Archive for June, 2009

Listed today!

New Shop Items Posted! is a post from: RagTrader Blog

MY DAD!


The reason for celebrating the day!
I definitely dropped the ball in planning ahead for this day. When I asked my Mom if she had anything planned for the day, she said "He's not my dad." Fair enough. That's true! So, we planned, in very short notice, a picnic at the park. (Thanks to my Mom!) For some reason, my Dad reminds me of Pa Grape in this hat. (Have to watch Veggie Tales to understand!)




Alliyah was ready to play! She's wearing an outfit that my Grandma Corbett made for me when I was little!



Monkey Annie! She can climb!



Elli swinging! And learning how to keep herself going!



Liah cuddling with Grandma ♥



Me trying to get a picture of Justus while holding him!




Annie and Kaity...best cousins!




Sam and Elli...best cousins too! Trying to convince them they can't get married when they're older is difficult!




Jeffrey and Justus...waiting to eat!




After the meal, came the part I think the kids loved the best! We all walked to the pond and the kids tried to feed the fish and the geese. These are very well fed fish and geese...I'm not sure the kids even saw any fish and the geese were totally uninterested!



Still trying to feed the fish!




More studying the water for fish!




Zach posing with the fountain in the background.




Nathaniel and Austin found shells, stinky snail shells. (Some of the other kids found them too!) We tried to convince them to leave the shells there or the snails would be homeless...I think we actually succeeded! But not without them trying! (again and again!)






Sam and Nathaniel throwing rocks in the pond.




Papa and Caeden
(I think Caeden was voted 'most likely to fall in the water'...he just loved being close to it! Thank goodness he didn't fall in though!)



Liah posing...a future dancer?

We ended the evening taking a few pictures of the Dad's and their kids (or grandkids!)



Here's Jeff with his brood.
Annie, Austin, Samuel, Caeden and Justus



And Frank with his...
Kaitlyn, Zachariah, Nathaniel, Elliana, and Alliyah



And Papa with all but one of his grandchildren!
(Miss you Asher!)

Happy Father's Day!
Thanks for being such a great Dad!♥
Dotty McGill Dance Studio had their recital on June 20th this year (once again falling on the wedding day of one of my cousins!). Kaity and Elli along with my niece, Annie, all were in it.




This was rehearsal for the finale, "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog." You can see Ann on the far left of the picture giving the girls instruction.





Elli, Annie and Kaity all ready for their first dances!





Kaitlyn with her stage makeup and tap outfit on!



Elli "getting all made up"



Elli with her stage makeup on. She did a ballet dance this year.



My camera does not zoom nearly well enough! Elli is the 4th one in from the left with her toe pointed in front of her. She danced to "My Magic Tutu."



Mandy's camera zooms MUCH better (thank you Mandy!). Here's Kaity during her tap number. (Gotta work on that smile!) Her dance was to "Pink Cadillac."




Alliyah got a backstage trip the day of the recital! This is Kaity in her ballet costume. She danced to "Yellow Bird."

Here's Kaity stretching out before acro...to do her back walkover. (That's something I never could do with any consistancy! So glad she can!)



Kaity and Annie...stretching and posing! : )
(The one dance they got to be in together! )
"Do You Believe in Magic?" was their song for acro.


The beautiful dancers after the recital with all the flowers they got! (Thanks Grandma and Papa and Uncle Jeff and Aunt Mandy!) (Also, notice Austin in the background scowling because he got caught making faces while we were trying to get "nice" pictures of the girls! LOL!)




Posing with Grandma and Papa Corbett




~Elliana~



~Annie~



~Kaitlyn~



Frank with Liah...this was actually her SECOND dance recital! What a culturally enriched girl! : )



Our attempt at a family shot...Nathaniel hurt his eye and would not look up!


The girls outside Pew Fine Arts building at GCC.
The recital was good! Wish you all could have been there!

The boys kicked-off what I'm calling "camp season" this week by attending a basketball camp offered by GCHS coach Don Fee. Zach has gone the last two years, but this was the first year Nathaniel was able to attend too! They both had a great time improving their skills and got these cool shirts and basketballs the last day.


Here's Mr. Z with his new b-ball!



And Thaniel with his, which he thinks is cool that it's a size 6, cause he's six (at least for another couple of weeks)



BROTHERS!
(If only they got along like this always!)

I didn't get and pictures from VBS, but the Kaity and Elli went while Zach and Than were at b-ball camp and had a great time! Crocodile Dock was the theme. Kaity especially enjoyed the special "top secret" things the older kids got to do each day...like clean up at the park and go to the nursing homes and play games with the residents. Although their plans got changed for Friday because of the weather (was supposed to be swimming) they still had fun playing games at the church and eating pizza. Zach and Nathaniel went for the last day to have some fun too!
Attending Strawberry Days has become a tradition in our family. After Elli's dance class that Saturday, the kids and I went to see what was on display this year.



