Sledding Southern Style

Living in the south we miss out on a lot of the fun parts of winter - not having snow and all...

I had a craving for pizza today so we bought Pizza Hut pizza. When Andy went out to throw the box away the kids were rolling down the hill. The next thing I know he says "you have to come see this!" It was really cute and worked surprisingly well. We'll have to try it again sometime. Now we can enjoy sledding even when it is 51 degrees.

Family Picture

So obviously the 21 day thing hasn't been working for me. My excuse is that I have only been sleeping about 4 hours a night; that is 4 interrupted hours a night mind you. So somehow I just don't care much about blogging.

I generally try to get a family picture once a year. I usually aim for summer but this year it is a little bit later. I keep saying I am going to have someone take it for us but that just means I have to be more organized and set up an appointment with someone. Today I figured we were going to look semi nice for our ward Christmas party anyway - might as well get the picture taken.

This year it didn't turn out too bad - even Andy is smiling - surprisingly enough we usually have problems with that.

Now I am going to take a minute and toot my own horn. I actually did stuff today. I made 3 pans of funeral potatoes and a double batch of fudge for the ward party - and did most of the dishes associated with making them. Then I cut all the boys hair - which generally is a feat all by itself. I also got all of us ready for pictures including straightening my hair, and braiding Emma and Katie's hair. I even got a moment to watch the last episode of MONK on Hulu. OK really that might not sound like much to you all but it was a lot for me lately!

Is it Christmas-time yet?

Matthew is pretty excited about Christmas this year. He will randomly ask if it is Christmas time yet. What he means is is it time to open presents yet. I try to explain the whole idea that it is Jesus' birthday, and that it is Christmas time now - that we get to think of Jesus being born but it is not time to open presents yet.

As I was explaining that we open presents because it is Jesus' birthday, Matthew interrupted me with questions. "Is Jesus going to come down here to have cake and open presents?" I explained no he is going to stay in heaven and we will open presents and think of him. "Are we going to make him a cake and give it to him?" no "Can he make his own cake in heaven?" I actually answered yes here - he could! It was just really cute to see his mind work and try reconcile what he knows about birthdays, with Christmas.

Out to Eat

I kind of had a head ache this afternoon so I didn't really want to make dinner. Fortunately it was an easy sale to Andy to go out for Mexican food. We usually go to the same place and most of us generally all get the same items off the menu - we certainly aren't adventurous - unless you count taking 5 kids out to dinner.

Emma is usually a little bit tricky when we go out; she is not terribly interested in the food and she gets bored before we are done. It is nice that she is a little older now; she ate chips and salsa happily for a long time and spent most of the rest of dinner playing with her cup and straw - which she is old enough to not drop as she holds it in her lap so it doesn't spill down her front.

The older kids had some money they earned cat sitting a neighbor's cats so we offered to let them spend their hard earned cash on fried ice cream - something we never do. We bought three and shared, but asked for extra spoons.

Since Emma had not eaten much dinner I was sure she was going to dig right in to the ice cream when I gave her her spoon. By this time she had lost her patience with sitting in the high chair and was on my lap instead. I tried to give her ice cream and got an emphatic "no" for and answer. She was more than happy to have the spoon; a minute later she had grabbed a salsa cup and was spooning salsa into her mouth go figure!!!

I figure we did pretty good: Emma only dropped one cup of salsa on the floor/my pants, Matthew ate some food and only spent limited time under the table/chair, and only ate like a dog once (he did enjoy the basketball game that was on TV), Aaron while eating his quesadilla with his hands otherwise mostly had good table manners, Katie only complained about Aaron's existence twice during dinner, Nathan had good table manners - like twelve year old should but spent his time plotting what he was going to order next time!

I mean to say we had a nice evening out, where I got a break from cooking and the kids got a break from dinner dishes and cleanup. We just have to make sure to give a good tip to take into account the mess we leave behind ;).

Snow is Falling

Snow in Mississippi is definitely something to mark down on the calender. The last time it snowed here was the day we moved into our new house a couple of years ago. It really didn't accumulate much but it was fun coming down.

This is even good wet snow and has accumulated enough on the trampoline to make some good snow balls.

Halloweens Past

I didn't really have anything I wanted to blog about for today so I figured why not show some old Halloween pictures
This is Halloween 2003 back when Nathan thought he had to have something to pose with in order to take a picture. This was also my first year here the kids. I made Katie and Aaron's costumes.

