first day of school

My kids came up to see me just before they left for their first day of school. They were very excited. LMG has already made a good friend. LMS made a 104 on her pretest in spelling. And when I asked Mr. Happy if he likes school the other day he said "yeah....we get to sleep!" :-p School is a big adjustment for my sweet boy - says a lot that his favorite part is when he gets to stop and rest!

I miss them.

my last day

This was the day I had been dreading all summer. It came way too soon. LM Sunshine asked to have a "goodbye party with a Leah cake" added as the very last thing on our summer list. As this day got closer, I realized it was a very good thing we were going to have people around that day - otherwise we all would have just been sad all day! Which I was, really, but it was just good to have some distractions.

We decided to make it a pool/slip'n'slide party...of course!

Sometimes Jonathan is not so sure about trying some things...but the slip'n'slide?? He cracks up every time!!

Laura was not too sure about the slip'n'slide herself at first but I told her she had to try juuust once!

She loved it. Everyone does! It's better than Dollywood! lol

Then Leah wanted to try.

Shannon didn't get to go on the slip'n'slide the last time she was here because she was pregnant...this time she went and said it was more fun than you could imagine!

Cute, cute, cute.

LM Giggles is very serious about her butterfly catching this summer. It's one of her favorite things to do.

Then I got to babysit for the evening and put my kiddos to bed, which was the perfect way to end my last day as their nanny.

Little Miss Sunshine, Little Miss Giggles, and Mr. Happy:

I love you so very much! I have loved every day of being with you for the past five and a half years! From potty training to time outs (that I thought might never end on some days!) to trips to the library to imaginary pink hammers :} and so so so much more! All three of you made me laugh and smile every day by just being you. :} I hope you always remember all the fun things we did together and how much I love you...but most importantly of all, I hope you will always remember, no matter what anyone else ever tells you, how much Jesus loves you - so much that He died for you! He who created you thinks you are beautiful (and handsome! ;) ) and even though Kiki can't be with you every day now, He is ALWAYS with you and He will NEVER leave you!

I already miss seeing your sleepy little faces each morning and I especially miss my eskimo kisses each evening (oonne...twwwo...frreeee...)! But I am asking and trusting God to keep you safe and to remind you often just how much He (and I!) loves you. I will never stop praying for each of you by name and I will always be here if you need me.

I LOVE YOU.....TO THE MOON AND BACK!!

aarrrrr!

Mr. Happy is in to pirates these days. He always has been really... see? :)

I have called him my little captain for a long time. His bedroom used to have a firetruck theme...but is now being turned into an awesome pirate room. So when Laura mentioned she had a big box that she could bring over to make a pirate ship out of...Jack's mouth dropped open and he was VERY excited! (Not to mention that making something out of a cardboard box was on our summer list!)

Leah is into pirates right now too - so it was a perfect match! Laura and I worked on the general design...and Mr. H. drew everything he wanted on it.

Terrible cell phone pic... but after Laura and Leah left, he even fell asleep in it for a little while!

Then we took it up to his room where it fits in just perfectly!

Ha! He and his sisters figured out that this little stuffed animal fit perfectly through the porthole and was also used as a cannon ball. :}

I promise we feed him really well!! lol The boy just has so much energy he runs it all off in a heartbeat!

Aw! He almost has a baby six-pack! Lol

Thanks for bringing the box, Laura! It was a huuge hit!! :)

quick pic

I am attempting to madly pack so I can move tomorrow. I will stay at a friend's house for a little bit and hopefully before long will have another job and be able to afford my own place again. My attention span today is zero however and I decided take a break and post a quick pic.

LMG loves to play dress up. You never know what outfit she might come up with next! This was her very couture design from last week...

I'm sure the people on the show Project Runway would be way impressed.

:}

chinese dumplings

Ever since we read a book about the Wall of China last year in school and I told my kids I have a friend, Jing, who is from China, they have begged me often to have her over so they can meet her. We finally got to have her over a couple weeks ago and she taught my kids how to make Chinese dumplings.

They love that they can remember her name - because it sounds like the "jing" in "jingle bells"! :}

LMS and LMG take their dumpling making very seriously.

We did some fried and some boiled. I can never decide which I like better...usually which ever one I happen to be eating at that particular moment!

