July-Northern VA visit and my big 5 year old!

A trip wouldn't be a trip without an ER visit. :) I found Leighton in my parents room chewing on something with Tylenol bottles strewn about the floor. After calling poison control to ask what to look for they told me to take her to the ER. So we did. Poor thing got a stomach full of charcoal (after going through TB meds this probably wasn't as bad as it could have been) and blood drawn to let us know that she was fine. That was definitely a better safe than sorry moment.
Some college girlfriends and I have been trying to get together every summer...this summer only 5 of the 8 of us made it and we really only hung out and did dinner but it was sweet to see them.

It is hard for me to believe that my little 2 pound 13 ounce premie is 5 years old!!

We had a small birthday party at grandma's house and invited some of my college friends' and their children over to celebrate with us.

I also had an evening to hang out with my friend, Susan. We went to Wegman's and ate dinner and talked for a couple hours...how cool that you can do that at a grocery store?

We went to the 100-acre woods with Grandma one day and had a picnic and picked berries...that was a lot of fun, too.

i cannot believe it's been a month!!

We went to see "night at the museum 2" with a couple friends as one of our last fun florida things.

Kylie and Josiah's sunday school class with Mrs. Jean

AJ's sunday school class with Mrs. Belva

The princess tea party at the Hardee County Library (the night before we left town)

My sweet friend, Jenn, who flew down to help me do the drive back up to VA.

Some of my Wauchula SAHM friends. Miss and love you ladies!!

Saying goodbye to Mrs. Belva and Mr. Joe. The kids had many good times at the Vance's house (while Tom and I got some good date nights) Matthias still asks if we're going to "miss belba and mr doe's ouse"

Mrs. Amy was another fun friend in town. We would go visit her chickens and pick vegetables from her massive garden. She would cook us really good chinese food and bring us over homemade yummy sugar doughnuts!

Ok, so we left Wauchula around noon-ish on tuesday....I drove from noon to 9pm and Jenner drove from 9 to 3am. It was a long tiring trip, but we made it! Here are the twins sleeping on the floor at Jenn's place....they woke up at 7 the next morning...needless to say, Jenn and I were both zombies. :)

We spent a little bit of time visiting the Busbice's while we were in Raleigh. I left the girls there for the afternoon/evening so they could have some good playtime. Kylie and Megan were best friends during seminary days...it's been fun to watch them keep up even if we only see them once a year or once every other year.

Sweet girlfriends.

I also got a chance to see my uncle benjamin, aunt susan, and cousin sarah. We met up for breakfast before we left for Virginia.

The trip was exhausting and I couldn't have done it without Jenn. It's really a whole month ago (i can't believe it!)....I'm hoping to slowly post pictures of my time in Virginia in the next couple days/weeks. As an update...we did arrive in Arkansas this past Wednesday night. Basically I spent 2 weeks in Northern VA with the kids...the night that Tom got to town I came down with a fever which put me in bed for 2 days (pretty much worn out from travelling and visiting and such). We left the day after I was feeling better for Harrisonburg....spent a weekend there (where Tom and Josiah fought a fever), drove to kentucky to visit my brother and his family (woke up the morning we were leaving to find Matthias with a fever) and made it to Arkansas on Wednesday! It's been slow going with the unpacking and I think we're a little overwhelmed with everything that needs to get done (driver's license, insurance, bank, boxes, sick kids, etc...)...but excited to be here and excited to see what the Lord might do in this next season of our lives!

June happenings!

What an absolute insane month this has been!! Tom got a chance to take the 2 big kids to the Kenndy Space Center the week after school got out.

That next weekend we had a yard sale to try and get rid of some stuff

Sadly, the kids only made $2.00 at their lemonade stand.

And then, last week...we had a chance to take the 2 big kids to Epcot! We hadn't been yet, so it was a neat chance to do one last Florida thing...and we brought our old friends from seminary (since General Assembly was going on in Orlando at the same time)

the last time we had seen John John was in 2002. We lived down the hall from each other and Kylie and John John were both 3 and Josiah was not quite 2.

We had a great time with John and John John....and were sad to not see the rest of their family.

The kids had a lot of fun! :)

Last weekend we had a girl's night out with some of my church friends and some of my mom's morning out friends....we went to my favorite restaurant in lakeland (bd's), had some cold stone creamery ice cream (yummy) and then went to target and wandered around for a while (only wauchula women...who don't have any shopping choices in town would go to target on a girl's night out!) :) I'm going to miss these ladies.

We celebrated Father's Day last weekend....sooo glad for Tom who is a sweet daddy to our crazy brood.

Our dead grapefruit tree finally all fell down in a rainstorm we had recently. We put the kids to work loading up the wood.

This past week has been our VBS week. We're doing Crocodile Dock and the kids loved going every night.....the twins did a great job in their preschool class and the older kids were able to learn and be reminded of who God is! Fear Not!!

Here's Tom with our friend, Mitch, doing a skit from up front.

The girls, especially, loved the singing and the hand motions to the music.

Leighton fell asleep one afternoon before VBS started. Staying up until 9:30 every night was a challenge.

Eating an Oreo the right way. :)

My happy boy.

It was a really exhausting week for all of us...tonight at dinner AJ couldn't stand it any longer....she fell asleep in the fellowship hall with kids running around her. (I was taking this picture from under the table, poor tired baby)

The boys doing peace out signs. :)

Sweet friends. Aliyah is our across the street neighbor and we will miss having such a sweet friend to play with right across the street...and Hannah has been a blessing to Kylie as well....starting to think about saying goodbye to our friends is really hard.

So...that kind of catches you up on our past month. We have 3 days until we hit the road...Jenner flies down on Monday and then we all load up (minus Tom) and hit the road for N.C. on Tuesday. Please continue to pray for our transition and saying goodbye. Pray for our house to sell....definitely a bit of a stresser. I can't wait to see some of you in NoVA before we head off to our new home in Arkansas!!

Thanks for checking in!!

Kylie's GNI (girl's night in!)

Josiah went camping this weekend with a friend and his family, so we took the opportunity to have a couple girls over to have a GNI for Kylie! We started off with a little purse craft....

Then we went to painting fingernails. (after running around a screaming for a while)
We ate dinner, ran around and screamed a little more, and had some yummy "purse cake" that my friend Lori made.

Did another little craft (decorated baseball hats with sequins and signed each other hats with sharpies)

And ended the evening watching Nancy Drew projected on the wall!

The girls had a ton of fun...Kylie's going to miss her friends when we move. :(

End of the school year!!

Josiah and his best friend, Rawson. Every time they get together at least 2 or 3 hours of their time is spend on legos!
The Beartooth Club boys with Pastor Brook. We had a lunch after church last sunday where the boys put on puppet shows for us with the sock puppets that they had created. So fun. and funny. :)

Josiah and Mrs. Rich at the 2nd grade awards assembly. He got the national physical fitness award and an honor roll award! We are very proud of both kids this year, they did a great job in school.
Kylie and Mrs.Coleman on the last day of school. What a great 3rd grade year Kylie had!! She continues to prove herself built for school. :)

I looked up online how to make hairbows and went crazy with the ribbon and glue gun last night. Probably not what I need to be doing with all the packing that I need to get done, but they turned out really cute...all 3 girls wore a handmade bow in her hair to church this morning!