Flags Galore!

 

We went to a local park Sunday after we heard about all the flags that they had displayed for Memorial Day. Actually they were doing a fundraiser for a local school and this was the beautiful results. I think I read there was 1,300 flags and honestly it was a sight to see. 

These pictures really do not do them justice.

Piggy Back Rides!

Dash has become the master at piggy back rides and the girls love it! You should hear them giggle as he runs around the house. It is quite cute. Both girls adore him and love to play with him. Can't wait to throw Bebo into the mix! :)

Happy Birthday Dash!

Happy 11th Birthday to our Dash! What a handsome, sweet young man you are becoming. Keep up the great job at school, we are so proud of you!

School Pictures

I completely forgot to upload the kids first day of school pictures. One week late is not bad, right? Everyone is staying very busy and here I thought life would slow down a bit. HA! I do know busier families and I don't know how they do it.

Jewel is playing field hockey again this year. We just don't know if it will be modified or JV. Seems they may not have enough girl to form the modified team. She is also learning sign language with us.

Dask is our least busy child (as well as Twink). He is not doing a sport until winter but he is learning sign language with us. I think that is enough to keep him busy. He is doing very well at it I must add. He also does AWANA one day a week.

Spitfire is playing soccer again. She seems to be doing a tad bit better and is loving it. She is not doing the sign language class but her K class does learn the alphabet and colors in her class. Pretty cool if you ask me! She also does AWANA one day a week.

Twink is just happy to tag along to a game here and there. She is not doing the sign language class either but will gain a ton from our use of it. :)

So as you can see we are not overly booked but enough to keep us hoping and one of us driving! The adoption is coming along. We are officially waiting for LOI with a couple weeks under our belt. Feels good to finally be able to say that.

Thank you to those who share some yummy recipes! I can't wait to try them.

Ouch!

My sweet Dash was stung yesterday four times!! He also made everyone at our house, heart stop. Dash was out jumping on the trampoline having a great time. I was cooking up some lunch for my family and the in-laws. He let out a scream that just sent chills down ones spine. He was curled up in a ball on the trampoline screaming like crazy. We just knew he broke something. My father in law pulled him out of the trampoline and we were able to pry out of him what was wrong.

He had be stung.

Noah is extremely afraid of bees. When he is stung the swelling usually triples in size. When he knew he was stung on the neck he asked if he was going to die. He was afraid his neck was going to swell. To be honest with four bee stings and the way he had reacted in the past to them we were a bit nervous. The bee was caught in Noah's shirt and kept stinging him. Thank the Lord he did not have a serious reaction. If you see him in the next week or so he will tell you all about it.

Fun Weekend

We had such a busy weekend but was so much fun. We have family in from out of state so we were able to enjoy their company this weekend. All of our children are around the same age. The only time I was not pregnant with my SIL was with her oldest and my youngest (Twink). We either were pregnant together or ended up pregnant soon after one had their baby. I must tell you the same thing has happened with Bebo. :) Are families are expecting. Their family will receive their bundle of joy before we will. Could you all keep them in your prayers. She has developed a complication with her pregnancy and I'm sure would appreciate all the prayers they could receive.

Here are some posed pictures from the weekend. I'll post some of the candid ones later this week.

Twink did not want to be in this picture but with the help of her uncle we were able to snap this picture! :) Great job Uncle Mark!

Are these girls not beautiful! My niece is an amazing young woman! I wish I had a video to show you. On Sunday in church she signed and sang to the beautiful song. I wish you could have seen her. There is so much joy and emotion in her when I've seen her do this. God has gifted her with such a beautiful talent and I am so proud of her.

We've Been Busy

Last weekend we hit the ground running! I don't think we stopped all weekend. Saturday we worked outside on the yard and the garage. The Count re-mulched the trees and landscaping, mowed, trimmed around the house, and did our huge ditch out front. In doing the ditch he has to mow and trim the weeds. It is not fun because it is pretty steep.

I cleaned out the garage. Your probably saying to yourself shouldn't it be the other way around. Shouldn't Cheri be re-mulching. I would love to but because of my previous neck surgery that is out of the question. I must say I did a pretty good job cleaning. Next step is our shed! I'm going to leave that one up to The Count! LOL

We were not able to make it to church on Sunday. Just as we were about to leave Spitfire decided she wanted a drink. She took her little chair (TM, you know about those little chairs!) and went into the fridge. Took hold of two gallons of freshly made pink lemonade and realized it was too heavy. Unfortunately she spilled it all over the place. All over in and on the fridge, the floor and herself. Needless to say the fridge and the floor were cleaned on Sunday. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw what happened! I just stood there and Spitfire looks up at me and said "Sorry Momma." I think I then yelled "HELLLPPP!!!" The poor little honey started to cry because we could not go to church. Lets just say I felt like crying too. I wanted to go to church and now had a big mess to clean up. Spitfire went out and played and The Count came down and saved the day! He's awesome people! He took everything out of the fridge and I cleaned it at the sink. Team work.

Monday we had the in-laws over for the day. It was a beautiful day out and we just relaxed. I was able to snap some pictures of the kids hanging out too. I'm trying to gather as many as I can so we can choose from a bunch to send to Bebo when the time comes. Hopefully that won't be long!

