New Life

I'm a wee bit late with spring happenings, but no better time than the present.  We were late in ordering our chicks, and we purposely bred Moira's goat late so as not to have a newborn kid coming in February.  So the usual spring happenings, just so happened closer to summer.  Can you believe that tomorrow is the first day of summer?!?!  I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around it!

This past week was busy with Moira and Flannery volunteering at Runner's Camp during the morning, then volunteering for VBS in the evening.  The younger ones, all but Merida, partook of VBS. They had a lot of fun, and fit a ton of stuff into one week!  We went to the 'grand finale' tonight, to see the kids perform their songs that they have been working on all week.  Aubrey's age was up first.  He and a few others just kind of sat there...doing nothing.  The kids were taught hand movements along with the music, and the poor guy just sat there!  Ha, ha.  Jonah was next in line (as far as our kiddos go) and he did a great job.  He was very outgoing about the hand movements, and looked like he was having a lot of fun.  Last up was Jed. I was so proud of him.  He was singing the songs to me while running errands today, so I know that he knew the words.  I saw him singing on stage, and really putting effort into the hand movements.  There was a leader up front doing the hand movements to help the kids out, and you could see when Jed knew the movement by heart, and when he didn't.  It takes a bit for him to process what he sees/hears, and put it into action. But he did a great job, and he really had a great time!

It was weird to just have one little one with me for almost 4 hours each evening all week.  Just the baby and me!  Merida and I would play for a bit, then go out to feed the animals.  I would give her a bath, and then it would be bed time.  It was QUIET in my house.  QUIET.  Odd, very, very odd.

Not much else got accomplished, well, except trying to keep our one cat from eating our chicks.  Sigh.  He got one, thankfully I happened to go out at that moment to check on them.  Since it is so hot here we need to check on all the animals often, but the chicks more so, to make sure they have water at all times, and that no one is over heating.  I walk out and hear a chick chirping in the front yard.  The chicks would find ways to get out of the barn, but they wouldn't go more than 2 or 3 feet from the barn.  I thought, "How strange....I wonder what a chick is doing out so far from the barn."  Um, yeah...I look down from the stairs to see said chick in the mouth of our cat!  I saved her, we had to keep her in the house for two days, but she is doing well and back with her flock.  We patched up all the holes we could see, but they were still managing to get out.  Then we found that even though they are only a couple of weeks old (3 weeks maybe), some were able to manage flying over the divider between the goat area of the barn, where we are keeping them, and the old nesting area.  So we had to put up some fencing to keep them in.  So far so good.  I haven't seen any chicks out since we've put the fencing up.

Here are some pictures of the new-ish things around the homestead:

 Kittens. Five of them.  One we are keeping.  You know, you can never have too many cats!  Cough, cough.  We really need to get our female cats fixed.  We had three, one disappeared (fox maybe?), leaving two to 'fix'.  The other one almost died on us, and I thought that with her bout of paralysis that maybe she was going to be sterile?  Um, no such luck. She is due to have kittens soon.

 Oh my goodness...cuteness!  They have full tummies, and are hanging out on the cool rocks.  We have flirted with 100+ for a few days down here, so all the animals have been trying to find the cools spots.

Three of our 30+ chicks.  I don't remember how many we got.  They didn't have some of the ones we wanted, but shipped out the ones they did have, leaving us with a credit.  We used that up, and then some, since they had a minimal shipping number.  On top of that they always throw one or two more in each order, due to the unfortunate possibility that one or two don't make it during shipping.  This year, all of them survived.  But I didn't keep track of how many we didn't get in our first batch, but the extra one or two they added in for good measure, plus the number of chicks in the second batch.  It is a bit over 30 if I am not mistaken.  One of these days we'll count them.  They move too quickly to try to count them right now.

