Ed'venture Camp

This week Madie has been at camp. She's had a BALL!!! Now, why it's called "Ed'venture Camp", I have no idea. I'm sure there's a story behind it somehow, but it's our first time here, so I have yet to hear that story. It's at the same community college that Noah took his science camp at, only she's there for 6 hours, not 3. It's very much like college in that they pick a "major", which is something they do every morning, but in the afternoon they pick their "minor" and each day is a different minor. She chose "Botany, Bones, and Arrows" and it was all about Native American Culture. She really enjoyed it a lot, bringing home a game they made with a stick and a leather pouch, necklaces, dream catchers, and things like that. Her minor on Monday was Kite-Making. She made a kite with dowels and paper and decorated it. She was out flying them Monday when we picked her up. Tuesday was Animal Planet and the petting zoo we visited a couple weeks ago is what she got to participate in again. Then yesterday was Go Green Paper Art and she made homemade paper and cut them into shapes. She said this was her favorite. During their lunch break, they had special presentations like a magic show and african drums and things to keep them entertained. And, today, we were all invited to come see what the different majors did all week. I was really excited to go. Noah and Livie, well, let's just say we nearly walked out to take care of a little disciplinary action, if you catch my drift...







Here's Madie as she entered the auditorium.

Here are Noah and Livie giving you some idea of their antics today. Oh, how I had wished Pete was there to help me monitor. They were not in the mood to sit still and I wasn't in the mood to have them NOT sit still!! I needed back-up!! We made it through though and amazingly I was able to leave the building with some of my sanity still in tact.

We went early, because they were having a slideshow at the beginning. I waited with that camera until a picture of Madie popped up. Not once, but on the second go-around, because I didn't have my camera ready the first time around. I think that's why I was testier than normal. Trying to hold a camera to get a snapshot of a 3 sec picture, while you have 2 kids hitting each other and licking their legs (yeah, you heard me) was not a good idea. But, hey, there's the picture of Madie, on the big screen, for all of you to see. Worth it, wasn't it? ;-)

Her instructor took everyone in her class on stage and talked a little about what they learned this week. Then they did a dance for us. It was really cute and Madie really got into it. 'Course, by now, she's had lots of practice on how to dance on a stage. She's the little one to the right of the moms on stage there.

When the time came for the kids to come up and introduce themselves, Madie was first to the microphone. She stated with a loud, clear voice, "I'm Madeleine Trolinger. I'm 8 yrs old and I had a great time this week at camp!". The crowd ooh-ed and aaahh-ed. She's such a cutie!

After all the groups went through (there were 6 of them), we went outside to watch the last group launch their rockets. It was cool! Noah loved it and wants to do that next year. So all the camps have been successful! Hooray! Now, after next week, swim lessons will be done. All the summer adventures will be over. And, we'll get to enjoy a whole week of relaxation before school starts. Oh boy. Here's one of the rockets we watched. Again, I'm not a professional, so watch with that in mind.

Weekend Fun

This weekend was a fun one! We were a little afraid our plans were going to be cancelled, because yet another of our children came down with the fifths.


You can see Madie here with her red cheeks. It got progressively worse as it spread down her arms and such, and I know it'll continue to spread for a few more days, but the rash didn't slow her down. She felt pretty good. So, we went ahead and headed back to Warsaw like we had planned, so we could spend time with Pete's folks. We didn't get to see them much when we were back over the 4th visiting with the family that came out to Goshen. So, we wanted to have time just with them.

Originally the plan was for all 5 of us to meet up at my best friend Teresa's house on Sat while we were in town, so we could all get together with them and my other best friend and her family who drove up from Indy. But, since they have young kids and my child was leperous, I left them at home with Pete and their nana and papa and enjoyed the afternoon with them all by myself. It was a lot of fun! I've told them I need uglier friends, because they're just so cute and I always hate being the sad one of the bunch. But, since we've been friends since we were like 8, I think I'll stick with them. ;-) Got to see their kids, which I sadly didn't take any good pictures of, and boy are they cute! They've grown so much! I'll take more pictures when we get together in Sept.

