triathlon. It was great! We went with Chris and Jill Baumgardner and their girls (sans Reed), and took our oldest three. Mom kept Elizabeth. It felt all wrong to be leaving her behind in McDonough (this is before my leave-them-all-four experience), but I kept thinking all weekend how glad I was not to be dragging her along. She had a much better time with Grandmommy.

We stayed in a condo right on the beach, with two pools and two hot tubs. Fun was had by all here. Chris has done this particular race a couple of times, so he and Jill walked us through the race scene.

There was a small expo with all kinds of running/biking/swimming gear. We walked though it the day before the race.

A booth advertising for an upcoming race at Amelia Island. Apparently Amelia Man is their mascot.

Amelia and Carsen.

Seeing friends at church every week isn't the same as getting to spend extended time with them on a trip. The kids got along great, and had a lot of fun together.

We got there on Friday, May 6 and enjoyed some beach and pool time, then headed out to dinner. The next morning the guys had to be up and out super early, so Jill took them to the start of the race about a mile up the beach. We fed the kids breakfast, then headed up there ourselves on foot.

Before the start of the race Daddy had some time to chill with us.

Jill, Chris, Sydney and Carsen.

Chris has been a lot of help to James through his transition into Fit Guy, and an integral part in getting him interested in triathlons. Chris has competed in many of them, and has finished a couple of full-distance Iron Mans. I think that's some combination of amazing, awe inspiring, and just plain nuts! An Iron Man triathlon is a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride, and a full marathon (26.2 miles)...all done with no breaks in between. The half distance is, well, half of that. A 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and 13.1 mile run.

Chris is also a help with the more mundane matters, like getting into a wet suit.

Chris, ready to swim.

James, ready to swim.

A couple of guys looking a bit more like aliens than serious competitors...

They sent groups out in shifts, basically, by age group.

And they're off! Keep your eye on the guy with the fish on his rear. That's James!

I'm really, really glad the water was calm that day. It made me nervous sending my husband off into the ocean to swim for over a mile.

It's hard to get a feel for exactly how far it was, but they swam past the end of that last buoy you can see, then over to another one parallel to the last, and then back down another row of buoys to the shore. You really couldn't see them for most of it.

Finally they're coming back in. James did it in less time than he expected it to take, 38 minutes.

Here he is coming through the shower (sort of) area after the swim, on his way to the bike.

Wet suit already half way off...38 minutes, yeah!!

Chris coming through after the swim.

By the time we got to the transition area James was already gone, but this is what it looked like. We headed back from the swim/bike area to the condo to set up a portable tent and watch for our guys to come running by later. It was nice to be there with someone who knew the ropes.

Jill and the girls.

I had to get a picture of Shannon on the walk back to the condo. We've been collecting the tabs off of cans for Mimi, who sends them to the Ronald McDonald house to help raise funds. Naturally in Panama City there are a plethora of cans of all kinds all over the roadsides, so he stopped to collect as many as he could.

There was representation from every beverage group: carbonated, energy, and alcoholic. Most were even empty. Eventually I had him stop and just pull off the tabs and leave the cans in the trash. There's only so much a six year old can carry.

We had a great spot to set up the tent, on a grassy spot right next to the condo. We waited for awhile to see our guys since they had to finish the bike ride before they could start the run. It was too hard for us to get to a spot on the ride where we could see them, particularly with five kids in tow. We cheered on every runner as they came by.

The kids made signs for encouragement. Shannon's said, "Go Go Go, Do your best!"

You could tell which of the ladies who ran by must be mommies. They enjoyed the signs.

And finally, yet way before we expected, came James running around the corner. That's because he KILLED it on the bike! Turns out he finished 23rd overall on the bike out of 740 something finishers.

He flashed us the "I Love You" sign as he ran by. Woo hoo, go Daddy!

Here comes Chris.

He took a few extra seconds to hug his cheerleaders.

Then he took a stroll in the park with his wife. Just kidding.

There really are no words for the next picture.

