Sleeping Baby

It's really rare, these days, for me to go into Benjamin's room to get him up from a nap and find him still sleeping.  The sleeping baby days are long gone…except when I capture him like this.  He is only about 5% baby and 95% testy three-year-old these days.  He's still adorable.

Last Project of the Summer

I saw this project someplace on Pinterest, so of course I can't claim credit for it, but I'm still happy with it!  For the first time in her life, Grace's jeans got a little too short before they got too narrow.  I loved these jeans, and they don't come in sizes larger than this one (5T) so I decided that extending the ruffles would be perfect.  I used fabric from my stash, so extending the life of these jeans cost me nothing.  I think they're adorable.  I hope Grace will still like them when fall comes!

Elastigirl

That inborn flexibility of Gracie's that was so alarming when she was crawling and not walking is a lot of fun now that she's older.  She has fun with it, and we just stand there and watch.  I keep thinking that she'd really love gymnastics, but she's not interested!

My Favorite Lego Minifigure

One of the many things I love about summer break is the way it gives Jonathan plenty of time to cook up a plan and see it through from start to finish.  He spent many happy hours on this one.  He decided to make a functional model/sculpture of a Lego minifigure.

Here's the first version.  His shoulders, wrists, and neck all rotate, and his hat is removable.

Jonathan is proud of him.

 Of course, after he was finished, Jonathan had to modify him, so he spent some time making changes.  He decided to remove the overalls, and model the guy after a real mini figure.  Here are the two guys posed together.  It was really hard to get the lighting just right in the positions that Jonathan wanted, but you can use your imagination, right?  I think this was my favorite original creation of Jonathan's from the entire summer.

The End of Ballet

Grace's several-week ballet class did come to an end, and she loved it.  These pictures are of the 5-year-olds and their older helpers practicing their dance before their little community recital.  The girls are supposed to look like the little French girls all in a line in the Madeline books.

And here they are at their recital.  I have to say, Grace didn't exactly remember her dance, which I knew she wouldn't, but she enjoyed it and immediately asked to do ballet again next time, so what more can I ask for after a few weeks of class?  The recital was long and hot - each age group did a dance - but it was pretty adorable.

And here she is with her teacher.  The teacher knelt down to be closer to Grace, and then Grace got down low, too.  I'm thankful she enjoyed her classes so much.

Lucas and Cherissa and Crew

We had a wonderful visit from Lucas and Cherissa and their four kiddos.  We're so happy we got to see them and take a stab at catching up!

(Recovering from swimmer's ear.  If you know us, you know it's extremely rare for one of our kids to fall asleep on the couch!)

Independence Day

You can tell who got the "dud" sparkler…and also had a hurting ear.  We have no experience with hurting ears around here, so we didn't realize that it was swimmer's ear, and that swimmer's ear is super painful.  But, now we know!