Look what I got today...

at a garage sale for four dollars!! I've been looking for something to put my printer and my cricut on together next to my computer, and well......shoot, it even has an extra shelf for my picture printer and cartridges. I finally found it for FOUR DOLLARS. Did I tell you that I got this for FOUR DOLLARS???? It's solid oak, super sturdy. Love it. Yay!

Spaghetti Face

Look who likes spaghetti. I love the picture with her fingers in her mouth...the one that makes her cheeks look HUGE. (yes, her cheeks look huge in all of them...I'm talking about the second picture.)

Dollar toys

I love the Target Dollar spot. See what fun things you can get there. When we were shopping earlier this week, I bought these for the boys because they were being so well behaved when we were out. We finally got around to pulling them out today, and boy, did they have fun. (Well, not all of them....but that's a whole other story. I'm sure you'll be able to tell by who's not in the pictures.)

Air Rockets and slingshots....shoot, I tried to play with these toys, but they kept taking them away from me.

I love this one of Kaleb. What a stance, huh?

Picnic

We met with Mindy and her girls today for a picnic at the park. The kids were fascinated with cicadas. The funny thing was, my kids wouldn't even get close to touching them until Makenzie started holding them and playing with them. I guess they figured that if a girl could touch them, then so could they (everyone except for Jakeb). Then Blake found a freaky worm/centipede thing. Finally we gave up having them play at the park because they just wanted to play with the critters. So, we had lunch....(after we washed our hands very, very thoroughly). Guess what the kids found at the picnic area....CATERPILLARS!!! ARGHHHHHHH...so many bugs! Of course, caterpillars don't bother me to bad. After eating we went for a walk to the waterfalls.
PS. See the picture of the cicadas? Makenzie told me that they were holding hands!

Standing Tall

She's not really getting up on her own, but she is standing, and standing cutely. That's no easy task.

Cicadas

Our friendly little friends are back this summer. Check out the tree in our front yard. Pretty gross, huh?

Cutie Pie

After her third day in a row of missing a normal nap, Makenna fell asleep in the car. How cute is she? Today we took my mom to get her first ever cel phone because she's going to the beach with my brother and his family next week. We also took her shopping to get some fun and well deserved vacation clothes too. She's hoping she comes home with a man! Just kidding!

Memorial Day

We decided to have lots of family time today because it seems lately we don't get as much anymore. We started out by having a picnic lunch at the park and then having some play time at the park too. Of course, like all Memorial Days that I've ever experienced, it started to rain, so we had to leave. Next we stopped at Mickey D's for a hot fudge sundae. Everyone enjoyed that a lot. Who doesn't love a hot fudge sundae.


Next it was back home, and since by this time it had stopped raining we had a few fireworks...mostly smoke ones, and the boys popped some poppers, then we played a game of family baseball.
Our game of baseball was fun. It was Eric, Blake, and Kaleb against Me, Luke and Jakeb. Of course the younger boys had a hard time keeping track of which way to run and what to do when they caught the ball, but it was so fun to watch them play. I love that when the game was over the older boys wanted to high five the other team just like they do when they play on their leagues.Then we watched a movie...the Legend of Zorro. The boys enjoyed it. Too bad 3 of the five kids fell asleep after an exhausting day.
After the movie and putting the sleeping kids to bed, we played a game of Skip-bo with the older boys. Somehow, Jakeb woke up and heard us talk about playing, and so of course, he had to play to. He then proceeded to kick our butts the first game. The Blake was thrilled because he won his first Skip-Bo game ever!

It was a great, fun, and relaxing day that we all enjoyed.

A Dr. Seuss Favorite

On Saturday the boys kept asking me what I was making for breakfast while I was in the kitchen. They kept asking, "Is it Green Eggs and Ham, MOM?" I finally answered yes to them. Here's my version of a famous Dr. Seuss story...green eggs and ham....er, I mean, bacon.

The kids didn't mind it at all, okay, well a little at first, but what's funny is...Eric and I couldn't get past the green eggs at all. They didn't taste at all different, but there was just something about them being green that totally freaked us both out!

By the way, the orange stuff in the eggs is cheese. My kids LOVE cheesy scrambled eggs.

