And, I’m back…sort of

Still trying to get through my list and get ready to start up next week but this here’s startin’ somethings we’ve been up to this past month…

After the convention we traveled to Alabama and picked up the other half of our kid crew.  We enjoyed a short visit and stories about what they did while we were gone.

One of which included Liam refusing to eat baby carrots because he thought they were bay food!

Bryant loves getting cuddles!  Grandmere was a little fond of them too.

 The biggest treat for the older kids was a zipline Papa bought and installed.  That was one of the highlights of the weekend.

 Mark also made it a point to let Papa know that Josiah likes the dirt (he will literally roll in it at home).  So, Papa made sure Josiah got some dirt playing time in.

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Happy Mother’s Day to Me!

This Mother’s Day I have racked up.  Hearing Voddie Bauchum Jr.  (and hopefully meeting him), Kevin Swanson, and Ken Ham.  And getting some other great goodies (which I received early due to our gallivanting across the southeast)…

Hats for the kids!

Nah, I got something nice and shiny but it wasn’t jewelry (thank goodness…what is a mom of six little ones going to do with jewelry???).  I finally got updated mixing bowls!  And a surprise…a mandolin (I think that’s right…it’s one of those super duper veggie slicer/dicer/julienne things).

The kids enjoyed the bowls as well.

Fashion accessory, “fun” mirror…not just a mixing bowl anymore!

I love my gifts and being able to celebrate fun and practical gifts.  For the record, I really don’t want jewelry.  I hardly wear any except my wedding ring/engagement ring.  When we got married I never really though I’d have six children.  So, I didn’t register for large family items (like a mandolin, very large bowls, etc…plus, we lived in a one bedroom apartment that was about the size of our kitchen now…not conducive to housing large items), so I’m ecstatic when I get practical gifts.  They make my everyday normal days go so much more smoother.

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Attack!

Giveaways going on now!  Don’t forget to sign up to enter here and here

 So, Saturday of our Kabining trip was waaaay hot for the middle of April.  To remedy that, we hit the local Wal-Mart and picked up enough water guns for a whole trip of campers.  Fire Away!  The afternoon was full of cool water fights.

 This is how we filled up the water guns!
 World’s skinniest Sumo Wrestler!
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and Keep the Old…

No, I’m not referring to our friends as old…it goes along with the last post…”Make new friends, but keep the old..”  Moving along…

Last weekend we met up with most of the Transue clan in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Turns out that’s the halfway point for both our families!  And, that’s also a place with plenty of KOA Kampgrounds.

This was our first stay with KOA and while we thoroughly enjoyed it, I believe our camp hosts were a little worried about having so many children.  We all survived and I think they were pleasantly surprised.  They invited us back at least.

We stayed in a Kabin and it was super nice and way easier than transporting a tent.  We did, however, have to bring all our camping supplies to eat and we had to do the community bathroom thing (which was pretty good trek with the kids each time and if we had to go during that night.  That was the not so fun part).

 They lined themselves up to sing a song.  We got a picture!

 What’s Kabining without s’mores???
 Yep, they were thrilled we stuck them together.
 Activity for our full day:  Chattanooga Zoo.  It’s small, but word has it there were a lot of monkeys loose that day!
 Liam loved watching the animals!

This little monkey was particularly photogenic that day.
 Monkeys watching monkeys…

 Mr. James.  Poor little man had a hurt arm but it just slowed him down.  Didn’t stop him though.

Ten points if you know who this little owl looks like.  It’s from a book…and a movie.
Monkeys like to climb.

 Okay, stop me if this is not the most adorable picture in the whole world!
Where to next???
 The highlight:  the indoor carousal!
Okay, that’s all for now.  The rest will have to come when blogger gets it’s act together and I can upload these pictures!

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Make New Friends

Giveaways going on now!  Don’t forget to sign up to enter here and here.

We had the privilege and excitement of hosting this young, Young, family (hahaha), the weekend of our mission conference.  The Youngs are missionaries with Biblical Ministries Worldwide and will, by God’s grace and timing, be going to Scotland to work with church planting there.

We were thrilled to host this family and their fun children.  Their two little ones just fit right in and Nathan and Krystal (the mom and dad) didn’t seem too disturbed by our plethora of children.  Mark and I were thrilled to have them in the home and talked with them late in to the night on two occasions, not even realizing what time it was.

Yeah, I think Nathan was praying he’d be released soon from this chaos!  Ten points if you can guess who’s missing.

These are all the missionaries who attended and spoke at our church’s conference.  I’d love to get the videos for the Louks up, but I can’t figure out how to embed it in here, so I’ll just point you to their website and tell you, you must go see what they are going to be doing in Romania starting this summer!

