Baby Birds In May

Early in May we saw that birds were creating a nest on top of our side garage lights. With all the choices of the trees in the yard, this seemed like an unlikely place, but the birds seemed happy with their new home.

Photo 140 of 365, taken May 13th:

As the nest grew in size, any slight breeze would blow some of the stray nesting materials, setting off our motion light at all hours of the night. Dave debated taking the nest down, but it was clear that the mama bird was being very protective of it, and we knew baby birds were on their way.

Mama bird sat hunkered down and all puffed up like this for several days in a row.

Photo 141 of 365, taken May 20th:

One day there were some sweet and noisy baby birds out there to greet us. It was neat to see, but it is also when the nest got way out of control. I'm not sure if it was an effort to keep everyone in the nest warm, but over the course of a week or so, the nest tripled in size. It appeared that the adult birds were dragging up every piece of garbage they could find, including paper and something that looked rather cloth-like. Our motion light was set off constantly {we would have just disabled it entirely, but many evenings I really appreciate it as I am walking from the driveway to the house}. After watching the nest grow to monumental size, one morning about half the nest fell on its own...and a second bird family moved in. Now about a month later, we have new baby birds chirping noisily as I type this up. We just might be stuck with that nest all summer.

Photo 142 of 365, taken May 20th:

Unrelated to the birds, Alyssa made a planter using a 2 liter bottle in science class. She says a tomato plant is going to grow.

Photo 143 of 365, also taken May 20th:

Grebes bakery had lots of pretty flag cookies on our last visit. The girls loved them, and continue to look forward to all of Alyssa's monthly orthodontist appointments because they know it means a cookie and donut treat from Grebes.

The Mosh Pit, Or in Other Words Photos 133-139

Clearly I {or at least my blogging} was no match for the end of the school year and transition to summer vacation. I have loved doing the 365 photos project for the year, but it has really made me feel forced into posting things at least somewhat chronologically, and my brain just doesn't work that way most days. More often than not I feel like my thoughts are flailing and jumping around like a mosh pit in my brain fighting their way to get some air at the top {this is not to say that I have actually been close enough to a mosh pit to experience this first hand, but I imagine that's what it's like, and it's definitely how I have felt realizing how long it has been since I last posted any new photos and considering where to begin.}

I am sticking with it though, because I have some crazy need to finish what I started, so the next several posts will be my best attempt to recover. Bring on the pictures!!

Photo 133 of 365, taken May 16th:

Emma's gym teacher selected some 4th and 5th graders to run in a track meet. Here is the 4th grade team, our school was the only one who brought 4th graders, the other schools only brought their 5th graders, so Emma was super excited she even had the chance to compete.
Photo 134 of 365, taken May 16th:

Emma did the 400m race and the long jump. Here she is exhausted after the 400m. She had never done anything like this before so I tried to give her a little advice about the lanes, explaining that because they are staggered it can be deceiving how far ahead of you someone is etc...I wasn't sure she knew what to expect, but little did I know what I was about to see. I also overheard her gym teacher give her some advice about not starting out too fast, and that was it ~ the race began.

As they rounded the first corner, Emma was either in last place or second to last. I knew her strategy was to save some gas in the tank for the end of the race, but I couldn't help wondering what she was doing. I knew she was faster than that. This continued throughout the straightaway and then without warning she just turned it on! One by one she overtook the rest of the runners {people we didn't know in the stands were counting down the runners as she passed them as soon as they realized the move she was making to take everyone down}. By the final straightaway she was by herself. At one point I saw Emma glance at someone who was passing her, and I was way far away in the stands, but I thought I saw an expression of frustration on her face. She stayed true to her plan though and didn't get distracted. I don't know how you teach a kid patience like that. She surely didn't get it from me! In the words of her gym teacher, Herr Arndt, "Smart race, Emma. Smart race."

Emma and her sweet friend Ava who did awesome in the 70m and the softball throw.

Emma won the standing long jump too, jumping 6 foot 3 inches. Long term, track is not going to be a sport she will be competitive in, she's just not tall enough, and for the purposes of her gymnastics endeavors we will not wish away her petite stature. But for today it sure was an awesome day at the track!!

The same evening as the track meet, Alyssa told me she needed an updated photo for the sidebar of the blog...
Photo 135 of 365, taken May 16th:

I still have a hard time believing she's a teenager, mostly because I am pretty sure I was just a teenager myself last week. We recently got the question that was bound to happen at some point: Are you sisters?

Photo 136 of 365, also taken May 16th:

Once again, Rebekah was too busy playing for me to take pictures.

