5th Annual Fourth of July Fireworks Extravaganza

It rained and it rained! Bless all the people who still came out to the Extravaganza in the rain. But you know what?? We all had a great time. The kids loved it. And God stopped the rain for a short time so Eric could do his show!! It was amazing. I'll try to get around to posting some videos of it soon. (Check my youtube sidebar every now and then, and eventually they'll be posted if you want to see them.) You know what's funny? The forecast said it was gonna rain all day and actually start thunderstorming at 6:00 pm. Never once did we hear thunder or see lightning, and then it let up exactly before dusk. I still can't get over it. Oh, and it started raining again less than five minutes after Eric finished his show.

3rd of July

Here's the kids doing sparklers. Makenna tried one and then decided that it wasn't very cool. In fact, it was so not cool taht she went all the way down by the woods and hid behind a tree for a while. (See the little shoes?) Then Eric put on a tiny show for us.

See the tiny white feet way out there behind the tree?

Easter Sunday

What a great day! the kids enjoyed their bubble baskets, and no, ahem, Makenna did NOT get her first little Vera Bradley bag. It sure is cute though isn't it? The boys looked very sharp in their outfits. Someone gave us two of the suits, and I bought the other at Willie's Boutique for a little over $4.

We tried frantically to get a good family picture, but to no avail...Makenna would NOT cooperate, for hardly any pictures, so we left her out of some.
We had a fun Easter Egg hunt outside where of course we hid the eggs. Then the boys had a chance to hide the eggs for Mom and Dad to find. That was fun.
But most importantly, and sometimes we get caught up in all of our other celebrating that we forget. Today (and every other day should be) is the day that we set aside to celebrate the death and resurrection of our King, Jesus Christ. If it wasn't for Him, there would be no reason to celebrate Easter at all. If He didn't die on the cross for our sins, then we would have nothing to live for. Thank you, Jesus, for the gift of life that you have given to me.

Hunting and Dyeing

We took the kids to an Easter Egg hunt at Serenity Baptist. It's a very small church that does a community hunt every year (except for last year...still not sure what happened then.) Anyways, the boys and Makenna had a BLAST!! We came home and later dyed our eggs. Everyone got to do their own this year (except Makenna), and boy did they have fun. They dipped and dunked and even put stickers on them. Jakeb kept cracking me up with all the silly faces on his. (Get it...cracking me up??? Ha!) Then the three older boys decided that they should match their egg to their face.

Christmas snapshots

Okay, so I've not only been a bad blogger lately, but I've been a bad picture taker. I didn't take any of the kids opening presents on Christmas morning, and very few of them at all that day. They woke up at 5 so I was out of it most of the day. I'm planning on still getting a picture of all of them by the tree, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.

However, we had a great Christmas. The kids got spoiled, and believe it or not, they still have one more Christmas to have. Their grandparents are coming in to town tomorrow, so maybe I'll take pictures of them opening those presents.

Anyways, here's some snapshots of Christmas day. Christmas dinner, and no...I did not stay in my pajamas all day. I would never do that.

Kaleb hiding out in his room playing with his new toys because he didn't want anyone else to play and he especially didn't want Makenna to come and mess up his people.

Jakeb and Luke playing DON'T WAKE UP HULK! This was the year of games for Christmas. Everyone got at least one game. Luke got like 5.

Blake and his favorite toy....a Mega Rig Space Shuttle by Matchbox. You can build the shuttle a ton of different ways.

And one of my personal favorites....the old people sleeping on the couch....Eric and my Grandma.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was good and relaxing. We spent it in Michigan at Eric's parents house. Before we left though, I had the boys write five things each that they were thankful for and then we put them on leaves, cut them out and put them on our fall tree the basement.
Blake: going to Michigan, our toys, George came over, planets, Jesus died on the cross
Luke: there was no fire in our house, Bible, family, cousins, Jesus died on the cross for our sins
Jakeb: house, church, bones, God, co-op
Kaleb: mommy and daddy, school, brothers and sister, health, birthday

Our trip was fun too. My sister in law straightened my hair. I LOVED it. Check it out! Let's see what else did we do while we were there in Michigan. We played some family games after the kids went to bed. We also watched movies, played the Wii (on loan from a great brother-iin-law), and just had a nice relaxing time. We also took the kids sledding for the first time

and then to warm up after they got back, they were able to get in the jacuzzi for some bath time fun. Kaleb was not too impressed with tub, but Makenna was dying to get in. Check out this picture.

