NEW CAMERA!!

Those among my readers who are sick of looking at my grainy cell phone pictures... well... worry no more!!  After losing all the cameras we own, we decided to spend a little of our savings on this.  It's nothing too terribly fancy, but it's an improvement over nothing, and I'm just thrilled to know that I won't miss any of those precious photo opportunities.

As a sort of celebration, I decided to chronicle our Monday with photographs.

(Even though the new camera arrived last Tuesday, I didn't manage to get it out of the box and operational until almost a week later.)

N has been wanting to make a telescope ever since she saw the instructions in her new High Five magazine that arrived Friday.  We've been so busy since then that we've been putting off her repeated requests.  Sunday night she wrote us this reminder (Daddy helped with the spelling):

(that says "Make Telescope", with a picture of the telescope drawn above)

Did I mention that N is a girl who knows what she wants?

So, when we woke up Monday morning and came to the breakfast table, we saw the note, and it served its purpose of reminding us to make telescopes.  And so we made them, first thing!

These telescopes actually move in and out, due to the rubber band construction.  Pretty cool!  High Five is always good for a fun, easy craft.

Then we put our suits on and spent the morning at the wading pool:

C had a wonderful time laying on the shady blanket and watching the tree leaves moving in the breeze. This has been one of her favorite activities for the past few months.

C likes the new camera too!

Then it was back home, lunch, put the little girls down for naps, and some afternoon pie baking with N (I had frozen an extra pie crust and filling back when we picked our strawberries).

That's my Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook there-- love it!

N made a play-doh pie, and then took a picture of it herself, with Elmo of course:

Then she took this self-portrait:

The finished product:

Of course, we had to make cinnamon swirlies with the leftover pie crust:

And then had a tea party with swirlies:

Then it was homemade clam chowder and biscuits for supper, and...

C joined us at the supper table for the first time!

Did I mention that I started her on solid food last week?  Yes, I dutifully gave her rice cereal, which of course she hated, as all of my children have.  Rather than put her through a few days of gagging, I immediately ditched the cereal and switched to mashed bananas... BIG hit!  She of course wanted to use the spoon and feed herself, as you see in the picture.  Afterwards I read what kellymom has to say about first foods, and I was reassured that I don't have to force her to eat that yucky cereal.  I mean seriously, have you ever tasted it?  Nasty!

And that was our day!  Quite a busy one, wouldn't you say?