Not the best picture, but these are the two bucklings that Moira's goat, Mocha, had.  Mocha has been VERY people shy.  So much so that Moira was going to sell her, and the bucklings and use that money to buy another goat.  We know how hard it can be to milk our 'socialized' goats, and she didn't want milking to be an epic battle each and every day.  Two times a day.  For the next 6 months or so.  Not fun. However, motherhood has treated Mocha well, and she has actually been coming up to us!  She wants to be pet, and loved on. At first Moira thought she was sick! I mean this is a goat that would bolt if she even thought you might be heading her way.  So for now it looks like we will keep her and see how the milking season goes.

 Lots of refilling of water buckets going on around here.  LOTS.  For some reason this picture does not convey the 102* temps and the humidity.  That water bucket almost seemed to be steaming it was so hot out.  Each day the girls or I go out to top off or dump and refill the animals water buckets/bottles.  Cat bowl, dog bowl, two 5 gallon goat buckets, two chick waterers, and 5 rabbit water bottles.  The baby really enjoys helping.  I LOVE how she tries to say the names of the animals. Doggy, cheep-cheep, bun-bun (for bunnies, so, so cute!), kitty, go (for goats).

 Our peach tree actually has peaches on it this year.  Last year it got some baby ones on it, and they all dropped off when they were all but an inch wide.  This year there were a few that dropped, and there were many that we plucked off.  But as you can see, we have quite a few 'brewing'.  I am very excited to see how things pan out!

 This one is getting a bit of it's peach color to it.  A beautiful sight.

 It appears that our plum tree is following in the peach tree's footsteps. This year is the first that it has any fruit on it, but all of it has dropped.  Above you can see how tiny they are.  I am hoping that next year we will see an actual harvest.

This is our pitiful almond tree.  We have some trees that are growing like mad, and others...not so much!

 Our big growers.  In the front left is our plum tree, behind that is our peach, and over to the right is our cherry tree.  We have one apple tree that is growing well, but the others are still really small.

 Our hoops have not seen much action this past week.  With all of the camps, and the heat, they have been sitting here on our fence post....beckoning to us.  We only have one room with AC in it.  I have thought about bringing in a hoop to hoop in the AC, but too many bodies are occupying that room :-)

The boys had a crazy hair day at VBS this week.  I used some green and blue food coloring on their bangs.  It was only supposed to be the tips of their bangs, but it kind of spread.  Thankfully it all washed out by day 2.  They thought it was neat though while it lasted.

Time for bed!  I am hoping for a good nights sleep.  The baby has been getting her molars in.  Teething = No Sleep.  No Sleep = No Fun. And when she seems to be having a break in the pain...we had a massive storm come through waking me up, then Aubrey who came in a few hours later needing itch relief from some bug bites, and then a girl....and so forth and so on!  Goodnight!

Running errands and such

I always hate when I get behind on posting what has been happening around here!  So much can happen is such a short time.  And then there are the times when it seems that absolutely nothing happens for long stretches of time.  Sigh. So it is either too boring to post, or things are too busy to post.

I have a prom post that needs to be written.  But for now I am waiting for a certain daughter to attempt to get the pictures from her prom date's mom.  And, the pictures that I have, I need to ask the parents of the kiddos involved if they are ok with me posting them online.  Soooo, that may take some time.  Until then I shall give you this post of us running some errands.

 Obviously, this was not an errand, but it was something I did before we ran our errands.  The day before was shopping day. I decided that I needed to get serious about 'putting up' some things.  It never seems like there is enough money to do so, but I figured that I would start with something, anything, no matter how small.  So I had grabbed some extra bags of frozen veggies, and as soon as I got home from grocery shopping I cut open the bags and dumped the contents right onto the dehydrator trays.  This Saturday morning, most of the items I was dehydrating were done (the carrots and spinach were not).  I took these out to cool off and be ready to bag up when we returned from our errands.

 Our little gaggle of children, walking into the store.  I was trying to get a picture of Saorise carrying Merida.  The clothing combos and the cowgirl boots were just too awesome.  But, alas, I did not get the shot!  Bummer.

