SINGing in the rain

There have been plenty of rain storms lately--most of them have come with tornado watches, thunder and lightning. So, the other day, when we were headed out the door for our walk through the neighborhood and the clouds suddenly darkened and it began to POUR but there wasn't any thunder or lightning or crazy winds accompanying the rain, we set the kids FREE!It was fun to watch them squeal with delight around the circle...Addellyn's SUPER leap!Coleson enjoyed "shaking his bootay" in EVERY gutter!And Beckett enjoyed his thumb--he did have to grip onto his cheek in order to keep his thumb in place, it was hard work! Put him right to sleep...
And if only the video would load--then you could have enjoyed Ty's "singing in the rain." Bummer!

NOTHING will stop her!

This girl LOVES to practice tumbling and climbing--anywhere and everywhere! She even had a HUGE run in with the red cofee table! (this is after a LOT of the swelling had gone down and it stopped bleeding, see the bruise behind her ear as well?) At first I thought we might have to rush and see daddy at work...BUT, she didn't even cry much and after about 30 min. of holding ice on it she was ready to get up and "monkey around" like usual!

Date Night: Striking Out and the Circus!

On our first night to get away without this little man:(We'd been out before without the other 3, but he came along sleeping peacefully in his carseat...however his carseat seems to weigh a million more pounds now and he doesn't sleep nearly as much anymore:))

We started out the date at WalMart buying tissue and benadryl, Strike 1!

And yes, I had a horrible head cold, headache and all (1 of 4 from the past 2 months! ugh!) Strike 2!

Then, we decided to head to a local Thai restaurant that we had been wanting to try. It was one of those lower lights, small and quaint, nice and quiet restaurants, that would be so nice for looking dreamily into one anothers eyes as we talk, holding hands across the table, at least hear what the other person was saying, etc. ;)

UNTIL, about 10 minutes after sitting down and enjoying the quiet company--a CIRCUS came waltzing in: 2 moms, each with 3 (VERY wild) children under 2. They were seated RIGHT next to us. It was hard to keep our drifting eyes from watching the main EVENT. We couldn't really hear eachother over the high frequency of tantrums, mother's giving warnings, jumping up and down from their seats and the 8 of them playing "guess what nickelodeon theme song I am singing now?" It was slightly distracting, and we were doing all we could not to giggle at their expense because it was VERY comical! Strike 3!

All I could think was "GOOD thing we are paying someone to watch our circus so that we could go to a nice restaurant and be entertained by someone elses!" AND "You poor mothers--next time try take-out and feeding the kids mac-n-cheese, it's MUCH less stressful!" It was honestly kind of painful to watch them because I felt SO much empathy for what they were going through.

Needless to say, we ate a little more quickly than we had been eating and we couldn't really concentrate hard enough to talk about anything of very much value...so we headed home a little earlier than planned and decided that 3 strikes meant we were out and would have to try again another night. :)

BUT, I came home with a greater sense of appreciation for my own little, sweet circus--my kids really are good and behave really well for the most part--and I have an awesome husband that helps a TON with the circus management. I really feel blessed to have such a wonderful family of my own.

(I also came home with a greater sense of appreciation for the many, many couples that we may have disrupted while they were trying to have a calm and relaxing night out---however, we really NEVER take the kids to nice restaurants--but if you are one of those couples, I'm sorry about the distraction :))

FUNny kids

Don't you love how she is trying to act so cool and collected? Her class singing was very fun to watch! (plus the kids have been singing this song NON-stop ever since). But, making us sit through a 3 hour PTA meeting in order to watch them sing, was an awfully DIRTY trick! Next time we will know to get there at least one and a half hours late, at least...

Need I say more??? We were truly entertained that morning by this funny man, he LOVES Michael Jackson. (Addellyn and Beckett were giggling to eachother on the couch the entire time.)

the striped shirt

So, do you remember that photo shoot from when he was about a week old? Well, now he's 8 weeks old and he FILLS-out the same t-shirt. He also has added several new faces to his repertoire of cute baby faces to pull when you would like some attention.