She much preferred to examine the flowers and run around the yard than sit and pose.

That weekend Rebekah danced at Maifest in Germantown.
Photo 137 of 365, taken May 18th:

There's not a whole lot that is more German than necklaces made of pretzels and beer before noon. Eins, Zwei, Drei...Zuppa!


Photo 138 of 365, taken May 18th:

Rebekah had recently asked me why when Alyssa is in a play she gets flowers after her performances, but that she had never gotten flowers after a German Dance outing. We couldn't have her thinking that somehow her dance wasn't as special, so Alyssa picked out some flowers for her on our way to Maifest.

Photo 139 of 365, taken May 18th:

After Maifest we headed over to celebrate a baby shower for our friends, Tanya and Paul. Baby Christa was just born on June 20th and is just precious! Alyssa and Emma are pictured above with Christa's very proud big sister, Alyssa.

The Observer

Most of the time the girls take the bus to school in the mornings, and I pick them up in the afternoon. Often they will point out places as we drive by and tell me that their bus drives by it in the mornings. Sometimes, I think they must be wrong because we are in really random places when they tell me that :-) After school the other day Alyssa described a location to me and told me there were some beautiful flowers that would make the prettiest bouquet. She wondered if anyone would mind if she picked them.

The next time I drove past the place she mentioned, I took special notice of where she had described the flowers location to be. When I looked out there, I was surprised that she had noticed them from the road. They are very discreetly located right behind the tree, you can kind of see them in the tree's shadow.

Alyssa and I share a love of tulips and she was right, they were beautiful and bright. She had given me very precise directions, describing the tree, the shed I would see behind the tree, and their proximity to the nearby traffic light.

Photo 132 of 365, taken May 16th:

I felt like pulling off to take a picture was making me look suspicious (the flowers are near the entrance to a National Guard Refueling Wing, and I didn't want the intentions of my picture taking in a government protected field to be misunderstood) but at the time, I knew I had to get a picture for her since she loved them so much. It wasn't until later that I got to thinking about how much she had admired the flowers from such a distance but never got to see them as closely as I did.

Getting Mail Sure is Exciting!

Right after I threw in the towel for getting the photo I wanted in my previous post, the girls had the idea that they should check the mail. I called out to them that I had already gotten the mail that day but they insisted upon checking the empty box anyway.






Photo 131 of 365, taken May 13th:

What the girls didn't know when they were running to the mail box in great excitement was that they had already received a care package of all their favorite Hawaiian goodies from Great Grandmommy and Great Granddaddy. These are all their favorite treats packed with love. As often as we have them, the girls are asking to have them in their lunchboxes! Thank you so much to Grandmom and Granddad for giving the girls such a happy and delicious surprise!!

Just One Picture Please...Or Maybe 26

I usually try to take photos with the girls on Mother's Day and their birthdays. It seems like when we don't go out of our way to schedule getting a picture, Dave and I usually don't get into the photos with the girls. But anyway, on Mother's Day this year, I did not get any pics with the girls. It was just laziness to be perfectly honest. With having the musical in the evening of Mother's Day, I tried to get the girls to relax in the afternoon so they could be well rested, and I ended up dozing off myself :-)

After school on Monday I was determined to get a cute picture of all three girls so I could have my "Mother's Day" photo. It was one of those silly notions, because typically I take anywhere between 300 and 600 photos each month, so I certainly needed one more today. The other 400 in my May folder were not enough. It occurred to me that any photo I took on this particular day wouldn't be as nice as having them in their church clothes, but I just wanted something, anything. I momentarily debated asking them to change into their dresses from the previous morning, but that just seemed crazy. My willingness to settle should have tipped me off that this picture was not going to come easy.

I asked them to sit by the tulip bed and from the very start it was a mess of giggles, trying to make a swing out of their interlocked hands for Rebekah to pose on, not looking in the direction of the camera, closing their eyes and squinting because the sun was too bright and other acts of uncooperativeness. And I thought they were difficult to photograph when they were toddlers.

Alyssa and Rebekah sitting next to each other felt like the hugest obstacle to a successful picture {see the middle photo of the first collage, that's Rebekah pushing Alyssa's face away from her face. They are so full of love for each other, their hearts can't stand it sometimes}, so I thought a change of arrangement would solve the problem. I was wrong.

Photo 130 of 365, taken May 13th:

I never did get the picture I was hoping for that afternoon, but I can't begin to describe how thankful I am for these girls, the people they are becoming and that I get to be their mom.