This guy did the entire triathlon in his rubber duckie Speedo. The swim, the bike (ew!), and the run. Props to him for his self-confidence. James says he was a nice guy who had lot of encouragement for everyone. The sunburn at the end had to be something else. No farmer's tan for this guy.

We were at the finish line when James came through. That was a cool moment.

He finished in 5 hours, 5 minutes, and 29 seconds. I was so proud of him! Of course, that time is only 9 hours faster than I could have done it, so really, how great was it?

Here's Chris!

Feeling a bit spent, but happy!

Good job, guys!

They actually had the energy left to go to the pool at the condo after the race.

These next ones are a bit out of order, this was the first afternoon or the last morning...considering how long it's taken me to get this post done (three months) I don't think I'll take the time to figure out which it was. I just know there was no throwing of children the afternoon after the race. It was kind of like they were tired or something.

James and Carsen.

Whee!

James and Sydney.

Ever seen anyone sit on water? Sydney can. It's amazing.

Amelia.

Sydney and Amelia.

We also got to spend some time on the beach.

Here's what happens when you have your camera on the wrong setting and then your editing software only gives them swimsuits, no ocean background!

No trip to the beach is complete without a sand horse sculpture with a seashell mane.

That night we went to Jimmy Buffet's restaurant, Margaritaville. It's a place to eat AND a place to be entertained.

This dude was walking all over the restaurant on stilts making balloon creations for kids. Avery whispered to me, "That's the tallest guy I've ever seen!"

Good thing we were in a big booth since the hats took up so much space.

Hey, no sword fighting at the table!

A slightly out of focus picture of Chris and Jill. I think my camera was confused and didn't know whether to focus on them in the foreground or the bright yellow scuba tanks behind them. Or maybe it thought Jill was a scuba tank, since she appears to have a nozzle coming out of her head.

Us. Uh oh, looks like somebody trimmed her own bangs to get a little more mileage out of a haircut!

They played hard! This happened in the car two nights in a row.

Waiting to eat outside Red Robin. (Photos are still out of order!)

Carsen and Avery dance the Fandango. At one point Carsen asked us if she could trade Sydney for Avery. I assured her she would miss her sister!

Sunday morning was Mothers' Day, and Carsen and Amelia brought Jill and I breakfast and juice in our rooms. Then they left. I didn't want to eat all lonely, so I brought it out where everyone was. They were sweet and thoughtful to do it. It was the nicest Mothers' Day ever, since I got to spend the morning sitting in a lounge chair by a pool, right by the beach, watching my kids play. I vote to spend all of them like that!

We headed out that afternoon, back to Cleveland, back to camp and all of it's mounting May craziness. Elizabeth had a good time with Grandmom too. She was glad to see us, but would have gladly gone back home with my mom.

Well, I did it. I finished up May. Since I have no more pictures from that month I'll let this be the end. Look for June, hopefully coming soon!

Remember me?

2011-06-24T20:16:00.000-07:00

Would you all please welcome me back to the world of blogging? I have taken a leave of absence for some time again, due to an ailment known as Too Much Stuff To Do. End of the year school stuff, camp trainings and preparations, and a to-do list 300 miles long have made sitting down to blog pretty much impossible.

Way back in the middle of April I made a trip to McDonough with the kids. I was going to look at some potential camp horses at a Girl Scout camp kind of near my folks' house. It was kind of far, as it turned out, but we had a fun trip anyway. Our school year was getting near the end at that point, and once warmish spring-type weather starts to show up I get field trippy. So Mom and I took the kids to Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta for one of our school days.

I find this a bit disturbing.

This one is even more disturbing, though the Elizabethosaurus makes me laugh.

This was a lot of fun.

They had just finished a new kids' area with a big tree house, slides, and all kinds of things to do. Through the middle of the room was a stream painted on the floor, but a projection from above somehow made it look like it was rippling when you stomped on it. There were also fish scurrying around.

The fish scurried faster when you jumped at them. Hours of fun for a boy!

The joy of playing in a vapor waterfall.