When I got back to the Trolingers, my niece Allyssa was there. We were so excited to see her, because we hadn't seen her in months. Her hair had grown so much and she was talking so much. Such a cutie! She was a little shy, but enjoyed playing with her cousins a lot. And look at those curlies! So much like Madie's hair at that age. Guess the curlies are in the Trolinger genes. :-)

Here are the kids with Nana T. They love to do all kind of things with their nana and papa. Nana went with them on the Greenway, which is a series of walkways through Warsaw, and they got lots of treasures. Papa came to the lake later with the car and was able to drive the 2 oldest home, since they were tired. The fifths took a little extra out of Madie, I think. But, they looked at sea glass with her and we all went shopping together and colored pictures. They had a great time with nana and papa and as we pulled out of the driveway, Livie told me, "I think we could sell our house and move into nana and papa's house". :-) Guess she didn't want to leave!! It was a great weekend and we're glad we had another free one, so we could head back and see them again. With school starting in 3 weeks, the summer is dwindling so quickly. We're trying to fit in all that we can before that all starts up again.

VBS

Tonight was our final night of VBS. Hooray!! I always love VBS. Look forward to it every year, but by the time it's done, I'm ready for it to be done! Our church didn't have VBS this year, because we couldn't find a director, which honestly is probably what God wanted from us this year. All things work out the way He intended. So, we got to go to our friends' church instead, which was GREAT! Through Madie's best friend Michael, we've gotten to know his parents and his dad is the pastor of 1st Baptist here in town, so it was fun to get to be a part of their church this week. I was the preschool teacher, which is really the only group I've ever led in VBS. It's exhausting, but lots of fun. :-)



Here are the kids on the stage in the sanctuary. There is a man at their church named Jerry who is this incredible artist. He did all the bugs things all throughout the church. Just amazing!

Here we are at song time. You can just barely see her on the right there. That's Patty, the pastor's wife. She's become a good friend and she led song time - the kids favorite part!

Here are all the preschoolers. It was a low day today. We've had 13-14 each night this week.

The snack and craft were combined with the kids making their craft out of food, then eating it. Genius! Here's Livie enjoying her lightening bug. She didn't actually make it though. She ate all the pieces before they even got to explain how to make it. Doh!

This was Colin's bug. He let me take a picture, so you could see what it looked like. Cute, huh?

Here's a short video I took of the kids during the closing song time. You can see Noah and Livie up near the front, then Madie come join them. I loved watching them praise God each night! As we said all week, "AWESOME!". :-)

Shoe Sorting

In preparation for a playdate today, I was cleaning the house and asked the kids to pick up the shoes that were laying all around. This prompted them to decide to "sort the closet" out for me. Wow! Cool! You will see that we have WAY too many shoes for a family of 5. I swear, we have enough shoes to supply a third world country!

Here they are deciding which ones to put away in the basement and which ones to keep. That's just half the pile - if you can believe that!

These are the ones for the basement. As they're sorting though, I'm finding many of MY shoes in that pile. Guess we'll be doing a bit of switching around before the final judgement is made. Have I mentioned how much I love shoes? I buy them more for my kids than I do myself. Especially my girls. I think I'm creating shoe monsters too, because Livie is more obsessed with shoes than I am and she's only 3! :-)

Petting Zoo

We were at church today when a friend told us about a free petting zoo at the Starved Rock Park area today, so we called us some other friends of ours to see if they wanted to go with us and they said sure. :-) So, after lunch, we headed over to the Havenga's house and followed them over to the zoo. The kids were sooo excited!! The Havengas have 2 kids - Ella who is the same age as Noah and Bodee who is 4. Brett couldn't go, because he was working on building their shed, so it was just Lee Ann, the kids, and us.



It was fairly busy when we got there, but that didn't stop them! This picture is of them with the turtles. They had this small turtle and a larger turtle as well. I didn't get a picture of him. The kids loved him, but Livie ADORED him. He was her second favorite of the day.

This is Lee Ann and Bodee with one of the guinea pigs. This one had red eyes and freaked me out a bit because of it. It was super-sweet and didn't get scared when you picked it up, but the red eyes made it look possessed - probably had eaten broccoli right before we got there.