I have been reading a book my mom gave to Alyssa and it's a book for teens, but I thought I would read it before Alyssa does. The prayer the author has for the book's audience resonated with me, maybe it will for you too. I often feel so caught up and cluttered with our day to day activities and responsibilities, and it's all good, worthwhile stuff we are busy doing. But how much better is this:

"I'm praying God will call you to do something great for His name and His glory. It may not make the headlines, but greatness is determined by God, not by man. Most of all, I am praying you have the courage to answer that call."
~ Living For God As Courageous Teens, by Michael Catt, with Amy Parker

It's my prayer that we always point the girls towards His target for their lives and simply enjoy the little people He has entrusted us with. Even when they won't take proper pictures for us :-)

Two Mother's Day Musicals

I began to look through photos from this year's Mother's Day musical when I realized that I had never shared any of the pictures from last year's musical. The 2012 Mother's Day musical was the very first Kid's Choir Musical that Rebekah was old enough to be in, and the very last one before Alyssa was too old to be part of Kid's Choir. So being a first and a last it was somewhat bittersweet and I knew I needed to have pictures of both here. The blue shirts are the 2013 musical, the yellow shirts are the 2012 musical...

This year's musical was called "The Star Factor" and was as cute and funny as ever.
Photo 128 of 365, taken May 12th:






I enjoy watching the musicals so much. I can so clearly see the girls' personalities in how they act on stage. Each song has a little choreography that goes with it and Emma is always very focused on their director the whole time, trying to be right on cue and doing every movement as precisely as she can. Rebekah on the other hand does her own thing sometimes, sticking with the motions and dance moves she loves the best.

The musical from 2012, Acorns to Oaks:



Alyssa had one of the leading drama roles in her last Kid's Choir musical. I am not sure if I have ever said this in other posts about the girls' involvement with choir at church, but I know it is because of her Kingdom Kid's Choir experiences and their awesome teacher, Gina, that Alyssa realized how much she loves music, singing and acting.

Music has become a part of her. There is not a moment of the day when she's not singing, humming, or tapping out the beat of a song with her pencil eraser. Music seems to help Alyssa think and it's always swirling through her mind and heart. She'd love to teach music someday, despite the current lack of job security for music teachers. I'm sure that if it's what she's meant to do, God will open the right doors, but for now, we could not be more thankful that Alyssa has been blessed by some really great teachers and found something she is very passionate about. She helps run sounds at all the practices now, since she is too old to be part of the choir itself.

Emma doing her thing ~ she had a solo.

With this being the first time Rebekah was part of the choir, I had to beg her to even stay at the first several practices. It was a tearful battle each week for the first few weeks, but I just knew if she went, she would love it! By Mother's Day she was ready for the show. I was fearful that she would do something very unpredictable, or possibly stand up there and cry, but she rocked it :-) {you should click the collage to see the photos better...we may have a future drama queen on our hands, see the bottom left photo}
It was such a fun musical and a perfect end to Alyssa's time in the Kid's Choir.


Happy Birthday to my Dad!! His birthday was May 8th and it always falls near Mother's Day so we get to celebrate both occasions on the same weekend.

Photo 129 of 365, taken May 13th:

One more choir related photo...the Monday after the church musicals a group of kids always goes to a nearby retirement community to give the residents an abbreviated presentation of the musical. Here they are being silly after their performance. It's often easier than I might imagine to make people happy.

Can We Do This The Fun Way?

I took the girls to the lakeshore to do the hike at Seven Bridges and before we started on the trail Emma looked at me and in a very serious tone asked, "Can we do this the fun way?" I kind of thought just the fact that we were there was at least a little fun, but I just told her that they could hike the path however they liked, as long as it was safe.

Photo 127 of 365, taken May 5th:

It was interfering with their "fun way" that I wanted them to stop and take a picture.

The fun way sometimes means re-enacting the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff on each bridge we cross. 7 times on the way to the lake, 7 times on the way back...I think the story is cute, but 14 times in row makes it a little much.

Today the fun way meant scaling rocks down to the water {not on the path, by the way}.

Wading in freezing water. Ice bath, anyone?

And rock hopping through the creek that trails to the lake {still not on the path}.

Rebekah insisted on doing everything the older girls were doing, of course, and in spite of the fact that she was wearing super slippery slippers {flip flops}. I could barely stand to watch, I thought for sure she was going to fall on the rocks. But she kept answering my many requests for her to join me on the path with, "But I just want to be like Emma." Emma's friend, Hallie thought it was so cute and offered to trade Emma her little sister so she could have Rebekah.

It was an awesome day at the lake.

We definitely did it the fun way.

The season of trips to the lake and wet, sandy feet being tracked every where is here again. And I am so glad!