School Is Out!!!

We are all finished with school for the year!!! It was a big year for Adam.  He graduated from 8th grade and will be moving on to highschool - WOW! I can't believe that our son is old enough for highschool.  Time sure does fly!!  We are very proud of the young man that he is becoming. 

Also, very soon we are getting our next farm animals.  Our goats will be arriving within the next couple of weeks.  Dillon has chosen to buy his own goat from a goat farm that raises and breeds nigerian dwarf goats.  He has been working hard to save the money for her.  We will be getting her this weekend.  He decided that he would like to show her for 4H.  Rosie will be showing one of the pygmy goats as well.  They are both very excited to try out 4H this year.  We have never been involved in this so we are all excited to see what it is like!

Happy Birthday Adam!!

Yesterday we celebrated Adam's 14th birthday!!! We can't believe how old he is getting!! We are so proud of you Adam and so blessed to have such a wonderful son!

Stitches

Just after lunch yesterday, I got a call from the principal of Adam's school.  I was thinking, "Oh man, I hope Adam didn't get in trouble:)"  She told me that I had better head that way because Adam got a pretty big gash on the back of his head while playing a game in the gym at school.  I headed over there and saw that he was probably gonna need stitches. We came home for a while to see if it would stop bleeding, but it just kept bleeding so I called our regular doc to see if they would squeeze him in so we wouldn't have to have an emergency room bill and they got him right in and fixed him up in a jiffy! Yeah! 

The crazy thing for me was that about 20 minutes before the principal called, I had this bad feeling in my gut and actually said to myself, "I feel like something bad happened."  I tried to shake it off and tell myself it was nothing, but then when I got the call from school I realized that it really was something, kinda weird, huh!

Homemade Knives

Adam was looking in one of our hunting magazines last week and found a cool project to do with Jay and Dillon.  The article was about how to make knives out of old sawblades and manufacture any handle you choose to add to the knife, such as deer antlers, wood, rope or other such stuff.  The knives are ALOT of work to make, but are really coming along well.  I will post more pics when they are completely finished, but here are a few of the blades before handles are attached.

Happy Dog

Here is a pic of Adam and Reba that Dillon took with his camera.  It looks like she is laughing, he clicked just at the right time!

From A to Z

I so enjoy watching our oldest child and youngest child interact with eachother.  They REALLY enjoy being together! It brings me such joy to see especially since I was very worried when we found out we were pregnant with Zaria that the bigger boys would be like, "Oh man, another baby".... or feel weird that they were older and there was gonna be a little baby again.  There has never been one time that that sentiment was expressed in our home. On the contrary, just the other day Adam said to me, "Mom I wish I could freeze time and have Zaria stay little just like she is now..."  The funny thing is, in my journal just the day before I wrote that same sentence, in fact the title of my journal entry was "Freezing Time".

On the other hand it has also been so exciting to watch our oldest son grow from boy to young man.  He is so helpful to me and such a neat kid.  He is such an outdoorsman and I love listening to him talk about hunting or fishing or bbgun shooting. 

I believe it is truly important to savor each and every moment that you have with your family because no matter how much you wish you could, you cannot "Freeze Time".

Homework Buddies

That's My Boy!!!

Be prepared, this post will be filled with bragging, gushing and mommy pride....
Adam is in his first year of baseball this year. He has had an awesome time. He is finding out that he really loves the game and is good at it. The last two weeks have been big ones for him. Last week he hit his very first home run - all the way to the fence!! Then he also got two singles in the same game. Then last night it was so awesome, they played the team that they went up against for their very first game, they lost by one run that night. These teams are very evenly matched. The other teams batter was up and he slugged the ball to what looked like it was gonna be a homerun and it was going right out by Adam!! It was like slow motion, the ball was way up high and then falling, falling, falling, I was like "C'mon Adam, you can do it!" Everyone was holding their breath, then he caught it!!! Everyone was SCREAMING it was SO awesome!! Jason and I were so proud of him! Then the next inning Adam was up to bat and hit a triple!!!! All the way to the fence again! That was such a fun game to watch and they won the game by one run - way to go Phillies! When Adam got in the car after the game, he said his coach told him that he was the player of the game!

Our Oldest

Man, it sure seems like Adam is growing up fast all of the sudden.....

Spring Break

We had a pretty good spring break. We had hoped to do a little more, but Zaria had a cold so we hung out close to home. At the end of the week we did venture off and spend the night in a hotel and went to the boys wrestling meet the next day. It was a fun end to spring break for the kids. They had a riot swimming in the pool at the hotel. The wrestling tourney was fun as well Dill had to wrestle 2 opponents one of which was a girl. He pinned them both in less than 30 seconds! Adam did really well also. This is the boys' first year wrestling so most of the kids their age that they wrestle have years of experience on them. Adam wrestled 3 times, the first 2 he lost and the last one was an awesome match and he won!! Woohoo! Here are some pics of the week.

Boy Stuff

These last couple of weeks have busy ones around here! First Jason and Adam took hunter's safety and they both passed the test and are both very excited to go hunting this fall. So after passing the test, they were both very excited to get bows. Well they are quite expensive so we were kind of figuring out what was the best course of action. Used bows or new bows and where we were gonna get them a store or ebay... well God totally blessed them with bows that they could borrow from friends from church. And it all came together within a matter of a few days!!!! Jason came home from consistory last night smiling from ear to ear carrying in a little bow for Adam that looks just like a mini of the bow that a friend gave Jay to borrow. Adam doesn't know yet so I am very excited for Jason to show him after school today! By the way, I am told that the bow that Adam will be shooting with has taken 3 deer!

