Elser Family Blog

Well, you might have noticed something different? I guess I trust the world too much.

I’ll ignore it.

The kids are going to VBS this week. Here I am, dressed up as an Angel, telling them about the shepherds that were visited when Jesus was born. I recruited some “angels” and we went out back and “found” some shepherds, and told them “we have good tidings of great joy” for them… Etc. It was fun.

This weekend it was HOT in our southern-state-that-I-wont-mention-the-name-of, so we went to the next village-over-the-river to visit their fountain and run and play in it.. It was quite fun. We will do that again soon.

And when we got home, we saw this guy lounging on our fence, taking in some sun. We DON’T like palmetto bugs, but we do LIKE lizards.

We don’t have a story line for tomorrow nights “LAVA LAVA island, Where Jesus Love flows” adventure story room… Anyone have any ideas from other VBS’s? It usually includes a story and 1 or 2 interactive times, where the kids have to answer questions, sing, or do something concerning the story line….

Here is Hannah doing something she probably shouldn’t be doing, but what the heck, It looks like fun.

AND WE HAVE A WINNER!

Tammy was in her Mother-in-Laws garden, and noticed a suspiciously familiar looking tiny flower. She said

“Here’s my guess for the first flower…tomato, I think. Happened to notice Verna’s tomato plants this afternoon, and those are some large hairy things in the picture! So either the flower is small, or very scary! 😉

Also, she was interested in doing a blog for her family, but was concerned about the rogue factor. I figured I’d revisit the conversation for any of yall that are thinking the same thing. Here is what I told her:

“About the blog… Yah, I know what your saying, but I feel the benefit of relatives and cousins getting to know their younger cousins better is worth much more than any risk associated with it. And, its not public.. You wont find these pages in any search engines. I have them excluded in the antique-shop.com/robots.txt file that (legit) search engines use to see if someone wants their page listed or not.

What are the odds? Statistically, She has a much larger chance of getting killed in a car accident than being a homicide victim. Heck, perhaps it will motivate me to be more atentive to teaching the kids to be carful and to follow all of the “stranger danger” advice. We should also remember, kids 50 years ago where MUCH more vulnerable than our kids are…

Anyway. If I didnt do it, you wouldnt have this blog to read, would you?

Here is Melinda sharing a little love with her little brother.

Here is Hannah looking at the leg of a spider we found, in the microscope (10x power with a 10x power eyepiece, for a total magnification of 100x.. Not too much, but enough to see a hairy spider leg!!) While her brother curiously looks on… Don’t worry Rock, you’ll get your turn soon enough.

We have been active in debate on the email lately… A bit too active! Full email boxes abound!!

So, to alleviate that problem, and to allow people to review past debates at their leisure, I have created a family forum to post in. You can also use that for posting comments about this blog…:)

I have not started to make it pretty yet, but I’ll work on that…See you there!

Family Debate Forum

The easiest one is left.

Ho’da thunk’ it.

The White flower on the garden blog has been identified.

It is a pepper flower. (green pepper)

It was identified by Dale in Belize.

OK, So far I have to mail something to Switzerland and Central America.

I was counting on my family in SOUTH CAROLINA and INDIANA to guess these things… The shipping is gonna kill me!

🙂

We went to the local observatory in Aiken to see the transit of Venus across the sun this morning. After all, the last time it happened was in the 1800’s. We got up bright and early at 6am to see it. There were many people there to see it also, but, alas, the eastern sky was cloud covered. We were able to look at the moon through the observatory scope’ though. And, we did see the transit through a computer linked telescope somewhere in Africa. There is something fun about keeping your kids up way past their bed time, or getting them up very early to do stuff like this.

Kathi’s sister Teri in Geneva Switzerland guessed one of the garden flowers correctly. The yellow one on top (the moon pie prize) is a cucumber flower.

Now I get to send a moon pie to… Switzerland??

She also asked for a hint on the others, so here is the hint.

They are ALL vegetable flowers.

I couldn’t get a winning picture at the birthday party to save my life. I must have shot 40 pictures, and none of them were notable. Then, I take the camera out and shoot 1 picture on the porch… And I get this. What a great picture of the sisters, no?

The garden blog quiz has not been attempted. Come on.. Just take a guess.

Hannah had two birthdays this year! OK, well two parties, at least.

Here is Hannahs informal cake on June 1st, officially 6!

Here are flowers out of Kathi’s garden.

Here is Hannah at her official party. 8 friends showed up. (we had the party at the Church.

Here is a movie of Hannah showing me her “6” candle. She drops it because the wick was still hot. But she does not hesitate to pick it up right away… How about that fancy cake? It was a carousel cake, the center animals actually spun and it played music. Too bad I DIDN’T TAKE A PICTURE OF IT.

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Here are Hannah with some of her friends playing with one of her new toys.

Here are the girls playing on the playground.