These next two are 2004. This year I made Nathan and Aaron's costumes.

Here is 2005. Aaron's costume we got from my parents and the big scooby-doo came from them too --however it used to be a stuffed animal. Nathan hated this costume it was kind of bulky and hot - but at least in the end I didn't have a huge scooby-doo hanging around my house!! I did make Katie's costume and after Halloween I cut off it's head and made it into a hobby horse.

This is 2006. I have to admit that I was amazing this year because I made everyone's costume --although Matthew's was a hand me down. I think I started them in July maybe August because Matthew was supposed to be due Oct 17. Thankfully he was early, but I knew I would be in no position to sew costumes.

Here is 2007. I know it is an awful picture but I didn't have another group picture and didn't want to do individual ones. This year was easy, my mom made Katie's dress, Aaron and Matthew were recycles, and Nathan just needed a cape (I can't remember if he was Luke Skywalker or just a jedi.)

For 2008 I can't find any pictures. It is possible that none got taken because I was out of town taking care of my mom in the hospital and Andy might not have taken any. As I recall Nathan was a dude with a gun, Katie was a dinosaur -- finally I didn't make her dress up in a pretty princess costume, a dinosaur is more her style (it was another really cool costume that my parents sent), Aaron was a tiger, Matthew was a cowboy and Emma was a butterfly.

Anyway not that any of you care, but I think my kids will have fun looking back at all the pictures.

Halloween 2009

While I realize this is a little late too... Halloween was kind of a crazy time this year. It came at the same time that mom was doing poorly and then died. We had a trunk or treat at the church on Friday but I had spent the whole day doing laundry and packing because we were leaving the next day. I also was feeling pretty pregnant sick and hadn't been sleeping much more than a couple hours a night. The long excuse is to explain why I didn't take good halloween pictures this year.

Nathan was Indiana Jones.



Katie was a dragon; I really missed the ball on her picture because you can't even see her wings or tail. Oh -well. This is the only costume that I actually made this year and feeling a bit lazy I just safety pinned everything instead of actually sewing it!!







Aaron was a giraffe.









Matthew was Batman - because a few days before halloween he started a Batman kick. I have no idea where it came from - I don't even think he had even seen Batman, but we happened to have an old costume of Nathan's that was just his size.








Emma was piglet. Rebecca geve us this adorable costume when we went to visit her in Oct. I did have a picture with her actually looking at me but her hood was coming off so you couldn't even see the piglet face.

Saturday

Sorry, no picture this time. On Friday I did something weird to my knee -- even weirder I have no recolection of what I did. By Saturday it was pretty swollen and sore and I didn't want to walk on it much because I didn't want to make it worse, the other reason was that limping on it was going to make my pregnant sore hips worse. Andy was at work so I couldn't just hide in my room all day.

Anyway the point of telling you is to brag about Nathan. He did a really good job of getting things whenever I asked and if he was in the room when my CD ended on my audio book he would switch it without even being asked. He helped out with Emma and Matthew and even offered to make dinner - and did make part of it. And on top of all that the usual torture of getting him to do his chores didn't happen; he didn't complain and he did a good job. Needless to say he earned major points for the day.

Matthew's Birthday

Obviously this is a little late -- just over 2 months late... But better late than never!!
This is Matthew's dinsaur birthday cake. Fortunately we already had the little dinosaurs so all I had to do was make a cake habitat. Matthew really enjoyed putting the dinosaurs on with me.

I really like the face he is pulling here which is why I chose this picture. Katie's face is pretty classic Katie too -- OK so is Aaron's.

I thought this was a cool present. He got it from my parents. It is a little remote control bug.

Aaron

Since I shared Nathan's interesting holiday tradition, it is only fair that I share Aaron's too. Three Christmas' ago we pulled out his stocking and he started studying it intently - remember he was only 3. He saw the train on it and said "hey my birthday cake was a train." I continued to pull out the Christmas decorations and he continued to study the stocking. Then he said "this year I am going to have a bus cake," followed shortly by "No I think I'll have a temple cake!"

I was only half listening to him because I was doing my own thing after all, but when I realized he was picking things off his stocking to have for his cake I thought it was pretty funny. Little did I know he really meant it! The funny thing is that for the Christmas after that he did the same thing and decided to have a dog cake that year.