 Merida's shoe had the habit of falling off multiple times this day.  Saoirse was the lucky child who happened to be at hand when that happened.  As such, the cowgirl boot theme really came into play when she had to wrangle said shoeless child to try to put the said shoe back on.

 Success!  At least for the moment.

 Jonah watching the rodeo from the side lines.  Speaking of rodeo, my girls went to one last week.  Unfortunately they had a poor run in with the owner of the rodeo.  Isabella pulled into the staff parking because she realized that she had an item which belonged to her friend and wanted to give it back.  She got out to hand over the item, during which the owner stormed over the the truck the girls were in and started yelling at them for parking on his grass. They were perplexed as all the other cars were parked on the grass!  Oh, well.  We decided that we would be nice and send him some grass seed. We know how hard it is to grow grass.  After 8 years living here we finally have given up on trying to grow grass.  And wouldn't you know?  We have grass (hay really) growing everywhere this year!  Go figure.

 Merida enjoying a snack.  We have all been having a lot of health issues of late.  Merida herself was very, very ill last week with a bladder infection.  The poor thing was sooooo sick.  Anyways, this is our last hurrah before we go off wheat for a while to see if we can't bring our bodies back into health.



 The girls are in possession of my phone waaaaayyyy more than I am.  I use it for when I am on the road.  The girls try to take it every chance they get!  Here Flannery is using it.

 Some carnations that Walmart was handing out to mothers.  How did they know I was a mom?  Huh.  :-)

 The library was next.  I was trying to get a picture of Jonah putting the books in the book drop.  He was too fast for me!  All of the pictures of him are a blur.

 Merida had a blast with these little chairs.  Just the right size.

 More wrangling.

 She was giving Saoirse a run for her money.

 Aubrey checking out the selection of board books.

 After the library we stopped at the park.  Jedidiah is in the habit of annoying his sister.  We are working on him realizing when enough is enough.  He likes to repeat himself, with words or noises, and thinks it's really funny.  No one else does though.  Certainly not the baby.  He was not hurting her, just kept touching her head, which she did not like.

Someone was getting sleepy!

The girls met up with a couple of friends at the park.  These friends live right across the street from the park, so they ran over to see if they were home.  We had brought our hoops and the girls had a lot of fun teaching their friends some hooping tricks.  See, I didn't get permission to put their friends' pictures online so I have to put little circles over their faces.  Can you imagine me doing that with prom pictures?  No, me neither....so we wait. :-)

 Saoirse exhausted.  Probably from all that wrangling :-)

 Aubrey, up high.  I told him NOT to jump.  I took the picture, had to turn quickly around to see if Merida was still where she was supposed to be and heard that 'thud' noise of a child jumping.  Sigh.  Thankfully he did not get hurt like he did last time he jumped from a high spot.

 Merida looking cute.  There was a girl there of about 10 years old who followed Merida everywhere she went.  She took her down the slide, pushed her on the swing, carried her around the park.  Her mom came up to me and said, "She's a babysitter in training."  I told her that her daughter was going to make an awesome babysitter some day.

I did not get the bagging of the dehydrated foods done when I got back like I had wanted to, but I got them done today.  The brown in two of the bags are paper bags.  The paper bags help the carrots and corn from poking their pointy edges through the plastic bag.  It's not a whole lot (for our family size that is), but it's a start....10 pounds of veggies dried and 'put up'.

So those were our errands.  I was exhausted when we got home.  Merida slept for 10 minutes in the van, which she thought was totally sufficient for a nap. Mommy thought otherwise.  Oh, well.  Sleep can wait, right?  It's totally over rated.  At least that is what I keep telling myself.  Speaking of which I need to get some boys off to bed, and catch some zzz's of my own.  Or at least try to.

