hearsay, but worth repeating

My sister heard this prayer recently:

"Bless those in lofty callings, such as parents and nursery leaders."

the time has come

It's been 11 and a half years.  Jake and I decided it was time for bedroom furniture that we (I) picked out and paid for, as opposed to be being donated to us by parents.  Here's my craiglist.com find:

There are two really exciting things about this stuff: we've had it over a month and it still smells good (like cedar) and Jake has finally stopped chastising me for paying too much for it.  (It's worth $1000, not $1050!)

 I include this picture because I need window advice.  I like the convenience of mini-blinds, but I hate the look.  What should I do?  Curtains?  Woven wood blinds? Roman shades?  It will be another 11 1/2 years before we can commit to window treatments I like, and I want to be prepared for the day.

it's the great pumpkin, charlie brown

My true calling in life is to be a pumpkin farmer.  Look at how my darling has taken over the garden.  I'm so proud of it.  I shouldn't count my pumpkins before they're carved, but I think we're going to have four come fall.

And here's a yellow squash.  It's the only thing we've been able to eat from the garden so far, unless you count the spinach.  We got about five leaves of that before the wildlife and the heat took the rest.  One good thing about the heat: I think it killed a chipmunk yesterday.  We gave it a burial and Damon accused me of being happy it was dead.  I wasn't glad it suffered, though.  I'm not a monster.

moving out

Pet peeve: when a child of mine tells me or anyone else, "Then I don't like you anymore!"

Ignoring this phrase to make it go away has not been working, so on Monday I washed Anne's mouth with soap.  She packed some supplies and moved out.  I took some pictures when she wasn't looking.  Here she is digging a hole for her tent pole.

 Here's her Teddy bear, either tied to a tree for security purposes or being hanged.

Here's the tent, completed with a sheet and Damon's help.

It was a hot and humid day.  After a few minutes Anne got "tired and bored" and moved back in.  I haven't heard "Then I don't like you anymore" since.

Fancy Nancy

This is Fancy Nancy.  She loves all things fancy and all things French.  Anne hates her. She tells me that every time she has me read a Fancy Nancy book to her.  Claire told me today (I don't know what prompted this--we weren't talking about Fancy Nancy or anyone we hated) that if you hate someone because they have something you really want, it's called jealousy. 

Last week, Anne told me she wanted to learn to speak French.  Damon immediately said, "I don't want to learn to speak French.  No one speaks French except people who want to be fancy."

That's probably true.  Unless French is your native language...

BUT, any time a kid wants to learn something, you should jump on it, according to my superhuman friends who home school.  And Jake has some French language courses from when he worked at PowerGlide in Provo, so I dug them out and we're off.  We've mastered "Parlay voo onglay?" and "oui" (pronounced 'we'--it means yes) in only three days.  I think we're off to a good start.