See they fit right in…fixing toys and such.
And, Mark and I had the privilege of watching their children while they attended a ballet put on by a local company here.  They actually trusted us with their kids.  Little did they know…
I called it “twin practice” in hopes that one day God will bless us with twins (yes, you read that right…I would love to have twins although the odds are greatly stacked against us).
 Madeleine is a couple months older than Bryant.

 Pose for the camera kids.
 What are you???
Madeleine also cut a tooth while they were there.  She was pretty grumpy when we kept her and at one point she and Bryant were both competing in cries.  I smiled and saw all the other dear children covering their ears and announced that we could handle twins.  Mark laughed.  Anyway, we didn’t realize she had cut a tooth until she had kept Nathan and Krystal up all night.
Mr. Miles was a trip.  He enjoyed “playing” the Wii.  He was close to Josiah’s age and oh so much fun.
Please remember to pray for Scotland and the Youngs as they prepare to serve Christ!
You can learn more about what they are doing here:
Or go to their website:  Pray for Scotland.

And if that isn’t enough jabber, one of the reasons we were thrilled about having the missionaries in our home was because of the great influence they can have on our children.  It is our desire that our children seek to serve Christ and to bring Him glory through all they do, whether that is living in a hut in Africa or working inner city missions or a “regular” job in the states.  We also want them to be aware of the great needs that are both here in the US and abroad.  Hosting missionaries for a brief time gives them faces to the names that they hear so much about.

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Josiah-isms

While brushing his teeth with his orange tooth brush he announced he wanted one like his brother’s (it was yellow).  I told him he had one like his brother’s, it’ was just orange instead of yellow.

“But Mama, I don’t like da color orange because it’s made from oranges,”  was his reply!

***

Mark was admonishing him because he had hurt his sister.  Mark quoted Ephesians 4:32, “But be kind to one another, tenderhearted–“

Josiah through his arms up in frustration and in tears exclaimed, “But I don’t. Know.  What  That  Means!”

***

We were blessed with a lot of storms a couple of weekends ago.  We had thunderstorms from that Saturday night through Sunday.  When Josiah woke up on Sunday, we were sitting in the kitchen getting breakfast ready and discussing the storms.  In all seriousness, he informed me, “Mama, those storms last night were fweaking me out!”

Oh yes, he’s at that adorable age of silliness and seriousness (Is that a word???  Oh well, it is now).  So stay tuned for more from our 3 year old sage!

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Bumps and Bruises Week Part 1

Last week made me really wish we had a padded room.  Or at the very least, full body armor for the kids.  Well, maybe not full body, but helmets for all occasions would come in handy.

Josiah started a head injury trend on Wednesday.  As I was teaching the three oldest, he was playing with Ceili Rain.  They were racing from the kitchen down the hallway (it makes for a good little raceway).  Apparently, he was bent down and/or pushing a toy as he raced, and decided he wanted to try and move the kitchen bar.  With his head.  Yeah, the bar didn’t move, but he did manage to take a small chunk out of his head.  While I wasn’t too concerned about the appearance, it did look rather deep for a scratch, so I called the doctor’s office to see if they could look at it to determine if it needed stitches.  The doctor looked and thought that it wouldn’t need it for healing but for cosmetic purposes we could have a stitch put in or a steri-strip put on it or glue.  So, I opted to head to the local “doc in the box” that Mark and I call our physican (even though I haven’t been there in several years, who needs a GP when you have an OB).  The kids pediatrician didn’t have the “tools” necessary to do the work.

So, all seven of us (yep,  I had all the kids), headed to the urgent care.  They took one look at me with all my kids and were really questionable as to whether I could hold a three year old down and a baby at the same time.  Helloooo…how do you think I maintain peace all day?

The doctor there looked at it and didn’t feel that the trauma would be worth so small a scare.  I agreed.  They didn’t have any glue (I guess Elmer’s wouldn’t work) but he said because he took a chunk out that a steri-strip wouldn’t work so they cleaned it, put a smiley face on a bandage and stuck it on.  Insert happy kid here.  The only problem is that now, I am getting requests for artwork on bandages.  By Friday, we were up to a small robot!

Yeah, I know it doesn’t look that bad.  That was a couple days after the accident.  The grimace is because I made him take the bandage off.  I think he thought his brains would fall out if I took it off!

Ahhh, smiley face bandages make it all better.

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PJ Day at Brusters!

Yep, we did it again.  This time we brought captives…

It just so happened that PJ Day was the same day as Ceili Rain’s birthday.  I would like to think that Bruster’s knew about CeiRai’s birthday and chose that day  for PJ day purposefully to help us celebrate..  She thought so at least.  Papa and Grandmere were able to come up for the weekend.  They opted out of the PJ day and chose to actually buy their ice cream.  Who knew that people actually do that still!

Bryant gave up trying to get his ice cream and settled for a sock.  That’s what you get if you don’t wear your pjs!  We don’t buy ice cream on PJ day!

Some people in our family like to wear their ice cream with pride.  It’s like a symbol of pure yumminess.

and cuteness!

