Birthday Girl

Somehow, a year has gone by since sweet Esmé Ruth was born.  She is a beautiful, busy, bottom-scooting baby who continues to delight the whole family.  I am so thankful that she is my best sleeper and really just an easy baby all around.

Can you tell I'm having just a bit of fun with my little girl?  I'll have you know, her ridiculous pink party dress is the only item of clothing I have bought her in this entire year.  Speaking of, big shout out to the family members that do keep her dressed: Gramma, Queenie, Aunt Steph, and Aunt Hannah.

 Esmé had a very special birthday on Friday, since Zach took the day off of work.  We played/worked in the yard, enjoyed a delicious 12 Bones lunch, and then Esmé had her first taste of chocolate cake with Bobbi frosting (a very secret and very Polish recipe handed down from my great grandmother).

 E was a little suspicious regarding why we would bring a flame so close to a one year old, but we didn't let that stop us!

 

Like anyone with a good dose of Zembruski blood would do, Essie ate the frosting and disregarded the majority of the cake. It was blissful.

 Owen and Caelum were very excited about getting Esmé presents with their own money.  Zach also thought we should get her something because he is kind like that.   Aunt Rachel sent an adorable wooden tea set that the boys could barely keep their grubby hands off of.  It was a hit with everyone.

Saturday was the day of the big party. It was quite a busy morning as Gramma and Grandpa arrived and the ladies headed off to Sam's Club while the fellas went to Family BBQ Day at Borgwarner. Soon enough, both sides of the family arrived and the party really got started.  I will refer you to Hannah's blog for better/more pictures.

This is about as fancy as it gets for an Ashton birthday party.  The pallet was my crowning achievement in craftiness. Yep, spray paint and double-sided tape are as good as it gets with me.  We had plenty, even too much, food and a new creation we like to call Blueberry Ridge Punch.  A large thank you to Mr. Zach Zoschke for giving us a basic recipe with which to work.

Zach manned the grill and a few of our neighbors came to help us celebrate this sweet girl: 

E spent a lot of time in her highchair, eating, which is appropriate since that is her favorite thing to do.  And of course, there was MORE CAKE! She got to have the traditional Angel Food cake for her first birthday (a tradition that we made up with Owen).

 

And now, pictures of Essie stuffing her face:

 And my face:

 The big kids had a lot of fun (maybe too much in some cases?), and Bennett was the champion of "winning everyone over" with his adorable face and personality.

As the party wound down, it was time for presents. E was lavished with gifts from all the family, and she is once again stocked with clothes (phew, what would I do otherwise?). Grandma Dean completed E's beautiful quilt, which will soon be hung in her room. 

 Her favorite was probably the matching pillow that Grandma Dean made.  She plays peek-a-boo behind it and bellyflops onto it. She was sleeping with it, but started playing with it too much. It has  been removed until she learns to handle a pillow like a big girl.

 Before the night was over, my mom and I had a big photoshoot in the front yard because, well, why not? I can't even choose my favorite, so feel free to scroll quickly past an embarrassing amount of pictures.  You'll get the general idea: baby, balloon, dress, belly.

A big thank you to all the family that drove for hours in order to come to the party, with food and gifts in tow.  Thank you for the help and for being so sweet to Essie.

M.I.A.

Oh, guys, we need a new computer so badly. I love the Mac which we purchased immediately after our wedding (when we briefly had money as newly weds), but it is barely chugging along at this point. Since it has put in a solid seven years, I feel good about replacing it, but first we need to figure out exactly what we're looking for and even where to put it. I'm hoping to go the cheapest route: Mac mini plus a wireless keyboard. We could just run it through our tv which is great (for as much as we use our computer).  Anyway, you'll know when we've finally settled on something, as I'll start blogging again...but until then here's a summer fun picture.

Lonely Goatherd

This blog post title is only too appropriate as this song is a constant refrain in our house.  In between the other Sound of Music songs, that is. We saw the play at Asheville Christian Academy a few weeks ago as the kids' sweet babysitter, Miss Amy, was Maria.  She was amazing and Owen was totally riveted the whole two and a half hours.  Caelum and Esmé took turns napping but enjoyed the play as well.