Somehow last year his cake didn't match the stocking, but that is probably because I just make cute dog cupcakes that year.

I love that having totally forgotten about all that I pulled the Christmas stuff out again yesterday - just to have him study his stocking again to pick his cake. I got a good laugh out of it again! This year though he decieded he wanted a stop light cake - of all the things on the stocking I find it funny that he picked that one.

Here is the cake that started it all - and made him think he had to have cakes from off his stocking.

The temple cake came next.

Followed by dogs. I was feeling a little cake lazy this year and just bought toy dogs to stick on top.

Katie Adventure

Katie and I needed to go out and do something fun together, but what do you do here for little money? She had her ears pierced when she was a baby. When she was 3 or 4 she kept taking her earrings out without dad or I noticing and her ears would mostly clog shut. A couple of times I poked it back through but she would always have trouble with it or have red pussy ears so eventually I just gave up.

We decided to go and get her ears re-pierced for our fun activity. The funny thing is that the piercing lady noticed her pre-pierced ears and just poked earrings through it so she didn't really get re-pierced after all. It was nice to know that the reason it is difficult to get earrings in her ears is because they are pierced crookedly so especially after they have closed up some its really hard to get them through.

It was really fun to go and do something totally girly with Katie. We also had a good time checking out the jewelry in the store.

Conveniently for me I don't have to make sure I twist her earrings 3 times a day and put the liquid stuff on. Conveniently for her she can already change her earrings to what ever she wants.

Emmarella

You can't tell by looking at her, but she is happy to be vacuuming. She actually went to the closet and drug it out and honked at me until I plugged it in and turned it on for her. It really comes in handy because while the kids may not be perfect at vacuuming with this little thing it does mean that much less work for me to do.

Weird Holiday Tradition

Katie gets carsick when when we go on trips - especially when we go on windy roads - and has ever since I've known her.

I just found out a couple of weeks ago, much to my uncomfortableness, that Emma gets air sick.

While it is unpleasant it is a fairly normal occurrence in both cases.

Nathan is my oddity; he gets holiday sick!! I'm sure you can ask a few relatives that have been privy to such goings on, but he tends to throw up before exciting events. He even threw up when we first got to DC at the beginning of Oct. I assume because he was so excited to be there.

Well he strikes again and is sick for this Thanksgiving. Although to be fair, he really is sick this time evidenced by Andy having it too. I wasn't planning on doing an extravagant dinner this year and Nathan was feeling quite gypped by this - now I guess he doesn't have much room to talk because he won't be eating anyway =).

I pulled out the camera to take a picture so that the blog wouldn't be so boring, but I think I offended Nathan by taking a picture of him - he was trying to run away!

Matthew Moments

We get together to have game night with a family from our ward. Matthew is really into games - he wants to play them all the time. So usually he is sitting on my lap or near me trying to play games along with us. This time I had the brilliant idea of setting up a table and a game for all the little guys. They thought it was great and surprisingly even Emma sat for quite a while and they all played with the pieces of the game together (with no adult supervision the rules weren't followed very well but they were all happy.)

On an unrelated note I think I found a way to potty train Matthew. He has been pretty against the idea and would sit on the potty forever -tinkle a bit then get off and pee where ever he was 5 min. later. This evening I had him sit on the potty and watch a movie but when his legs fell asleep I just pulled up his pants with no diaper or underwear and told him he'd better not pee on me. (He was sitting in my lap.)

Later I had him go again with success, and after that every time he had gas he pulled down his pants and sat on the potty. I guess wearing a diaper is too convenient; wearing underwear feels too much like a diaper; being free in pants seems to be different enough to make him choose to use the potty on his own. I guess after I try it for tomorrow we will see how effective the new method is!!

Little Stinker

So I had my ultrasound today and I am at 19 weeks, but my Little Stinker was a little too modest for my liking. It spent the whole time with its legs tucked tightly by its little bottom so there was no chance to see what sex it was.

On the bright side, it was very calm. Matthew was swimming in circles for his ultrasound, and Emma was wiggling up a storm too and to see them now you would not be surprised. For the whole 20 minutes or so the only time I saw movement from this little one was near the end when it taunted us with one little kick giving a glimmer of hope to see what it was - oh well. I am hopeful that this calm attitude will continue well into life; everyone deserves at least one calm child right?