Soooo yummy!! All three of my kiddos LOVED them! Jing came back on our last day and brought more dumplings - and Mr. Happy pushed his to the side of his plate and said he was saving his for very last - they are definitely "last" worthy! :)

Thanks for coming to see us and help us cook, Jing! :)

catching up

Sorry things have been a little quiet around here! Just been a little busy... :} I'll work on catching up now.

Here is one of our "bucket list" items...going to the science museum.

This brought back many memories of coming here as a little girl! Their hands are on the Van De Graaff generator. It is a small model of a MUUUCH larger machine. It makes your hair stand up. That's about all I really know about it... lol. LM Sunshine didn't do this that particular day because her hair was in "teddy bear ears" as she likes to call them. :) Oh well!

On the left... trying out his hand at braille.

On the right...how he sat during the presentation about the Van de Graaff generator. :}

More coming... :)

on the farm

These three asked me to do some pics of them one evening during camp. We wanted Abby to be in them too - it's not a complete "best friends" set without her - but she was being stubborn and wouldn't do it! :-p So we did it without her!

I love the vintagy look these edits give the pictures. It's probably one of my favorite edits to use and fit well with the farm surroundings. :)

12:34

Warning: Unusually long post. I won't blame you if you don't make it all the way through! But it's an update on my life in general. :)

I borrowed this idea of a summer “bucket list” from Meg's blog. She does this with her children every summer. I have thought it was such a great idea for several years but had never gotten around to doing it before. I decided it was very important to do it this summer though. Important because this is my last summer with my kiddos. Some of you already know this. They will be going to a really great private school in just a couple weeks. All three of them. All day long...plus aftercare. Therefore, they won’t need me anymore. So I have been soaking up this last summer with my three beautiful children. We have done many things on our list, although we have some left to do in the next two weeks.

As for the questions everybody is starting to ask...

Do your kids know?

Yes, they’ve known all summer, although the concept of me not being here has been pretty abstract until this past week. It just clicked in Little Miss Sunshine’s mind last week just exactly what it means when mommy says they will still see Kiki sometimes - it doesn’t mean they will see me outside when I walk down my stairs on the weekends or in the evenings...it means I will not be living here right next to them anymore and they will only see me if I come to babysit every now and then. The look on her face when that clicked in her head was pretty sad. Little Miss Giggles has said often in the past week, “But Kiki, I don’t want you to go!” Mr. Happy has said off and on all summer, “Kiki, you know that day when you aren’t going to be here anymore?? I just hate that day already! I hate that day!” Which is hard to type without getting tears in my eyes.

Wow, you will miss them, won’t you?

Well, duh! :) I have been here for five and a half years and I love them like they are mine. No one except possibly my friend Rebekah, who has done the nanny thing before, completely gets just how much I will miss them and how hard our separating from each other is going to be. No one gets just how strong a bond there is between us all - but probably between Mr. Happy and me the most, just since I have been the one to care for him almost every day since he was 8 weeks old. The closest thing I’ve been able to compare it to is getting a divorce and losing custody of your children....except no one is angry with anyone, thankfully! :) So HECK YES I will miss my babies!! I’ve told wendy I get first dibs on babysitting now...and I have claimed Boo at the Zoo as mine in the fall. :) I’ve taken them every year for four years now and I’m not about to stop!

Where will you live and what are you going to do next?

Yeah. That would be nice to know! I am waiting for Him to show me where He wants me next. I am fully and completely 100% confident that He will be faithful and provide exactly what I need and beyond. There is another blog I love, written by a mom named Linny and honestly, just simply reading her blog has strengthened my faith so much! Her faith is rock solid and I see Him answering prayers and moving mountains for her all the time and realized one night...wait a second...she loves and serves the same God I do...He can totally answer my own prayers like that!

However, while I know He will provide, I am human and the waiting and unknown can sometimes be a litlte bit scary to this girl who does not like change, when I forget to keep my eyes focused only on Him. He has been increasingly faithful in moments of doubt to remind me that He is still there. Like the title of this post:

12:34

I decided a long time ago that that is my favorite time of day. 12:34. The numbers go in order...1,2,3,4. When I happen to glance up and see that time on a digital clock, it always reminds me that the God Who created the entire universe, who ordered the stars in the sky, who sees when a tiny sparrow falls, is the same God Who is taking care of me every moment. He is here. He holds my life in His hands. He will never leave me. He is in control and He knows my future. I don’t usually see that time on the clock very often seeing as it only comes twice a day! And while I am a night owl and am often still up and getting ready for bed at 12:34am...I’m not usually looking at a clock at that time of night. And usually during the day I am fixing lunch for my kids at about that time. So I only see it every once in a while. But can I just tell you how many times I have seen it in the past two weeks?! I was sort of dreading coming back from camp because I knew the following three weeks would get increasingly hard as the time to say goodbye rushes closer and closer, but a couple times during the second week of camp i would glance at my phone and realize it was

12:34.