Two weeks ago, we went to Mountain Top Creamery for a homeschool field trip.  It was tucked up in the mountains near Chimney Rock, quite close to where my parents rented a mountain house for a little reunion last summer. The field trip was awesome.  First the boys bottle-fed kids that were only three days old.

Owen, bestie Grant, and Caelum

Then they had a tasting of goat milk, goat milk cream, and various kinds of goat cheese.  Caelum could not get enough of the goat milk. And Owen's favorite? Aged goat cheese! It had a strong flavor that even some of the moms couldn't handle, but he loved it. Such a refined palate from an otherwise picky kid.

Chugging his second cup of goat's milk

Then we took a tour of where they milk the goats and make the cheese.  My favorite part was when one little girl started gagging because the goat cheese smell was so strong in one building.  The culmination was milking Lady Caroline. Caelum was all business.  The lady who ran the creamery wanted to make a trade for him and have him work there.  Owen also did great and was not at all tentative.  I shouldered my way past the kids for a try and apparently did it wrong. "No, not like milking a cow.  Just gently squeeze." You'd think I'd know enough about milking at this point.

 After the tour portion was done, we had a picnic while surrounded by 300 goats.  We purchased some plain goat cheese (which Zach and I polished off in a few days) and a wedge of aged goat cheese, for Owen. It was a great time and educational!

Mark Me Absent

Let's say, hypothetically, that I've been homeschooling my kids.  I haven't really been.  We're lucky if we get a day or two in per week.  I keep telling myself, "This is only preschool for Owen! We'll kick it into gear next year when Kindergarten starts." Despite my laziest efforts, I feel that Owen - and Caelum - have actually learned a decent amount this year.  We've had a lot of fun "field trips" (ie doing what we would normally do and maybe learning something along the way). I've appreciated my Nature Center and Biltmore House passes for this very reason. Also, separate goat creamery field trip post to come.

At the Biltmore Estate Gardens, doing a plant scavenger hunt (with special thanks to Gretchen, who came up with the hunt!)

At Biltmore, again, with other homeschool friends

 

At home, if we actually do school, it's a pretty easy routine.  Now that Classical Conversations is over, we're just focused on reading, writing and 'rithmetic.  We occasionally talk about the calendar and weather.  Owen and now Caelum both do a lesson from The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading.  We read a story from the Jesus Storybook and Owen writes a summary sentence in his journal and Caelum draws a corresponding picture in his journal. They'll each do a page or two in their Singapore Math workbook. And then we usually call it a day.

Caelum's rainbow for the story of the flood.

Owen doing some math

Classical Conversations was a great way to feed Owen's insatiable appetite for history.  He loves to sing the various history sentences, and for the end of the year recitation, his class got to present the history section.  He was overjoyed.  This morning he was singing his favorite one as he played with trains: "In 1994, South African President de Clerk allowed free elections.  Nelson Mandela became the first black president, demonstrating apartheid was ending."

Owen's class doing silly faces

Watching the egg drop on the last day of class. The kids made egg protectors and then they were dropped out of a first story window.

  Only two survived. Here's the crowd, watching the decimation.

At the rehearsal for the end of the year program, I let the much-neglected-at-CC Caelum stand up front.  He recited all of the history selection and sang the presidents song.  This kid is so ready for CC, but he's still too young.  Next year I hope to be more active about working with him during the class time.

At the rehearsal

Singing the presidents song at the performance

The end of the year program was great.  Owen loves to be in front and really enunciates and speaks loudly.  I wish I could put the video up of him doing it, but our computer is on the outs.  There was also an ice cream social at the end, which was a fun way to celebrate the end of the year.

All of Owen's class

 When I allow myself to stress about whether this homeschooling thing is going to work or if they are learning anything at all, I can easily calm myself with how much reading we do.  It's still mainly me reading to the kids from our huge stack of weekly (or bi-weekly) library books, but more and more, Owen will want to read.  He also loves to be read to from chapter books.  We've read From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Mr. Popper's Penguins, Farmer Boy, Little House on the Prairie, all of the My Father's Dragon books, and many Magic Tree House books.