**Note to self, check the ISO before shooting outside! You'd think I'd learn!**

Art Show

First off let me thank Rebecca for updating the header with some recent pictures of the children. We felt like we were looking at baby pictures! LOL OK well maybe they were not that old but almost a year and a half.

Last week Jewel had some art work entered into the art show at school. Here are two of the three piece her art teacher selected to enter into the show. Unfortunately she could not find her third piece when we were looking for it that night. it is a big event. I know that at least 4-12 grade is involved in it and I want to say that the younger grades are too but I can not be certain.

Dash did not have any art work selected but he did find a piece of his hanging on the hall walls leading to the room that held the art show. So I snapped a picture of his also! :) I think it's pretty darn good.

Yesterday I decided our lamp post needed a little TLC. You see the first year we lived here I planted a clematis and in it never really did very well. Three years ago I planted some different things and it looked cute. It came in last year looking great but that stinking clematis started growing like crazy climbing the poll, covering the lights (even though I had tore it out) it was out of control. Well it killed my flowers. At the end of last year I killed everything at the lamp post. Weeds, flowers and the clematis! It worked and I've had no real growth this year. Just in case, I sprayed all the little green things again before I applied 240lbs of top soil a huge bag of mulch. Looks so much better.

There was a huge rock with our house number on it where you see the brown paper and the hole.
A little to close but I am a bit paranoid and did not want you to see my rock with our house number on it! ;)

Soccer, Baseball, Oh My!

We are full swing into soccer and baseball season. This usually means our weekends are very busy with games. I can say thank heavens Jewel is not playing softball this year or we'd live at the field. This is the first year (in I don't know how long) that shes not played. You see she is now old enough to play softball for school so she can not play for little league or what ever they call it for girls. Either way we are now busy shuttling children to and from practice/games three to four nights a week and trying to find time to eat as a family! Is that ever challenging.

Spitfire had her first soccer game this past weekend. She LOVES soccer. She is still learning but I think she's pretty good for a 4yr old. Twink does not like to sit and watch the games so it makes things a bit challenging. Either The Count or I have to "entertain" her or beg Jewel to babysit for us! ;)

Dash also had his first baseball game this past weekend. He was very excited that he would be catching for a portion of the game. This is Dash first year catching and he did pretty darn good his first game. Neither team scored a run so they tied 0-0. They have a game mid-week and then one on Saturday. Unfortunately Dash will not be able to make his game on Saturday as we will be out of town doing our home study. There will be plenty of games for him to play in this season.

Lake Pictures Part 2

The wind did wild things to Jewel's hair!

I love this picture except Spitfire seemed to get lost. Had I realized she buttoned her sweater (wrong) up I would have undone it for some contrast. I may try to do this picture again at another time. I love the setting.

Very seldom do we actually get a "real" smile from Spitfire on camera.

My monkey who climbed up higher than he should have!

As you can see my oldest daughter likes to have her picture taken. Always has from the time she was little. I do need to get some sort of software to do touch ups as these are straight off the camera (except for some extra sharpening).

Soon our leaves will be in bloom and everything will be beautiful. I so can not wait.

Lake Pictures

I become bored of taking the same pictures around my house. I decided to take the kids to the lake one day last week. They were on Spring Break and we decided to go visit my sister. It was a nice sunny day but rather breezy. I was able to capture some beautiful pictures. I will share some today and some another day this week.
I can't believe I was able to capture both Dash and Twink's expressions in this picture! Twink loves for her brother and sisters to play follow the leader. Only problem, they have to do it in a circle. It's almost like they are chasing each other. She just giggles none stop at them and signs more when they stop.

Here Dash and Spitfire are looking at a water fountain. I should have captured what they were pointing at but I'm still learning.

This is Twinks new thing. Little Miss Attitude! She loves to put her hand on her hip when your telling her some thing she doesn't quite agree with.

Spitfire is picking flowers. I'm sure she was not suppose to so as soon as I snapped the picture I put a stop to it. ;)

Here are the flowers she picked. She soooo wanted me to take a picture of them.

Spitfire at the last minute stepped too close to the mirror and I was not unable to capture her face. I love this picture though. They were acting all silly until they realized I was going to take a picture. I also did not realize the park had lights hanging from the rafters. Maybe they don't but Twink is looking at some thing and it looks like lights to me.

I have not forgotten Jewel. I have some beautiful pictures of her. I think you'll love them. I'll share those another day. :)

Dash and Spitfire

I thought I'd post these cute pictures of Dash and Spitfire. Neither one of them like to have their pictures taken so this was great. As I was trying to get a single shot of Dash, Spitfire decided she was going to try to get in the picture. I think she did it to mainly annoy Dash. Just as I finished the first shot she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a big hug. You can tell by the pained look on his face he LOVED it! LOL

spitfire tells Dash she is going to marry him all the time (I don't think so sweetie)! It drives him crazy when she tells him this. She knows it bugs him so she'll keep doing it. She runs to the door when the bus arrives home in the afternoon to greet him. Other times they fight like cats and dogs. Oh but they do love each other! :)

As you can see I have my blog back to *normal* thanks to Carla's help this morning. I am so excited!