New Pics

It has been a busy month preparing for and purveying Christmas to a 2 year old and a 4 year old. Here are some belated pictures (more to come once we get home).

Leafpeeper

Annabelle, getting the most out of the Barnhardt's oak tree on an unseasonably warm November Saturday. There were leaves in her hair, pockets, shoes and the turtle part of her turtleneck. Fortunately for her she insists on wearing two pairs of underpants these days, and the leaves were only able to permeate the first layer.

Barritt's New Best Friend

is, naturally, Caramel Corn.

Late Harvest

After a long night...

...this little vampire just wants to take off her lipstick and get to bed.

Danbury, NC

The Chambers highly recommend Priddy's General Store in Danbury, NC. Your family can see bluegrass free every Saturday afternoon in October. Your two and a half year old can eat her first homemade fried apple pie, and then part of a second one. Then she can dance it off, as her four and a half year old brother looks on approvingly, whilst eating his first Moon Pie.

Ubiquitous Seasonal Punkin' Patch Photos

It's been 5 weeks

We've been super busy - Dad has been at work all the time, B is hitting the books or the soccer field, A is memorizing every song she's ever heard and Mom is taking care of the other three and herself.

We've been slack on the pictures - after getting new cameras last year, we haven't made time for enough pictures. I imagine with autumn leaves and the ensuing holidays, more will be coming.

Not a staged picture

Barritt, wearing Dad's shades and hat. After 9 months of being spoiled in the Hottessy, he claims it is too sunny in a regular car to see the DVD player.

Genesis 9

B&A had a picnic with some friends, which was interrupted by a late afternoon summer thunderstorm. After waiting out the storm in the dry part of the jungle gym, the kids emerged to find this.



And lo and behold, there was a loud voice in the heavens, saying: "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between Me and you and the couple of other kids that are with you, and maybe for successive generations: I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and Tanglewood Park in western Forsyth County. I will never again send a torrent and flood to mess up your playground. At least not today. Amen"

Don't Lego Of That . . . .

(not Barritt's actual X-ray)

Monday, 12:50 a.m. The cry of distress comes out of Barritt's room. Not one that we are unaccustomed to. Every few days there are night terrors of the mild variety, usually about something mildly scary like spiders or dinosaurs or non-orange cheese. And the descriptions of said dreams are typically difficult to piece together, for they are made in the semi-conscious incoherence of a four year old falling back to sleep.

But last night Barritt was wide awake and sitting up in his bed.

Dad, walking in the room: "B, what is it?"
B: "Dad, I think I swallowed some Legos."
Dad: "What?"
B: "I think I swallowed some Legos. But don't worry, they were only the little ones with one dot."
Dad: "How many?"
B: "Two, I think."
Dad: "How did it happen?"
B: "Wellllll, I was just sitting here, biting on the Legos, trying to get them apart, and I just swallowed them."
Dad: "We've told you not to bite on the Legos."
B: "But Mom is asleep and she has the fingernails."
Dad: "Are you sure this wasn't a dream?"
B: "No, this was about two minutes ago. Maybe three."
Dad: "Are you sure they were just the little ones?"
B: "Yep."
Dad: "Go back to sleep. I think you are going to be OK."

As I went back to bed, the true scary thoughts started to rise up within me. No, I was not concerned about some kind of GI distress inside of Barritt. After all, there are probably 10,000 Legos swallowed in the United States every day, and anyway, we have at least 3 family members who could help deal with that.

The real scary thought was: what the hell is he doing playing with Legos at 12:45 a.m.? After all, he was asleep when we went to bed at 10 p.m. What is he making? How integral to his invention were those two (at least) tiny one-dot pieces he swallowed? Does he do this every night? What will he make tomorrow night?

We might need to start locking the bedroom door at night.

Did you know...

...that you can add spinach (fresh or frozen) to a smoothie and your kids will still drink it? We've been making them with vanilla yogurt, orange juice, frozen berries, frozen bananas, spinach and wheat germ. Considering the rest of our diet this week has been strawberry pop tarts and hotdogs, I feel pretty good about the smoothies.

