leighton singing doe-a deer!

Thanksgiving 2010!

We had loads of fun with the Quillen's and the Hathway's this Thanksgiving. It was the 2nd time for the 6 of us to gather with our total of 15 kids....the kids had a great time together...no major fights to speak of... the adults had a great time of playing and sharing and enjoying fellowship with each other. We are blessed to be able to keep in touch with such good friends!

Fall 2010 pt 3

We had the blessing of seeing our friend, Marie, yesterday for about 36 hours. She was in AR spending time with family and had the chance to come stay 2 nights with us! It was so much fun to see her and catch up and let the kids get to know her again (it'd been 3 or so years since we'd seen her). It was great to have her around. :)

Fall 2010 Pt 2- Ama and Akong visit!

My parents came for 10 days to visit us! We had a great time of eating out, seeing the sites of little rock and hot springs, trying to get some school in... and just having them around.

in the peabody elevator!

visiting the hot springs bathhouse museum...can you imagine sitting in one of those steam chambers with your head sticking out??

fun at the science museum in hot springs!!

tom's birthday :)

Fall 2010 part 1...

Little Rock Airshow with some friends....it was really cool to watch!

and the pumpkin patch!

Wow. I thought i couldn't keep up with life before....homeschooling has really made life crazy. We have had a really busy fall with a lot of fun activities and visits from people....definitely been non-stop at our house!
I'm not going to ramble much...just wanted to post some pics for my m-i-l to see what the grandkids have been up to this fall! :)

chick-fil-a camp out!!

#62!!

randomly throughout the day they would call a "line check"....everyone would line up next to their number and they would go down and make sure it was you. you were not allowed to leave the parking lot once you got your place in the 100 first customers.

Josiah playing in the baggo tournament!

when our schoolwork was done we had a fun game of settlers. josiah won!

our tent!

we had an ice cream treat before bedtime last night

5 am....matthias was the first up.... it took a while to get the others up and going...

we did it!! in all it was a fun experience....

i arrived at cfa at 8am. i was number 62....they reached 111 around 11am. for those of you who don't know...chickfila has this grand opening 100 first customers thing...they give them 52 combo vouchers...one free combo a week for a year (or in our case, 10 or so free dinner's out for our family!). they fed us...breakfast, lunch, dinner and an ice cream bedtime snack throughout the day. the twins had mother's day out (which worked really well) and the 3 bigs spent the majority of the day with me (aj left early to go play with a friend)... doing school, playing games, reading... it was pretty hot but i had a good friend bring me her awning/tent/thing which saved us from a lot of sun! later in the day, tom came by to pick up the big kids....they went to church and came back when they were done to spend the night with me. i don't think i'd ever do it again without some friends...or having tom with me all day. but...am glad to have done it....we'll definitely be eating more chicken this next year!! :)

HAPPY 11th BIRTHDAY, KYLIE GRACE!!

Wow! I cannot believe it's been 11 years!! 11 years ago tomorrow (sunday the 12th) Kylie Grace was born (on a sunday)....it's kinda funny, the cowboys and the redskins played on the day of her birth (and they're playing tomorrow!...we're hoping they do better tomorrow than they did 11 years ago). Anyways, it's been 11 years of seeing this little sweet baby grow up into a sweet young lady....what a blessing Kylie is to our family! We are celebrating her birth and her life this weekend....HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KYLIE!!

september? seriously??

first day of mother's day out

playing in the creek behind our house

rock climbing with my cousin amos!

art...their favorite subject!

I can't believe it's already september!! My last post I talked about how we were reorganizing to make a schoolroom...well...we ended up moving (quite a way to reorganize, eh?)!! It's a really long story having to do with AC, anyways...we're moved into our new place, which has less rooms but more space and an awesome backyard (plus a creek and a paved bike path!!). Needless to say, beginning school has been a whirlwind here. We started homeschooling a week after we moved in...it's taken some time to figure out how to schedule our days, but every week has been better than the first so far! :) All five of the kids go to a homeschool co-op once a week which will be really good to have a day off during the week. Other than that we're definitely keeping busy. Hopefully I'll get back into posting more than once every other month. :)...thanks for checking in!!

Visiting with friends

Kylie got to spend 1/2 a day with Allison (her best h'burg friend) and Allison's chickens. :)

taking turns riding the horse (Sophie, i think)

Family hayride fun!

Kylie and Zoe

Sweet girlfriends :)

Driving the tractor...i think her name is 'Jane'.

longtime h'burg friends. sarah and i were friends, pre-children. i think i met keary when i started watching her oldest (who was 1 at the time). we now have 14 kids between the 3 of us!

Fowler's, Mirabella's, Glick's and Ritchie's in front of cricket cottage.

We were only in h'burg for less than 48 hours....which wasn't enough time to see everyone (sadly). In all, our summer trip to VA this year was fun. I think i might need to figure out a way to make it not quite as chaotic. Hard to know how to do that, though.

So. I think I'm caught up to the end of July!! I know that I missed a bunch this past spring...and I'm hoping that this school year I'll be able to keep up a little better. I might actually put Kylie to work posting and updating..... she might enjoy that. :) I think that I mentioned before that I'm going to be homeschooling this coming year. I put my order in this week and am getting more excited about it as it gets closer. We are in the midst of reorganizing the house to make the den into a schoolroom. Other than that... and right now being without AC (it's very hot)...not much else is going on! It's been a great summer with VBS, swimteam, GA and our trip to VA. I can't believe it's almost over already!!

Thanks for checking in!!

Cricket Cottage and the Baggett's!

Some Mirabella kids and all the Baggett kids!

Mike and Seth gave us a private concert :). Actually they were practicing for later that evening and were sweet to let us listen!

Saturday morning on the farm. :)
Seriously, the 3 older kids had a blast raking hay to feed the cows, picking potatoes and squash from the garden....we always love staying at cricket cottage when we're in h'burg

The Baggett fam. They happened to be visiting family nearby so they came out and spent a couple hours with us. We ate gyros from Gus's, I mean, Dave's....let the kids play and enjoyed the beautiful day. The Baggett's are church-planting in the Philedelphia area....check out their website if you're interested: redemptionpca.com