Beech Hill Farm and Ice Cream! (Siobhan)

~Beech Hill~

To celebrate the twins' first birthday, we took them to Beech Hill. Beech Hill has always been one of our favorite places to go in the summer! Baxter and Cade loved eating ice cream and seeing all of the animals.

Even though Baxter and Cade are similar in a lot of ways, they definitely have their own personalities. They even eat their ice cream differently! Baxter smashed his cone and made a huge mess, and Cade neatly nibbled around the edges 😊

(Cade left, Baxter right)

We always love looking at the goats, and we even got to see the peacock open his feathers!

Double Trouble (Siobhan)

~Double Trouble~

Baxter and Cade go absolutely everywhere together! They love helping each other get into trouble 😉 Now that they are walking, they love finding new places to explore. Their favorite place to climb is on top of our flour bin...

Double Trouble!

Click here to see more Twin posts

Butterfly Rescue (Siobhan)

 ~Butterflies and Praying Mantises~

One of our favorite science projects each year is our painted lady butterfly hatching. We buy caterpillars from Insect Lore and watch them turn into butterflies.

We've always had great success with hatching our butterflies, but this time around we had one butterfly which was born with a broken wing. Shaila is an avid animal lover, and she immediately claimed it and took care of it. She named it 'Mephibosheth' (after Jonathan's lame son that King David took in.) We set all of the other butterflies free after a few days, but Shaila kept Mephibosheth because she knew he wouldn't do well in the wild. She fed him sugar water and tamed him so that she could walk around the house with him on her finger. When he had lived a nice long life, she released him into our flowerbed out front.

We also bought a praying mantis egg sack. We had almost given up on it hatching, and we woke up to dozens of little praying mantises crawling out of their container!

Shaila and Ethan let them free by our garden so they could eat all our pests 😉

Click here to see our other butterfly hatching posts!

Converse Shoe Cake (Siobhan)

~Converse Shoe Cake~

Lydia and I made this converse shoe cake for Elim's sweet sixteen. Elim had custom designed converse shoes, so we copied the pattern of her shoe, carved out the cake and decorated it with fondant.

A big thank you to Ann from How to Cook That for the inspiration for this cake!

Shaila's Cat (Megan)

Last Christmas my mom presented Shaila with a mama cat and told her that she needed special care because she was about to have a kitten.  Sure enough, the next morning a sweet baby kitten was nestled in the cat's bed.  Shaila's joy knew no bounds!  Since then there have been some surprise "deliveries" in the middle of the night.  :)

Field Trip to The Butterfly Place (by Connor, age 9, and Shaila, age 6)

we went on a field trip and it was a butterfly field trip and we learned about them so much and it was fun to! one of the thing"s that we learned about is that there is a owl butterfly and it has owl eyes on its wings and there was one butterfly that was so pretty and grandma loved it to. I had a very fun time.
 Shaila


i went on a field trip with grandma carter Shaila and grandmas friend it was so cool we learned a lot of facts about butterflies. when when caterpillars aren't butterflies yet there is a special place for them. and when there crisalits they have a place for them to. then when they turn to butterflies they are let into a huge room where other butterflies are. there are many  different types that we saw i did not see it but there is a type of  butterfly that has glass wings they are really see through. that is so cool.
Connor



there were some butterfly"s and they were so cool and I loved them and grandmas friend came to and it was so fun because we learned so much I love butterfly"s they are one of the most amazing creatures on earth they can do a lot to defend it is sometimes so crazy and carter liked the field trip to because he came with us to and he was a little scared at first but then he loved them. just like I was scared at first when I saw my first butterfly and then I loved them it is crazy how people sometimes do not like stuff at first then when they get used to them then they love them and I am happy God created butterfly"s and now they are every ware and God created anything you could think of every animal that you could think of I meant and everybody loves butterfly"s when you get used to them and I hope that you learn about butterfly"s someday and maybe you can be someone who studies butterfly"s but remember just listen and learn about the facts of butterfly"s I hope you can studie them when you are older  
 Shaila
 we had such a fun time

Cute Kid Stuff

As you can see by Shaila's detailed butterfly blog post, she is becoming a prolific writer.  She was determined to finish Typing Instructor by the end of first grade so she could set up her own e-mail account.  My one stipulation is that she show e-mails to me before sending them (unless they are going to family members :).  She agreed that this was a good idea, saying, "Yup, you should probably read e-mails to my friends before I send them.  It's not like I'd TRY to put anything crude in them, but you might think it's kind of weird and not let me send it."  :)

Shaila has such a tender spot for animals.  When we hatched butterflies, one of them emerged with a damaged wing and couldn't fly.  She named the little guy Mephibosheth, hand fed him orange juice, and charmed him so he would rest comfortably on her hand. 

Occasionally Brandan will interrupt his playtime with the twins by dragging one of them to me and asking, "Mom, which baby is this?"  :)

Brandan is such a funny mixture of trouble and tenderness.  He has been having an awful time adjusting to summer break.  Each evening he asks if tomorrow can be a school day.  Siobhan has tried to include him in some baking projects.  The other day he gave her the ultimate compliment on her baking, saying, "Siobhan, this is delicious crap."

The other day I asked Brandan to check our mailbox.  He came back with a handful of letters and informed me, "Since we didn't have any mail, I just took the neighbors'."

Brandan likes to echo my words when we pray together.  The other day I was finishing up with, "In Jesus's name..." and he added his own, "And all God's people said AMEN!"

The kids have cute names for our pets.  Brandan is proud of our new "echo" (gecko) Dobby, and the twins love yelling for Cora at the top of the basement stairs.  Baxter calls her "Dora," and Cade's very first sentence was, "Bora!   It's a dog!" 

Memorial Day Menu 2017 (Siobhan)

~Memorial Day Menu~

Happy Memorial Day!! We always celebrate Memorial Day with a Memorial Day cookout. This year we made some delicious burgers...

For our appetizer we had bruschetta. It is SO easy to make and tastes incredible. We sliced a baguette, spread it with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and heated it in the oven. Then we topped it with some slices of mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, a slice of tomato, and a little drizzle of balsamic vinaigrette.

You can't have a cookout without watermelon and corn on the cob! We also served deli salads and chips.

We always season our burgers with this hamburger seasoning. It gives our burgers some great flavor! We topped the kids' burgers with a four cheese blend and some bacon. Those of us who wanted a 'fancier' burger topped ours with some goat cheese, bacon, and caramelized onions. Then we added our choice of spinach, tomatoes, jalapenos, and bbq or ketchup. They tasted amazing, and we finished our meal with some Klondike bars.

We hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day!

If you enjoyed this menu, be sure to click here for more recipe ideas.