Washing the Dog

They were so proud of themselves for surprising Daddy the Dog Washer.

  He was very surprised to come home to clean dogs for a change.

Emogene and Hattie looked like a pair of drowned rats.

Lydda said, "I not wan go ou-side wi Ha-ee an Emma."

She was happy to watch Kai-Lan.

I had to go outside just to take pictures.  They were really good at spraying themselves with the water.

I just laughed and laughed.  They announced that Sheldon is harder to bathe than Shadow.

I need to find my real camera.  My phone camera is getting on my nerves.

My Author

Emogene is in the process of writing her first book report.  She chose Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary.  I am very impressed with her report.  It had to be 4 pages long and she is almost there.  I had to share my favorite sentence from her report, "My favorite I think book by Beverly Cleary is this one."
Her teacher has nicknamed her Yoda.  It was soooo cute.  She was adamant that it sounded right to her. 
I helped her with her report tonight.  We will finish it tomorrow.  She is such an incredible student.  I am always wowed by Emogene!

Drawing with Friends

I love playing games on my phone with friends.  I am currently playing the drawing game.  Hattie loves to help me and try to guess.  I drew my picture and asked if she knew what I had drawn. 

She said, "Ooh, it's an elephant." 

"You're right, but look at what he is holding in his trunk."

"An elephant on vacation?"

What an awesome guess!

We had to giggle a little.  

Do you know what I drew?

Thank you Aftercare Teachers

I was so tortured blessed when I picked up the girls from school.  They didn't have just one creature to bring home, but FIVE!!!  Emogene told me that she found a worm/caterpillar for my classroom.  It is a beautiful green color and is named Greeny.  Emogene is sooooo thoughtful.  

Hattie told me that she caught a roly poly and a dead worm.  Lovely!  

One of my students caught a snail.  That actually got me excited, so we now have a pet snail at our house.  I even picked up some parsley at the store.  Hopefully Slowpoke will be a good pet.  

The fifth creature wasn't discovered until I opened Hattie's plastic container at home.  I believe it was a leaf hopper that Emogene had caught.  This one was lovingly named Mystery.  The dead worm was named Wormy and was surprisingly not dead.  The roly poly was given a proper burial complete with a song because he was the dead one.  So it was quite an eventful afternoon.  It got more eventful when Mystery went missing and hysterical, pitiful, heart wrenching crying poured from Hattie.  We never found Mystery.

This morning, Emogene informed us that she is pretty sure that Wormy is forming a chrysalis.  We may have a butterfly in a couple of weeks.  Hattie likes to take out Wormy and play with him on the couch, but forbids anyone (me) from putting him up because he is VERY FRAGILE.

Then Eric and I let them go outside to learn and absorb nature and all of its beauty.  We HAVE to stop letting them do that.  This is what they brought into MY house.

 I'm sorry.  Did you just have lunch?

Are you feeling nauseous?
 

How about now?

Did you gag a little bit?

Eric and I did.  I'm gagging right now.

So, our snail has some friends.  They will not be staying in the house much longer.  Eric has put a container of salt next to the jar just to warn them of what is to come if they even think about escaping.

Eric was wondering how they got them into the jar.  They picked them up with their HANDS.  Emogene did thoroughly wash her hands before cooking lunch for everyone.

Eric is requesting that I squash their adventurous little spirits and put them into princess dresses and tiaras.  We will be having a creature free tea party later, because little girls are supposed to be made of sugar and spice and everything nice, not slugs, snails, and lizard tails.

I KNOW HOW!!!!

We are hearing "I know how!" many times a day.  Eric and Lydda holler it back at each other over and over again.  Lydda takes off running after her family members, and I believe would take them down so she could do it first.

This picture shows that indeed she does NOT know how.

The Princess in the Frog Boots

Spelling

Hattie has a new way to study her spelling words.  

It is more successful than writing them 10 times each.

I'm not sure she likes this any better though.

  "The lady doth protest too much, me thinks." -William Shakespeare

Flower Finds

"Do you see Rosie Mommy?  She is so pink."

Mean Daddy

Notice the tears.

I get into the car to find a sniffling and hiccuping Lydda. 

She said, "It's not fair!  Daddy mean!  He throw my cheese stick in the ditch."

I then looked up and saw her "mean" daddy coming out of the house with a fresh, clean cheese stick for his little darling.  After hearing about what she had just said about him, he hesitated before giving it to her.  

Lydda failed to mention that her first cheese stick had fallen on the ground.  This helped change my opinion of her daddy.  I was thinking he was such a cruel cheese stick stealing villain.  I was glad to hear otherwise.