Elli spotted the wood carver. He had lots of items on display. This horse bench was just one of the beautiful things we saw.



We spotted these miniature horses and carriage. Of course Elli was excited. As they passed us, the driver said "Rides are free!" MUSIC to my ears! The oldest four kids all had rides.


Elli was in her glory when she got to pet them! She was so sad when she had to stop so they could give a ride to her brothers!


Zach and Thaniel enjoying their ride!



Another *FREE* thing we found was face painting! Elli, of course, got a horse! She picked the colors..


Nathaniel chose a lizard!


Here's Liah sporting pig tails!




Elli looked around at everything there was and just HAD to have this unicorn! We stuffed it together and picked out the outfit.


We ate lunch there (pizza!) and ran into some friends. The kids went back later and did a few things with Daddy. The one thing Zach REALLY wanted to do was gem mining. The boys had done it the day before when they'd gone with Grandma and Papa Chuck. I thought the price was pretty high for what you got in return, but Zach really wanted to do that and nothing else. So, when Frank took them back, he let Zach gem mine. Turned out, one of the photographers from the Allied News was there and took a picture of Kaity, Zach and Thaniel while Zach was gem mining...so now they think they're famous!


Recently a good friend of mine added to her beautiful family! I wanted to write about it because she is one tough lady. She is the mom of 6 boys and her husband is serving in Iraq until the end of the year. She not only home-schools her children and takes care of the home, but also runs a business doing doula and midwifery care. ( www.merryblessings.com )

While out and about, people often ask her why she has so many children. She has given this area of her life over to the Lord. She takes the song, "I Surrender All" to include her womb. May heaps of blessing be upon her, her family and her husband! -And may he safely return to a stronger, happier family!

Amen!

The spring farm kittens are here!  Now is the time for what my sister Marla calls “fuzz therapy.”  All your troubles melt away when you have kittens purring in your arms.
The cat population is pretty difficult to control on a farm.  Non-spayed cats are often dropped off (sometimes already pregnant) and frightened feral cats seem to come out of nowhere to make the farm their home.  Even if we somehow managed to catch these wild cats we wouldn’t have the money to spay all of them.  So for now all I can do is try to catch the babies and tame them.  Then they can eat and play freely around the farm.. and when they need medical assistance they will be tame enough to treat.  They may even be adopted at the Farm Market or by friends unless we grow too attached to let go of them.
This spring we have 4 litters.. 2 from sweet dropped off mothers and 2 from grumpy wild barn cats.  I’ve brought 8 of them to stay at my apartment in order to prepare them for adoption… and all are ready except the 3 that were from wild litters.  These 3 guys are almost all tame now but are still recovering from eye colds.  They’ve come a long way though (note the picture of my bloody hands.) These little dudes did quite the number on me when i stole them from their mother.  Now theyre super cuddly.

The short haired calico (pictured below) is one of the newly tamed.  The rest are ready to go! .. Except Gilly my ferret.  He got in line to have his picture taken too so i figured what the heck.

*update: the short haired calico with white paws and the orange kitty with white paws are adopted.

*update: A fuzzy brown kitty and a fuzzy grey kitty are now ready to go! (no pics of them yet)

Barn Kittens is a post from: RagTrader Blog

Some of my purchases at the Renegade Craft Show in Brooklyn.

You can find the full list of crafters here:

Mean Card

Mean Cards

Ezra 1Ezra 2Ezra 3Ezra 4
The Chalkboard Tee

My nephew Ezra got a pretty big kick out of this!

Dirty Loves CleanDirty Loves Clean

Vintage Tie CuffVintage Tie Cuff

Can’t remember who I bought this from!

Old Book Purse 1Old Book Purse 2Pretty Theory’s Vintage Book Purse

Berkley IllustrationBerkley Illustration

These are perfect for our fridge at work since our company is called Animal

I also bought some coasters, pins and prints of theirs : )

Renegade Finds is a post from: RagTrader Blog

Here's what Asher's "spinning" looks like these days. Notice the effortless skill he uses to get the bowls going! I don't know why he's shaking his hand like that. He doesn't do that most of the time. Maybe he was just excited this day. Hope you likey!

When asked "What was your favorite part of camp?"
Austin answered, "Ga-Ga!" A game pictured above.


The fabulous new pool!

Annie's favorite part of camp was swimming... she is her mother's daughter!!



Annie and Austin were old enough to attend
"Camp With Me" at Seneca Hills. So Jeff went
with them and had a blast! I admit,
I was a tad jealous as I LOVE Seneca!
But I am so glad they got that time together!!!



They did the climbing wall, putt-putt, swimming and games galore!


This is a great shot! I got a few of these from the Seneca Hills site.






Craft time! These came home complete with a great photo of them with their dad!




Both wanted the top bunk.
Big surprise!


Annie, Cute-Ball, the hedgehog, and Austin.