Freckles

How cute is this kid? Seriously, look at those freckles!!! I'm loving them. My new camera is excellent for capturing them on Luke's face. He's not to crazy about them, but well, I think they make him look absolutely adorable! But if I tell him that I get a pout, and then a retort, "Mom, I'm not adorable, I'm a good looking boy."

park time

Tonight Eric and I took the boys to the brown park for just a few minutes. The favorite tonight might possibly have been the swings. Of course, Kaleb always loves the swings. But everyone else had a great time tonight. Afterwards, we went good ole' Costco and then off to Pot Belly for supper. Yum!!!! It was so nice out that we were even able to eat outside. The boys loved that!

Soaking = wet

The boys have a new saying. It's "soaking." They say it for everything. Let me explain.
If they're hot, they say, "It's soaking hot outside."
If they're hungry, they say, "I'm soaking hungry!"
If they're tired...(yeah right)...they say, "I'm soaking tired!"
I keep trying to explain to them that soaking means wet, but to no avail...they keep using it in their terms. It sure is funny.

Traffic

This is what my boys did for fun tonight. A lady at church gave the boys some cars tonight. They have recently really gotten into them more and more, so this was a huge hit for them. So huge in fact, that this is what they put on their rug. Notice all the cars. They called this, "TRAFFIC." How funny is that???

A new toy

I got a new camera, and it is taking great pictures. Eric surprsied me, and bought a new camera for me. He bought two monstrous memory cards which is good and bad. Good because I'll be able to take many more pictures, but bad because the kids have to sit through many more pictures!!! In the past 4 days I've taken close to 1,000 pictures! These are my favorites so far. This camera is soooo cool.
I'm very fortunate to have a husband who is into the latest and greatest technology. I guess it could also be a good thing or a bad thing. But look what it gets me....a NEW CAMERA!!! Thanks, honey!!! (and yes, I know...pretty soon I'll have to give in and let you get your big bad HD TV!)

a week later

We finally made it outside to watch some fireworks. You see, that's what we were all on our way to doing last week when instead we decided to spend the evening in the ER. All the boys were thrilled to be watching the parachutes outside. Usually they end up getting stuck in trees, but this time they weren't, so the boys were chasing them as they fell from the sky.

my baby shower

I had my baby shower today. It was very cool. We played this one game that was quite disgusting. You had to sniff diapers! Yep, that's what I said...sniff diapers. Luckily what you were actually sniffing was smashed up candy bars. Talk about gross! There were 12 diapers filled with 12 different candy bars, and you had to guess whichi candy bars were in which diaper. If you kept reminding yourself that it was candy bars in the diapers, you could make through, but I've seen a lot of diapers, and every single one of those "candy" diapers looked like something I had seen in regular diapers. After that, they measured my belly with toilet paper. That was enjoyable.
The baby got lots of cute clothes and other stuff. One of my favorites was this cool shadow box that Richi and Stephanie got for me, and I got this pink and brown diaper bag that is totally "me." And, of course, I loved all the outfits. It was just so weird to be opening girly stuff this time around. It felt so unnatural!
Anyways, the party was lots of fun and I'm very thankful for the friends who helped put it together for me. And, thank you everyone for coming!!!

Slumber Party

Last night, Eric had a Halo party, so the boys didn't get to see their daddy very much. To make up for it, I let them do something that I have never let them do before. I let them all sleep in one room. They loved it. Blake and Kaleb bunked up together, and Jakeb and Luke bunked up too. They spent a little while talking, and very slowly one by one, they fell asleep. Kaleb was the last to be knocked out. I went in there to check about an hour after I put them down, and there was Kaleb jumping on the bed in the dark with his big brother Blake next to him sleeping. It's amazing what kids can sleep through.