Katie wanted us to come up with a nick name to call the baby until it is born (probably because her story for school this week was a Ramona story about a new baby that had a nick name.) We hadn't come up with one but when I couldn't tell what it was I called it a Little Stinker and I like it so I assume it will stick.

Mom

I really like this picture of mom with all my kids it's really cute. This is from when she came down to help when Emma was born. The sad things is that one time when I was visiting recently she told me that she hardly even remembers anything from this visit. She was in so much pain at the time because she had a very painful cancer and they had not yet diagnosed it or started medicating her for pain yet but you'd never guess that by looking at the picture!

Here is her obituary:

Karoleen Marie McClellan, beloved and admired wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend, passed away just after 12 noon on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009. Karoleen was born the fourth of nine children in California on Nov. 21, 1954, to Robert and LaRue Walker. She grew up in California and earned a degree in Clothing and Textiles from Brigham Young University in 1976. Following her marriage to David McClellan in the LDS Oakland Temple in May 1975, Karoleen lived in Utah, Texas, Colorado, California, and since 2001, in Lake in the Hills, Ill.

She will be remembered for many gifts - for her love of music and her ability to create a welcoming home, for her warmth, humility, and wonderful sense of humor, and for the quiet courage and compassion that characterized her life. Most of all, she will be remembered for her faith in the Savior, which sustained her through a lengthy and valiant battle with cancer.
She took great joy in passing on her talents to others - from her passion for making keepsake dolls to her love for quilting and sewing - which she taught to many young people throughout the years. Quite often, friends received answers to their prayers, not knowing that Karoleen was behind the kind and much needed act of service. Her continued desire to help and cheer others in the midst of her own deep suffering was a testament to her firm and abiding trust in God and her love for His children. Her greatest regret throughout her illness was that she was often unable to do more: "it was in Karoleen's passing, like the beautiful autumn leaves that surrounded her in her final days here on earth, that we were privileged to see her truest and most vibrant colors shining through."

Karoleen is survived by her father and seven siblings, as well as David, her devoted husband of 34 years, her five children and their spouses: Charles (Heidi), Daniel (Miranda), Kera (Andy), Brian, and Melinda. She was a grandmother to nine grandchildren with three more on the way. Each family member was a light and strength in her life.

A memorial service will be held in Karoleen's honor at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5209 Walkup Road, Crystal Lake, Ill. Her burial will take place at 2 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2, at the Village of Algonquin Cemetery, located at the corner of Route 31 and Cary Road in Algonquin, Ill. In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Crystal Lake Second Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, payable to the Perpetual Education Fund. This resource enables young people to improve their education and career opportunities, thereby better serving their families, the Church, and their communities.

It was really neat to attend her funeral and hear all the great things about her that I already knew. It was a really good funeral and I learned a thing or two about my mom too. I didn't know that her theme song was "Have You Done Any Good." I did know that she loved to serve people but not that it was a conscious effort - or her theme for life. But what I really enjoyed were all the people who came up to me and told me little stories about what made her special to them. It was kind of strange, because the funeral was on Sunday afternoon, but first we had church and it was fast Sunday. Really it was like having two funerals in one day. Practically every one who got up to bear their testimony mentioned mom, but the thing that was so cool is that they were all actually bearing testimony of something gospel related and also relating it to mom. What cooler tribute could I have had to how cool my mom is than that everybody recognized Christlike qualities and attributes in her and relating her life to the gospel.

Then during church, before and after the funeral, when the ward was feeding us, on my ride to the airport etc. people kept coming up to me and telling me stories about their relationships with her. Since I am finally tired though I won't write them all right now, but I plan on popping little mom stories here and there so that I will remember them and so my kids will know what she is like. Seeing as I don't write in a journal you will all have to bear with me as I randomly do it here!

Long Time No Blog

So, obviously I have been a little delinquent about blogging. For a while it was just too little time to much to deal with and then I wasn't quite sure where to start off. Not even mentioning the fun random moments in the last few months... Should I start with the announcement that we are having another baby in April -which is kind of why I didn't have the time to blog for a while I just felt too yucky!! Although most of my readers already know this news by now he he. Or should it be a birthday blog for Matthew - since that did happen about 2 months ago - but that takes planning and picture set ups so that we can see his favorite things. I do feel bad for not doing this in a timely manner. In twenty years he will look back and realize that all of his problems are because he wasn't loved as a child!!!

