WOW!

I didn't realize I hadn't said anything for 2 months. Believe it or not life is incredibly busy. Football season has come and gone, but wrestling is in full swing. He's LOVING this and having a great time. Eli loves the fact that he has an excuse to practice with Hannah and Cody. Dance is keeping us busy as well. Performance last weekend and another one on Sunday. And she wants to do a solo, so we'll have to add that into the mix of things. My sad news to report is that the camera has officially died. I think that's why I haven't posted anything. Stories are so much better with pictures. I'm having some serious withdraw over this. I follow the kids all over the place with the camera. I have had to resort to a (wait for it.....) disposable! I'm not happy about this. I don't take pictures of anything and everything because you have to PAY to have them developed! I do have Halloween, football, dance, and when Eli has his first wrestling match, that as well. Maybe when I get those developed, and a disk, I'll put up new pictures. Until then, and until my husband decides that his wife is super awesome and deserves a new camera, I'll try and write and keep you informed of all the happenings in the Wilkernix household.

Chicken Stock

I guess it's a good thing nobody really reads this here piece of space. I've been awful about posting. The office is closed today, so that means a 4 day weekend for me! I've been collecting, and by that I mean freezing, chicken carcasses for awhile now. And my husband thinks I need to do something with them. (I'm pretty sure he would like that space freed up so that in the off chance he gets a deer this year we have room for it.) So today is chicken stock day. I have made freezer jams (which turned out wonderful) and we tried our hands at pickles. They aren't ready yet, not sure how they'll taste. We go through so much chicken stock in the fall and winter and since I like knowing what's in our food and trying to figure out how this whole living not so much on the grid thing works, I thought I'd try making it. Cody got me a pressure cooker for my birthday. Since I'm terrified of the thing and won't try it out without him being home, my job today is to get the stock ready and we'll pressure cook it tonight, after he gets home.

Homework time

Homework time at our house happens right after school (and some days this happens with much eye rolling). Eli is always finished first, cause he has less. Hannah has to do math, work on spelling words, and read.

Eli hasn't made up his mind yet on what hand he wants to use. One day he'll do homework with his left and the next day with his right. He decided to use both to create his AB pattern.

Hannah likes to do her homework under the table. I'm not really sure why.

First Day of School

My baby got on the bus this morning :(

He's been soooo excited about going to kindergarten. Excited and nervous and scared all at the same time. Monday night he had a few nightmares, we think they were from nerves. Last night, none. He's met his teacher and we've been to the school a few times so he could get a feel for where things are. This morning he was ready. "Bye Momma, love you!," followed by a hug and a big grin. I'm not worried, just a little sad that the baby is going to school. And Hannah, second grade with super cool light up twinkle toe shoes. You can see her coming!

Fishing

We took the kids fishing a few weeks ago. My dad has a small pond near his house that is FULL of fish. We know there are catfish and blue gill. He claims there are bass. He hasn't caught any and Cody tried and was unsuccessful. That is still an undermined fact. There are LOTS of bluegill. The kids caught over 60 of those suckers. They would cast and within a minute or two would have a fish. Needless to say, that's a lot of taking fish off hooks for grown-ups. I think I got to cast out twice and then I just gave up. But it was a blast watching the kids catch and have fun.





Cody and Eli also each caught a catfish. Eli has this itty bitty pole with a light line on it. He casted out with a bee moth on the end and ends up with a catfish. That's like a one in a million chance that he caught it and could reel it in without the fish snapping the pole or his line. And in true fisherman likeness, when he tells the story the fish is always bigger :)

An Evening with the Indians

After we went to the IMA, we headed back downtown for an evening of baseball at Victory Field. The evening was perfect. It was cool, cool enough for sweatshirts had I been better prepared. My mom got us great seats. The boys were unhappy being behind the net behind home plate. You just can't catch fly balls and broken bats being there. I was good with it.

Our children are nuts!

IMA

After the wedding and really doing a pretty good job with the budget, we were looking for things that were on the cheap/free side to do with the kids. The Indianapolis Musuem of Art, perfect. The grounds are HUGE and sooooo pretty, and FREE! We packed a picnic lunch and spent a few hours wondering around through the gardens and the new 100 acre tract.

Canal Visit

Man!! Things have been busy. We had the flu run like wildfire through our house 5 days before the wedding. Every. Single. Person got sick. Not fun. We had a wedding, then an absolutely too short honeymoon, a week of staycation with the kids, and two birthdays. On Wednesday last week we took the kids down to the canal to ride around and have a picnic. The kids had never been to the canal, they liked it.

This is what my husband does. Anytime he sees something that he could possibly climb, he does.

Maggie is obsessive about water. She wanted a drink and "accidentally" fell in. It was just like watching one of the kids deliberately do something they aren't supposed too.

There's my clan waiting for me. I get distracted and stop to take pictures of things and then they have to wait :)

Who'd a thunk it

Not us. Not after the first practice. We were just out to watch little ones play baseball and cheer them on and be happy when one of them gits a hit, especially ours. Then we won, and won a few more, and half way mark and no loses, and then the end of the season and STILL no loses?!?!?! Who woulda thought that our team would win the championship game. I'm going to give huge props to the coaches. These are kind of coaches I would want in every sport every year. They were fabulous! All about the kids and making sure they are having fun and giving them support and encouragement. Congratulations Pirates!