Muddy fun

I must be one of the coolest moms ever. I took my boys outside to play in the mud. Okay, actually that's not entirely true. I took them outside to play, and then I bribed them by letting them play in the mud just so I could test out my NEW CAMERA!!! Jakeb loved the mud. Blake and Luke were cracking me up because they were hesitant because they didn't want their pants wet. Then there was Kaleb who just kept falling in the mud.

choices again

So this picture above is the bedding that I have. The first picture below is the bedding that I found today at Walmart. The picture's color are shown incorrectly. Everything is a least a shade darker, so it's very similar in color to the one I have already (and the one pictured below.) It's cheaper, so that's a plus. I hate making decisions like this. These little ones kill me every time. The second picture below is an absolutely adorable by Carter's. All three would match the walls perfectly. Why do they have to come out with new stuff after I already buy mine? I really like the Carter's one, but you have to buy everything seperately. I should just stick with what I already bought, huh? AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Spending freeze starts again.

Anyone want $5??? Let's see. If I decide to buy anything scrapbooking related until the end of September, I will owe anyone who sees or catches me $5. (There are two catches: Adhesives and blades do not count. And I still have 1-2 months left with the stampin club.) I just don't need anything. Shoot, I even have enough girly stuff to last me through this new baby's 1st-2nd year. I must be strong!

Doctor updates

I went to the obstetrician this morning, and everything is right on schedule. However, he wants to make sure my sugar levels are normal most of the time, since all of the results were so different. So the plan is to have me check my sugars twice a day for two weeks. Pricking my fingers is always so much fun. Hopefully, everything will be fine, but we'll see.
Jakeb's appointment was this afternoon. After waiting over an hour in the waiting room, we went back. They unwrapped his bandage after soaking it for another 15 minutes. According to the doctor everything looks fine, and should grow completely normal, so that was very encouraging. Jakeb is quite proud of his new brown bandage too.

Miscellaneous

Blake and Luke had t-ball practice again on Monday. They are just so stinking cute out there. They're not exactly sure what they are supposed to be doing, but they try to pretend. Luke cracks me up because whenever he puts the baseball helmet on for batting...well, it just doesn't fit. His poor little ears get all curled over and smooshed. His head is MONSTROUS! We're gonna have to look into buying him his own helmet. But he sure does love it. He's gonna be our sports guy.
Then we have Blake who's just there because we're making him be there. However, he is trying too. He has been positioned in between first and second base, so kinda right field, but closer up. Every time the ball comes his way, he will get it whether it goes through his legs or not. Then he will throw it to first base, and then for some reason he will run to second and tag the base with his foot. We have no idea why he does this, but it's so adorably cute that we haven't told him to stop yet.

Jakeb's a little upset because his "snakes" are gone. Now most of you know that his "snakes" are in his hair, and they are actually his curls. Since his hair cut, he's been asking about them and whether they're going to come back. I did forget to tell you guys that before his haircut, I caught him wiping his dirty hands in his hair (during lunchtime). I asked him what he was doing, and he proceeded to tell me that he was FEEDING THE SNAKES!! I guess those little critters need to eat too, huh?

Kaleb has finally come to the conclusion that a girl won't be too bad. He'll actually tell someone that we're having a girl as opposed to screaming hysterically that it's a boy.

Update on Jakeb

He's doing great. Besides the big bandage on his hand, you'd never know anything was wrong. He hates to take the medicine that they gave him, and he never complains about pain. He actually slept through the night fine last night.
He goes to see the hand doctor on Wednesday to make sure everything is healing okay. What's funny is....as I'm typing this, I'm hearing him cry upstairs because one of his brothers abused him. His special treatment from his brothers is officially over!

well, it's official...

..my camera is no longer living. The screen has been out for two day now. All I get are fuzzy pink/black lines on it, actually more like streaks. Sniff, Sniff!! I'm just glad it made it through the weekend. With the weekend that we had, it's a good thing it made it through. Now it's resting in peace. Farewell, sweet camera. You will be missed.