There were also baby alligators.

Did you know if you take a flash photograph of the baby alligators, a nice Fernbank employee might walk over and ask you not to use a flash on the baby alligators? Then you might see a sign that says, "No Flash Photography" stuck to the side of the baby alligators' aquarium. That's what I hear, anyway.

Ever wonder if paleontologists ever get it wrong? What if the fossils washed around and what appears to be the correct order isn't? I wonder if God gets a kick out of seeing humans scurrying around trying to get it all figured out. I'd be afraid to speak with authority on the subject if I wasn't alive to see these things walking around. Personally, I'm glad I didn't ever have to see this one! That's a big dude.

Some of the columns in the room were like a puzzle. Cool!

We pretty much closed the place down that day, ending our day with a fun IMAX about animals. Another school day down! The next day Amelia had to be a church by 4:00 for a rehearsal for the upcoming kids' choir musical. We went home via Marietta so we could visit with Lisa, Jordan, and Reagan. We met them that morning at our favorite gymnastics place that has free play hours.

Cousins!

Heading up the steps to the big inflatable slide.

Monkey boy sequence.

The foam pit is their favorite. My favorite is the trampoline that goes down into the floor and springs you up high enough to lose control while you're in the air. Not that that happened to me or anything.

Getting ready to Tarzan...

Cannonball!

This one can always be depended upon to find new and creative ways to do things.

The next Sunday was the kids' musical at church. It was Fish Tales, which highlighted several "fishing" stories from the Bible, told from the setting of a fishing tournament. It was very well done. We have some talented and dedicated folks working with our kids' programs at church. There was even a live fish pulled out of a kids' pool at one point. There are also always devotions for the kids to work through in the weeks leading up to the performance, which I really like.

The church sanctuary has to be the worst place to take photos. They never turn out too great.

This was Shannon's first musical with the kids' choir. He's on the front row in the red shirt. Good thing he got over the former ill feelings he always demonstrated toward choir in his preschool years.

Amelia had her first solo. She did a great job!

I like these next photos. Look at them and you'll know why.

Two of my favorite girls! If you had told me one day Taffy would be teaching my kids to ride I wouldn't have believed it. The two oldest kids and I had a fun April Sunday afternoon at the barn. I don't get many chances to teach them about what I love since the smallest one is still a bit dangerous underfoot at the barn, so this was an enjoyable afternoon.

This was Shannon's debut riding alone. He and Maverick got along very well, and he made a friend that day.

"Jumping," Taffy-style.

Amelia trotting alone.

Shannon trotting alone. Makes a mama proud!

And then it was Easter. Remember Easter? Way back on April 24? During the week leading up to it we dyed eggs, of course. Periodically during the year they ask me when we're going to dye eggs, so it's a looked forward to event.

First you color on them. Actually, first you boil them. Disaster, otherwise.

Who can know the workings of this one's mind?

Almost ready to dunk 'em.

The mad scientists stirred up the colors. That project is made a little trickier when you don't have any red to work with, since the red got used up on the last birthday cake.

All done!

On Easter Sunday we went to church, then drove to McDonough for the day to Uncle Danny and Aunt Lynn's for lunch and egg hunting. Here's where you'll have to imagine the Easter Sunday photo of our family. We did take a couple, but I handed off the camera on the wrong setting and it was WAY overexposed looking. Why don't I have pictures of just the kids all dressed up? I HAVE NO IDEA. I think it's the normal hurry of a Sunday morning compounded by the fact that we were trying to drive nearly two hours after church. I do regret it. Oh well.

Easter dinner was yummy, as usual, and the fellowship is always fun. Uncle Danny took the kids on a hayride so the eggs could be hidden in peace.

When we got back the little kids got to hunt eggs in the front yard, and the big kids were in the back yard.

Jordan contemplates her next move.

Reagan's just picking up colorful shiny stuff. It doesn't take them long to figure out there's candy in those things though!

Score!

Granny joined us for the day.

The mad rush to find the big money egg...$10. I wanted to find it.