The boys did a read-a-thon with Usborne books and in two weeks, we tallied 13 hours of being read to and 3 and a half hours of Owen reading.  The boys get some books as a reward and a portion of the money raised is used for books for a women and children's shelter in Asheville. Caelum wanted to "win the competition" so he would try to read along with me, which translates to mumbling and then saying the last word of the sentence after me.  I'm glad the desire to read is there!

Reading!

 Now that our weather has been so nice, there's been lots of yard time.  For our "plant unit" we did leaf rubbings, planted lots of seeds, labeled parts of plants, used straws to demonstrate stems, and talked about the Parable of the Sower.  And the continuation of this lesson has been lots of weeding and watering!

 
I am so thankful to be home with these sweet faces.  A big shout out to all my other, um, relaxed? homeschooling moms out there. Let's call it our educational philosophy.

Contrast and Compare

Hannah is so good about doing comparison posts of her kids.  It's always interesting to notice the similarities between the siblings and reflect on how quickly time passes and the babies move on to the next stage.  Here are my babies, all around six or seven months:

Can you tell who is who?  It's not really far since Esmé is almost always in something girly. Owen is the one on the Clemson blanket.  I look at the picture of Caelum and I just see Esmé, but then check out this bonus Owen picture:

That looks like Esmé!  Her eyes are definitely going to darken, like Owen's eyes. And I presume her hair will be dark too. She's going be a looker like her Daddy, I can tell already.

Nobody puts baby in a corner!

In other Esmé news, she rollllls to get around.  She starts on a blanket in the middle of the room and then gets herself into a corner in a matter of minutes.  She sits up like a champ and prefers to sit and watch the activity than to be in her bouncy seat or lying down.

Good Grounds

Joel.  Such a giver.  All I had to do was give him a call and say, "Hey brother, will you drive 12 hours in the car with your wife and five kids, all to help Zach fix the deck?"  And they did! We were so glad to finally get our deck reinforced, so that we can comfortably use the sunroom without fearing collapse.  And of course we were ready to spend time with the Mannings and give them a chance to meet Esmé.

 

The Mannings were there when I got home from Florida, so I was able to see two out of three siblings in one day! Pour one for my homie, Jason.  I'm hoping we can see you guys soon.

Joel and his "helpers"

So much engineering prowess in this picture

Anyway, Zach and Joel worked hard and quickly on the deck and got it done in a day.  That left time for games, playing in the yard, and hiking during the rest of the visit. My parents spent a few hours with us on Saturday and took all the grandkids out for donuts and a park trip.  We met up with my parents again on Sunday when we went hiking after church.  Turns out I didn't get any pictures of that, but we went to Triple Falls and High Falls, and it was a beautiful day.  You'll just have to take my word for it.

Ticket to Ride

Pompeii - yes, you get to drop the game pieces into the volcano

I was relieved that the weather was perfect and glad that the Illinoisans were provided a break from negative temperatures and many feet of snow. The Good Grounds Manning kids are so sweet and play nicely together. I love when siblings are kind to one another (and to my kids, obviously!).

Steph and some of the girls on the swingset

Precious Caralee

Uncle Zach making ginormous bubbles

Picnic in the front yard...now this can be done on the deck!

Cadence and Haven are tall and old suddenly!

Gramma in full gramma-mode

Joel and Steph love to be productive, and it really worked in our favor.  After the deck was done, they were ready for another project. Six months ago, Zach and I had bought a massive art piece (ie rusty metal thing) done by a local Asheville artist.  Because we're hip like that.  We knew just where we wanted to put it in the living room, but it would be a little precarious. Read: wood plank balanced on a ladder, balanced on the steep stairs. So it sat in our garage for a long time. With Joel and Steph's help, it finally got hung!

Everyone rejoicing! (Carly is being held up in the staircase, not dangling over the rail)

Lots of action

Esmé squashing Carly

All in all, a delightful and purposeful weekend.  I'm thankful for helpful siblings, precious nieces and nephews, present grandparents, and great memories.