The Summer of Phil

We took a chance and visited The Grove on an overcast Sunday in May...the sky did eventually open up, but we were down to our last tickets anyway, so we weren't fazed!  Welcome to The Summer of Phil!

Our Family Wall.

We keep framed (semi)current portraits of our 10 children on one wall in the living room.  Until recently, the frames were a mismatched hodge podge of whatever frames I had available. I've been saying for years that I'd like to replace them all at once with 10 matching frames, plus another frame for an 8x10 of the whole family.

This year, somebody finally listened. :)

Jeremy, Sarah's beau, presented us with an even dozen of matching picture frames for Christmas!  (I suspect the mismatched frames offended his perfectionist engineering sensibilities even more than they bothered me).

The week of Christmas was exhausting, and every day in the first week of January I wanted to tackle the frame replacement project, but I was too busy.  Then I decided that today, Saturday, January 10, it was going to happen.

I set them up in three rows:  the three youngest girls centered in the top row, all four boys centered in the middle row, and the three oldest girls centered in the bottom row.  It SEEMS as though all I have to do is lay out the top three pictures, measure the distance from Regina's picture-hanger to Noelle's, then make a level line and hang all three pictures a few inches from the ceiling.  Then do the same for the four boys and hang them, staggered below and between the top row's pictures.  Finally hang the remaining three bottom pictures directly below the top three.  It works on paper.

The first problem is that the wood stove was blazing, and there was all heat and no oxygen to breathe up by the ceiling.   The second problem is that the ceiling is uneven - DRAMATICALLY uneven.  Then there's those pieces of molding that cut the wall into uneven sections.  No matter how perfectly I measured, the optical illusions of unevenness created by the ceiling and the wall made it look crooked.

As an added bonus, I dropped every tool I touched every time I touched it, and Philip was on the loose so he kept going after all the framed pictures and every tool I set down.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I also have a cold and my stuffy head and runny nose just exacerbated the misery.

In the end, I ended up just eyeballing the whole thing and moving nail after nail after nail until they satisfied my aesthetic sensibilities.

It only took an hour-and-a-half, but it was the longest hour-and-a-half of my life.


There you go, Jeremy and Sarah.  I don't know whether to thank you or curse the days you were born!

Just kidding. It looks great.  I love you both.

But if either of you comes here and points out something that's a little bit off, I'm probably going to snap.

June.

Natalie with her patriotic berry shortcake!

Regina is by far the most tech-savvy kid I own.  She had been adeptly using our Kindle tablet for the first two years of her life (until I killed it).  The first time I showed her how to operate a mouse, she was spot-on.  

My beautiful hanging basket of Lantana, a gift from my wonderful oldest daughter.

Philip backed himself under his dresser and couldn't get out.

He's determined to fall and break his head.  This is the only place where the stairs aren't completely kid-proofed.  I really gotta get plexiglass on that side.

I won my first stuffie from the claw machine!

Regina's shiner is almost completely healed.

Saturday night Noelle tried to show me how well she could go hand-over-hand across the rungs on the swingset.  She almost made it.

Her face impacted the ground.  Hard.  At first I thought the bloody nose was the only injury, but while we were stanching the nosebleed, she started complaining about her arm.  At first she said the upper arm hurt, but later said it was the elbow.  No matter...either way it meant a trip to the emergency room.  Thankfully the xrays didn't show any breaks, so we're just managing the pain until the soreness goes away, and she can wear the sling whenever the arm bothers her.

Frosted Sugar Cutout Cookies.

Frosted Sugar Cutout Cookies...the finished product. Clare, Theresa, Noelle, Natalie, Regina and I worked on it this morning. I accidentally added twice the amount of butter to the frosting recipe but ohhhh, is it good.

  I was too busy supervising and refereeing to take any pictures of the decorating, but here's a slightly wider shot of the proceedings.

Sock Babies

I found this craft idea and couldn't resist - making a Baby Jesus out of a sock.  You can read more about the tradition here.

As an added bonus, all the socks were matched from the sock-matcher basket while we were looking for stray white socks to use for the craft!

Portrait Time Again.