Blessing Day

everybody loves being woken up from a nice sleep and thrown into a tuxedo early in the morning, right?By some crazy fate we were actually at church early enough to get a few pictures taken before heading into the building (thanks neighbor!)...
looks like he is back to sleep and ready for his daddy to bless him with his name and a very sweet and spiritual blessing. But, he wasn't totally asleep; he added a few of his own words towards the end.what a happy day it turned out to be!I thought it would be nice to try and get a few pictures of him on the darker background to see his suit a little better (although, I loved the blanket Great Grandma Vivian made for him. Isn't it so beautiful?)
But, once he had been held by daddy, he was definitely NOT going to pose for anymore pictures laying in a bean bag ALL by himself :)

oh, How Beckett LOVEs...

warm baths to splash in... (until he has to get out in the COLD air...he doesn't like that too much!) striped socks and warm sunshine...

HAPPY faces (and this has to be the cutest happy face EVER!)...

his SUPER hero big brother...

cheeks and thighs growing "chubbier by the second"...

really tight onesies...(hmmm, maybe he has grown a little bit!) sweet "constantly head rubbing" big sisters (how sweet is his little face?)... and his twin...(are they twins?? No, one is actually 31 years older than the other...but OH how they LOVE eachother! I just think it's funny that their eyes and foreheads are doing the same thing)

Easter Sunday

Here are those adorable Easter outfits (made by Grandma). We never got a good shot of Beckett though, he had a matching blue and white striped onesie with a red tie sewn right on the front.

This is a classic "goofy" Coleson face and a good close up of Kinzie's missing teeth :)Here are all 7 kids, ready for church on time (not that we actually made it on time).

And yes, we were trying to make it look like a giant doggy pile, we had no intentions of making it look as if they were all sitting up and smiling at the camera, none at all! (and at least Finn was holding Beckett so that you can see that cute onsie of his pretty well!)

We watched this as a reminder of why we really celebrate the Easter holiday.

He does Live. We know He lives and loves each of us. And because of our perfect Savior, we know, that we too can live again!

the egg HUNT

Yay for hidden baskets full of fun surprises! (Easter is much more fun with 7 kids around! Right Liz?? :))

They were pretty excited about emptying their baskets and heading outside to find MORE!Oh, and I am supposed to say something about how Ty left the grass REALLY long so that the Easter Bunny would have better hiding places and Not say that it's actually because his mower has decided to be officially done with it's mowing life and we haven't had the time to replace it yet. So, Ty left the grass long for the Bunny...And it DID make it pretty hard to find those last few smaller eggs that were down in the grass, but eventually they all ended up checking out their spoils on the porch.those hunts can be incredibly exhausting (can you see Finn sprawled out on the couch? Leaving his mom some great floor space to sleep on.)And these two Kings took the best bed in the house...apparently, sitting up on the porch watching "the hunt" is even MORE exhausting :)

Special Deliveries

Ok, so this one came a long time ago--6 weeks from this picture to be exact--but we still are thoroughly enjoying him! (Isn't she so cute, she ALWAYS wants to hold him and pat his back--plus this picture gives you a good look at their matching round cheeks, profile noses and hair color)But his adorable smile that emerges on cue is definitely new!Grandma sent a wonderful package that turned Coleson into a SUPER hero! (and it also contained their incredible Easter clothes, yay!)
And the most wonderful Liz and her 3 boys came down to play! We LOVED our time with them, but it went by so, so quickly...(I should have taken a picture of the awesome food she brought to stock my fridge and freezer, because that was definitely an unexpected special delivery!)

we have a PROBLEM

We ran into 2 major problems last Sunday: #1: we found out there was a candy loving rodent in our house.It leaves VERY sticky wrapper trails and we aren't sure how to capture it#2: we got dressed up, everyone looked super sharp, we were going to be EARLY to church (and Dad was at work, so we were all on our own), BUT, then we ended up looking VERY nice at WalMart for 2 hours instead, waiting for our tire to be patched.

We did have 1 MAJOR blessing (in addition to a BUNCH of littler ones, ie: mom miraculously not loosing it!): the best neighbors EVER! They saw us leave the house (and noticed a weird sound, then saw my very flat tire!), tried to call- my silenced phone in preparation for church- repeatedly and then resorted to running red lights in order to stop me before I got on the freeway with a screw punctured tire! (because apparently, if it's a back tire, and you have 3 kids in your car listening to and singing along with their church music and one crying infant, you don't notice a thing!) It really could have turned into an incredibly DISASTEROUS day if the Fife's hadn't saved us.