Ephraim Oliver's Arrival

Following in the footsteps of Mattias and Sylvia... Ephraim Oliver McMullin opted as well for a birthdate 14 days exactly over his due date.  He was born at 5:50AM, July 24th.  - Yes, a Pioneer Day baby.  I think as long as he doesn't live in in Utah or Idaho,  it won't affect him much.  It isn't quite the same as being born on Christmas.

    Here are some shots of his first day of life.

Sylvia has been a great big sister since we came home.  She reads him books, and plays quiet songs on her violin to make him go to sleep.   He is going to love having her around.

Asher was a pro baby holder right off the bat.  He has been incrediblly helpful with helping around the house to make things go smoothly.

 When the kids came up to the hospital, Sylvia had fun playing around with the camera.  I think she may have gotten the best shot of Ephraim's face.

Mattias has also been a great help around the house.. making pancakes and helping with Sylvia.  He is a nervous baby holder...afraid he is doing it wrong somehow.  I'm sure he will be getting plenty of practice now that we are home.

Ephraim is a mellow little fella.  I am relieved to have an easy going baby.    He was 9lbs even, and 21 inches.  This makes him bigger than either of his brothers at birth by a few ounces.   It will be interesting to see who is the biggest McMullin in about 20 years.

 The boys are surprised by the age gap.  They make comments like, "When he is 10, I'll be home from a mission and almost done with college!"   Syliva's immediate reaction was less long-term.  She was just worried that he would chew on her My Little Ponies.  Sean assured her that she has at least 6 months before he was crawling around trying to eat things.   That seemed to put her at ease.

     I'm so grateful for this little blessing.  He is a piece of heaven that you can kiss over and over again.

    

Sylvia's 7th Birthday party

  Since we had cousins visiting for the first time in 6 years, we decided to have Sylvia's birthday party a few days early.  It was great fun.    First we went swimming at the high school pool.  (Sylvia has been wanting to have a mermaid themed party all year... thus the pool part was very important to her plans.)

After swimming, we came back to our house for pizza.  These three girls ate as much as the teenage boys did.

And here are the boys, thrilled to be at a mermaid birthday party.  They are secretly wishing for more pizza.

Eli realized that eating the plates tends to take the edge off hunger when the pizza is gone.  Smart boy.

Spencer enjoyed the balloons.  Daniel got his exercise chasing after Spencer, who was chasing after his balloon, which was heading out towards the street.  Good thing Daniel still has some speed from his younger days, Spencer keeps him moving!

We moved inside for some challenging party games, such as Pin the Tiara on the Mermaid.  Here is Ben, one of the boy's buddies showing his skills.

Unfortunately Daniel is not as talented at this party game as the kids.  He almost pinned a tiara on Ben - Asher's friend. :)    Luckily it ended up landing on Syliva's doll instead.  I still think the look on Ben's face was priceless.

Here we have the birthday revelers, attacking each other with the party favors.

Sylvia's Arial-the-Mermaid cake did not turn out quite as dashing as I had hoped.  I now know I should never attempt recreating Disney faces with frosting.  Luckily, seven year olds are very understanding.  It had candles, and tasted good... so it was a hit as far as cakes go.

Our cute little bunch of birthday cake munchers.

  After the party, everybody had a good time blasting through several packages of Snaps (fireworks) that Kaydee picked up at the store.   Kaydee is a secret pyromaniac.  Who would've known?

 After the party, Sylvia got to have Addie sleep over. (She had been staying at the motel with her family until now.) It was a first sleepover experience for them both.    We started out by decorating cute tiaras, to match the jewlery they had gotten at the party.

That moved into watching the movie The Little Mermaid, and painting nails.   Not only did Asher know all the songs, so he could sing along.. but he allowed his toenails to be painted purple.  This made him a big hit with the girls.

Addie and Sylvia each had their nails done in their favorite colors (purple and pink), with an exrtra layer of sparkle polish.   (Asher drew the line at the sparkles.)