Poor Maggie

Sometimes, Maggie becomes a source of entertainment for Cody and the kids. I guess they thought she needed to wear clothes. I'm pretty sure she would disagree, given the fight she put up when Cody was trying to get the clothes on and off her. Although Hannah pointed out that she really should be wearing girls clothes instead of a boy's. Good point, but she wasn't OK with sharing her wardrobe with Maggie.

18 days

We have 18 days left! Someone tell me why I let soooo many things pile up on the to-do list and now I HAVE to get them all done NOW? I'm super excited about getting married. No nerves at all on that front, the nerves are coming from making sure I get everything done. Today and tomorrow are jam packed with things to get done. We are off and running! It's a good thing I get to use Hannah's surgery as the reason we haven't been swimming. I timed that one perfectly. I don't think the kids would be OK with not having gone to the pool just because mama has lots of wedding stuff to do. :)

End of the year carnival

For the last 5 years, at the end of the school year we head to the preschool carnival. This year's was the last one. We have absolutely loved this school. Each year the kids have had amazing teachers and the director is awesome. I'm sad to be leaving this behind, but also happy that the kids will be in the same school now!

The school puts on a fabulous carnival! They look forward to it and always have a blast. We worked the basketball game for the first hour. Then the clouds opened up and it poured. They didn't care. It was warm out so they just played in the rain.

The school brought these amazing face paint ladies in. I've never seen face paint like this and they were so fast! Hannah didn't care what she had, she just asked that she not have a tiara. And Eli asked to be a pirate.


Pretty good, huh? Less then 5 minutes per kid. This was the last thing we did. The sky was threatening to let loose again and they wanted to make sure Cody saw their faces. We grabbed our pizza and ran! They waited up until 9:30 just so they could show off before we had to wipe it off for bed.

Finger Weaving

Nawny taught Hannah how to finger weave on Monday. She's been making all kinds of things for everybody! Maggie seems to get most of the gifts. Her and I have been making earrings, bracelets, headbands, and collars. Now she has no more loops, so we must take a trip to Michael's or Hobby Lobby and get some more. That's fine, I love those stores and Maggie loves her new collars :)

New Trunks

I'm trying to rack my brain and remember the last time the kids had new bathing suits. They just don't gain weight. They grow taller, but not tall enough to grow out of last years suit. I think they got new ones 2 summers ago. Yep, it was time for new ones. Eli first, cause he's home more, and they were having a pool party at school today and tomorrow. (I love Walmart at 8 in the morning.) He's talked about a Phineas and Ferb suit for almost a week now. Luckily they had one in his size. He got an x-small and I had to cinch the inside drawstring AND the outside as much as they would go AND the suit is still too big on his belly. But he's got some cool new swim trunks.

Presents on the doorstep

I feel like I should know the UPS and FedEx drivers by name. They've been bringing us lots of different online purchases for the wedding lately. But they aren't social (apparently neither am I if I've been doing lots of shopping online), they just drop presents, ring the doorbell, and run. Reminds me of the dog poop in bag tricks. Anyway, plants came today!

We ordered our tomato plants from Burpee. We have 3 sweet tangerine and 3 steak sandwich plants. I was curious how they would ship live plants. Pretty cool little set-up they have. Now I need to plant. Tomatoes, a few pepper varieties, and corn. And this dark purple clematis is going out front. But guess what? More rain!!!! They will have to wait until Saturday.

A late Mother's Day post

I take pictures all the time and always have the camera with me, I'm just not good and putting them up anywhere. My Mother's Day was awesome. And it might have been the last nice day we've had in over a week. It didn't rain and I think it's rained every day since then. We went to breakfast at LePeeps. We met my mom, grandmother, Aunt and cousins, brothers and sister, sister-in-law, and nephew. After brunch we met my mom, Ash, and Landon at Mallow Run. A few hours relaxing, sipping on wine, and playing with the kids. I could not have asked for a better day.

Oh, and my present...a finch feeder! Please excuse the dirty window, Maggie doesn't understand that she doesn't need to put her nose on it ALL the time. One of these days, when we are rich, I'll get a camera where I don't have to perfect the army crawl without being seen to get a better picture of these guys. And maybe one where you can't tell how dirty the window is :)

The accident was bound to happen

Cody had Eli last night. They went for a bike ride around the high school. The boy knows no fear on his bike. Cody and I keep talking about how he's going to wipe out and it's going to be bad. It happened last night. Mama was not around to see it, which is probably a really good thing. This is what I saw when they got home last night...

I think I asked a blue million questions....what happened, did you love on him, did he ride home, did you clean it...


He's fine, they got a blizzard and you know ice cream fixes everything. Now he has a battle wound and a story to tell everyone at school today.

Things are happening...

Lots of things are happening around here. Kids are crazy busy, wedding meetings to set-up, a HUGE to-do list with wedding things on it. My not so crazy thing is the garden and the small amount of time I get to read. You would think the whole not having a job thing would make life a little less crazy and I'd have lots more time to read and work on my tan...so not the case. Anyway, the sugar snap peas have come up!

My husband-to-be rocks. I think I might have mentioned that one or a million times before. I consider myself fairly simple. It doesn't really take a lot to make me happy. I was asked to come out and help unload a few groceries Sunday morning. There were no groceries but some plants for me. The man knows just what I love. He brought home a rosemary (last years didn't survive the winter), thyme, and cilantro plant. I love having herbs out in the yard :)