This is sweet Ella holding the bunny. This bunny was so cute and so soft. I could've held it all day. There used to be a coloring contest in the Logansport paper at Christmastime and Easter as well and one of the prizes was a bunny. I would color that picture so carefully and as perfectly as I could, because I wanted that bunny SO badly. Royal Center people never won in the Logan contests though, so it was a lost cause, but boy did I try. I've always loved bunnies.

They had a whole assortment of amphibians. They had a bearded dragon, some other lizard I can't remember the name of, this giant frog, and a leopard gecko. This is Noah and Madie petting the frog. I didn't let them hold it, because I was afraid it would jump away.

But this gecko was the favorite of the day. Livie and Noah fell in love with this thing. I have a feeling that a gecko might be part of our family soon. It was so calm and would just crawl up you. So sweet!

See how easily it passed from child to child? I talked to the gal who was running the petting zoo and she said they make great pets. :-)

This was the minature horse they had. Again, very calm and relaxed. I think it actually fell asleep, even with all the kids around.

The piece-de-resistance was the skunk. :-) After all our experiences with skunks, Pete didn't want to hold it. He thought just from sheer frustration at the breed, he's end up body slamming it or something. But, I held it and it was really a sweet guy. Heavier than I thought, but like a big cat. It was fun! Maybe I won't be so quick to destroy them next time they try and dig into our patio resort.

Here is the guinea pig again. They had a couple of them.

The pot-bellied pig was nice too. Very bristly, but again, didn't get nervous or anything and was a good one for the kids.

They had a llama and an alpaca. The alpaco had his eye out for Noah. I swear, it cracked me up! It was like he would just stare at him and follow him around with his evil eye on him the whole time. It was like a mafia alpaca, if there is such a thing. Can you ask Uncle Guido, Jude? ;-) The llama was in this position the whole time. Didn't pat an eye, even when Noah tried to lay on him. Noah thought he was the softest thing ever and said, "I want a blanket made out of him". haha Don't think he meant, he wanted to kill the thing and use it's skin as a covering, but he enjoyed the feel of his fur.

Again, here's the gecko. Like I said, he was the favorite!

Here's the hedgehog. He was really pokey and very skittish. We didn't pick him up, because if you tried to touch him, he'd jump about 10 feet and scare everyone. But, he was really cute to look at.

Noah had the gecko on him like this for most of the rest of the time we were there. He said, "He loves me and I love him back". He just didn't want to let him go. Again, probably going to be a member of our family in the future, I'm sure. There was also a duck there and a rat, some ferrets, and chinchillas as well. It was a really cute little thing they set up and they weren't upset about letting us pick them up and hold them. We followed it up with ice cream, so it was a really fun way to spend the afternoon.

Flashback Friday

2006:



2009:

Sisters. Thought I'd do a post today about my girls and they're special bond as sisters. Even though they are nearly 5 yrs apart in age, they always have a great time playing together and love each other a lot. Though, this morning Livie cut Madie's head off, sucked out her brains and destroyed them.... the love is there. ;-) As much as I love my son and would've loved to give him a little brother, I really, really wanted Madie to have a sister. Why? Because my sister and I are so close and I wanted Madie to have that too. Sisters share a special connection. I don't know what it is. But, we do. We share more than just our clothes and our jewelry. We share everything. And, for me as a mom, it's beautiful to watch my girls laugh together, love together, and share things together. I can only hope their relationship grows stronger as the years go on. Let's hear it for sisters!!

Fifths Disease?

