Day 451

Just a lazy rainy morning here. Caleb and Hannah played the Wii for a little while.

Day 450

Goofy little Caleb wanted olives with dinner.

Day 449

Tonight was a Midsummer's Night Thing at church. The big kids got to "camp out". They were playing with snakes when I came to pick them up. The "look" Samantha has is because the snake just pooped...really!

This is just a "isn't she cute" photo.

Day 448

Today we went to Schlitterbahn. It was one of the things I really wanted to do this summer. I printed off this coupon before we went. That way the admission price didn't hurt so much. LOL I don't have any pictures of our day there because water and electronic devices don't go well...as I learned in the morning with coffee and my brand new computer keyboard. Our day was so fun. Josh did get lost once, but we have come to expect that of him. I don't understand really. It has been happening since he was 2...just about any time we went anywhere. In a way it wasn't all his fault this time. Our rule is to stay put. Well...we were in the (not so) lazy river. We all made a planned cut-off and he didn't. I waited and waited and waited for him to come back around and he never did. That meant he got out and there was only one place to do that in the area we were in. I sent mom and Caleb off to find Samantha and Marc (they made the cut-off the first time and the rest of us missed it) and I sent off around the lazy river with a nearly sleeping Hannah. Never saw him, so I went to find the others. We left the kids with my mom at a baby pool so we could quickly look. I sent Marc to guest services and I went to our table. Josh was upset because he couldn't "stay put" and was crying, but he got out and told the lifeguard he was lost. Finally he is learning to not just go wandering around looking for us! No one else got lost and we really did have a great time. We left and went to The Spot for some really good hamburgers. After dinner we went across the street to the beach. Here are some photos....

This is the only one I have inside of Schlitterbahn.
Yes, I really did put my sleeping child on the table. Have you ever held a sleeping baby for hours while you have done things.
She didn't think the table was very comfortable and woke up...just in time to eat. Oh and I promise we really do use sunblock!
A family picture!!! That never happens...thanks mom!
This is my poor Caleb. We told him not to go in the water because it would burn his skin. He didn't listen. He ran out screaming at the top of his lungs that it his legs burned. Hannah sat down and started copying him. Poor little guy.
Hannah loved digging her toes in the mud.
Samantha is somewhat unimpressed with the brown murky water...she has been spoiled by the beautiful Bahamas.

Day 447

Who would think that this pretty little thing could drive a parent---maybe not all parents---crazy? Really and truly I HATE this thing. This innocent looking gumball machine sits in the waitin room at the music studio. From the time we leave the house the kids are clamoring for quarters. It builds up to the chiropractor office. Then it turns into see whose quarter we can find "sitting" in the car. From there it is me saying, "give back _____'s quarter." Followed by moaning. All this BEFORE we even get there. I am sure you can imagine how fast they jump out of the car and head in. You can't tell in this picture but the yellow gumballs out number all the other colors 4 to 1, so when everyone finally gets their gumball they grumble about yellow or orange and how that is all they get. Then it turns into "MOM, can I have more quarters? I don't like the yellows." Whatever..... Finally Josh and Samantha head in for their lessons and always seem to come out with another quarter. That prompts protest from Hannah and Caleb. Surprisinly, Hannah doesn't swallow the gum....wish she could teach that to Caleb! A few quarters later... more complaints about yellow. I won't even go into the pleads during the lesson from my two youngest for more quarters. Rant over! Glad we only have music once a week. LOL

Day 446

"Free Willy" or Shamu??? The kids have recently seen the Free Willy movies plus had a visit to Sea World. The decided to play Free Willy AND put on a Shamu show. As you can see, we have lots of Shamu's...after this picture was taken, they even added a dolphin into the mix.

Day 445

Today was a day of rest and recovery from our Music camp week. We did nothing! Really and truly nothing! This photo was taken after Caleb's bath. I really don't understand how they can sit on the top of the couch like this and not fall. That is even the section that flips down into an armrest. He was sitting there telling me how to play Farkle. LOL

Day 444

Last night was the Music Camp's performance of "Joseph-from the pit to the Palace." It was sooooo good. The kids worked so hard and did a great job. Marc wasn't going to be able to come so I took a group shot during dress rehearsal. Here are all of the kids! Marc did end up coming, so I have a few pics from the night. He thought he was recording the whole thing, but he doesn't know how to use my camera.