A Slithery Surprise

I decided to clean up our back yard. We've had some wood sitting in our back yard with a tarp over it for the past year....from the construction and all. I decided to move it closer up against the house. Upon doing that, I hear Luke scream out......"there's a snake!" AHHHH...You should have seen me back up. Then I decided I could take care of the snake, and I picked up a 2x2 beam (some extra scrap wood) that was available and proceeded to hit the snake over and over again. Note that each and every time I struck the snake, I screamed a high pitch squeal/scream along with it causing all the kids to look at me like I was crazy. Not to mention the fact that with each swing, I did a funny little jump in the air and closed my eyes because I was terrified of seeing snake guts spray all over. I walked away after I thought I had killed it, but went back to check on it, and would you believe that that little creature survived my beating. Poor thing....NOT! So beating number two went into effect in the exact same procedure as beating number one. One thing was different. Blake threw a stick/piece of wood at the snake in attempts to help me out. Finally when that little sucker had flipped and flopped itself to death.....I went to the garage to get the shovel to carry it out to the woods. EWWWW... I carefully picked it up, and of course it fell right off, and the screaming started again. I successfully scooped it up with the shovel the second time, and ran/skipped/jumped/screamed all the way to the woods carefully balancing the snake on the end of the shovel and tossed him into the woods. And that was the end of that snake. Kaleb went around for the next couple of days telling everyone that his mom killed a snake. Fortunately for me, he left out all the embarrassing screams, jumps, and hollering that was involved.

(I don't know all the copyright rules of the web, but I'm gonna give credit where credit is due. This isn't my picture of the snake. Here's where I found the picture of the snake. )

Reading

The kid is a little genius. Seriously, I don't spend time working with him on the sounds...I might have done it 5 times in the past year. But the other day, Jakeb READ me a book. It was a Dr. Seuss book. I think it's called One bear, One Wheel. It was amazing. Then another day, we pulled into Big Lots, and he read it.....Big Lots..... And one more example of the kid's genius abilities... he saw a commercial for the show LOST, and the next thing I know, he says, "LOST, Mom, those people are LOST!" I have absolutely no idea how he's done this, but the kid has pretty much taught himself to read. AMAZING!

4 boys and a little girl

Awhile ago, at JC Penney's, I saw this great idea for a picture. They had all the kids standing behind the little girl in jeans. It was absolutely adorable. I decided that I would try it. I wish I would have done it about 2 or 3 months ago when she wasn't mobile, but it was fun to try. They didn't come out as great as I wanted, but well, they were still cute. Afterwards, I decided to take individual pictures of all the kids.

a birthday party

We were invited to a birthday party at Run, Jump, and Play. Here's some pics of the kids bouncing around.

11 months old

Well, it's that time again. Makenna has turned 11 months old. I can't believe how fast time has gone. As you can see in the pictures, Makenna would not cooperate for me in these, but that's okay, it shows her personality, right? I tried everything to get her to sit up there with the doll, but she wouldn't have it. Well, the fishing pole worked for a bout 10 seconds, and then it was back to crawling off. Good thing I was there to continually catch her. So then I just gave up and decided to take a picture of her standing ont he floor next to the couch. Makenna is obviously standing up (with help), going from lying to sitting (it took her forever to do this), crawling, eating real food, saying hi, drinking milk, just having fun, and blessing our lives. She's so much fun. It's shocking that in one month she'll be one year old.





Check out all the past months by clicking on each month: June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, and April.)

Look who's happy.....

Eric did a group buy this year for fireworks. And well, I'm just glad he told me that he got the least out of all the guys he did it with. He said there were 90 something cases of fireworks delivered to where he works. Crazy, huh? Oh, and in his defense, he's supporting his own hobby. He started a online business called
Pyroboom.He sells mortar tubes, racks and plugs which to most people might be a lot of gibberish, but to the pyro-world....well, it's pretty exciting!

Pictures of the day

Here's some pictures from today when the kids were outside for a little bit playing.

Here's Makenna

Wassup, homey?
Kaleb's hat got knocked crooked, and well...he looked like a punk. Then he tried to fit the part.

Eating homemade popsicles for the first time. (See there, Betsy, I can make something homemade......)

Here's my new favorite picture of Makenna.
She's crawling now!

Check out Luke trying to ride this little bitty car. Seriously, he's gonna break it. (Of course, that is the same little car that Eric and I rode last year right around this time. Click here if you want a funny reminder of it.)