Fireflies

For those of my blog viewers who have never been to the east and experienced the true magic of the bug know as the firefly, this is for you. A camera cannot come close to doing them justice. They are, hands down, my favorite bug in the world!! The trees look like they have twinkling Christmas lights in them. I have tried every kind of lighting possible and can't get the camera to capture them in the trees, so this is the best it gets.

The tiny little figure singing in the midst of them is not a wood nymph. It is actually Melissa on the hunt to catch as many as she can fit into a jar. My girls do NOT like bugs, do not touch bugs, and usually run screaming at the very mention of a bug. However, if a bug happens to have a light bulb on his backside, suddenly it's wonderful and worth touching!

Flowers

This post is mostly for my mom and sisters. Pretty orange flowers...

...and some white ...

...and some pink. All from different plants, right?

Nope! All three colors are growing on the same plant! This is called a Gay Butterfly Weed. Jason and I found it in a seed catalog last year and thought we'd give it a try. It bloomed this year and has put a big smile on my face! I've never seen anything quite like it. No butterflies yet, but I am still hopeful.

The view from above. The only flowers not on the plant are the pink geraniums in the top middle. Very cool plant!!!!

Another Birthday

Rachel had her 7th birthday this week. I can't believe she will be baptized next year! They are growing up too quickly. I love all my girls so much.

She wanted an Oreo cake. It has a cream cheese, mint Oreo filling and ganache on top. By far the easiest cake I've ever made and soooo delicious! Good choice, Rachel.

Piano Duet

I had my first official piano recital this past weekend. I have 16 students (including 3 of my own kids) and it went very well! The theme was "Songs from the Movies" and I found a great Pirates of the Caribbean duet book for me and Ashley. We played "The Curse of the Black Pearl". Neither of us is brilliant on the piano, but we sure had a great time with this song! It's flipped on it's side because Melissa was filming with the camera turned, and while I can view it normally on my camera, I can't seem to get it upright for this post. Also, blogger won't allow more than 100MB video clips, so there is a lot of the song missing! This is all you get.

Goods from the Garden

This little one is growing, but not in my garden. Just had to throw in a cute picture of my Emily, now 5 months old.

This, however, is straight from the garden! We had a fantastic amount of enormous radishes. Melissa thought this was a tomato when she first saw it. Yummy! Excuse my very dirty hand. I had just finished pulling weeds.
Here's a small amount of our own home grown strawberries that Sara can't get enough of. We have picked about two cups of strawberries each day for the last week, and they just keep coming! They are so delicious!!! Sara is covered in chocolate from her chocolate milkshake we had with dinner tonight. She's still way cute.

Ashley's 5th Grade Concert

Ashley is three weeks away from being a middle schooler! That's crazy. Her entire 5th grade (which is 9 different classes, about 180 kids) had their end of the year choir/band concert this week. Jason was unable to go, so I had four girls with me and there was standing room only in the auditorium. I was standing next to the wall holding a baby and a camera, and did any young, healthy man offer me his seat? Nope. Chivalry is dead. So forgive the background noise (mostly Sara whining--a 3 year old should not have to stand in the aisle for two hours). Here is Ashley's duet.

And this is poor, tired Sara. Luckily she found a nice big spot of aisle to lay down in. No one offers a seat after seeing this? People have no hearts. I'll spare you all the video of the band. It is, after all, a 5th grade band, and I couldn't even see Ashley in the flute section, anyway. She did great, though!

Four Months Old

Finally a smile caught on camera, and she's covered in rice cereal!! I'll take what I can get. This picture was actually taken about two weeks ago. It's Emily's first taste of something solid, and as you can see, she loved it. She especially loved putting her hand in her mouth right after having a spoonful of cereal put in. I guess it was very fun to play with.