This is a pic of the stage before the show.

Samantha during her solo
Josh during his solo

Day 443

This was by far the longest day this week! I have always been a night owl and old habits are hard to break when it is only for a week. It caught up with me today! I can't remember ever being so tired. The morning started out with Music Camp! It is so much fun and the performance is going to be great. The kids are great...there are a few that are mentally draining and make it hard for me to be joyful with my own kids later in the afternoon. My kids are great and understand. Caleb even sang "Jesus Loves Me" tonight before he went to bed because he knew I was going to bed very soon. Today we left church and headed to the mall. Yesterday I set hair appointments. I was told 2:00 for Samantha with her regular lady---found out today she is pregnant. I am going to be so sad if she doesn't come back because she has been doing Samantha's hair since she was 3. Caleb's appt was supposed to be at 4:00, so I didn't check him in. I decided that it would be a good time to schedule my hair too. Josh and Samantha can sit and Hannah would just copy them. Well Carmen, Caleb's stylist came over to get him. She said he was scheduled for 2:00. "Boo and Wow" (those are the words Caleb said yesterday after a movie preview LOL) I was glad they both got taken care of at the same time, but a little worried because all 4 kids would have to be "good" while I got my hair done...after being up 10 hours with no napping. Anyway, they did ok...yes, just ok. Samantha was GREAT though. Anyway, I have a before and after picture. The after doesn't include me though. My phone battery died...thanks to nearly 100 texts received this morning...thanks guys--you know who you are! LOL

Bef0re of all 3 of us

Caleb took this before picture. He is always in motion which is why it is blurry.
Here is the after picture of Caleb and Samantha. Yes, we did go round and round about the length, but in the end it is her hair and her choice. I will say that was a hard mommy moment for me and Quiyhn ( her sylist) felt my pain. She absolutely loves it and that is what matters! I am sure I put my mom through the same thing too.

Day 442

I told you about our Music Camp shirts the other day. I really really like them. The colorful "Joseph" is the front of the shirt and the "Hi5" is the back of the shirt. Music camp is going great! I am having so much fun and so are the kids. Have you ever heard the story of Joseph? It is a really good story and can be found in Genesis. In case you don't want to look it up, I will put it here. :) Just keep reading.

