Passing the Time

With the start of the school year, we started the kids back to their activities.

Joey has taekwondo 4 times a week, Jon starts swimming lessons this weekend, and Arabella and Lily started dancing. I am teaching the boys piano lessons since I have not been able to find a teacher that does not want to charge an arm and a leg. 

 When there is time to kill while Joey is in class, we head to the nearby park.

Lily had a grand time collecting horse apples. I have been told they hold some bug repelling properties.  

 

 Samantha had her first ride down a slide (on Arabella's lap).

These kinds of playground equipment make me happy and nostalgic. The new playgrounds may be bright and colorful but we sure had fun playing on all metal equipment like this above. 

Labor Day Weekend

We had an amazingly productive Labor Day weekend.

It felt soooo good to get so many things done!

Peter was amazing and did a bunch of things on his to do list!

 He helped Joey make this shelf to pass off a requirement for scouts. The shelf is made from the boards Joey broke for his 2nd degree black belt.  The book ends are made from the boards he broke when he earned his 1st degree black belt. 

 He installed a new light fixture in the upstairs bathroom which also involved patching some holes in the wall from the previous fixture. 

 Lily and I supervised as he pruned one of the trees in our front yard. 

He also finished installing new outdoor light fixtures by the front door. You can just see one of them in the above picture. 

Joey and Peter also mowed our lawn as well as our friends' lawn -they were out of town. 

 This project started before Samantha was born.

This is the accent wall in her room. I hope to add "I am a Child of God" to the inside of the big frame and maybe a few other accents here and there. I will also be putting actual pictures of her in the 3 smallest frames. 

By Saturday night, Joey was not feeling well and was running a fever of 102.8 which then spiked to 105.6 on Sunday. Oh that kid does not seem to understand that he does not need to have raging fevers for us to believe he is sick. I called in a favor at work and they called in a prescription because he had the nastiest tonsils and all of the symptoms he usually gets when he has strep throat. He started the medicine on Sunday but was still sick on Tuesday morning and could not go to school. I took him in to the pediatrician and she put him on a new antibiotic. He made it to school on Wednesday but did not show a big difference until that afternoon. I hope he is the only one. You know Joey is sick when he does not spend some part of his day jumping. But, you also know he is doing better when he heads for the trampoline for some good jumping.  

Lunchtime with Dad

This would be one more perk of the older kids being back in school:

the occasional lunch date with Dad.

Peter and I started doing lunch with one another back before Lily was born. We were so crazy busy with work, church and life that we rarely went on a date or even had time to watch a show together at night. So, we started to do lunch. Even if you have one or two kids along for the date it is better than all 5 and good for your marriage. 

Oh I love that man!

The 3 of Us

Me and these 2 little ladies are getting used to it just being 

the 3 of us during the day.

 Somedays, like the ones after I have worked all night, I let Lily stay in her pjs almost all day.

 And a few times we have met dad at this splash park for lunch. He watches the girls while I go to a gym that I bought a groupon for. It is a boot camp thing and each workout is 30 minutes long and it is close to his work. It has worked out so far. 

I hope we are able to make some great memories together, just the 3 of us. 

Camping At Murrell Park

We fit in one last camping trip before summer was over.

 I love how if my kids had the room they would sleep all over the place.

We invited the Barrett's, Miller's, Ostermiller's, and Thompson's.  It was a great time for all. 

That night we went to dinner with some friends to celebrate their birthdays. I love to watch a tepanyaki show! We decided as friends that we needed to do this more often- here is to hoping  it actually happens. 

School Year 2014-2015

The most exciting part of this school year is that Arabella is starting Kindergarten!

 Arabella and Ms. Taylor

 Joseph and Mrs. Brooks

Jon and Ms. Rucker

Here they are on the first day of school! I love these kids so much and I know they will make the most of this year and learn so many things. 

Austin- the end

We headed home on Wednesday morning so we could be home for Arabella's first day of ballet.

 This was Lily after we had swam at the pool on Tuesday and she slipped in the shower scraping her cheek on the shampoo bottle. 

 Peter and I have recently observed that travelling with large families is tricky. There are not very many hotels that have rooms that connect or that have 2 beds and a pull out (or maybe just in Austin and Washington DC where we have been trying to find them). Large families are becoming a thing of the past. I watch a fair amount of HGTV and have noticed lately that many of the young couples that are purchasing homes talk about having room for their dogs or a bedroom to use as a dressing room. But, there are not very many that talk about the desire to have room for a family or future kids. One even said that they had been married for a few years and had not intention of having children for at least 5 years. There is nothing wrong with having pets or waiting to have children but it does make me sad that more men and women do not possess "parent hearts". They are seeking the things the world offers and are not as concerned with what our eternal destiny is and that is to have a family. 

 Anyway, we finally settled on a hotel that was closer to Peter's job site and had 2 full beds. So, the 3 middle kids slept on one bed, we put Joseph on Peter's camping cot and Lily was in her box again (you can see it in the bottom R hand corner).

And we will end on this sweet note! Oh and that we did not make a single stop on the way home- it was wonderful!