Easter days

This is Jackson speaking I will be your blogger host today SO DON'T BE SURPRISED. We were out of town since Wednesday through Sunday as you can see we were visiting my cuisines plus Julie's parents. Sorry we missed the party at the Kagy's, but I had fun of my own down by the lake like...we had our own Easter egg hunt so now my Easter basket is full of lemon heads. And I went sailing which was fun because we almost tipped over, and I can jump off the dog house on to the disk swing now. So you can see I had F-U-N. So here are some pics...

Well, that was Jackson. I'm not sure I can do much better. He has been dying to be allowed to blog so I told him he could if he wrote the entire thing out on paper first. And I was going to type it for him but he insisted he do it. After that, I had to teach him what spell check was and go over proper noun capitalization and such and just realized that the spell check did not catch the word "cousins" because he spelled it like "cuisines". So learning to spell is important people or you might turn in your next job application referencing your favorite cousin and your prospective employer will think you're talking about food. Anyway...

Yesterday we started back into schooling after being off for a two week Spring Break...there was just too much going on and I was feeling sorta guilty about it until we arrived at my parents house and not an hour later my son is catching fish and then cutting them open to find all kinds of boy-loved things such as the heart and "poop sack." This is NOT something you get at school people, and it's not even something you get at the Alley's home school. You have to go to your Pop-Pop's house on Spring Break to learn this science lesson. So there you have it. Not to mention sailing and just all around exploration with the cuisines. ;-)
Here are some pics of the fish guts and also the Easter egg hunt (right before we released them into the yard) where they hunted for 116 eggs. And also one of many pictures I got of Libby of her backside...she was running so fast!

And lastly I'd like to talk about the above picture. It totally illustrates the stages of child photography to me. None of my children wanted to take this picture. But you can see their behavior...the 7 1/2 year old stands still, gives as genuine a smile as possible when you're not really smiling on the inside, and knows that the sooner he conforms, the sooner he can go inside. The 4 1/2 year old decides to stand still and look at the camera but will not be happy about it and is not afraid to show it on her face. The 3 year old all of a sudden understands what this picture taking stuff is, and decides everyone should be posing in a certain way and does not realize that in making this effort he is actually NOT looking or smiling for the picture. And the 17 mo. old baby, well, she just wants to run around and cannot be made to be still no matter what you say, no matter what crazy sounds you make, or no matter what silly things you do to try and get her attention. So there you have it kids. This is why I have so very few pictures of you. I'm a realist. I want my pictures to be realistic and don't expect to get a picture where everyone is looking at me and looking there best. But for some reason, I still try. I ended up getting a decent picture when Jackson held Penelope but this is the one I liked the best after all. It shows the craziness of what I try to do every day: get everyone to pay attention to me when I am telling them something important. I get pretty much the same result. I'm outnumbered and no one seems to get it. But for some reason, I still try. Every day. I think it will be worth it when one day, someone hears something I say that is important and can apply it to their lives. Here's to all the Mom's out there living on a prayer. Keep trying.