My mother in law and I did some heavy duty shopping on Friday. Fortunately we didn't have to go out early. We simply went out about noon and got everything that we wanted. We did spend about 45 minutes in line at Kohl's though. That was a long line!! It wrapped around the entire store. Sheer Craziness!! But so worth it.

On Sunday we went to see Eric's old pastor who was filling in as an interim pastor about 1 hour away. Afterwards we were introduced to the BEST PIZZA EVER at some podunk small town restaraunt. And that, my friends, pretty much wraps up our trip to Michigan.

the EXTRAVAGANZA

Well, the Extravaganza was a huge hit this year. We had a ton of people. We counted it up and I think there was over 80 people there. Crazy. The food was great. Thanks, Dave, for grilling for us. And the fireworks were spectacular.....what we saw of them. A little over halfway through a cop showed up responding to a call someone had called in. I guess we were being a little too noisy. Poor Eric never got to his Grand Finale, but I'm telling the one that he did get to were AWESOME! The cop said basically that if we were doing them on the fourth, then it would be fine, but since it was the fifth....we couldn't do them. Here's some videos of the fireworks. (I didn't get any great pics of the actual fireworks, but Deb did. And she's sending me some as soon as she gets back from camp later this week.)

Fourth of July Parade

Since the party was cancelled, we were able to go to the Fourth of July Parade in our town. We met up with Barb and her kids. It's a small-town parade, but the kids love all the candy they get!

Cancelled

Our firework party was cancelled yesterday due to the rain, but was rescheduled for today. So, I'll have pictures sometime soon.

Father's Day

The boys loved helping pick out things for their Daddy for Father's Day. They ended up getting him a whole bunch of stuff for Father's Day...flashlights, t-shirt, shorts, game. I made him a small album that the kids wrote in. I thought it would be fun to have the boys tell their Daddy reasons why they loved him.

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.

Mother's Day

Check out my kids on Mother's Day. Cute, huh? Jakeb was cracking me up because he kept trying to blow the petals off the flowers....kinda like dandelions. Kaleb would only give me his goofy grin, and Blake...well...he was not impressed with holding pink flowers even if it was for a good cause. Mother's Day was pretty good here in the Alma world. We went out on Saturday for Skyline and then Eric surprised me and took me out Sunday night too to Cracker Barrel. (Can we say YUMMY?)

All's well in Alma World

Everything is great here in Alma Land. Just a little behind in blogging. Be prepared for the longest blog ever. I was gonna do lots of different post but then decided to do one monster one! We had a wonderful Christmas here in Ohio, and a great Christmas in Michigan with Eric's family. Believe it or nodt, I didn't take a lot of pictures. Seriously, I might have 20 from the whole Christmas time. Oh wait, I did take some pictures of all the cousins together, but that is about it.
On the Saturday before Christmas, the kids opened presents from our friends, Kent and Richi. Blake and Luke spent hours that day looking in the backyard for money with their new metal detector. And Jakeb spent all day playing with his Power Ranger Transformer. What's really funny...is that days later....he still kept coming back to it and playing with it.

We opened Niki's presents on Christmas Eve. I GOT A VERA BRADLEY bag!!!!!! I LOVE IT! They had three gifts each from her which seems like a lot and it is, but Amazon.com was having a huge sale and she got the stuff for like 50% to 75% off. It was totally AWESOME! The kids thought that was Christmas all in itself. I videoed the whole thing, but it's too long to post. Later on Christmas Eve night we read the Christmas story and opened one more present. I surprised Eric with a watch that he wanted. You should have seen his face! He was so not expecting it.

