Heavenly Homemakers

Here are a few highlights I’d like to share from my time visiting family and friends in Kansas this week. 

Monday…

Here’s Malachi taking a turn holding his cousin Austin. 
He only dropped him off the couch once. 
(Don’t worry…I caught him.)

Here’s my niece Renee. 
She looks a LOT like I did as a little girl. 
And yes, that is Elias attacking Malachi on the couch. 
Glad I could capture that on film for you.

Here is a shot of my dad’s yard and our memorial day picnic. 

Tuesday…

I was privileged to be able to meet Amy and Crystal for a visit. 
Wish you all could have been there!

I told Amy I would play Rock-Paper-Scissors with her to see who got to hold Silas first…but it wasn’t long before Amy had to take care of a kid with a bloody nose, so I snatched the opportunity to grab him up (first). :)  Look how sweet he is.

Here are Amy’s kids…Crystal’s girls…and my boys all sitting around the table eating a picnic lunch. Amy and Crystal were so happy to tease me, the “Heavenly-Homemaker-I-only-eat-whole-foods”, since I was feeding my kids frozen pizza for the picnic. HEY. There was NOTHING else at my dad’s house to fix. Sometimes, you just have to resort to frozen pizza, you know?

Malachi wanted a turn with Silas too. 
Malachi could never remember what Amy’s little girl’s name
was and kept saying, “Where did that girl go?”

Wednesday…

I met a few friends, as well as my SIL Michele and her kids at the park on Wednesday. The weather took a sudden turn toward coldness and we all froze since I hadn’t packed warm clothes! After playing (freezing) at the park, we met my dad at a pizza place. (yes, more pizza)  My dad’s wife Tacy couldn’t meet us during that time, so that was a bummer. I would have loved for her to be in this picture too.

Here we are waiting for our pizza to arrive. 
I wanted a pic with Austin, and of course Malachi had to get in on it too.

Wednesday night after church, we went to see my niece and nephew play baseball. I ran into Amy again (and forgot to watch the rest of the ball games).

Thursday morning we headed home.

Everything about my week…definitely finer things. 

Being back home with Matt…the finest thing of all. 

This post is linked to Finer Things Friday.

Ah, the month of May. I love, love, LOVE it! 

Here’s what our Thursday looked like:

Our morning began with a nice round of light saber wars. Check out that ninja in the background with the purple light saber. 

My living room is alive with this type of “violence” on a regular basis. 

We spent time outside planting okra (yes I know that wasn’t on my original list, but I had a little extra space and Matt loves okra). I also put the boys to work pulling out a bunch of “sticky weed” (I’m sure that’s the official name for it) around the garden. They pulled it out and stuck it all over themselves. It was loads of fun…until the itchiness set in. 

Asa with his sticky beard is the main feature of this picture…but if you would like to take a peek behind him at one of our garden areas, I can show off my little potato plants to you! And way in the back protected by milk cartons are our little broccoli plants. So far, they’ve all survived!

Here’s how our potato container looks now! Isn’t that SO EXCITING?!?!?!? Okay, maybe you aren’t a garden geek like I am…but little green plants growing out of soil makes me giddy. I added more soil from our compost area so that the “growing potatoes in a container” project could work. Notice that last time I showed you pictures of our container, it was the left side handle that was missing and this time it’s the right side handle. How did that happen?

After our time in the yard, we went in and cooked up lunch.

Here’s Chef Justus. Is that hat the greatest or what?! Here he is stirring our mac and cheese. Notice he changed out of his sticky (turned itchy) clothes after pulling weeds. 

Malachi couldn’t wait for lunch. This little guy has been HUNGRY lately. I mean, more than normal.

Our last soccer games of the season were tonight, and Asa wanted a treat for his teammates. We baked these cookies into bars and put them into baggies to share.

Here we are on the way to our last games of the season. Justus decided to sit in a booster seat, which is why he’s so high up on his chair there. Silly kid!

One last event to end our evening…

Malachi has been shy about playing on the field with his teammates (he’s a little four year old guy out there with four, five and six year olds), so most of the time he just sits on the bench and shakes his head no at his coach when asked if he’s ready to go in. I REALLY wanted his season to end on a good note. Soooo…I asked Malachi, “If Mama goes onto the field with you, will you play?” And he said yes.  And so I did.

There I was on the field with a bunch of little people running after a soccer ball. I was trying to stay out of the way, yet trying to push Malachi over to get the ball (which he really didn’t want to do). Other parents were waving and smiling their teasing encouragement (probably very happy that it was me and not them).

Malachi finally had a chance to kick the ball twice and had big grins on his face and we went and sat down again. Oh the things a mother must do (and where in the world was the daddy?) (at Justus’ game…so he had a good excuse).

I’m so sorry to report that I don’t have a picture of this part of our evening…I guess you’ll just have to picture that little event in your head.