WFU

My friend Jen came to town last week and we met on Wake Forest campus to visit and let the kids run around. Its hard to get 5 kids looking the same direction at once...sorry we can't see your face below, James!

Lobster Gram!

"What are you lookin' at?"

Our friend Bobby came with his daughter to stay with us a few weeks ago. We had a great visit, eating, canoeing, eating, swimming, eating and eating. Then last Friday afternoon, this guy and his buddy arrived on our porch. Thanks Bobby! It took me and Matt back to our days in Manchester, MA.

Summer bounty

Every time I post a blog entry I have to re-learn how to do it...passwords, formatting pictures and text. Sometimes I can only manage to do one thing at a time. Pictures one day, text the next. In case these pictures don't explain them selves (like the one below), I'll walk you through.

Above is one of the first decent harvests from the Chambers Family Veggie Patch. Its been relocated and expanded in 2009. Earlier in the summer we had great luck with lettuce and peas, and now we are loving the early tomatoes! Do you recognize the fruit at the very top? A fig! Thanks to Mrs. Dobbins we have several bushes full of fruit, but this was the only one anywhere near ripe for now.
Sangria for a baby shower with the neighbors. We have great neighbors. And this was great sangria.
Ice cream cone cup cakes on the back stoop with some of said neighbors (not the same ones the who enjoyed the sangria).
This isn't the greatest photo, but we had such a fun time that I wanted to document it. A couple Mondays ago we went to Pilot Mountain. Within the first 10 minutes, B discovered a "hideout" and rejected all encouragements to hike anywhere else. So we stayed on this outcrop all morning, blowing bubbles, snacking and playing The Three Robbers. The best part about the game was that A's Baby got re-named Tiffany, from the story, and now A calls her "baby Sniffany."

Our Summer, So Far

Picture number one with the shirt off - B working the slip'n'slide in the neighbor's back yard. This is how he remembers our veterans on Memorial Day.

No matter how many Animal,Vegetable, Miracles or Omnivore's Dilemmas a parent reads, it is hard to overcome the force of an excited four year old, confronting the General Mills trifecta at Costco. We have a love-hate relationship already with Costco, but for B it is only love.

Pic two with a shirt off. First watermelon of the year. Probably the first time A has had her own section of a watermelon.

Clearly, Annabelle should have her own melonballer.

Birthday 4.0

This picture is not from the birthday party, clearly. We felt like we had to include it if only for the Our Gang/Little Rascals-like depiction of a dislike for school. And B won't even go to school for another year and a half. And it wasn't even taken in a school; it was taken at the Arthur exhibit at the Children's Museum. And even if Barritt was in school, and it was a real classroom, look at the message on the board! Not unhappy news at all. Nonetheless, we thought the picture had to be shared.

OK. On to the birthday pics . . .

Yar! Barritt's birthday was a big hit, replete with two chocolate ganache pirate ships decked with 8 cannons, enough eyepatches to go around, and enough booty to fill several pairs of jeans, er . . . I mean a playroom.

We don't want you to be misled; more often than not one of these two seems to be upset about something the other did to them. Yet there are the nice moments where the depiction in a photograph defies reality in such a nice way that you hold on to them, portray them to the world, and mislead others into believing that you have perennially irenic cherubs. Annabelle in her Easter getup and Barritt with his mom-made shirt round out the occasion.

More pics to come later in the week. Lots of birthday party hikinks to detail.

Our Day in Rowan County

Sunday was a killer day - 70 degrees and sunny, and we weren't trapped inside the house or on a long car ride as we seemingly have been the last 50 Sundays. We hung out at the park in Salisbury, watched Dad race, and then went to the NC transportation museum in Spencer, NC. It was a fine spring day, and it left the kids exhausted as you can see. Annabelle went down mid-PB&J, as did Barritt. What kind of parents let their kids nap at 5:00 p.m.? The same kind that have to endure Barritt moaning in the room next door at 9:53 p.m.