The Story of Joseph

This is the story about a young man named Joseph. His father's name is Jacob, and they lived in Canaan from where his grandfather was from.
Joseph was seventeen (old enough to drive a car these days), and he had eleven brothers; and only had one brother younger than him. Can you imagine having eleven brothers to play with, or fight with?
Because Joseph was one of the youngest sons, his father spent more time with him, and he became very special to him. So Jacob had a special robe made for Joseph. (They didn't have jackets back then, so this was a very special jacket). It was very beautiful and had every color you could imagine in it.
All of Joseph's older brothers saw this and they got very jealous. The word jealous means that Joseph's brothers disliked him because they thought his father liked him more, and because he got the special coat. They got so jealous they couldn't even say a kind word to him.
One day Joseph had a dream, and he went to go tell his brothers. He said, "Guess what? Last night I had a strange dream. We were tying up bunches of grain out in the field when suddenly my bunch stood up, while all of yours gathered around and bowed to me." The brothers looked at each other in disgust, but Joseph continued. "Then I had another dream that the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed down to me."
"Who do you think you are?" The brothers said. "Do you think that you are better than all of us? Do you think that we would ever bow down to you?" This made the brothers dislike Joseph even more.
When he told his father about his dreams he said, "Those are strange dreams." But he thought carefully about what Joseph had told him.
A few days later Joseph's father asked him to check on his brothers. They were in the fields quite a distance away. So Joseph went to find them.
When the brothers saw Joseph in the distance, they made a plan to kill him. But when Reuben, Joseph's oldest brother heard this he said, "Let's not kill him, just throw him in a well out here in the field." He said this because he was secretly planning to come back and rescue Joseph when the other brothers had left.
So when Joseph came to them, they took off his beautiful robe and they threw him in an empty well. A little while later a group of people came by that were wanting to sell some things in Egypt. One of the brothers spoke up, "Why don't we sell him to these people, this way we never have to see him again, and we don't have to kill him."
The other brothers liked this idea, so they sold him to the people who were going to Egypt.
Unfortunately Reuben had been working and hadn't seen what happened. When he returned to the well he noticed that Joseph was gone. He had been sold to an important man named Potiphar, an assistant to the Pharaoh of Egypt.
The rest of the brothers took Joseph's beautiful robe and dipped it in animal blood and took it back to their father. When the father saw this he cried, "Some animal has killed my son." And he cried for many days, so much that nobody could comfort him.
Now Joseph had started out as a slave, but the Lord was with Joseph and He helped him do everything right. So Potiphar made him his helper, and put him in charge of everything that he owned.
The problem came when Potiphar's wife lied about Joseph to her husband, so Potiphar had Joseph put into jail.
The Lord was still with Joseph in jail, and the warden put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners. He never worried because the Lord was with Joseph and helped him do everything right.
After Joseph had been in jail for some time a cupbearer and baker to Pharaoh had been sent there. One night each of them had a dream. They told their dreams to Joseph and he told the cupbearer that he would soon be let out of jail. "Please tell Pharaoh about me, and ask him to get me out of here." Joseph said.
When the cupbearer was freed he forgot about what Joseph did. So Joseph stayed in jail for two more years. Until one day the Pharaoh had a dream, and nobody could explain it to him. The cupbearer then remembered what Joseph had done for him, and Joseph was brought to Pharaoh.
"Can you understand dreams?" Pharaoh asked. "I can't, but God helps me." Joseph replied. After Pharaoh had told him his dream Joseph explained, "God is warning you. There will be seven years when nothing will grow and there won't be any food for anyone."
"What can I do?" Pharaoh asked. "God has shown you what to do. There will be seven years before the bad years that will be very good. So good that there will be extra food for everyone. So you should save a little bit of each years harvest, that way you will have enough to get you through the bad years." Joseph said.
Pharaoh believed all that Joseph told him, and put him in charge of all the land of Egypt.
People came from all countries to buy grain from Joseph, because the whole world was in need of food. Some of those people were Joseph's brothers. When his brothers came, Joseph recognized them, but they did not know who he was. (It had been over 10 years since they had seen him).
The brothers all bowed to him because he was an important person. Just as he dreamed they would at the beginning.
After a few meetings with his brothers he could not keep it in any longer and Joseph said to his brothers, "I am Joseph! Is my father alive?" But his brothers couldn't answer him because they were afraid. Then Joseph said, "Come here. I am your brother, the one you sold! Do not worry, and do not be angry at yourselves for selling me, because God has put me here to save people from starving."
So his father, his brothers, and their families came to live in Egypt with Joseph, and they had all the food they needed.

Day 441

Look it is a magic eye thing! Really it is not, but I want you to bear with me for a minute. I want you to go HERE and read toward the bottom of the topic. It is about the carpet at church. Trust me it is a really funny post! Now look at these pictures. These are in the room formerly known as the Green Room. I gave you some different angles to look at. Click on them and make them bigger if you want. What do you see? Really, I want to know!!! I see a bear, a lion or grinch type creature, a rose, Tinkerbell, and maybe a stalk of wheat. I don't see the rabbit mentioned in the post above, so if you find it let me know. Leave me a comment here (yes even you lurkers...you know who you are!) or on facebook.
***To anyone in that room today who might or might not have seen me take these pictures...I PROMISE I did not do it during the prayer!

Do you want part 2?

