Salamanders and paddle boats

We had a great time Friday night and Saturday in Stuart at a friends cabin.  He has a pond that the kids went fishing in and rode the paddle boat.   Eli and Ella have caught a couple fish but Ella holds the record for catching the most salamanders with a fishing pole.   I think she is at 50 or more.   She has spent hours out there fishing and even worms all of her hooks.  Emmy enjoyed the paddle boat but her legs aren't long enough to reach the pedals.  We have also seen a few snakes.   Thankful for the awesome weather and that there are few bugs out yet!!!!

Strawberries

Kids were super excited to go picking strawberries.  When we go there they told us they were done for the day.  Lots of sad faces so instead they gave each one a bucket and said go for it.  An hour later we left with 4 gallons of strawberries.  Emmy ate plenty while holding the bucket.  Eli, Ella, and Landon were searching each row for the perfect strawberry.   Landon thinks these are the sweetest strawberries he has ever had.   Guess that is a good thing since we have 4 gallons!!!!   Strawberry short cake, strawberry ice cream, strawberry cobbler, strawberry muffins, strawberry bread, chocolate covered strawberries....

Growing up

It's hard to believe that Emmy has been home 16 months now.   She is growing like a weed, all of them are growing like weeds for sure but it seems she has almost doubled in size!!!  Yesterday we marked a new milestone moving Emmy out of the crib.   We waited a while because she seemed to like her crib a lot.   Ella was super excited because she was also changing from her twin bed to a bunk bed!!   A big thanks to Aunt Caroline for taking Ella's old bed which saved a lot of tears as some of our kiddos have a hard time letting things go right now.   Ella and Eli are excited that they will get to "visit" the old bed at Aunt Caroline's whenever they go.   I am so pleased to report that everyone slept well without little feet getting out of bed after a new freedom of not having four crib walls standing guard for potential escaping.

On another fun front Ella and Landon had a blast last night in the musical "Back to the Cross" at our church.   It was so fun to watch them perform after working hard to memorize their lines.   Ella was the cutest valley girl and couldn't believe that I actually knew what valley girls were.   When I told her I lived through the 80's it was "like a total shock"!!   The videos below are fuzzy but Landon is the one in the hat and Ella is the one on the front row in the black leg warmers.  In the second video both Landon and Ella are in the middle (Landon still with the hat and Ella in all black).