Code-man's birthday

Here's what we did on Code-man's 9th(!) birthday. I know, I know, I am much too young to be the mother of a 9 year old. In case you can't tell what it is we're doing, we're hanging out behind a waterfall.

This weekend we joyfully witnessed the baptism of our nephew, Luke. I love baptisms--they're a new beginning: an outward sign of Christ's cleansing of our lives. I especially love infant baptisms. It's just such a powerful sign that God chooses us to be his children before we're even capable of choosing Him.

I pray God's blessing upon Luke and his family, as they continue on in their adventure of life.

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Here are four generations of men and boys on Hubby's side of the family: Uncle Robb, Joshua, Sawblock, Bubby, Great-Grandpa, Grandpa, Logo, Code-man, and Luke.

Grandpa looks blurry courtesy of Logo's fingerprint on the lens of the camera, not discovered until after we took all the pictures...ah, children.

Victoria

Victoria has emerged from her chrysalis, and it turns out she is a he--I guess we'll have to call him Victor from now on. Here's a picture--those black spots on the veins of the lower wings show us that he's a male. Sorry about the blurriness--I was taking the picture through the screen on the top of his container, plus he moved. It is amazing to me that all of that butterfly was able to fit in that itty tiny chrysalis. We're waiting for Hubby to return from work to release Victor.
Here are Charles (on the right) and King, both hanging out (literally) in their pupal states. They should be coming out in 7-10 days.
And here's one picture from our adventures in Colorado (I'll post more some other time). This is Code-man, cousin Tyler, cousin Connor, and Logo at the Red Rocks Amphitheater.

Culver's Flavor of the Day

Gizmo

Cody wanted me to point out that his friend Gizmo (which is his newest lego creation) is standing next to him in the picture of the garden--you can just barely see him to Cody's right (our left).

Garde UPdate

You know, I've heard that expression, "knee-high by the 4th of July," referring to corn plants needing to be that tall by then in order to get a good harvest, but I always kind of thought that seemed a little short. Where we live, there are only 2 more months of growing season by the 4th of July, and it seemed like if it had only grown 18" or so by then, no way was it going to make it to harvest. However, now I realize that corn grows faster as it gets bigger. Take a look at the corn on June 26 (click here and scroll down), and today--I've included Code-man (who is about 53" tall) in the picture for comparison--the corn is taller than he is.

That's a sunflower to Cody's left (our right, as we look at the picture), then come the tomato plants (you can just barely see them), the lone pepper plant, and the pumpkins, which are attempting to take over the entire garden. We harvested some green beans yesterday, and will have them for supper tonight (since Hubby's out of town, that might be all we have). I've spotted the first zucchinis and tomatoes as well.

In other news, we have decided that we're probably going to miss Victoria's emergence from her chrysalis, so we've invited two new friends, Charles (Charlie) and King, to stay with us. Hopefully they'll begin pupating before we leave on our next adventure--if they do, then I'm pretty sure the timing will work out that we'll be able to see them as butterflies.

Darn!

I uploaded three of the videos twice, and didn't get "How to catch a tadpole" (catching tadpoles is another of our favorite things to do when we're by Lake Superior), or either of the biking ones uploaded. Bummer. Maybe...not next week...three weeks from now?

Water slide, part 2

Here's Code-man sliding down a different natural water slide.

Skipping

One of our favorite things to do when we're by Lake Superior is skip rocks. Here's one time I happened to catch Code-man. He's standing in the Baptism River where it empties into the lake. It was about 30 degrees (or more) warmer in the river than it was 20 ft. away in the lake. Cody's record is 10 skips!

Rock angels

Don't ask why!

Water slide

Here's Logo enjoying a natural water slide below lower falls on the Gooseberry River (they weren't very creative with their names, as I touched on earlier today). It needed to have just a little more water in it, but those boys still had a good time.

There are more videos coming, but they're still processing right now--I'm not sure if I got all of the ones uploaded that I intended to--it was a little hard to keep track. I think I need a better system (or faster internet access at home so that I can upload more often...)

Ow tree

Here's Bubby helping build the tree fort...please note the sound effects.

Two fishes on

Here's one of the videos I didn't get uploaded last week. Sawblock and Code-man both had fishies on their lines.

Have I mentioned that Lake Superior is beautiful? I love it there. We went to Gooseberry Falls state park, which is on the north shore of Minnesota, this weekend. Hubby and I both commented that we could stay in that place much longer than we did.First day, I had to get a picture of the boys on the rocks with the lake in the background. I think I took about 10, and I managed to get semi-smiles from all in this one.We almost lost some of the children one day (my husband says I have to point out that we almost lost them off a cliff into Lake Superior--I think you'll be able to figure that out, since I just said we were at Lake Superior). Good thing Code-man was wearing his helmet. And just another beautiful waterfall...this is Fifth Falls, on the Gooseberry River. It's called Fifth Falls because it's the fifth set of waterfalls up the river from the lake (Superior, that is)--I guess they ran out of names.

You may have noticed that we're all wearing matching shirts. That's because we're cool (or maybe that's cheesy) and do things like decorate T-shirts together as a family.

There are so many more great pictures that I could show you, but that will have to do for now :-)

Back at home, here's a pumpkin--it's about 1.5 inches long--isn't it cute?

It's not easy...

...being green, although Victoria pulls it off nicely, regally, even.Overnight, my friend Victoria has gone into her pupal stage. Hubby commented this morning that he wished we'd had a video camera, or at least time-lapse photography, on her so we could see how she did it. Amazing. According to my research, this phase will last around 2 weeks.

And continuing in the good/amazing news category, Bubby went pee in the potty this morning! I think he was as surprised as I was.

And it's Tracy's birthday on Friday. Tracy is so well-loved and respected that the entire country celebrates--I think they wrote the day down wrong on their calendars, though, because their parties are usually a day off. Happy Birthday, Tracy!

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So I was mopping the floor late last night (a rare occurrence, let me assure you), and thinking about love languages, how mine is (mostly) acts of service (that's right, Hubby, I mopped the floor last night because I love you, and by the way, thank you for being such a loving husband and father and working so hard to support us), and I started thinking, wondering what God's love language is--that is, how God prefers to receive love and how God shows love to others. I know that there's a book about the 5 love languages of God, but I haven't read it. And I thought, is it acts of service? gifts? quality time? words of affirmation? physical touch? And I came to realize that God expresses love in all of these ways: God speaks all of the love languages. God is love. The more important question is, how do we express our love to God? I do think that any of these ways is valid, and accepted by God, but just as with our spouse, or other loved ones, whatever their love language is, we need to speak it intentionally to them, and we need to speak our love to God as well. How will you tell or show God that you love him today?