  After a bedtime story, and plenty of giggling,  the girls fell asleep in sleeping bags on my bedroom floor.  They were so sweet together.  Sylvia thought it was her best birthday ever.   I am so glad we could have family come visit us!

Daniel's visit - fun adventures!

    We got an exciting phone call from my little brother, Daniel, last week.  He was looking for a place to do a mini-vacation with his family.   Since they are living in Chicago for the summer, due to work, we are a mere 2 hours away.  Or faster, if you drive like Daniel :)  He brought his wonderful family up for 4 days, and we had a great time getting to know his kids.

  One of the places we went was the Madison Children's museum.   Here is Spencer starting early on his rock climbing career, with Daniel coaching him.
 

Spencer was interested in almost everything.  Here he is doing a masterpiece on the painting window.

    The one thing Spencer wasn't into, was the craft area. On the other hand, Sylvia and Addie spent most of their time here.  They glued and tied various things together to make some pretty amazing creations.

It was great to have Daniel park Eil in the craft zone, and just hang out and visit.  I love my little brother.

  Eventually the crafting marathon was finished.  Sylvia wore her homemade crown and flower jewelry for the next couple days, until  all the petals finally fell off.

Addie and Sylvia both enjoyed the spinning hamster wheel.  They would've stayed on it all afternoon.

We found critters for everyone to hold on the top level of the museum.  I was surprised at how calmly everyone let mice crawl all over their arms and hands.

They were not as excited to touch the snake... but though it was fascinating.

Later in the evening, we went to a Madison Mallards baseball game.   Asher's orchestra was preforming the national anthem at the start.   (Asher is the handsome blond, front center below.)

The orchestra sounded really great!  I was surprised at how well their sound carried out of doors.

Mattias got a chance to be babysitter to little Eli for a few minutes in the stands.  I forgot how good he is with babies.                                                       

   We had great seats, and were really enjoying the game.  Here we are smiling and unaware of how crazy the weather would become in 15 min. 

  Dark clouds were on the horizon.  They rushed towards the stadium, bringing buckets of freezing cold, side-ways rain, and high winds.  Yes, there was a tornado watch on.    We were totally unprepared, and huddled over the kids, unable to get into shelter for several minutes.  We were so drenched.  Daniel ran to get the van, and we cranked the heat up all the way home.  The baseball game was cancelled, but we still had an exciting adventure to remember.

   Back in Stoughton, the Addie and Sylvia were having a party with Noel, unaware that we were out fighting for survival in the fierce elements.  They had an art party, ate Blue Moon ice cream and played Wii.   Their evening was far less exciting, but I did envy their dry clothes when we got home.

Grandma's Visit: Week 2

The second week of Liz's visit saw us sticking around closer to home.  On Monday night we went down to our community garden plot and fenced it off.  (These are the wild kind of adventures we treat visitors to around here.)

Sean and Grandma kept the workers in line, and made sure they got the fencing straight. 

     The rest of the week was either really rainy, or really hot, so we did a lot of indoor activities.  Asher really likes playing Scrabble, which is also Liz's game of choice.  Here we have a rare occurrence... Liz getting beat.

    Below is a shot of the official score card...279 to 263.  Beating Grandma at Scrabble is a major accomplishment in ones life. He will probably put it on his job resumes in the future.

    Mattias wanted to challenge Grandma, but found he still has a ways to go before reaching champion Scrabble player status.  They still had fun though.

     Sylvia showed Liz the library down on Main Street (which is conveniently located next to the bakery).  Liz was wonderful and spent lots of time reading library books to Sylvia.

    I had an old faded flower pot in the backyard that could use some sprucing up. One rainy day,  Noel painted the background color, then we traced hands and decorated each persons outline.  It looks great now!

Here is Liz's realistic hand...

Noel went for more of a rainbow hand look..

 Sylvia went for a colorful flower on the back of her hand, and learned how drippy paint can be.

Then, Sylvia did a good job realistically painting our dog Maya's paw on some leftover space.  Our dog was not much interested in decorating her own paw, luckily Sylvia didn't mind.