Addicted to Goomers

I saw this peeking out of Hattie's jeans while rubbing her back.

She is 7 years old and still insists on wearing goomers (bloomers) anytime she has on a dress.

Lately she has transferred her love of goomers into anytime.  If I catch her, I make her change.  I missed it today.  Notice the size of the goomers, 2 years.  She steals Lydda's, but I'm pretty sure they were originally Emogene's.  Thanks to Hattie they have gotten a lot of wear.

Wild About Handwriting

I had fun making these posters to help my students with letter placement and sizing.  If I had to do them over, I would have found fatter giraffes so the letters could be seen better.  The students love finding giraffes, sharks, and hippos in their words.  It has really helped some students, especially with the shark letters.  I will probably continue to try and come up with better rhymes to go with them, but I rushed to finish these before the end of the year.

The Casle of Tarabitia

Emogene and Hattie watched Bridge to Tarabithia again and were inspired to build something.  I reluctantly allowed Eric to give them a hammer and some nails to do whatever they wanted.   I drew the line at painting since I couldn't afford for them to ruin any of their clothes and we did have to go to church.

 

 The sign was up!

 They then made a picnic table.

 This was a step up  they were making so Lydda could climb up and get to the trapeze bar.

They were required to take that down.  It was an accident waiting to happen.

Such concentration!

 

 That is not the best place for Hattie to look for a dropped nail.  

I quickly made her move.

 I'm sure the hard workers had a lot to talk about.

 Hattie was running away because she saw me with a camera and screamed, "Not my shoes!"

She for some reason went outside to finish the building project while wearing plastic hot pink dress up shoes.

They are getting so good at knowing why I need my camera.

Here was the horse stable they started on before we left for church.

I do need some things fixed around the house.  Maybe they can start hanging things.

The Joker

A Visit with Grandma

 We visited with Grandma.  Hattie and Lydda immediately found the favorite of all grandchildren.  It is Noah's Ark. 

Hattie was proud of her display.

 "Hattie said, 'Noooo.'"

Hattie was cooperating here.

We loved visiting with Grandma.

Emogene read a book while we visited.  She went outside for a while to explore with her sisters.  

Grandma has a great climbing tree, but it was wet that day so they didn't get to climb.

A Sweet Treat

"You know your children love you when they want to make you diabetic." -Eric Stringer

 

The girls told me I had to take a nap so they could make me a special treat.  I was a little concerned, but never turn down an invitation to take a nap.

I sadly had to turn down the first treat.  It is not because I am an insensitive mother, but because of toe gummies.  You see, the big girls had gotten a gallon size bag of  gummy lifesavers from a friend of mine that brought them home from school.  They were super excited about these gummies.  They immediately shared them with Lydda and went to play in the toy room.  Lydda was enjoying them while I cleaned the kitchen.  I walked through the living room to give her a sweet mommy smile and saw a disgusting sensory activity.  Lydda had placed both feet into the bottom of the bag and was squishing her toes all over the gummies.  I may have gagged.  I don't remember what happened to them after that until Emogene brought them on a plate covered in icing for me to eat. I explained why I couldn't eat them.  She and Hattie had to regroup and decide on a different surprise snack.   

 This was my surprise.  Secret: We don't have any ice cream.

Our, yes Eric got one too, snack was an ice cream cone filled with Cool Whip and cream cheese icing.

Hattie inserted a surprise into hers, yes we each had to eat two of them.  As we ate Hattie's surprise, we found sour and sweet mini SweetTarts.  My face after a bite of a surprising sour tart caused Lydda to say, "Mommy, you not yike it?"  I assured her that my treat was a wonderful surprise.

This was the treat Hattie made herself.  It was filled with Cool Whip and topped with Nutella and a Starburst.  Eric immediately announced that the not cheap Nutella had to go back into the cabinet.

Let's just say, Eric and I want to vomit every time we think about cream cheese icing.

A Nature Trip

I downloaded the pictures off of Eric's phone.  He had a wopping 89.  I have 2,305 on my phone.  That may explain why my phone is slow sometimes.
I'm so glad I downloaded them.  I found pictures of a field trip he took with Emogene.

 Here she is with all the girls.

Eric said that she looked like this for 80% of the time. She is always full of 

questions.  It is awesome.  She also absorbs animal information like a sponge.

 I want to believe that he took this because it looked like a heart.

 She lags behind to get a better and longer look at everything.  

People might judge her as being aloof or a daydreamer.  That is not always true.

 

 I'm thinking it is a snake.

 She looks happy!

She got to see a snake eating a rat.  

Happy day!