Then of course I need to do a couple blogs about our many travels. We went to DC to see Andy's sister, Rebecca's family. We had a great visit with them and got to see some cool DC sights. We also took a trip to Arkansas to say goodbye to Grandpa and Grandma Fox as they were about to embark on a mission to Kenya -- ok so we also went to pick up their truck that we are babysitting while they are gone =>. Which leads me to the fact that we now have 5 vehicles to our names because we also got a new van in order to seat our soon to be family of 8 - and we have yet to sell the old one, then we have Andy's car, his motor cycle, and his parents truck. I just take comfort in knowing that while we have a parking lot full of cars out front, they do all run!!!

Or I could mention our fourth weekend in a row in October that we spent in the car, but it was not for such a fun reason as the other trips. My mom had been battling cancer for a year and was receiving a bone marrow transplant but it wasn't taking well and she died. As a person who is not very good as showing/sharing emotions blogging about that is easy to put off - especially in the light of feeling to need to back blog other things first to keep life in order.

Just thinking about everything I needed to write overwhelmed me and it was easy to say - OK today I'm going to blog and then just let life get in the way and never get around to it. But now that I have done a brief overview of the last couple of months, maybe I can be OK with blogging it out of order and just writing what I feel like that day.

My other problem is that being pregnant made a good excuse, for me anyway, to not bother with taking many pictures for the last couple of months so hopefully I can either bum some off of family members who we spent a lot of time with lately or you'll just have to bear with me on my pictureless blogs.

I am going to try and follow my sister Heidi's example. After she had not blogged for a while she made it a habit again by doing it everyday for 21 days - you know because it is supposed to take that long to form a habit. That should give me plenty of time to fill in all the missing pieces and keep up with what is going on in the next few weeks too. Maybe starting this when my kids have a week off from school is a bad idea - hopefully I keep up with it.

TV Deal Follow Up

As you can see my deal for a new TV and food storage worked woohoo!

These Are a Few of His Favorite Things

I figured I would make a tradition of it, and do a favorite things page for each kid for their birthday. Ok so even such a simple task and I am already 9 days late for Nathan. Hopefully it doesn't get further and further with each kid!

The swimming pool is always a favorite, although he does like it better when there are other kids his age around to play with. Oh I guess I should use more grown up words like other guys to hang out with =>.

My kids were sadly deprived of the coolest pool toy ever - a torpedo - because I am too cheap to buy one. However usually there was someone with a more loving mom at the pool that would. For the last few weeks, there was one left at the pool and Nathan almost always had it.

Nathan likes to bike but as you can see his bike had a few technical difficulties. It got a flat tire, it is all fixed but not actually reattached to the bike yet.

Scootering is always fun too. Don't worry he usually had shoes on -- it was just for this quick shot that he didn't.

Nathan will still tinker around for hours builing with legos. The green and gray plane is an Indiana Jones set he got for his birthday.

Once it clicked toward the end of second grade that reading was fun he has been an avid reader ever since. Last year he got over 600 AR points (tests at school that

It's probably hard to tell from the picture, but Nathan is looking at a rocks and minerals handbook and has displayed a few of his rocks from his rock collection. He still wants to grow up to be a geologist.

Last year Nathan had a friend at school that had a coin collection and inspired Nathan to start one; it didn't hurt that he gave Nathan a bunch of old coins to start. He wanted me to write some specific ones he had, but I already forgot what he said =>.

While he is really not much of a sportsman (he'd really rather be inside) he has decided that two sports are pretty cool: soccer and disc golf.

First, don't look at the mess in the background... Nathan loves to run around with Emma on his shoulders - Emma really likes it too. I liked this picture because it's on the the way down from a bounce so Emma's hair is flying crazy.

Wrestling Matthew is a past time that is really not my favorite. They have a good time generally but sometimes Nathan forgets that Matthew is 10 years younger than him - or he does something silly like throwing shoes at him...

If I would let him, Nathan would be on the computer 24/7. Some of his favorite games are Worms, Spore, and Lego Star Wars. He also has found a new love for emailing people - as some of you have already noticed! Listening to Weird Al is also one of his favorite past times. When he gets together with friends they listen to his music and want to check out his videos on YouTube -- he also likes "Will it Blend" where they blend up a bunch of weird stuff. If only I would let him use the computer without exhibiting any sense of responsibility first... He has to earn his computer time with piano practicing time, poor kid.