 We also introduced Liz to "Fancy Nancy".   She read a couple of the Nancy books from the libary to Sylvia, and did a Fancy Nancy sparkle-puzzle with her.  What more could a person hope to gain from a vacation?

 On her last afternoon in town, Liz took us all out to lunch at a tasty Chinese-American buffet.  Noel had all vegtables, and Asher had all meat... they reminded me of the nursery rhyme "Jack Sprat".  Sylvia loaded her plate up with fried cheese balls.   -Very healthy.  We all enjoyed several helpings of really good food.

I took the older kids to their school activities, and left Sylvia in charge of the camera.  She went to Olbrich gardens with Liz and Sean, and took lots of fun pictures.  Here is a shot of Liz and Sean from Sylvia's point of view...

They saw lots of beautiful flowers, and enjoyed meandering along the walkways.

The Thai pavillion is a stunning part of the gardens.

   And when Sylvia got cold, her dad donated his wool sweater to her.  She has a ways to go before it actually fits... but it did the job for the day.

After a final stop at Staples and the Art Museum, Sean and Sylvia delivered grandma to the airport.  It was a fun filled day to finish of a great week.  We really enjoyed having Liz come and stay for an extended period of time.  The kids got to share their interests and activities with her through out the two weeks.  We hope she considers doing such a crazy trip another time. 

Grandma McMullin's visit - Week 1

Sean's mom flew out to visit this week.  We have done a variety of outings, in between rain storms.

Sylvia and her friend appreciate the fact that Grandma is staying in a motel with a pool.  There was much splashing this week.

 Here is Grandma with her two splashing mermaids.

   We also drove to Milwaukee to visit the museums.  Asher really enjoys playing Scrabble, so Grandma showed him some of the tricks of the trade as they drove in the car.  The played on her ipad the whole way. She is the ultimate Scrabble-Master, but Asher aspires someday to win.

  At the Discovery World Science Museum, Sylvia found out her arms are finally long enough to reach into the pools and pet the sturgeons swimming by.  The fish swim in loops, and it is a fun game to see if you can reach in quick enough to stroke their 2 foot long bodies as they cruise by.

Sylvia was also brave enough to try the "bed of nails" experiement.  You lay down on a sheet of plexi-glass, then they raise nails up, so you are totally laying on a bed of nails.  She said it felt "weird".  Sean and I were not brave enough to try it.

Sylvia also enjoyed making lots of silly faces in the hundreds of mirrors at one exhibit.  It was fun to see what she gravitated towards.

   The museum was full  of crazy public school kids on field trips, so lunchtime was looking to be more of the same loud chaos we had been trying to steer clear of all morning.  Liz discovered the top floor of the aquarium, the banquet room.  We asked the museum director for permission to haul our cooler up the elevator and eat there.  It was very posh, and quiet.  We ate our bagels and pudding cups surrounded by unexpected elegance.

The view was very pretty from the banquet room. You could see downtown Milwaukee and out across lake Michigan.   It had a wrap around balcony that you had to be careful not to get blown off.

In the afternoon we stopped at the Milwaukee Public Museum.  The butterfly exhibit is one of Sylvia's all time favorite places.   Liz had a butterfly that stayed on her shoulder most of the time.

Asher was fabulous with helping Sylvia catch and hold some of the butterflies.

Mattias won the prize for attracting the largest butterfly of the afternoon.

Noel has been getting a lot of driving practice in.  She is almost finished with her 50 hours, and will be taking her driving test next month.  She is looks very grown up sitting in a car for some reason.

    
     Finishing out the week, we journeyed a half hour down to Evansville, WI.  The high school there put on the musical "The Wizard of Oz" this weekend.  Since they don't have a strings program, they borrowed some of Stoughton's orchestra students.  Asher has been going with some friends down to practice in the evenings after tennis practice for the last two weeks.   The music was great, the show was amazing.

Not only did he meet other musicians from Evansville, but he made friends with the actors as well.  Here is Asher with the star of the show, Dorothy.   Although, Sylvia thinks the real star of the show was Toto. - Who can argue with that?