Bitterness....the solution

I have little time.  I have other posts waiting to be written (birthday, prom, etc.).  I have a ton of spring cleaning that needs doing.  But. BUT.  I happened to read someone's comment on someone else's blog.  It seemed that I should take a peek at this person's blog.  On her side bar (of her old blog I think.  I'm new to it, and there were two different looking blogs, but by the same person.) there were some links to posts she had written and other resources.  My eyes fell upon an article on bitterness.

Sigh.  I know I 'suffer' from it.  I've read and heard sermons on it before.  Each time I do not seem to get any closer to being free of it.  I know it damages my family.  I know it damages my relationship with God.  And yet, I can not seem to get rid of it.  There have definitely been times where it wasn't as pervasive.  I almost didn't click on the link.  Almost.  But, just like in my quest for health, thinking there might be that "one" thing out there that will help us, I did click.  I did.  And I am grateful that I did.

I don't think that I've heard of bitterness explained in this way before.  Though maybe I have and the truth just didn't sink in.  Either way, I finally 'see' it.  I finally see why I have times where the bitterness wasn't choking me.  I finally know what I have to do.  Don't get me wrong, I always knew I had to confess it, but this article just really, really explained it all in a way that helped me to see where I was going wrong.  I loved the idea of the cup of sweet water.  I assure you that I am NOT filled with sweet water.  Definitely, definitely not filled with sweet water.

So I want to pass this article along, hoping that it too can free someone else of their bitterness.  (To be clear, I just read the article minutes ago, so I will be working on this issue, I am not 'free' yet, but on my way!)

How to be Free of Bitterness

How neat!!!

Just had to share this little tid bit.  It was a wee small spark of cuteness that made me smile...which is saying something!  I will spare everyone the details, but things have been rather difficult here lately.  AND, it has nothing to do with my clean up and get back on board efforts.  Imagine that.

Anyways, Moira had mentioned a week or more ago about a movie having "a Saoirse" in it.  I vaguely remember her telling me that, so when Isabella mentioned it today (while looking for a movie to watch), I asked to see the trailer.  It is an animated movie, with the main character that has the name, Saoirse!  So, if you all want to hear how her name is said, you can watch the trailer below.  She's the 'glowing' baby :-)

I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth

Well, it feels like I have, but apparently I'm still here :-)  Things have been just a wee bit crazy lately.  I've been trying to get my house back in order, back to what we had right before Merida was born.  But we've had one 'wrench' or another thrown in that is making the process take way too long for my sanity's sake!

We have made progress, just not quickly enough.  We are in serious need of some order.  I have a bit of a plan in my head for how to get there, and I am hoping that in the next couple of weeks we meet our goal.  We have wiped everything off the calendar, save a couple of events that have been planned months ago (the Chivalry Ball for Flannery, a birthday party for Saoirse, and the prom for Isabella and Moira...all taking place in the next 14 days!).  My plan, of sorts, is as follows:

1. Quickly get the house 'tidy'.
2. Establish a very simple schedule of eating times and chores.
3. Work on deep cleaning/organizing.
4. Hammer out the next semester of school.  I need to sit down and figure out where everyone is in their lessons to take stock of what needs to be done next.

The above steps were what got us up and running before I had Merida.  It was a great feeling to get the important things done each day, with plenty of free time as well.  I am praying that we have no other interruptions to this process.  For example, it would be really wonderful if a late teething baby could have a much easier time of popping teeth out!  Poor thing.  She was miserable tonight. She is 15 months old and has 3 teeth.  She has a fourth tooth, that just broke through last week, and I am guessing it's neighbor wants to join the party.  This makes for a very fussy, needy baby.  A clingy baby = less work accomplished for mommy.

We've had a slew of new baby animals here.  Lots of baby bunnies!  And one of our cats had kittens yesterday!  And it appears that Moira's goat may indeed be pregnant.  Her tummy is *finally* getting suspiciously larger.  She should be due at the end of this month.  Moira is hoping she doesn't go into labor on prom night.  This will be her first kidding, and I always get nervous with a new mama.  You never know how well she will handle the experience and how good of a mother she will be.  Some mamas will shun their babies, making bottle feeding necessary. That is not fun.