Christmas morning the kids woke up at about 7:00-7:30....seriously not early enough......and we opened lots and lots of presents. I have before and after pictures. Eric took the boys shopping one day for me, and I finally got to open their presents. They did such a great job picking stuff out for me. Blake got me plates because "he kept breaking the other ones." Luke got me some sticker for scrapbooking. Fun..fun.. Jakeb bought me a coffee mug; and Kaleb bought me a bag.....(that's what he told me a couple days before Christmas) ....a bag of COFFEE!!! Yum!!!! I think the boys all loved their presents too. They pretty much got what they wanted. Did I tell everyone that I decided to play a mean trick on them??? I kept telling them that I was going to buy them one girl present each. And I did.....However, I bought Makenna some boys presents, so obviously....Santa just got a little confused. Poor Blake was so upset at first that he was about to stomp on the My little ponies!!! (I know...I'm so mean!) Besides the girl toys, they loved all of their toys, but too bad they only had a day to enjoy presents before we left for Michigan. Oh yeah, it was so funny. Eric had opened all of his presents. He received an xbox bag to put his xbox stuff in. Poor guy didn't realize that inside the bag was a GAME that he had been wanting. I got a great deal on it..(thanks again, amazon.com). Anyways, you have to realize that he opened it in the morning. Later he was telling me how this guy he knew was playing Call of Duty 4 online. (Did I mention that he was sorta expecting the gift...so that when he didn't get it....well....there was slight disappointment.) I asked him throughout the day if he wanted to check out his stuff, but he still didn't catch on. That evening as I was cleaning up. I asked him one more time........if he wanted to take his stuff downstairs or look at it all again. He responded..."Should I check it out again?" I simply smiled. But seriously, you should have seen the guy jump out of his seat when he realized that there MUST be something else in his bag! He was like a kid opening his most beloved gift! Okay, he was actually completely dazed at first because he couldn't believe I had tricked him. I just figured if he didn't find it today, he would have found it eventually, right???

On Wednesday, we had a great trip to Michigan, and arrived about 7:00 that evening. The kids were thrilled to see their Grandma Alma and T-Rex and vice versa. Thursday morning, we had another Christmas and the boys got spoiled again. (as did Eric and I....he got an office chair...I got all the seasons on I Love Lucy on DVD....seriously, a dream come true) The boys spend the next couple of days playing with their toys and their Aunt Jen's Gameboys. Eric's parents had their 39th wedding anniversary while we were there, so we took them out to Applebee's. And on Saturday, we had Christmas again with Eric's grandparents. By the time we got home we were Christmased out! Actually, we were just gifted out. I don't think you could ever be to Christmased out. We arrived home late on Saturday night, and made it to church bright and early the next morning. George came over and surprised the kids with gift card to Walmart. They were so excited about those. We had a special service on Sunday night for the New Year's which was very enjoyable! And...I found out that another one of my friends is pregnant. Congrats, Jenny! Yay!
New Year's Eve......Some friends and I went to Toot's and then to lunch and then off to Walmart to spend the gift cards. Blake and Jakeb went in together and got some Star Wars guys. Luke got some more animals for his Imaginext jungle collections, and Kaleb got a new train for the Geotrax. Makenna decided that she wanted to buy a new diaper bag (with a little coaxing from Mommy). It's pretty cute, huh? I also got her a new car seat too. I think Eric put his new office chair together....it was sooo desperately needed. Look at his old chair..... and then his new one!!! Seriously, it's been broken for years. I'm so NOT kidding. It's just been getting worse and worse. It's been like this for about 6 months. And yet, he still sat in it playing his beloved X-box!
That night Eric had to break out a stash of fireworks which only 2 of the 5 kids saw because the others were tuckered out! Midnight is pretty late for little guys! His show was a hit. It made me slightly excited for the 4th of July again...(shhh...don't tell him I said that!) And New Years Day??? Well, we just lounged around the house. Okay, not the whole day because we did take down the Christmas tree so that Eric could put the train together with all the extra pieces. Even he was overwhelmed by the quantity that he bought for Christmas. I swear that he likes the train more than the boys do.!) And that catches everyone up to the Alma life. Nothing too exciting. The boys started school today, and I'm catching up on laundry! Fun, Fun!