Cheviot

Little Miss must have found a mud puddle! She loves them. Just recently, she came out while I was milking and found a puddle about six inches in diameter and less than a quarter inch deep. She sure splashed in that tiny bit of water!

Mr. Imagination and Little Miss playing at church.

Mr. Inventor and Seth spreading compost. This was the last thing they did together. I was going to assign Seth to do it by himself, but they got into an argument, so I had them do it together. They did, very cheerfully.

Mr. Diligence doing his schoolwork in the morning.

Mr. Intellectual made a pinata for his birthday. This is the first stage.

Mr. Imagination loves to make up tunes on the piano!

Spring flowers!

Mr. Diligence

I sorted our library and organized all the books one afternoon. This was Seth’s bedroom and he was a bit grouchy about the mess—and glad when I got it all cleaned up the same day!

Mr. Imagination and Little Miss

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence like to go to the dump at the end of our road every week. They find some incredible treasures—like this all-metal, antique globe. The picture doesn’t do it justice; it was huge! They were able to sell it for quite a lot. I would have loved to keep it, but it was too big for our house.

We haven’t been taking very many pictures lately, apparently. I have time today to write a blog post, though, so I’ll share the few we have. We’re on our way to Dunedin for the weekend, so while we’re traveling on a straight, flat road between Ashburton and Timaru I’m taking advantage of a good battery in my laptop and writing. I do apologize for the fuzzy pictures; after noticing that several were that way, Esther noticed that someone had touched the lens of my camera and it was very smeary. She sweetly cleaned it for me.

Here she is, rocking her little sister right after we arrived home from church.

This is Mr. Inventor’s flock of turkeys. Too many toms! Five of them went into the freezer a few days later. Aren’t they gorgeous though? We’re planning to pick up a new tom for our flock on this trip, to avoid inbreeding.

A week or so ago, Mr. Intellectual helped me dig the rest of last year’s carrots. It was such a warm, sunny day that we cleaned them outside, and a few days later the boys helped me chop all of them and get them in jars. That will make quick soups even easier for the next year.

Little Miss was playing with this hat. She was delightedly waving “Bye-bye” to Esther in this picture. She is so much fun! She’s talking more all the time. Yesterday, she was chasing Mr. Imagination around and around the living room, and finally, in exasperation she exclaimed, “He has it!” It turned out that he had been given a small piece of candy, and she wanted it.

Mr. Sweetie was being silly one day, twirling around and around on my desk chair in this position! Little boys can be pretty amusing.

Little girls can be amusing, too. Little Miss has obviously been watching people lay down to read, so she did the same thing one morning while I was doing oral reading with some boys.

Little Miss helped Mr. Intellectual make breakfast one morning.

I was getting her ready for bed, and she ran away, jumped up on Daddy, and giggled.

This is why I record a lot of the books I read aloud to the boys. Mr. Sweetie spent an afternoon this week listening to Mountain Born, by Elizabeth Yates—a lovely story about a little boy and his lamb.

My sister made this dress and sent it with Esther and Mr. Handyman when they were in America last year. It finally fits her—but now I need to let the hem out! She’s growing fast.

Mr. Intellectual has been making kites lately. He’s frustrated, though, because either we have no wind, or we have too much wind to fly it.

Several of the children went together to buy the game Settlers of Catan recently. We’ve been enjoying playing with it.

Mr. Sweetie took this picture of Mr. Imagination.

Little Miss is a bookworm!

Mr. Intellectual was given a glass prism recently. He’s been having fun making rainbows on sunny days.

I was reading to Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie, and Little Miss decided she needed to be right in the middle!

Little Miss playing at church, in the foyer.

I sorted all the extra clothes recently. Mr. Diligence found this old shirt, which was his for a few years. He was thrilled to find an old favorite, and managed somehow to get it on! It was difficult to get off again.