Just a little catch up.  I don't have the energy to upload any pictures right now.  Not that I have a lot of them.  I haven't brought out my camera much in the past few weeks.  Hoping I can change that as well, as it is something I really enjoy doing.

A new hobby for all!

"All" of us that is.  Well, not for Jeremiah and Merida, but the rest of us have taken up a new hobby.  Months ago we came across some videos of 'hooping'.  When I first heard of 'hooping' I didn't know what the person was referring to.  Was it basketball?  When I found out it was hula hooping I thought perhaps she was mistaken.  I mean, what adult hula hoops?  Ha, ha.  Well,  come to find out hula hooping has been taken to a new level.

For Moira's birthday she chose to buy some special supplies to make her own hoop. There was a lot left over, so the rest of us girls got to make a hoop as well.  We spent an evening helping each other tape up our hoops.  It was a lot of fun. It wasn't as easy as we thought it would be, trying to get the tape to go around the hoop evenly.  Since our hoops have been done, we have taken to practicing.  Some of us, ahem...me, need lots of practice :-)

One thing we did not expect was for the boys to want to join in.  Little boys, big hoops, not possible, right?  Wrong!  Jonah took to hooping like a fish does to water.  Unreal.  Jedidiah on the other hand....well, he had some practice ahead of him if he was going to get that  hoop to stay up.

Although there may be people who think that boys shouldn't be hula hooping, I will say that it has given my boys a physical outlet while stuck indoors, *and* I have been very impressed that it has given Jedidiah something to work on.  He's not our most coordinated child to say the least.  Hooping is giving him something to work on those skills in a fun way.  Though admittedly he can get exasperated quickly.  But when he finally gets a move down he is so excited and wants *everyone* to see him in action!

Of course there are squabbles.  I mean, 7 people hooping inside of a house.  Two people can be in the family room, at least 2 boys, and only 1 can be in the living room at any one time.  Little boys are not as patient, so there have been hoops in the face and such.  Thankfully we are looking at some nice weather rolling in around here for the next few days.  Then they can hoop outside.

I leave you with some pictures of Jed hooping, and hopefully if I can muster it an embedded video. This particular video gets us really inspired to work hard.  You can find many more on youtube!

 Swinging the hoop around his arm.  For most kids, this is easy-peasy.  For Jed it is definitely work.

 Above and below are pictures of a move that Jed is attempting to learn.  He has most of it mastered, and is very pleased with himself to the level he has attained.

 It took Jed a few days to master gooping around the waist.  He learned on a much bigger hoop. The other day we got these smaller hoops and it took him a few hours to figure it out, but he got it!

 A proud boy!

The taping on my hoop.  Our hoops are made of black PVC piping.  I wound the silver reflective tape one way and the 'gripper' tape in the opposite direction.  The gripper tape is supposed to help keep the hoop 'up'.  Though, in my case that doesn't seem to be the case :-)  Ha, ha!

Our inspirational video we turn to:

Enjoy!

Girls Night Out

We attempt to get some more concentrated time with our kiddos.  Please read....try.  Jeremiah will attempt to have one on one time with each child.  I can never really have one on one, since I usually have a baby, or when I don't *everyone* wants to be the ONE child to go with me.  Recently we had a couple of "girls night out" times.  Fun times!

The baby was put to bed (yes, she is a girl, but a wee one that needs sleep more than ice cream), and the rest of us got ready to go out.  Our destination?  The local ice cream 'stand'....Sonic.  Ironically, all winter long we have had above normal temps.  This week?  Freezing cold.  It's freezing cold out and my girls want to go get some ice cream.  Of course.  Makes perfect sense.  It didn't help we had limited time and limited funds, so ice cream it was.