I bit the bullet and had the kids pose for wall pictures.  Actually my husband's mother is to blame thank, because she needed nice recent pictures of the twins for the newspaper's birthday page.  They ARE turning 7 next week, you know.

So I went for it.  Natalie was straightforward and simple.  Two shots and we were done, although she did have me take the prerequisite "posed"  shot.

"Take a picture of me reading!"

Final shot.

Regina, wild-haired child that she is, was also done in four shots or less.  The abrasion near her eye and the shadow at her hairline are evidence of her tumble down the stairs yesterday - or "lasterday," as she so eloquently phrases it.

Theresa was more challenging.    The phony smiles don't fly with me, so we had to try several different tacks before I was satisfied.  I still haven't chosen a favorite for the wall.    The hair flip was HER idea.

Philip just stared, dumbfounded, at the orange flash indicator light.  I had to take about two dozen pictures to get a few good ones.   I am partial to the middle shot on the right, although I love the dopey look he has bottom right!

Noelle was the real pill this time.  It was either a tilt of the head, or a fake smile, or half-closed eyes, or a blink...I am still waiting for a consensus before I choose a winner.

Noelle's "action" shot.

Group shot!

Halloween.

 Noelle as a sailor girl, in honor of her brother Brian joining the U. S. Navy.

Natalie as a cheetah, and Regina as a Rose Fairy Princess.

Theresa was a Ninja, but she took off her hood for the picture.

Philip as Robin, the Boy Wonder.

Our Boys.

One of these things is not like the other...

BD- 17, Scott - 20 holding Philip - 2 months, and Conor - 15.

Watershed Moment.

Biking at the watershed, now that the twins have mastered two-wheelers! 

We rode 5-6 miles. 

Regina & Philip tried out the new bike trailer. 

It looks like they didn't hate it too much.

Strange Wardrobe Choices

Kim over at The Mommy Machine made a post about this, so I couldn't resist sharing something.

Through the years, my kids have occasionally demonstrated an affinity for some strange wardrobe items.

When my oldest daughter was in single digits, she dressed purely for comfort. She had texture issues. The pattern/fashion was negligible - she only wanted to be comfy. It was with her that I first learned that socks should be put on inside-out so those scratchy toe seams wouldn't bother her. I also learned to avoid velour and crushed velvet at all costs. I could go looking through the old pictures to find a good example of her eclectic style, but she'd kill me. Or cut my hair while I'm sleeping. {JK. She's devious but not malicious.}

One of them wanted to wear his Batman costume all year round. And since I couldn't see the harm in it, I let him. (I was already carting around 5 or 6 kids - it was too late to care what people thought of me) It was a mad-awesome costume, after all. I don't have any pictures. Just imagine me trucking to the grocery store in March with 4 children and a three-foot-tall Batman in tow.

Conor's nickname used to be "Boots." His favorite color has always been red, so one year he received red rubber rain boots, which he wore until they fell off his feet. We replaced the first pair with identical boots. People didn't recognize him without his boots. I think he wore red rubber boots, winter and summer, from 2000 until 2004.

Clare and Theresa wear their Christmas dresses year round. This was taken in October.



Clare also is a huge fan of Little House on the Prairie. I made the girls sunbonnets and aprons last year for Christmas, and my mom found the perfect dress at the Sal Val. Clare can be seen here, running laps in her prairie dress.












And finally, at one point, some of my children thought that spandex exercise unitards were the bomb. For you SpongeBob fans, my husband affectionately refers to this photo as "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy."

Breathtaking moment:

Not exactly breathtaking, but touching ... after taking the Christmas tree down, my 12yos got the vacuum cleaner out to sweep up the fallen needles without being told, asked, prompted or threatened...

Picture Parade: Never Too Old

Picture Parade: Yuck.

Susquehanna River.  Up to their ankles in river scum.  Yuck.

Picture Parade: Noelf.

Sing it with me:  Dum, da, dum... Link, he come to town, come to save the Princess Zelda.

Noelle loves Link almost as much as Conor.

My living room isn't untidy, it's lived-in.  If I stopped to clean up the mess before I snapped a picture, I probably wouldn't take another picture until 2022.