My poor little guy. I think he might have fifths disease - which is a common childhood illness where they break out in a rash on their cheeks first. Then it spreads to the rest of their body. Now, I'm not doctor, but he's exhibiting the classic symptoms of it. He woke up yesterday with pink cheeks. I thought maybe he was allergic to his bedsheets or something, but it wasn't anything too noticeable, so I didn't think much of it. But, this morning he woke up with really RED cheeks and I thought I'd better watch and see if something comes from this. Well, when I picked him up from science camp just a few hours later, his cheeks were still bright red and it was starting to spread backwards to his ears and down the back of his neck. I called and tried to get an appointment with the doctor, to confirm my suspicions, but (of course) they were all booked up today and spending $100 for an emergency room visit kinda sucks. So, he's going in tomorrow morning. He doesn't feel bad or anything, which again is common with that illness. Just looks, well.... red. :-) BUT, he's very contagious, which means he doesn't get to enjoy his last day of science camp and he was sooooo looking forward to that! It was going to be water day. :-( So, my poor, sweet Noah looks to be quarantined for a little while and depending on how long that is, VBS might be out as well. Just crossing my fingers the girls don't get it too.

UPDATE : Noah went to the doctor and he does indeed have fifths disease, but he's not contagious anymore, so even though we missed his last day of science camp today, he'll be fine for VBS. But, it's still continuing to spread, so looks like he'll have the rash for a while.

Camp Week

After a week off to relax (and clean the basement and get caught up on laundry) after vacation, we are back to the craziness that is our life. I let the kids each pick a camp they want to go to during the summer. I don't want their summers to be jam-packed full of stuff all the time, but I think having a week to do something special is good for them. Though, between tball, vacations, swim lessons, etc... it's ended up being a pretty busy summer anyway. This week though is a special week for them. Noah's taking a science camp, which is right up his alley, and Madie's taking a little art class. It's not really camp week for her - hers is in 2 more weeks - but they both have something special going on right now. I let her do both, because the art class only cost $20 for the whole week! Can't beat that!


Noah's camp is about 30 min from here at the community college called IVCC (Illinois Valley Community College). It's from 9-12 each morning Monday-Thurs, which means I have to get up early. Ugh! But, it's worth it. Can't sleep in ALL summer, right? ;-) He was a little shy at first, since he didn't know anyone, but when they lined up to go into class, he was standing in front of another Noah, so I introduced them and he said they became friends today. Were partners and everything. :-)

Since we couldn't really drive home the 30-40min and then come back again, we just stayed in the area. We went to Target and did a bit of shopping and then hit the mall. They have a soft play area for kids and I just let the girls play for a while. I did this last year when Madie was the one in camp and Noah and Livie just loved it! So, the girls had a great time playing in there. Before we left, we had to stop and get soft pretzels (Yum!), before heading out to pick up Noah.

We got there a little early, so I could peek in and take pictures. Ever the blogger, you know. ;-) They learned about energy today. One of the types of energy had to do with wind, so they were making pinwheels when we got there.

He spotted me looking in through the glass at him, so he showed me his work. They also made some contraption with a marble, a cup, and a piece of tubing. He's going to show us how it works when Pete gets home.

As we were leaving, we saw a lot of the families going out the side door, so we followed. The kids had been outside earlier learning about solar energy and they cooked pizza rolls in solar ovens as well as made this black balloon thing they called the UFO. If the sun heated it up, it would float. It was pretty cool!

Here he is standing in front of it. It's like a kite, because they have it tethered. Or, probably more blimp-like actually. He just had a ball!! Can't wait to see what he learns about tomorrow. Well, we got out of there and headed back to Ottawa, so I could get Madie to her class at 1:30. Since it's a 30 min drive home, I knew we'd be early, but I wasn't sure where it was located, so I wanted to get there early in case I was wrong and had to drive around. I was right though, so we were there a half hour early. So, tomorrow I'll have to stop and let us have a picnic lunch or something to pass the time. Since Marseilles is too far away to drive home during each camp/class, we have to bide our time in the area. Tomorrow we'll probably go to the park instead of doing all the shopping we did today.

Anyway, we sat and colored for about 20 min until class started, then I took Livie and Noah until it was time to pick Madie up again. Her class is only an hour and a half, so it went quickly. Here she is with the other kids. Much smaller class than Noah's, but she had a ball too!

Here she is showing me one of her drawings. Marseilles Elementary doesn't offer art classes to its students, much to my dismay. So, this art class was something I was excited for her to go to. She loves art!

