Catching up

My phone updated and wouldn't upload pictures to my computer like I've been doing for the last 2 years.  I am not liking this update at all.  BUT guess who figured it out all on her own without Ben Shear's help...that's right...me!  It took me awhile and now I'm behind on sharing pictures, but better late than never, right?

So here a gazillion random things.

We went to "Lego club" at the base library.

We walked in and all of Ben's office was there with their families.  It was nice to have some familiar faces to talk to while the kids built.

Our tradition of ruining the grill while Ben is gone has begun.

Eli's favorite breakfast is blueberry muffins...except he calls them "sugar muffins" because of the topping.

Colin has fallen asleep on the red chair pretty much every day for the last week.  One day he asked if I would snuggle with him and was out in just a few minutes.

Eli built himself a fort one day and I found him with a stack of books.  He is doing such a great job reading!

I cleaned out closets this past weekend and sadly we are at the end of our hand-me-down stash.  Alison and Eli have both grown in the last month and now only have 1 pair of pajamas.  We've looked at several stores and can only find fleece pajamas and it's still close to 100°.  A friend told me that Yuma is weird like that and the stores still follow all the seasons.  Eli couldn't resist these spiderman pj's and wants to wear them all the time now.  I had to turn down the air conditioning one night just so he wouldn't overheat.

Colin discovered a dress jacket in his closet after I reorganized things.  He was in love and kept saying, "Oh, I'm going to be SO handsome!".

Some pictures from Ben.

He has his own car to drive around base:

This is his office:

I was teasing him about being really spoiled there (they cook breakfast for him and do his laundry) but he said it has more of a Camp Barnabas feel to it.  This picture of his office gave me a better understanding of what it's really like there.  I still think he's a little spoiled...the Chaplain before him left a cappuccino maker!

What he looks like when we Facetime:

This week, a friend took Alison and Eli on a field trip to the cotton gin with HEY (home educators of Yuma).  They had a blast and brought home cotton seeds for us to grow at home.  Now the question is, what do you do with cotton you grow at home???

Eli is in tan shorts, blue and orange shirt and Alison is in the teal shirt/shorts

Colin and I went to the park and bible study while they were gone.

We brought home Maddie with us after the field trip.  I am so thankful that Alison has homeschool friends.  Maddie did school with us and they were both encouraged by knowing there's other kids who learn just like they do. 

Yesterday was a wonderfully quiet, productive day at home.  I did school with each of the kids individually and got some great organization done in the schoolroom.  I was a happy teacher.  While I worked on my desk, the boys made police cars.  They worked for probably 2 hours on them, tearing of duct tape and drawing on the tape, making lights and license plates and sirens.

I love seeing their creativity and how much they love playing together. 

 

Alison has been really into creating necklaces.   She so sweetly made a necklace and note for her cousin...I loved how she packaged it.

School today:

Maya took a nap while we worked on math and Eli took 5,000 pictures of her because she was just too cute.

Shew.  That was too many random things.