There is always a lot of silliness during this time.  As it should be.  I have plenty of time to have deep conversations with my girls.  This time is for FUN.  Not only did we have fun, but I think some unsuspecting patrons had fun watching us have fun :-)  Actually, I am pretty sure they just thought we were nuts.  In case you do not have a Sonic in your neck of the woods, it is a spin on an old classic.  You pull up into a parking space with it's own order screen.  Place your order and your order is brought out by a 'waiter/ess' on roller skates.  They have a few outside tables that you can eat at instead.  We choose a bit of both worlds.  We ordered our food at the outside table area, had a lot of fun being silly, and when our food came we ran back to the warm truck.

Although I took quite a few pictures. they were mostly of me trying to capture the girls in mid air.  It was night time, and let's just say 99% of my pictures were all blurry.  Oh well.  You will at least get the idea of the craziness.  And, no, I never left the ground :-)  Only my girls did.

On top of  doing lots of jumping off of outside benches, we also had a lot of fun talking about all of the ways to keep safe.  Safe from what?  Vampires of course.  Yes, vampires.  One of the girls' friends has made the connection that in all of the scary movies she has watched that the one thing that no one has ever done (in an attempt to stay safe) was to make dinosaur noises to ward off any evil.  Brilliant!  A round of dino noises ensued.  Especially when we arrived home...in the dark...surrounded by woods (where all bad, scary things live of course).  There was of course the serious talk of what you shouldn't do, you know, like walk outside into the dark, into the woods to see 'what that sound' was.  Or, leaving the lights off when you investigate a strange noise.  Which herb is for killing vampires.  Practical things.

And then there was the singing.  This is the one time I really 'allow' the music to blast.  I can't stand music playing at home.  It's just more *noise* in my day.  It's not that I don't like music, I just can't stand another layer of noise.  But for girls night out, music is a must.  So lots of silly sing alongs, and being dramatic.

Flannery wanted to extend our time by roaming around a store, but we were all cold, and I was not up for walking around a store.  Maybe next time.

 Before we left three of the girls decided they needed a new coat of nail polish before heading out.  They wanted to paint my nails, but I had to drive, and time was a ticking before the baby might wake, so I declined.

 Isabella had been at horses all day, but drove over to meet up with us at our destination.  Everyone was in a chipper mood.

It didn't take long for the silliness to start.  Here we are ordering our food. Ice cream, in freezing weather.  Ok, "freezing" Southern weather. And for my Northern readers it is supposed to be a high of 16* in two more days.  We might freeze to death over here.  Pray for us :-P

 One of one hundred attempts to get a shot of jumping in mid air.  I have lots and lots of failures.  Thankfully for me, all of my failures are just as funny!

 Saoirse?  What in the world are you doing?  That's the great thing about being silly, it really doesn't matter.  I assure you that the other customers (there were 3 other cars) never saw this coming!  Who needs TV when real life is this good?

After this jump Isabella kind of tripped and came flying my way.  She was fine, but it was pretty funny.  And Flannery takes the award of highest jump. That girl can fly....er, jump.

There you have it, girls night out.  Now that I am thinking about it my husband might not ever let us leave as a group again :-)  Ha, ha.  No worries, the boys had a boys night out a few days later. Though something tells me it was more refined.  But, there was talk of the things they would do together when they got older.  It had to do with knives, guns and such.  Now that I think about it, I might have to make sure they don't go out as a group :-)

End Justifies the Means....Food Storage

It's been a long while since I have done something to add to our food storage.  We had a few bad months last year that resulted in using up a lot of our food preps.  This year I plan on adding to it, one way or another.  There are couple of items we have quite a bit of, wheat and beans.  But we are sorely lacking in other supplies, like veggies and fruits.  Trying to put up fruit around here is like one big mystery theatrics.  Who dun it?  Eat the dried fruit that is.  Dried fruit is some sort of childrens' idea of gourmet.  So this time around I put our dehydrator in our bathroom, where no one usually sets foot into.  And I did it!  I have two wee bags of dried fruit.  But it is kind of silly to think that all of this got pulled out....