This is my favorite picture of hers. Isn't that nice?! So, we left today at 8:20 and got home about 3:30. It was a full day and we're all tired, but it was definitely a fun one! And, we still have 3 more days to go! :-)

A New Perspective

As many of you know, I have used this blog to share our daily lives with you as well as use it as a platform for changes in America regarding the most detestable vegetable known to mankind....the broccoli. In my search for new and damaging facts about broccoli, I've had to wade through the numerous sites praising broccoli for its superstar status in our country. With all this reading, I've found the need to keep a trash bin nearby, so that I can vomit in it when the "accolades" get to be too much for me. But, in reading these falsehoods and, what can only be explained as cult-like literature on broccoli, I found a MOST interesting bit of news that I'm convinced with finally bring those of you who are still fighting our movement over to our side. I give you "Broccoli Obama"....

Yes, I've found quite a few websites about Broccoli Obama. This is what some of the websites say in regards to this creature they've created...

"...we decided that indeed, broccoli is a good name for him. Like broccoli, Obama helps make us stronger. Something we need to include as much as possible into our lives. Sustaining in times of economic crisis..."

"Green. Adaptable. Economical."

"..Broccoli Obama can shoot carrots off his back at the bad guys.."

These are the things being said about Broccoli Obama. Maybe now it's not quite as enjoyable as you once thought? Now that you see the similarities between the over hyped weed and our seemingly heroic president. Perhaps even the most ardent of fans will finally see the truth. The truth being that no president, no scientific research, no torture yet divised could or should ever cause a logical person to even LOOK at broccoli, let alone let its stench-ridden plume touch your lips. Those of you out there, wanting to denounce this vegetable, contact me. Send me your picture, showing the world how you hate it. How you loath it. Maybe even a picture of you destroying it? I will put your picture in our "Anti-Broccoli Crusaders" box and share with all how our numbers are growing. And, if what you see above hasn't frightened you enough to bring you to our side, the side of victory, then let God have mercy on your soul.

Flashback Friday

2006


2009

I haven't done a "Flashback Friday" in a while. Too much other stuff had been going on. But now that I've done all my posts on our vacations, it's back to the routine and today we'll do our FF edition. :-) The picture at the top is one of my very favorite pictures of my kids EVER! Madie was 4, Noah 2, and Olivia was probably 6-7 months old. Livie's at the age now where she's wearing the dress Madie has on. That's so hard to believe. It feels like I just took this picture! There's nothing really special to report on this picture other than I love it. Just a nice summer day, when the kids were all happy, and I was able to get their picture together with those smiles on their faces. I decided to add to this post, after I posted it earlier. I wanted to take current picture of them. Livie wearing that dress and everything. Here's what I got. In three years they've grown up, gotten glasses, and (if possible) gotten ornerier!! :-) But, they're still as cute as ever!

The End of our Trip

On Saturday, we finally were able to make it down to the Trolingers for a couple days. It wasn't a long visit, since we spent so much of our time with my family that had come to town, but it was nice to see them, even if it was a short one. We had dinner that night with Pete's Uncle Scott and Aunt Nancy and his parents. It was good to see them all! We hadn't been out there since April, so it had been a while.




These are kids the next morning sitting with their Build-a-Bears and playing Leapster.

At a garage sale we girls went to on Friday, I found a giant Mary Kay bag full of make-up things and I bought it for my girls for $5, so they could play make-up. After baths, Livie decided to "paint" Nana. :-) She did a great job!

She painted Nana's eyes, her ears, her freckles, her hands. She really did the total package there!

After lunch, Jill, Adam, and the boys came over. They were in town as well for the 4th, so it was fun to see them again so soon after our visit last month. Sue's friend Marti has a pool and invited us all to come over and swim. The kids were thrilled!

I didn't bring a suit, so I sat and got a little more sun, while watching everyone have a good time swimming.

Afterwards, we all walked back to Nana and Papa's house. They only lived about a block from Marti's house. Ty and Livie held hands most of the way. It was so cute!

We left about 6pm that evening, so we could get as much time in with them as we could. Next time our visit will mostly just be with them, since we spent so much time with my family last time. But, at least we got a short visit in before we headed home. This was the sunset that greeted us when we got to our house. Isn't it beautiful? A great way to be welcomed back!