On to the next bit of boy stuff, Adam and Dillon have started wrestling this year. They have been to a couple of practices so far and both are loving it! I am very excited for this father/son bonding experience as well because Jay wrestled in highschool and did awesome and he loves to pass this on to his sons and teach them. I am very excited to watch them wrestle when the matches start soon. I just hope that there are no serious injuries!!! I am kind of nervous about that.

Happy Birthday!!!

Yesterday was Adam's 10th birthday!! I can't believe that my first baby is 10 YEARS OLD!!!!! He will be taking hunter's safety with Jay next week and hopes to be bowhunting this fall!! We had a fun night celebrating his special day with presents, cake and icecream and we rented Madagascar 2 which was SOOOO funny! Happy Birthday Adam! Thanks for being such a caring, tenderhearted son! I love you!

Bad Day at School!

OK you have to hear this, yesterday all 3 of the kids that I sent to school came home injured! First I picked up Ruby and her teacher comes up right away and says that I need to be very careful with Ruby's left ear because she slipped while taking her snowpants off after recess and fell into and open locker door and cut open her ear, and her ear was in fact cut! There was a puncture almost all the way through her ear! (Well, I suppose she would have wanted them double pierced at some point! ;)

Then when the "bigs" got off the bus, Dillon walks up and right away I noticed that under his lip there was a mark, so I asked him what happened to his face? He was playing at recess and the first graders were playing hockey (with actual tree sticks, not regular hockey sticks) and he got whapped in the face with a stick, needless to say there is a huge bump inside his lip and he is less one baby tooth this morning!!!!

Then Adam walks up and I notice his eyebrow is red, and he was playing at recess, getting buried in the snow by his buddies, and sat up instead of laying down for them and one of his buddies didn't see him sit back up, and clocked him in the head with a shovel! So, that was their day at school, thankfully there were no concussions or stitches!!!!!

Pics

Our Weekend

I haven't posted in a while....again..... I just don't have much to say lately, so this is just another update:

This weekend Adam and Dillon took Ruby across the street to do a little fishing, and Ruby lost her balance and fell in..... well she got kind of disoriented and started swimming OUT deeper, so Dillon to the rescue!!! SPLASH! Adam said Dillon came flying through the air did a cannonball and rescued his little sister..... now that all sounds quite dramatic, so I better clarify that after getting Ruby into the tub (she was completely soaked head to toe), I asked Adam how far out she actually was in the water, and he said she was only a few feet from shore, but she was so panicked that she thought she couldn't touch, not to mention she thought that the BIG bass that they were fishing for was going to eat her. Anyway, I went back and checked on her in the tub and saw scratches on her neck, and she said that is where the BIG bass had her by the neck!! (Actually, it was a zipper mark from Dillon grabbing her hood and pulling her in.) So thank the Lord she is safe and sound!!

I turned 38 weeks yesterday, I have an appointment today and am hoping for the doctor to say, "Holy crap, you are dilated to 6!!!" Just kidding, but I am hoping for a little dilation, I am growing quite impatient!!!! Right now 13 days seems like it could be 130 days!

Not much else going on the kids are all doing well and enjoying school, in fact Ruby hates the weekends because she wants to go to school everyday! School pics are this week, and the girls are geeked about it but the boys HATE it, you should have heard them, "Awwwww, dang it! Then we have to be careful on the playground and not get dirty! Oh man, then when I'm playing ball tag, I can't jump in the mud!!! Please mom, just let us pack our picture shirt in our back pack so we don't have to stay clean on the playground!"

That's all for now!

Appointment update: Everything looks great. Dilated to 1 1/2 cm and 80% effaced.

Lawn Mowing 101

Fun Night

Tonight Adam and Dillon got to run in the 5/3rd Junior Riverbank Run! They had a great time. They have been looking forward to this for weeks. I was so worried that it would be ruined by the rain but the weather dried up this afternoon and they were still able to have the run. Each of the boys came home with a t-shirt and a couple of goodie bags and huge smiles on their faces!!! I am so happy that they had such a good time.

Also Rosie and Naomi got to get their pictures taken for the Annual TJ & Skylee sale that helps families raise money towards adoption expenses. It is a HUGE garage sale and fun to shop at knowing that the money you are giving the sale is helping to bring kids and families together!!! The girls looked so cute and I can't wait to see the pictures!!

Bod-Man

OK, so Adam gets off the bus and his friend Jordan is with him and they run in the house and are all excited the other day. Jordan is like " Hey Julie guess what, my cousin gave me man-spray!!" I'm like "Oh yeah let me see it, and sure enough, he pulls a bottle of Bod-Man cologne out of his back-pack. By then, I am feeling dizzy because of the fumes that followed the boys in. So now Adam and Dillon have been begging me for "man-spray" - pleeeeeeease mom, next time you go to the store will you buy us man-spray??????? So today I was in Meijer and I found a 3-pack of cologne for $5.99 (you know that is gonna smell great, right?) and I caved, they now have their man-spray and I am gonna have to teach them that they only need one squirt, because apparently after his shower last night when Adam got into Jay's cologne, he thought half the bottle would do the trick! Well wish us luck over here we may be using a lot of Tylenol to combat the headaches!

Ice Fishing

The boys had a really fun time with Jay this weekend! They only ended up spearing 1 pike, but they still had a really good time. Here are some pics of them in the shanty and by their tipups on the ice. Also the pics of the boys on the quad are them driving on the ice!!! I am so glad that I wasn't there this weekend because I would have just been a worry wart - I really don't like the ice fishing stuff, I always think the ice is gonna break!!

Party Time!

This week and weekend we finally got to celebrate birthdays with our families. Things kind of got backed up when Adam got mono, but everyone had a great time. The top picture is Adam and my dad because we celebrated their birthdays together on Wednesday. The bottom pics are Jason's family yesterday when we celebrated Adam, Dillon and Jon's birthday. Everyone had a really enjoyable time!