“I’m here.”

I can’t even remember how many times I saw it last week!

12:34.

“I’m in control.”

Just last night I was looking at online nanny job postings that want to pay $5 an hour. (Seriously? For a full-time nanny?? That’s what i made babysitting way back in highschool - 15 years ago!!) I looked up in the corner of my computer screen and there it was yet again:

12:34.

“I know the plans I have for you.”

All I could say was ok, I hear You. I know You are here and in control and already know where You want me next. I will trust while I wait. :)

This past Saturday however, He reminded me in a different way. I went tubing with some friends from church. We had gone a month ago up to townsend but the water was just so shallow and still that I informed them I wanted to take everyone to a “real” tubing place down in NC. I had been tubing on the Tuckaseegee river last summer with two friends and had loved it. The rapids there are stage 2 (a stage or so above Townsend.) and I remembered that one rapid had been a little too intense for my liking and I had gone way around to the side and out of the main part. But other than that and getting tipped out of my tube once, I had a blast just floating with my friends. So I figured it would be a similar experience this time too. Yeah. I was wrong. I had forgotten how fast the water flows through the rapids and started fearing that I would be flipped out with rocks all around. I found myself just praying through the rapids, “Please don’t leave me! Help me get through this one in tact!” :) I did tip over a couple times, scraped my leg on some rocks, couldn’t quite catch my breath, and might have had a slight panic attack for a moment which one of my friends might have had to talk me through, but I was fine overall and I still can say that I like tubing...mostly... :}

(Borrowed this pic from my friend...thanks, Deanna!) :)

Of course that whole experience, I am sure, was no coincidence. Even while I was hanging on through the rapids, it brought to mind the metaphor that life is sometimes like that river - we float gently through the calm parts enjoying the scenery and everything is great. Then the rough parts come and can be kind of scary, can hurt a bit, and we can wonder what in the world is up ahead around the curve - more rough parts, or another quiet stretch? - but just like in the tube on the river, God never leaves us alone. He is faithfully with us the entire trip - rough parts and calm parts alike. And not only that, but just like my friend who helped calm me down after being dumped out a few times, He doesn’t make us go through things alone but usually sends one or more people into our lives to be His hands and feet during the rough times. I already have had multiple friends (and family too of course!) offer their homes for me to stay at while I continue to search for another job. Other friends have sent me notes just to say they’re praying for me. So while those who know me well know how much I HATE change of any kind :-p , I can still confidently say that I KNOW my sweet Savior will provide for my every need just like He provided this job for me five and a half years ago.

That being said, I would still appreciate your prayers! :) The unknown of where I’m going or what I’ll do still gets scary at moments here and there and the thought of saying goodbye to Little Miss Sunshine, Little Miss Giggles, and Mr. Happy is something I try not to think about. Not to mention what a huge enormous change this will be for each of them too! I want to make this major transition as easy for them as possible, so pray for wisdom as to how to do that.

("Eat donuts" was one of Mr. Happy's addition to our list. They each got to pick out their very own...and I think they thoroughly enjoyed every bite!)

In the meantime, I still have this week and next week with my kiddos and we still have things to finish on our list so I'd better go get ready for the day! We're playing with a big cardboard box today and I think the goal is to make it into a pirate ship. Pictures later, I'm sure. :)

k.kamp 2011 ~ girlz week

This year girls' week of k.kamp started off with a biology lesson when one of the kids discovered...

kittens being born right then!!

Abby recorded some k.kamp randomness all week. She even made a k.kamp commercial...check it out!

Lots of crafts.

Rebekah and her kiddos came back to spend another day with us - and so did Jodi! I had 23 people in the house that day! And totally loved every minute of it. :)

Outdoor games...we were dripping with sweat just standing outside!

This is not at all the same type of picture as last year! They were not at all getting ready to go do something to someone's truck again in the middle of the night...

...and I most certainly did not go down to help them......!

Proof that I have been out at camp for two weeks!

I did one more photo shoot while I was out there...coming up next! :)