Can I eat my 45th piece of candy, PLEASE?!

Counting up the day's spoils.

Here's my cousin Ashley's newest addition, Camilla.

After egg hunting and our probably 4th plate of food, several went fishing.

Feet dipping too, though it's an activity that has its casualties.

Sometimes a flip flop gets away. I believe it was Cody's fishing skills that saved this one.

Shannon completes the rescue. Whew!

I knew both of us would have a better time if I brought Elizabeth's float. This way she was able to fish with sticks all she wanted without getting mad at me for holding her back.

Perhaps a zoom lens would have done a better job of showing Jesse really did pull in a fish.

Aunt Reda and her sister Leigh.

Kendel

The boys had all kinds of teachers that day.

Jordan was content to sit on the dock and scare away the fish.

I can hold a fish!

This one reminds me of another picture, now some years ago.

Avery never actually caught anything, but he stuck with it for nearly two hours. All in all it was another good Easter Sunday celebration with family.

The next few weeks we continued to work on finishing school, and I also spent time working on our upcoming certification clinics at camp. I was preparing to run the horseback riding instructor certification as usual, and also coordinated getting folks from other camps signed up to come to our archery, riflery, and lifeguarding clinics as well. We were also planning staff week training and hosting groups at camp. Anytime after March is generally crazy around here.

One thing kids everywhere look forward to at the end of the school year is Field Day. Homeschoolers around here are no exception, as there is a parent in Hall County that has been organizing a Homeschool Field Day for the past few years. I felt like we had a crew old enough to handle it this year, so at the end of April we headed over to the East Hall Community Center and took part. What a fun morning!

Avery isn't officially school age yet, but they let his age participate. I wondered if he would since he's been iffy about taking part in story hour at the library and some things at church too, but he jumped right in and did his part for his team. There were probably 60 kids participating, and they were broken down into teams. Avery and Amelia were on the same team.

You can't have Field Day without a sack race.

The old Egg and Spoon (or Ball in Spoon) relay.

No, he's not really holding it. It just LOOKS like he is.

Our friends the Sumptions were there. Sarah was also on Amelia's team.

Pour the Water Relay.

Good thing she wasn't a part of a team or their cup wouldn't be very full at the end. Spectating is hard work!

Ride the Fun Noodle Relay.

Looks like Sarah's getting bucked off her horse.

Run, Forrest, run! Avery got a start and then stopped, not sure what to do.

With some pointing and hollering he finally got going the right way again.

Wanna race?

On your mark, get set...

No Field Day is complete without Tug-O-War. At the end the kids challenged the parents. It really was all we could do to get them to budge even a little, but eventually through clenched teeth, grunting, sweating, and sheer determination we pulled them inch by inch over the line. I thought it was an appropriate metaphor for what we as parents, particularly homeschooling parents, do every single day!

Obstacle Course!

Agility training for the two year old set.

Most of the participants.

There were even ribbons for teams and individuals. We came home with quite a pile of them.

This one found her own entertainment. We're planning to train this entire year so as a three year old she'll be ready to compete next year. :)

May followed with a series of scary storms. It's been a pretty violent spring off and on, or at least from the perspective of a storm scaredy cat like me. One night we ducked for cover in the basement a couple of times. We hauled the kids down there about 11:00, and they immediately fell asleep, so once the first threat was over (there was another one later), James and I came back upstairs and left them sleeping on the floor. A tornado struck a few miles north of us, but thankfully decided to skip over camp. That would have been terrible timing with camp on the way, so we thanked God for sparing us.

I have many pictures to post from May, including the ones from James' Half Iron Man triathlon in Panama City. Since then we've also had school end, Elizabeth's birthday, and Amelia and Shannon went to camp for a week. Lots of pictures to come, I make no promises as to when! We're at the halfway point with camp now, so it has settled into somewhat of a routine. (It's been a terrific summer so far, by the way. We are so blessed to get to do this!!) I'll do my best to get another blog post done before Christmas.

Until next time..whenever that is!