Germ-Free. Injury Prone.

It was such a joy for us to have Ruby here for 10 days! I think I'll post a few random pictures out of order and explain them so that my lazy self doesn't have to think of connecting sentences. :-P

*sniff* In the car to take Ruby to the Clarke's who would take her home. It was a sad time, so we knit washcloths. (yes, that's what homeschooling girls do instead of texting each other)


Okay, so the following two pictures have a rather interesting story behind them...

Back in April (I think) as Daddy drove Jordan and me from Teen Speak to Daughters of Dignity, we listened to "Addicted to Spuds" by Weird Al Yankovich. Inspired and with extra time after D.O.D., Jordan and I thought we should make a music video with dancing, singing potatoes. We never got around to the video part, but we did have time to dress them up.

Daddy came up with an ingenious way to make their mouths move. That's what the rubber bands are. The reason this is on here now is because I left these potatoes in my Sewing Room window for these past 5 months and they grew interesting roots :
It's rather scary, yet really cool! :-D

One thing that I always enjoy doing is photo shoots with my friends. Minutes before we hopped in the car to take Ruby to the Clarke's, Ruby snapped this picture of herself which I love:

Ruby was such a hard worker while she was here. I looked over from the sink one evening and found this:

She did a wonderful job reorganising!


Tuesday night everyone but Daddy headed up to Oglebay to walk around and watch the light/fountain/music show.

Seth REALLY wanted to go on a boat ride, and Mommy hadn't really gotten the chance to do anything fun with him this summer, so she took him on one.

She also took him to the playground while we took Elsie on a walk around an out-of-the-way pond.

It was fun to do a photo shoot by the pond with Ruby on this tree that leaned out over it.

Now, there is a bit of a story that took place after these pictures. Emma really wanted to roll down a large, grassy, deer dung-covered hill. Ruby joined her. On Emma's 2nd or 3rd roll down, she got stung by a bee on the neck, but didn't make a huge fuss about it. Ruby rolled down next to her and I decided I needed to get a group shot and so headed over to where they were. I sat down next to them, but we couldn't get all of us in the shot. Too bad.

However, as we walked on, I felt a very sharp pain on my hip-- I had felt this pain before. Once on my hand, and once on my foot. Know what it was? Yes, I was being stung on my hip. Holding Elsie, I ran to catch up with Emma and Ruby who had walked a little bit ahead with the stroller. I explained what I thought was happening and started to rub my hip. I felt a buzzing bump. The bee was still there. I shook my skirt furiously and checked my pocket for the bee, because that's where it seemed it was. While this was all happening I had felt a few more stings. Ruby was wonderful and helped my discover where this stinging bee was.

We were quite the sight. Me quite freaked out, Ruby lifting up my skirt to find the thing, and Emma holding Elsie quite freaked out as well, since she was experiencing the pain herself. Eventually we shook the thing out from between the lining of my skirt and the main part. How it got there puzzled us for a while, but then it dawned on us that maybe there had been a second bee where Emma was stung, so when I sat down, it crawled up my skirt.

I've had two bee stings in the past year, so I knew what my body's reaction to them was; swelling, itching, and redness. We walked back to the playground to let Mother know what had happened. In just that 1/4 mile walk I could feel my hip swell. It's a weird feeling.

Yes, it was painful. That was 4 days ago. The swelling is gone, the itching is tolerable, and the redness has turned to blotchyness and to what looks a little bit like a bruise. But it seems to be doing well considering I was stung 4 times by the same lousy bee.

You don't need to sympathize, reading this long explanation is enough torture.

Oh, and then today Seth stepped on a bee that was on the porch. That makes 6 stings on 3 people this week.

Last Sunday after church we drove around some back roads. The scenery was so, so, "backroadish."

Squishing into the backseat.

Saturday after the yard sale, Willa and Seth cooled off by...

... getting thoroughly soaked by 4 inches of water.

Friday night before the sale we did some yard work. Seth helped chop down weeds. He was determined to get those weeds out of there!

So that has been the past 9 days. Of course, I didn't mention the late night, early morning (not in the same length of time), and middle-of - the day Bible studies Ruby and I had while she was here, or the fact that we have successfully had Family Bible time every day except yesterday for the past (at least) 11 days! That is a very huge accomplishment. Praise God for allowing us to do that!

The present status for the Howard Household is this: Nobody is sick. Nobody has been seriously hurt for about 2 weeks. Everyone, except Mommy and Elsie, has gotten hurt minutely this week. But that's normal.

Sorry that I haven't posted much recently. I'm not sure I'll be able to post a ton until... well... about a month from now... more on that will be posted, I hope. But I will try my best not to wait too long between these very varied and factual, not emotional or educational, posts.