My car has not been shampooed in over a year. Being an on the go mom with 4 kids you can imagine my car was not clean. The final straw was finding what could have been a science experiment or two growing. We got home from Music Camp today and started taking everything out. Even the kids were grossed out! We dropped it off after I agreed to the extra "condition" charge...kind of a no brainer, just clean the stupid thing! Well, 4.5 hours later...almost an hour after they closed I got back in. I was amazed! They have NEVER done this good of job. Really....my seats are light grey. I don't think I knew that...at least not in the recent future. It does NOT look or smell like my car. Just awesome!!!!

day 440

Today was the first day of Hi5 Music Camp. Only Josh and Samantha are old enough to participate. They are having so much fun. It is going to be an intense week followed by a performance on Friday night. I can't wait. I will have to take a picture of our shirts tomorrow because they are really neat! The bad part is that I have to wash them everyday because we need to wear them everyday. LOL....didn't I just finish a week like that last week with our Houston Project shirts? Of course, but I had 5 of them last week, I only have 3 this week. ;) On the bright side I will be caught up on laundry again this week.

Day 439

Do you ever just have one of "those" mornings? Today was mine! These precious feet belong to my two big kids. Notice anything strange? (Do notice Josh has no eczema spots on his feet!!!!) The strange part is that these feet should have shoes on them for church. Where are the shoes? This seems to happen a lot, so usually on Saturday nights I send them on a shoe hunt...I didn't yesterday because they have been better since about 2 months ago. What happened two months ago to change things? Missing shoes!!!! Samantha is still a white dress shoe short. Hannah's shoes have all been recovered and Josh is still missing an orange croc. Hear me when I say we do NOT live in a big house! We looked for shoes this morning for nearly an hour. Josh ended up getting a pair of shoes out of the car. Why were they in the car? I have NO idea! They are kind of small, so he takes them off in there sometimes. Samantha left the house this morning in her crocs.

*see the next picture

Isn't this a pretty dress? It looks so lovely with crocs don't ya' think? She was not happy when we left the house this morning...neither was I. On to MY problem. I must have had a brain fart because of the shoe issues. We are supposed to leave at 7:30 and have been since January, because the choir meets at 8:30. Well, I look at the clock and it is 7:50...I think to myself, I am going to leave 10 minutes early so I can go get new shoes for her (we used to leave at 8). I get in the car and go to Walmart. It only took about 5 minutes to get the shoes and get on the road. I looked at the clock, then it hit me. I had to be at church in 17 minutes! I am still over 30 miles away. Sorry Mom...no Starbucks this morning. Anyway---back to Walmart....
Samantha is not happy we are running through the store with her nice dress and crocs. We make it to the shoe section, which only has about 3 different shoe styles. I finally find something that is not jelly and grab 2 different sizes. Samantha says, "mom...these fit, but they feel funny inside." Seriously ya'll it was all I could do to not go off. It is WALMART! The choice is this shoe in this size or that size, no other! My 10 year old shoes feel funny inside because some little wet feet wore them one day and being a giving mommy, the kids feet come first. Anyway....here are the feeling funny inside shoes.
Since being home all shoes have been found---well not the long missing white one OR the long missing orange croc. Marc thinks I should have made her wear the crocs to embarrass her. Call me shallow, but I would have been embarrassed too. I also didn't want her to spend the morning focused on her shoes instead of God. Not sure what the right choice was, but she got the shoes. Kids are still stuck in their rooms until they are neat and organized--the boys are done. All I have to say is that I hope I touched someone at church today because it sure felt like I was in the fire this morning. It would have been so easy to go back to bed.

Day 438

Today my mom came over and made Marc a birthday dinner and cake. This was my grandma's strawberry cake recipe. It is super sweet AND since my mom didn't use lard the icing was a little runny. Marc loved it though!

I really don't understand how the kids can do this. Many times I will come in the room and find them--in this case Samantha-- just laying across the back of the couch.

Day 437

We finally got some rain and Hannah and Sandy got some snuggle time. Hannah LOVES Sandy.

FYI---I added some of the blogs I like to read on the side. I am going to go through and update the blogs on Hannah's Baby Blog later. I plan on trying to not have any overlap.

