Berg's Star Party!

We celebrated our Squishy turning 6! He wanted a Star Party. Not Star Wars or Rock Star - Star. So that's what we did! He made his own Berg "star" shirt for his party.

Everyone made a ninja star when they got there and then the adult had to try to get their kids to catch it. The Schocks caught Eben's star.

All of Bergie's birthday friends. After the group picture we all shared a pizza dinner with a side of broccoli of course.

We had a shooting star gallery and had kid and adult rounds to see who could shoot the star with nerf guns.  Berg won! And we had a gold star hunt. We hid stars all over and the kids had to try to find the 6 gold stars.

Berg also wanted a piñata, which we rarely do at parties. Carl won!

Berg chose apple and berry pie a la mode instead of cake this year. Good choice, Berg! Everyone loves pie.

Then Berg Doog opened his presents and thanked everyone with a big hug.

Our Berg.

Berg, our big, getting less squishy, still super cuddly, six year-old man. We love you so much! You bring us so much joy! You are the most sharing, giving, helpful, kind, loving soul. You love broccoli, milk, pizza and cobbler. You decided you were too old for your nay-nay. You love to give all your toys away to friends or siblings.  You can be shy and sometimes chose not to participate in things you're not sure of. You hate water. You have the greatest, thick hair and love it when I scratch your head. You love, love math and zoomed through your Kindergarten math book and into first grade. You're amazing at reading. You love Jesus. You want to be a missionary in Florida and not have any kids. We think whatever you do, you will be amazing because you do it for God's glory and you love Him! You will be very blessed, Berg. Shine bright for Jesus, Berg. You are His light in this dark world!

Seaside 2016 - Welcome Summer Trip

April 29 - May 2 - Seaside beginning of summer trip!

The first thing we did of course was our Seaside Goodwill trip which we do every time, where each kid gets $5 to spend on a toy of their choice. Then we tried something new! We borrowed our friend's clam guns for this trip and went clamming! I loved it! It was like treasure hunting in the sand. We went down to Gearhart because we heard that there are a lot of clams there.  The kids really enjoyed it too. Well, except for Berg and Tuff. They stayed in the bike trailer the whole time sniffing nay-nay and playing with the Goodwill dino. Coal liked it. He stayed in my jacket.

When we got home Kivi, Dada and Poppie prepared all the clams and made some delicious clam chowder! The girls watched a movie on the ipad with little baby Coal.

Our trip was full of lots of bike rides, 

digging in the sand, s'mores, and of course...

 our daily ice cream trip to the Candy Man's!

Our family on the beach!

Rest of March-April

Sphero finally came into our life. The kids only had to be perfect for 5 weeks in order to buy it with their own money!

Tuffy reads to Coal.

Berg and Pella read to Coal.

 April Fools! Mama pulls a great upside down water cups prank on all the kids!

April kayaking on Lake Steilacoom.

April 3 bread making with the Craigs.

April 5 seed planting day.

We now have five boys!?! That's a lot of boys watching one iPad.

Baby Coal

I took a bunch of pictures of Coal on March 29th to make a baby announcement, which I never printed and sent out. But I did make him one! These are my favorites.

Here's the announcement of our little baby #8:

Resurrection Sunday 2016

First we dress up in our Easter Sunday matching clothes and take pictures by the lake. Good think we already had these clothes from Dodie's wedding! Nonnie made a cute little tie for Coal to match. All the kids used to fit in this basket at one point, now the big five had to stand behind it!

Coal's Easter basket picture for his first Resurrection Sunday! Every baby has had their picture taken in this basket at Easter.

The Nonnie and Poppie picture.

Our first family of ten picture.

This year was full of hunts.

 In the morning, before church the kids had a hunt and found four kayaks on the roof of the garage!

The strong boys carried them all down so the girls didn't have to get their dresses dirty.

Then after church when all the family came over, we had an egg hunt. Dada is telling them about the special golden egg, which cousin Ian found in the bushes.

We had a lovely meal at our two Restoration Hardware tables. (Our first table's finish was scratching off very easily so they replaced it right away, but left us with the original one for a couple of months. They finally came to take the nicked one back after this.)

Then we had the Basket hunt. There were two kid baskets, one with lots of little kid toys and one with two big laptops! And Dada found his basket, too!

More March, Baby!

Big Baby, Little Baby

Sweet Baby Coal

Yay, Berg! You passed another Phonics level! Mud Pie for everyone!

Awana Crazy Hair Night! Dada is the T&T Director this year!

Dada fixed the main water line to the house. Time to fill it back in! (Picking up rocks now becomes the main consequence for months. Thanks broken water line!)

March 20th - Tuffy walks! Watch out - everyone!

NICU Baby

So to make sure that Coal would continue to breath on his own without stopping, and look at his heart a little more, he stayed in his NICU room for a couple more days. Each day he had less wires hooked up to him, he ate more and more from Mama,

and even had his first little sponge bath and turned as red as a lobster!

At one point we heard rumblings of them moving him to another shared nursery, but when we asked one of our doctors if she knew my uncle, they let us stay and we never heard any more about it! (Everyone knew him by the way, he's like a doctor celebrity!)

The mom's of babies in the NICU meet and do crafts and while we were there they made Coal a sign for his room and a whale onesie! 

On March 14, we were able to bring our bundle home!! Goodbye, hospital that was long enough, thank you.

The kids and Poppie and Nonnie, who had been watching the kids after Auntie Tonya and Uncle Chris took the first couple days, made us a welcome home sign! They boogied up here after being told that we were having the baby even though they had just started their first ski run that morning in Mammoth.

All the kids were excited to finally be able to hold their little Coaly even though they had to wear masks for the first week he was home when they held him. Sickness was going through our house and we really didn't want the poor boy to go through more that he had to already.