So, Josiah got some “Purple Dinosaur” ice cream on his shoe.  I didn’t realize this and the next day he was getting them on and showed me his purple on his shoe.  Being the wonderful mom I am, I started in lecturing him about the reason we don’t write on anything but paper.  He smiled and quietly said, “It’s from my ice cream.  I have a purple dinosaur shoe.”  I had to shut up then and just giggle.  That was too cute!

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Happy 2nd Birthday Ceili Rain!

So, yes, we celebrated Ceili Rain’s birthday this month.  I still don’t think she had a clue what was going on.  But now she associates things with her “biffday.”  You know, important things….chocolate cake, chocolate icing, ice cream, presents.  She’s going to have a tough time when we get to others birthdays and she’s not opening presents.  But she did have a wonderful day.  No massive party.  I’ve learned now, to save those for when they ask for them!

I’d like to say that after my elephant fondant success that I ventured in to ladybugs and made the cake topper.  But that would be a lie and I try my best not to lie.  But, I did find it at an extremely reasonable price on Etsy at a great shop by KidsCakes.  I ordered it about three weeks in advance and it got here the day before her birthday!  The owner was amazing to work with and customized the colors to match the plates and napkins I had bought (on sale mind you).  Ceili Rain loved it.  We used the leftover polka dots from Tracy’s shower to finish off the decorating.  Zoe and Ceili Rain did those.

I have my eye on some adorable robot designs for Bryant’s first birthday!  I love that you can get their name on there….and she even fit Ceili Rain on her topper!

That’d be a chocolate cake with chocolate icing for our chocolate lovin’ princess.  And guess what…she only ate a little bit of it!  That’s alright…more for me.  It’s justified…I did all the work to get her here.

Okay,s o she had a little pre-party taste testing for the icing.  That may have contributed to the no-need-for-awesome-chocolate-cake time.

Chefs in training!

Check out the waves in the hair!  Yep they’re back.  I’m not at a spritz, gel, and scrunch method.  It’s wavy and a little curly and it works (no, I’m not pregnant).

 Blow out the candles!
And open gifts!

Happy Second Birthday to our littlest princess!

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Absent

This story of absence is nothing short of well, interesting…

It all started when I requested that Papa and Mark work on the front flowerbed while they were visiting a couple of weeks ago.  They obliged…somewhat happily.  However, they didn’t have time to finish it completely because we were celebrating some special little princess’s two year birthday. 

The Before:  That pile of rocks is our altar.  We really need to get into the New Testament during family worship time!
Papa “working” hard!
The Helpers!  We chose this project because we knew that everyone could pitch in…and they did!

This is the side of the house that connects to the front bed.

So, that left the finishing touches to be completed by us the next weekend.

We got to work bright and early on Saturday morning.  Everyone really pitched in.  We saw a ton of lizards (yay, they eat mosquitos…the more lizards the happier I am…as long as they don’t come inside), frogs (they eat bugs too…stay on little frogs…outside), and a snake.

Trust me.  He’s in there.

Yeah, a snake.  Just lounging around in one of our azalea bushes in the front yard.  One of the azalea bushes in the azalea bed that we were clearing out and Mark was throwing lyme (lime?  whatever…the acid neutralizer stuff). Mark threw some lime and then jumped back a few feet.  We got out our handy dandy google and realized we weren’t dealing with a poisonous snake.  Just a little garter snake.  However, they eat lizards.  I like my lizards (outside), so I knew we were probably going to need to kill him.  But first, I wanted the kids to see him.

So, after several attempts, Mark was able to pin him down with the shovel while I picked him up.  Whether we were going to kill him or not was not questioned after that as we realized he was hurt in our jaunt to get him out of the bush, so after letting Ceili Rain touch him (the only one who wanted to), Mark took him off to the side of the house to give him his final resting place. (Sorry Jacie…but it was better than letting him suffer)

It just so happens the place Mark took him was where our cable line was buried.  Just so happens that cable line is the same cable line we use for internet and our landline phone service.  Just so happens that it’s not buried very deep.  And, as you can guess, it just so happens that when Mark sent the snake in to utter darkness, he sent our internet and phone in the same direction. And, we learned all of this on Monday when the cable repair guy came out and found the cut line.
 
Oh well!  He was super nice and did a quick great job fixing it up.  He greeted Mark at the door telling us he liked our bumper sticker (about abortion being wrong and such).  That was a nice visit!

And now you know why I did not post on Monday!

But hey, we got a nice cleaned up low maintenance flower bed…and I got my azalea bed cleaned out and mulched up.

A side view.  I’m going to add a couple of more plants to even it out but that won’t be until the big nursery near here has a warehouse sale and I can get them for dirt cheap…haha..dirt.  cheap.  I’m so funny.
Ahhh…what a little landscaping fabric and mulch can do for a yard!
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