April Showers Bring May Flowers By: Stella

   Hello To All Of Our Readers! 

This is Stella, here to share with you some pictures that I have taken of the beauty of 'May flowers!'  I loved my Aunt S's pictures: *See her blog: http://www.inviewfrommylens.blogspot.com* and I decided to take some of my own! 

I hope you enjoy...

 

Filia loves taking 'nature walks' with me! When I water, or take pictures, Filia is almost always at my side...

 This was a Sunday morning, therefore: the dress :-) 

~Pretty little fairy princess~

Even dandelions are pretty in their own way! Also great for a nice dandelion green salad :-P

Here's our flowerbed! 

And here are some closeups...

My famous chocolate mint! Great for putting some nice fresh leaves on top of a pitcher of water, and best of all: picture perfect. ;-) 

Ground Cover...hopefully this will spread out! This is from last year, so we're making progress...

Here's an example of spread out ground cover!! This is in our side flowerbed-where we have chives, stevia and lemon verbena plants, etc. etc.

Similar plants-yet the first one has tinier leaves! Each is beautiful in its own way...

Now some odd shots- but still unique...

Petunias-pretty little beauties :-)

Some of my favorite shots...

 

April Showers Bring May Flowers

 By: Stella 

Age: 12

Grade: 7th 

Funny Stuff

I scarcely recognize my blog.  It has been a pleasure to hand over Alma Mater to Stella and enjoy her creative posts and pictures.  Perhaps I'll have more time to post this summer (after school is completed and the garden is planted)...  In the meantime, here are some cute stories I've been compiling...

Rus - "Can we read the story about the pranks God sent on the Egyptians?"

Rus - Just before Mother's Day, Rus told me in despair that he hadn't bought me any presents.  He added, "And that's why I'm SO STRESSED because you deserve a GREAT Mother's Day!"

Rus often begins our school time with this prayer -  "Dear God, please let this be a pleasing school day for Mom, and help me be diligent."

Rus's computer skills are really taking off.  He is learning to type, and he navigates his way around a few educational sites we allow him to use.  The other day I heard him muttering, "OKAY...I got THAT off my shoulder (meant his chest :)).  Mozilla Firefox just wasn't responding."

Playing checkers with me, Rus gave me a sly look and said, "Mom, I could tell you had something up your shirt (meant sleeve).

Tert referred to our dog as "a fat old canine."

The other day Stephen was leaving a meeting at work.  When he put his arm in his coat sleeve, out popped a large Winnie the Pooh shirt!  The engineer he was working with got a huge kick out of that since he has a one year old granddaughter (like our Filia).  You never know where they'll hide their treasures.

Hair aka Filia :-) Pictures and Captions By: Stella

HAIR! Filia's hair is too adorable :-) I take so many pictures of her and spend so much time sitting in a chair with my little sister in front of me, combing and brushing out her pretty waves of silky blonde hair.  She usually complies to my putting in elastics without much resistance, sometimes not though, and then I have to stop :-P However, she ALWAYS loves having her hair brushed, if not put up...

THEREFORE...the pictures....

Filia always complies to my taking many pictures though! She has to, because I am constantly trailing behind her and taking pictures faster than anything...

Groggy in the morning...LOL!  Just too cute :)

Hanging out right outside of Tissy's room...

...and INSIDE! :-) 
Okay, now I couldn't get enough of this outfit :-)

 Filia is convinced that my bed is WAYYY better than her own. :-D

LOVE that smile :-D

OOOHHHH! Now let's see what trouble I can cause...

AHHH! Ripping the pictures off my wall...

Time out :-) 

I don't get many times when I have my little sister 'peacefully' lying in one place! So I took advantage of this (as usual ;) ) by taking a bunch of pictures...

Our beautiful little fairy princess!


Hair aka Filia :-)
 Pictures and Captions By: Stella

Praying Mantises Galore... By: Stella

We recently had an amazing experience! We got to watch a whole egg sack of at least 50 baby praying mantises hatch :D They crawled out of the egg sack and we all checked on them in awe over the morning; they literally must have been growing before our eyes! In the evening they were WAYYY darker and bigger than in the morning! (Maybe it was all those flightless fruit flies and bugs and spiders that we were feeding them :-) )
They can eat anything that is smaller than themselves. When they get bigger they can even eat hummingbirds! (No way, I couldn't handle feeding them that either :-( )
We hope that you enjoy these pictures, taken about 5 minutes after they had hatched and while they were hatching. ;-)

 

Mom was the only one who would brave sticking her hand into the icky, slimy mass of blue ooze that contained the food for our hungry little mantises. (Probably because she grew up with brothers with snakes and other slimy critters ;) ) 

 
Nobody can keep a straight face on when we ask them for 'flightless fruit flies'. :P They always start cracking up, many clearing their throats and asking Dad to repeat it, hoping he'll say something like 'fruitless flight [or fright] flies' :) He's a good sport ;-)

Okay, so I HAVE to end this post with the above pictures! They are so cute ;-) Tert said that the first picture is one of a praying mantis with 'someone touching it'! I enlarged the 'someone touching it' so you can see it better ;-)
I don't know what it is about 4 year old's pictures... :-)
By: Stella
Age: 12
Praying Mantises Galore 

Family Pictures

Note From Stella: Hello Everyone! We recently got our family pictures taken by Aunt S. (Her blog is: www.inviewfrommylens.blogspot.com if you want to check it out; it's absolutely amazing!) Thank you so much, Uncle A and Aunt S for doing our family pictures :-D
(Sorry it took so long to get it up here! I've been ordering and loading pictures all day :-P )
I have the pictures posted in a slideshow version at the top of the blog! I may move it to the side of the blog later, so if you want to see it later on; don't panic, we still have it! Just look at the left side of the blog! 

That's about it... so ENJOY! :-)

Slideshow Compiled By: Stella 
Age: 12
Date: May 5, 2012