May 2018

1- Dada took all the big kids out to lunch during April. The first was Pella's day!

2 - Pella earned her Awana pin!

3 - Tuff's lunch date with Dada.

4 - Berg and Pella both used special helper rockets to buy rewards from the Special Helper Rocket Store!

6 - Tague Family Dinner while Poppie and Nonnie were in Italy.

9 - One of our Awana Leader Dinners

10 - 12 - Kivi's Mission to hatch a goose egg. And Jasper found her a lost duckling to raise. Sadly both endeavors failed days later.

 

12 - Down and Dirty Mud Run with the Adams and Kinneys! We practiced for this by running a mile every morning! I only fell once, while wearing Flint in a front pack, right in front of everyone turning into the elementary school!

13 - Mother's Day & our 18th Anniversary (But we celebrated that in England!)

14 - 15 - Berg's 8th Birthday at Great Wolf Lodge!

Berg we are blessed to have you as our son! You are loving and kind and helpful. You say tons of verses in Awana, love to play games, both video and board and usually win! You are a great reader and are zooming in math. You still love to give things away and share. You moved into the room downstairs with your big brothers on the top bunk. We are excited to see how you grow, Berg, in your kindness, love of others and God's word. 

20 - Mystery Boat of Mysteries (Berg's the lookout.)

25 - Nonnie and Poppie give basket of presents after they get back from Italy.

25- June 1 - Dada goes to Lodge Boy Reunion in Denver and then to a work conference in Orlando.

30 - My Awana Youth Leaders - our new program this year for Middle and High schoolers serving in Awana!

31 - Italian Sodas!

January in One Post!

We started out New Year's at a rockin' game party on New Year's Eve at the Schock's house hosted by the Edgren's. It was so good, that even though I don't have any pictures, I still remember it! This was the first time that the kids (all of them) got to stay up for New Year's and they loved it! They had so much fun, playing games, going on a scavenger hunt that Josh set up for them and running around with all their friends. Peter and I loved it too!

1-2: I finally got my ring chopped off my finger! My knuckles had swollen since I was pregnant with Eben and hadn't been able to take off my ring for 11 years, but with this pregnancy, my fingers also got fat and it was starting to hurt!

1-3: Tuff meets Great Grandma Lee, and two of Grandpa's sisters, Aunt Roberta and Aunt Valerie.

1-9: Berg gets his long hair shaved off.

1-10: The kids love putting on shows, this one stars the girls doing an acrobatic/ballet routine using the rings and hammock. Eben worked their lights and music.

1-13: Bigs and Littles. Biggest Brother with Littlest Brother and Biggest Sister with Littlest Sister

1-16: Extracurricular Activities -  The Girls: Reading books and playing with the baby. The Boys: Anything involving a computer.

 1-18: Kivi used her Special Helper Rockets and took Mama ice skating at Sprinker. 

She did amazing but we had to leave a little early because Kivi's knees were the size and color of an eggplant. Ice is hard.

1-19: Grandma and Grandpa took Opal out for an early, special birthday manicure and pedicure.

 1-20: Our friends, the Holmes, are letting us borrow their Story of the World curriculum, so that we can still try to homeschool while figuring out our new schedule which now includes 6 baby feedings a day. It is so helpful. It's a minimized version of what we did while learning about different countries, but goes in order historically, is shorter and less involved. We listen to a storyteller on CD, learn the maps, do some of the fun projects they suggest in the book, review some questions and take a short test on each chapter. Berg especially loves the maps and asks everyday if we get to do them. This week we learned about the Celts so we painted our faces blue, made double-edged battle axes and of course, had a battle.  

1-23: The kids take their own time lapse video, so they are actually posing for that, but I had my camera and took advantage of the opportunity. All seven of them rarely want to take a picture at the same time, and they did it on their own!

This is what they would do in between each coming together to pose shot. I love Berg and Pella in the background with their hats over their eyes.

1-28: Pella Became a Christian!! Pella decided she wanted to ask Jesus into her heart, so that night, she prayed with Dada for Jesus to "agive" her sins and live with her "foreva". Sooooo precious! Such a big decision for a big three year old girl. We were all so excited to get to share that moment with her!

 1-29: Bubble Time with Tuffy. Dada had a fun bath time with the little man and put bubble bath in the jet tub with makes great bubbles. Tuff didn't know how to smile yet at this point, but if he did I'm sure he'd be smiling. He was so calm and loves the water. We were laughing so hard naming all of his different bubble hairstyles.

Tuff Time

Tuffy has had more newborn pictures taken than any of the kids. So the idea that you take less pictures of the younger kids is not true. Here he is with Dada the day after he was born, hanging out and being cute.

Grandma and Grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins came to meet the new little man!

Dodie helped me try to take a fall picture on the 23rd of Tuff in a drawer with pumpkins next to the fireplace, but he didn't cooperate very well.

Opal cashed in her Special Helper Rockets to go out to ice cream with Mama and Dada and Tuffy and bought him a new outfit. She also bought Kivi a teapot and plate. What a sweet sister!

More cutie pics of our new man on the 24th:

Here's the first one we got of all the brothers and sisters together:

He looks so tiny!

Opal's Special Helper Rocket Reward

Opal cashed in her 20 Special Helper Rockets to go on a pedicure and lunch at Red Robin date with Dada on February 16th!

Let the New Year begin!

The day after we got back from Leavenworth, we let the kids eat their beloved gingerbread Bethlehem. It was the longest activity ever. They didn't just eat it, they demolished them with butter knives and then reconstructed one huge house. Actually, they said it was a church, with stables for animals and they included the elements of Passover for some reason. 

Creative, dangerous boy with cute puckery lips yielding a demolition weapon.

January 4th - Our sweet hearted Jasper finally got to use the 40 Special Helper 

Rockets he had been earning for a loonnnngggg time to take the family to Charlie's Safari! This has never been done before in Special Helper Rocket history. Usually a child earns 20 and can go somewhere alone with just Mama or Dada all to themselves. Jasper wanted to be able to take all his brothers and sisters somewhere special, so we told him if he could earn 40 he could take the whole family. He's been working so hard to help out around the house without complaining and earn more rockets so he could pay everyone's way. His brothers and sisters were so thankful that he included them in his reward!

Sharing with other makes his day. I think he was so happy to get to spend this day with them and enjoyed it so much more knowing he was giving this gift to them.

Our new 2013 plan is to get doughnuts on Sundays as a special treat for the kids and me (I love sugar!) so we can look forward to the Lord's day, have fun as a family, and let others eat the cookies that are offered at our church. It's not a healthy goal, but it's a fun one. We finally got to try out this plan on the 6th. I love this picture of Peter in Opal's bow at Krispy Kreme and Opal with her finger in her nose in the background!

 Since I'm on funny pictures of Dada, I like this one too of Peter figuring out how to take video on the iPad. Plus it shows how much we all love this years Christmas jammies. They are the most worn jammies to date! We'll have to do the converting blankets to jammies plan again next year!

On January 13th, we were able to attend Grandma Lee's 95th birthday party in Federal Way and meet up with lots of people from Peter's side of the family. The kids even met a lot of cousins they didn't know they had.