ER

Well, it happened finally....our first trip to the Emergency Room. Poor little Jakeb got his pinky finger smashed in the basement door. It was actually cut down to the bone. Eric yelled for me to get the kids in the van, and off we went. (That's why I told you in the previous post to note what the boys were wearing.) Two boys didn't have shirts on. (I did, however, grab two shirts out of the clean laundry hamper before I left.) And Jakeb actually had a pair of rain boots on. Bless his little heart. I'm so happy that we only live about 10 minutes away from the nearest hospital. I dropped Eric and Jakeb off at the door, parked the car, and waddled into the emergency room with the remaining kids (who, by the way, were angels this whole time.)
They wrapped his finger up, and then they eventually took him back. We were there quite some time.
In fact, I ended up taking the other boys home. My mom met me at my house so she could watch them, and get them settled down into bed. I grabbed some toys and Jakeb's "tickle blanket", and then I went back to the hospital. (You will all be shocked that I left my camera at home for the first trip to the hospital, but don't worry...I grabbed this time around, and got some cute pictures of him there. I did not take a pictures of his finger unwrapped because well....that's not a sight that I would like to remember, and I'm pretty sure that none of you would enjoy it either.)
After they numbed it (which might have been the worse part to watch becuase of the shot they had to give Jakeb), they started stitching it up. Poor little Jakeb fell asleep. He was so exhausted. He had been there close to 3 1/2 hours at this point, maybe even longer. Only problem was, once he woke up he was completely disoriented and started screaming to go home and go to bed. That got us out of there about 10 times faster because it caused those nurses to finish up the paperwork and let us go. So we finally pull into our driveway at about 1:00 in the morning.
So tomorrow, we're supposed to call the hand doctor and get in an appointment asap to see what they think. Hopefully everything heals fine. They were slightly concerned about his fingernail not growing back, but I figure, he's a boy....he'll probably think that's pretty cool not to have a fingernail. He was such a little trooper!

BATTLES

The boys decided to do some more light sabre battles today. (How do you actually spell that word? sabre or saber?) Anyways, got some cute videos and some fun pictures. All the boys were into it this time. Sure was cute! Hopefully the videos will work. (Also, note what the boys are wearing.)



Jakeb is very upset that you could not see his boots until the end. When he watched the video, he was thrilled with the ending, since he beat Daddy and you could see his boots.

Busy Day

So I woke up bright an early this morning. I was to meet Richi at Starbucks at 7:00, then we were off to a Mother's Exchange sale. Unfortunately, Eric's alarm clock is 10 minutes fast, and I always forget that, so I ended up being in the car at 6:31 ready to go. I was not looking forward to being early, and sitting in my car for 20 minutes, but I didn't want to go back inside the house and wake anyone else up. So off to Starbucks I went. I was very happy to be sitting in the parking lot for only about 2 minutes when Richi pulled up next to me. She was early too. (what's really funny, is that neither of us are normally early.)
Well, we made it to the Exchange sale where we met a few other girls to shop with. I purchased my big bad diaper champ. Diaper Genies are yuck! You have to spend extra $$$ buying their expensive bags and they still stink. You can use regualar bags on the Diaper Champ, and the only time the pail stinks is when you open the pail to change it. I had one with Blake and Luke, and loved it. I also got a few clothes too, a birthday present for Jakeb in it's original packaging, and some Nike cleats for Luke. And only spent $22. I was pretty proud. Afterwards we went out to breakfast. So instead of it being a girls night out. It was a girls morning out.
After spending an hour at home, I left again to go to my friend Angela's baby shower. It was probably the biggest baby shower I've ever seen!! There had to be over 50 people there. It took 2 hours just to open her presents. She got lots of fun stuff including lots and lots of baby blue stuff for Baby Liam. (She's due the day before me on the 27th.)
After that, I finally got to go home and relax......NOT!! Check out the rest of my posts to see what happens next in today in the life of the Alma's!!!

PUMP IT UP!!!

Who says Pregnant women can't Jump?? Our Sunday School class had a class activity tonight at Pump It Up. It's an inflatable place. Normally, you see lots of kids' birthday parties there, but tonight MorningStar Baptist had their own party there! It was more fun than I thought it would be. The best part was jousting, but the slides were fun too. You just had to see it. Who would have thought that grown ups could have so much fun in there. To see all the grown ups jumping around and just acting like kids was refreshing. I took some videos of some of the people boxing too. The group picture will make me laugh for quite some time because after the first shot, the entire inflatable started falling down. (I still think that the men were doing it on purpose, but who knows.)Notice all the people sitting down on the floor in one picture. That's because they are old and worn out after 30 minutes! Just kidding. They ended up getting up for round two in no time. The picture in the center is cool too because that's me and Erica proving that pregnant women CAN JUMP!
Here's the videos:
This one is of Eric and Tim boxing.

