Ten Things - the grabber arm

Ten Things:

1. This picture is from Calvin's birthday 5 years ago, back when he was turning two.
2. One of Mimi and Pa's gifts for him was a "grabber arm" because he liked using Pa's.
3. All four boys still love wearing mis-matched clothes.
4. Matching pajamas are super cute, but it just rarely happens around here.
5. Actually, pajamas rarely happen around here -- the boys sleep in the same clothes they wear during the day.
6. A different canvas is hanging over the mantel.
7. I don't know why the boys' pictures aren't hanging up next to the canvas. That's been our "spot" for 8x10 pictures for a long time.
8. That hedgehog lunchbox served us well over the years.
9. Another gift there on the couch is a growling tiger book that we still have. (Calvin was born into a love for tigers, partly because of his name).
10. I would like to have my own "grabber arm" to pick up trash we see on our walks and park visits.

Ten Things Tuesday - apple orchard

1. Coordinating outfits was way easier when we had only two boys.

2. I love fall!

3. The clouds look happy in this picture. :-)

4. This was our first time at the orchard where we didn't play on all the slides and swings and such. It was open, but there were too many people, and it looked too stressful.

5. The "r brothers" (Carter, Cooper) are wearing plaid. The "n brothers" (Calvin, Colson) are in stripes. This wasn't intentional -- there were limited options that fit, so it just worked out that way.

6. We've never visited the cows before, but the boys loved it. We probably stayed there for 10 minutes. Yes, the boys did moo at them, and yes, the cows responded with moos of their own.

7. Colson is trying so hard to be big.

8. We still got apple cider donuts and apple cider slushies.

9. Going to the apple orchard as a family was always a favorite part of the fall season as a child. There weren't fancy slides or corn mazes, but we got apples and carmel apples.

10. "Carmel" is apparently spelled wrong, according to this website. I pronounce it "carmel," not "caramel." 

Ten Things - children's museums

Ten Things!

1. The 6 of us visited the Cincinnati Children's Museum and became members in February of 2020, a month before COVID would hit America, shut down everything for several months, and then make indoor, high-traffic, high-touch areas like children's museums very unappealing.
2. It's bizarre to look at movies and pictures pre-COVID because now social distancing is so engrained. Now, we're conditioned to see people 6 feet apart and in masks. 
3. A bunch of objects falling down on your head can feel like a negative glimpse into what is happened these days -- worries piling up, the bottom dropping out, the world falling apart... But maybe I should look with the same anticipation and wonder at the GOOD that is happening all around. Just like these balls or balloons or confetti falling, things falling all around doesn't have to be all bad.
4. This is an hour and a half away, but we figured it would be a good day trip or pit stop on our way to Indiana.
5. Lucas and I love children's museums. We've even visited them without kids. One of our favorites was experiencing the Please Touch museum on our honeymoon in Philly.
6. Some of my other favorites are the Magic House and City Museum in St. Louis (although the City Museum is really in a category by itself), Kentucky Science Center in Louisville, Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Children's Museum of Evansville (Ind), the WonderLab (Bloomington, Ind.), Muncie Children's Museum (Ind.), COSI (Columbus, OH), and the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago).
7. Once you've been to several, they all start to kind of run together with similar exhibits, but it still is such a fun place to be a kid and PLAY!
8. Our children's museum in Lexington is small and limited, so we usually just go there on free or discounted admission days like MLK Day.
9. Part of being a member of the museum means that you have reciprocal privileges for half-off admission at museums across the country. This past summer, my mom and I were planning on hitting up many of these on our cross-country road trip to Colorado and back through Oklahoma. Sigh. Alas...
10. I keep waiting for that magical time "when the coronavirus is over," but I'm wondering if and when things will ever go back to normal. Now that we're homeschooling, I could see us utilizing a membership here even more than before, but I don't think we'll feel comfortable being in a space like this anytime soon.

Ten Things Tuesday - Calvin 5 years ago

1. This was taken in the Fall of 2015 when Calvin was 1 1/2. 
2. I love food-in-the-hair pictures and so-sleepy-I'll-just-sleep-here pictures. This one captures both.
3. Of the four boys, he's the only one with brown hair as a toddler. Carter's has gotten darker as he has gotten older, but it started white-blond like the youngest two (and like me when I was little).
4. We still have the same high chair (now occupied by Colson). The cloth cover is back on, but I think we've forever misplaced the straps and buckle (which would come in handy since Colson is starting to wriggle his way into a standing position).
5. We no longer have that sippy cup, but we do still use those plates that Lucas has had since his bachelor days.
6. We're a peanut butter family. It goes back to my dad's most frequent request of me, "Mary, bring me the peanut butter and a spoon."
7. We left Calvin's hair long at this age because it curled in the back. Cooper's is similar, and he still hasn't gotten a haircut at 2 1/2.
8. Our dining area is carpeted, and it has taken a beating over the years. We would never pick white carpet for a house full of kids. We don't want to replace it until they get older, though.
9. This is the most common place for the high chair, but we are known to move furniture around frequently. Currently, our table is pulled up to our couch in our living room, so the high chair is over there, too.
10. It's fun seeing the same toys, furniture, and clothes used by the boys over the years. One side effect of hand-me-downs is the nostalgia factor. "I remember when..."

Ten Things - Montana

This was a picture that popped up in one of my Facebook memories this summer. A participant from a YouthWorks youth mission trip to my site in Lame Deer, Montana, had posted it from the summer of 2005. When I "shared" the memory, it prompted so many thoughts and memories that I posted ten things that came to mind. I thought it would be fun from time to time on this blog to post a picture along with "ten things."  Some challenges on Facebook are to share pictures without any explanation. Well, I like the explanations :-)

1. Living for 10 weeks on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana was my first experience (in America) where I was the minority. It was one of the most transformational (and amazing!) summers of my life.
2. Yes, I lived in a high school for a summer! I slept on an air mattress in a classroom, cooked food in the cafeteria, and took showers in the locker room. It's fine when there are 70+ teenagers there. It's a little unnerving when it's just you and your team of 4 over the weekends.
3. I miss those pants. They traveled with me to Thailand, Myanmar, and Lame Deer, Montana. Also, I wish people had tried harder to convince me that they are definitely pajama pants and should not be worn out and about as "regular" pants. I think I was just excited that I had pants that were long enough!
4. Max the guitar is still going strong, all these years later! He replaced "Bently" that fell apart at a youth event in Florida the summer before. I've considered Bently and Max my "learning guitars," and after almost 20(!) years of playing guitar, I don't know that I'll ever upgrade to a non-hand-me-down.
5. This is the room where we did the skit that involved using a teammate's mouth as a "bowl" to eat cereal and milk out of. How did I ever think that was okay?
6. Taco Tuesdays just aren't the same without Indian fry bread from Alfretta.
7. This is where I learned "the eagle song" that spread to my next YouthWorks site in Colorado and everywhere I've gone since then.
8. I still wear my YouthWorks hat. It's definitely not dark blue anymore. I'm kind of sad that I don't have any of my YW shirts anymore. Nonconformist!
9. I've never seen as many shooting stars as I did in that football field outside.
10. Powwow music still gets me pumped up! (Note: I'm not playing powwow music, but this picture makes me think of it!)

Here's the "powwow music" I was referring to: