Still playing catch up - July 09

We stayed at Cricket Cottage in Harrisonburg for several nights before we drove west.... the kids loved the Marsh dogs....here are the 3 littles with Whip, their favorite of the 2 (Scout was a bit rowdy for them). Sadly, Whip died recently....our family will always have fond memories of that sweet dog. Tom remembers him as a puppy back when we were in college!

the boys in the barn

the girls in the barn

we grilled out one night so that we could see some families that we really wanted to see

The kids even got to take turns riding!

Kylie best Harrisonburg friend, Allison

The 3 big loved sleeping upstairs in the loft.

From H'burg we headed to Lexington, KY to visit with my brother and his family!
Playing on Micah's skate ramp. My nephew Micah was on a Disney XD show called Next-X. He got to go to California the week after we left and watch some of the X-games (and skate there).

all of the cousins just after having some delicious Grater's ice cream. mmmm.

playing some guitar hero...my bro sporting the awesome willy wonka glasses.

Twin time...

playing at the playground with no older siblings.

First day of Mother's Day Out!

They were very excited about their backpacks and lunch bags...and they had a great time!

1st day of school 2009!

4th, 3rd and kindergarten this year....hard to believe it!
silly pics...

all five crazy kids. the twins love to walk around with their backpacks feeling really big!

AJ's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Moseley!

E-I-E-I-OH!!

for some reason the twins, instead of singing "old macdonald" they sing "farmer jeddy"...which actually comes out sounding like "farmer jenny". (farmer jed is the name of the "little people" farmer) anyways, they are always doing some cute fun thing....they wanted me to take a picture of them singing, so here it is!

We got to see Anners!!

Our good friend, Anna, was stateside for a little bit this summer so we had a chance to see her at a mutual friends house in Pennsylvania. The 5 kids and I drove up on monday and back on tuesday. Way too short of a visit but so nice to see her! Our friend, Julie, and her kids drove up too....so it was a house with 5 adults and 11 children! Chaos and fun. :)

4 of the girls decided they wanted to sleep with Miss Anna in her bed. They actually fell asleep all in bed together....but i'm not sure if they woke up that way.

Anners and her kids :)

The Mirabellas and Anna.

Most of you know that Anna lived with us for the summer 2 years ago when we just moved to Florida. She is currently at language school in France with plans of returning to Cameroon and continuing to work with Wycliffe Bible Translators.

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!