Water Day

It was such a great day outside. After mowing the lawn while the younger boys were asleep, I cleaned out Jakeb's water/sand table, and set it up for everyone to play. They LOVED it!! Luke kept putting his whole head in the water. The other boys kept driving their boats and card through it, and just having so much fun!

Slightly Mismatched

Look at this little boy! Let's just say, he loves his accessories. Remember how I posted about his love for purses?? Well, unfortunately, he still has the love for them, but he's also discovered a new fetish now. Socks!! This kid loves his socks. It doesn't matter what color they are; well, actually I guess it does. He would rather wear any colored socks because whenever I pull out his white socks to wear, he gets very upset. Anyways, obviously, it doesn't even matter if they match. Shoot! It doesn't even matter if they are clean or who they belong to. He likes to wear socks. One of the first things he says in the morning when he wakes up is, "soks, soks, soks!" (Then, of course, "Wafles, wafles!" follows. No Alma boy can forget about food in the morning!) The good thing, is that he puts them one and pulls them off all by himself. The bad thing is, well...I guess there isn't really a bad thing besides the whole matching aspect. Pretty cute, huh?

Stampin' up Club

Once a month I have a stamping club. I've done this since last October, and I also actually did this about two years ago. (So, I AM an orignal member, Debbie!) Anyways, we basically get together, make some kind of project...usually a couple of cards (Thanks to Tammy's inspiring ideas!), and have lots of fun. I love it because I get to see some of my friends that I don't get to see very often. I also get to stamp and sometimes even scrapbook. (We made a mini scrapbook once.) And I get to enlarge my stamp collection. (Eric doesn't really care for that part too much.) Oh, and I get out of the house to have some "girl time." So, it really is great. I've never taken pictures before, but decided that this time I should because I really wanted to blog it. Here's the huge clan.
Notice the picture in the bottom of me and Karen holding the exact same purse?? Last month I saw that she had this purse, and I asked where she got it. She told me Kohls, and the very next night I got it at Kohl's. Now, we saw each other last Sunday at a restaraunt where we saw our purses were the same, so tonight we tried to keep them seperate until....she started putting her checkbook in my purse, and then realized it wasn't hers. Made us chuckle!! (Pictured from left to right from top to bottom: Debbie, Janet, Shanique, me, the whole group, Janet, Juan Marie, Tammy, Shanique spending $$, Karen and me and our matching purses... How did I miss getting a picture of Pat??? Pat, I'm gonna get you next time!)

Most recent page

"I love this Face!!!" that's the title on this page. Kaleb's just so stinking cute. These pictures were taken on some random night when I put him in his crib for night-night. Then he started hamming it up which of course caused me to get out the camera! Anyways, this page was just a lot of fun to make. However, the greens are showing quite a bit brighter than real life. So imagine a slightly more muted green that blends nicely with brown.

Baby's room

Last Saturday we started painting the baby's room, and I was slightly disturbed because the green color was NOT what I wanted. I guess I should have done what Home Depot says and take the color swatch into the room, and then make sure that it is well lit. Had I done all of that, I would have picked the right color. It's just to light of a green for a whole bedroom. So after much debate and discussion (okay, well not too much), we decided to to a darker shade at the bottom and add a chair rail in her room. How cute will that be. So we bought the paint on Monday night. (I gave up 24 to buy paint! How crazy is that? However, I did end up watching it online. okay, back to the subject on hand....) And I finally got around to painting it today. I LOVE IT!! The bottom green is the what the whole room was supposed to be. It's what I saw in my head when I was planning the room. So it's gonna be perfect after all. Here's a picture of the greens. They probably don't look the same in the picture that they do in real life, but you at least get the picture. Luke took the first picture. Oh, and obviously disregard the blue painter's tape and imagine a white chair rail instead!!!! Yay!! It's coming together. Now to find a white crib!!!