....for this!  Hey, I have to start somewhere.  So to anyone out there who struggles with not knowing where to start with food storage, or anyone who worries that their one bag or one can of food isn't going to get them anywhere, take heart.  Bit by bit, bag by bag....your food storage *will* grow.  Slowly maybe, but something will be better than nothing!  In our case, job loss and a hard economy, were more practical applications for the need of food storage, then say....zombies!

Valentines Day

I know Valentines Day was a few days ago, but I wanted to put up the pictures here for memory sake.  There was a homeschool party through our homeschool group that we belong to.  This one was for K-5th grade.  I was told that the preschoolers (AKA Aubrey) could take part as well.  My oldest three girls volunteered to be in charge of the active game station.  So everyone took part in some way.  I think this is the first time I had the boys take part in a homeschool activity aimed at their ages.  They  had a blast!!!  Well, except Jedidiah.  He had a lot of fun at first, but was totally bummed when he didn't get "all the candy" he thought he was going to get.  I told him that the candy would be in his valentine box at the end of the party, but he just pouted.  So he sat on a chair for the second hour of the party.  Silly boy.  He didn't want to do any of the activities after he realized he wasn't going to get candy for doing them.  I think we have some issues to work on!!

Anyways, besides mister pouty face, everyone else had fun.

The first station the boys attended was the cupcake decorating table.  Here you can see Aubrey eyeing all of the possible cupcake topping options.

As you can see, there were quite a few options.  The boys had sooo much fun decorating their cupcakes.  All of my boys love to help with cooking.  So this was a big hit.  They have really wanted to help decorate the past couple of birthday cakes, but their sisters kind of took over, much to their dismay.  So they were thrilled to be in complete control over these creations.

Jonah is our biggest chef around the house.  He was quite serious about this cupcake decorating business.

Even when there were mishaps, no worries, as they could be eaten :-)

Jedidiah was trying to get all of the different toppings on his cupcake.  At one point I had to stop him as I was afraid there might not be any left for the other kids!

Aubrey showing off his yummy creation.

Jedidiah's cupcake.

Jonah's creation.

Saoirse was the oldest to be able to take part in the activities.  She pretty much went to each station on her own, being a big girl and all!

Saoirse's cupcake from the back.

There was a craft table to decorate paper hearts.  The boys have a friend, Caleb, that they wanted to make valentines for.

Some of the moms were a wee bit worried about the use of permanent markers at the craft table. They might have to rethink that one next year.  Aubrey spent quite a bit of time decorating his.  I was surprised how long they sat working on their hearts.

Jonah's finished heart.

Merida was thrilled when I let her down to walk in the hallway.

Look at me go!

She is our petite one.  I have noticed that she is on the 'thin' side.  She doesn't have the chubby fat rolls that most of my kids did.  So weighed her the other day and she is only 18.6 pounds.  So far all of my other kiddos (remember, Jed is a totally different story!) were 19 and a half pounds at a year old.  So she's only about one and a half pounds lighter, but I can tell the difference.

Are you still taking pictures of me?  Yes, you cutie pie, you.

Jonah being a good big brother walking along with her.  He really does look out for her.

The valentine boxes set up on the tables.  All the kids got 20 valentines each.  I never got a picture of the boys opening theirs up, but suffice it to say, they had a blast!  They totally loved it.  Even Jed :-)

Flannery and Merida spent some time together at the end.  I have pictures of the older three girls at the game station, but I would have to blur out a bunch of other kids faces, and I'm not up for that right now.  I had at least 4 other moms tell me what a wonderful job they did with the games.  As a matter of fact the lady in charge asked the girls if they could add more open spaces to their station since it was such a popular station!  The girls told me that the moms would come to get their children and the kids would NOT leave.  They didn't want to go to the other stations because they were having so much fun.  Since all of the other stations were sit down activities, the kids were able to get their wiggles out at their station.