Day 436

Well...I can't find the picture I had set aside for this day. So, since it was Marc's birthday I decided to put up the photo of his gift. If you remember I already used this picture here, but I never told you what was in the bags. The tall bag has a pair of swim shoes...I know, I know...lame gift. Really a necessity to go to a waterpark in Texas. The ground is way to hot to walk on and our Sea World day at the waterpark the temp got to 105*. The other bag is an iPhone. He didn't wait to open it either, but I knew he wouldn't. LOL He has had so much fun with it and has to charge it back up several times a day.

Day 435

The pictures I have don't tell the story I want to tell, but the only camera I had with me was my phone and it can only do so much. I want you to go read this post by my friend Gina. She puts into words what breaks my heart. She has a follow up to that post today. That is the story of these kids we were loving on and praying for this week. That is their reality! I feel blessed and after reading Gina's post you should too. If you read Gina's post, you can probably guess what happened next...right? Well, here it is just in case you can't figure it out. I was in the prayer room this week. Gina came to talk to the prayer team leader about this need. I was standing there. My heart just about burst out of my chest. It breaks my heart to hear of kids who don't have things to meet their basic needs. So, I paced...and paced...and paced...Marc was with the evangelism team, so I had to wait for him to get back. I really think Marc hates it when I get soft-hearted sometimes. I took Marc over to Cass and Gina and explained to him that this little 3 year old boy doesn't have a bed. He and his siblings sleep on the floor. We have a twin mattress in our garage. It is a very nice high end twin mattress (which is why I think Marc hates it when I get like this). That twin mattress is now in the hands of this other family along with some bedding and pillows. Another family is going to arrange to get them another twin mattress and some bedding. Praise God, I was able to give something to someone who needs it. I am not using it anyway! Don't be fooled! We are NOT well off. We live off Marc's paychecks only because the faithfulness of God! We have it good! The house we dropped this bed off in had fans running and no a/c. At least if they had it, it wasn't on. I shake my head and wonder sometimes how we can get into our comfy little bubbles and tune out what is going on in our city! For my readers who do pray, could you please pray for this family and the other families we got to serve this week?

Day 434

Day 3 of Houston Project! It was awesome. I spent the dinner time mingling with little kids. One little boy always comes up and gives me a hug. He is just too sweet! After I made sure my kids got to their groups, I went to the prayer room. We prayed for a lot of things, but seemed to focus on prayer and praying for others. I do not know one of the women in the room and she does not know my kids. During her prayer she prayed specifically for a little boy who had eczema, allergy or bites on him. She said that his little face just kept popping in her head after she saw him just itching. She really did go on and prayed for him. It really meant a lot. I know my boys have been prayed for and prayed for. I/we have asked for prayer, but for someone to just pray because they felt led really touched my heart. The head of the prayer team knew she was talking about one of my boys and after the prayer I told her and we talked about it for a few minutes. Then the evangelism team came in with prayer requests from people they talked to. These are people who are not Christians, so as I was listening to these requests I am thinking about how these people must feel to know they are being prayed for. How must they feel to know someone cares enough to go before the Throne of God on behalf of someone they don't know. Just amazing! This photo is from part of the youth service. This photo was taken earlier in the day. Marc and the kids played a Bible trivia game. Josh kicked Marc's booty! Josh knew every answer...even when I looked for the "hard" ones, he got them all right.

Day 433

Today was day 2 of Houston Project. I was in the Prayer Room today. Remember I blogged about it last year. I just don't remember which blog and am too tired to look right now. If you want to know just look in July 2008. Anyway, I didn't get a chance to take a pic until time to leave. This is the stae for the opening assembly for the VBS kids. I really can't say anything other than WOW. A good friend of mine got some awesome news. It is all a God thing and answered prayer.

Day 432

Today was the kick-off carnival for Houston Project. It was hot, but so fun!!!

You might remember this dollhouse from last year here or here. You can see that it is not very big, yet this year Hannah managed to climb inside. She got in and played, then she "knock, knock, knocked" on the door and wiggled herself out. She went in and out a few times. It is hilarious!

Here are some pics from the fun at the carnival.



Mista Excelsius came out and got us pumped up. He really knows how to bring it!

I can't wait to see what the week brings!!!