Nathan's Birthday

Nathan is the big 12 now. I almost have teenager ahhhh! He was so excited to get to join Young Men's and recieve the priesthood. It also worked out that there is a temple trip on Saturday and he gets to go to that too.

He wanted to have an ice cream cake and it turned out great except that the spring form pan was rusted together (I had never used it and didn't make sure it worked before I did =>) so I couldn't get it off. The rim and the wax paper around the edge kind of detract from the presentation -- fortunately Nathan didn't care. Also when I tried to put he close up of the cake, for some reason it kept ending up sideways, so I just left it off.

Hair Cut

I realize that neither of these pictures are terribly attractive but they get the job done. You can't tell exactly but in the top picture my hair is about 22 inches from the top of my head to the end (I have had a weird need to measure my hair for years.) I really like long hair, but not always mine. It's not that it gives me head aches like it does to other people, it just starts to seem scraggly to me. I've been trying to hold off until the end of the summer and see if I like it better when it is not so miserably hot and always in a ponytail (mostly because Andy really likes it long!) But, I got out of the shower this morning and just looked at it and couldn't handle one more day of dealing with it long.

So I hacked off about 6 inches. Andy was a really good sport when I showed up to church with short hair - he he. He even said it looks nice for short hair. The funny thing is that there are probably only a handful of ladies at church whose hair is longer than mine even after I cut it. It sure feels a lot healthier now anyway. I will have to do a touch up job tomorrow though because I found a few spots that aren't quite straight!

Peppers

I figured for those who care here's a picture of our beautiful pepper crop for this week. We did use 3 bell peppers for fajitas before I took a picture but it still is a lot of peppers.

Deal Making

So the other day we were at a friend's house and Andy commented something about how I won't let him get a big screen TV. Taken straight from conference "We can't afford it, we don't need it and we don't even want it" is the quote that usually comes to mind when we talk about expensive things we don't need. My big kick right now though is food storage. I am actually using some that we already have, and I have spent all summer canning - so for some reason it has been on my mind. There is a whole lot that we still need, but I feel guilty asking to use a bunch of money to buy it.

Hence the deal. I figured that he could buy whatever TV he wants - within reason and I get to spend an equal amount on food storage. I really like this deal; the only problem is that Andy was mostly just talk and didn't really intend of buying a TV soon. It makes for an unusual situation where I am trying to convince Andy to spend a bunch of money on something we don't need that he wasn't planning to buy, so that I can get what I want. He he. I'm usually much more frugal than that!

So since Andy hasn't actually accepted my deal yet, I decided a little stronger persuasion is in order. The kids and I drew a big screen TV with a made up scene from Pirates of the Caribbean - kind of funny since they haven't even seen it - and taped it over the old TV.

This is a closer picture of the actual movie! We will make sure to have the movie playing in the background on his super cool surround sound speakers he already has. I guess I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Canoeing

We went on a 5 mile canoe trip while we were in Arkansas. We had 5 canoes, 8 adults, and 7 kids. Grandpa and Uncle Adam had the hardest time because they had kids as their front paddlers, they weren't a whole lot of help, but they had fun.
The kids were pretty excited and were sitting in the boat ready to go before we adults got everything in line.

Matthew was in my boat and had a great time for a while, he liked to lean over and stick his hand or whatever else he had in the water, but inevitably whatever he was holding would be left behind for the next boat to pick up.

Everybody had fun splashing(OK a couple of the kids didn't like the splashing), and seeing turtles and snakes. We also saw a Great Blue Heron that seemed like it was leading us away from a nest because it would fly a little bit away, and show off and then do it again and again.

Lopper Man

He's a real 'lopper' man.

Lopping whatever he can.

Isn't he a bit size guy for lopping.

Lopper man, please listen,

you don't know what plants I'll be miss'en.

Lopper man please don't chop down all of my plants.

We have a discrepancy,

he chops down every single tree.

Sometimes I wish he would listen to me...

Sorry for some reason calling him lopper man makes me think of the Beatles "Nowhere Man" song.

He really is funny, about a year ago he decided he really liked lopping. We used to have a bunch of useless brush outback, but he has taken care of most of it; on some occasions he has hacked something I wanted to keep though - oh well. Our first planting of corn was all done and so I thought- who better to cut it down than Aaron. Although of course since I wanted it done he wasn't quite as excited to do it.

He was more excited about using the spent corn stalks as speed bumps for his bike. It is really interesting to see what kids find to be fun!