Pure joy.

There is something about this picture that I love besides the girl in it.  She had been inside, cleaning her bathroom, fixing those pigtails by herself and when she came outside she saw the boys jumping and immediately had to take part.  No hesitation, just whole hearted, not afraid to get dirty, joy.

The start of the patch

After a visit to the ophthalmologist we were told we need to patch this guys eye.  Here is the before and after.

HE’s not a fan.

Soon to be birthday boy

I happened upon a birthday boy shirt and since his birthday was right around the corner it was perfect timing.  He was pretty proud of it.

 

Random picture of the day

The kids were playing on the floor.  I think Channing was wrestling with Gibson while he was attempting to play with legos.  Always fun around here.

Channing’s retreat

While I was away with the ladies, Channing had a retreat of her own away from the boys.  She spent the weekend with a friend from school, camping at Guadalupe State Park.  She had the best time!  Here are Jenna, Kinsley and Channing, kindergarten friends.

Ladies Retreat 2014

Erin did a fabulous job planning the Ladies Retreat this year.  It was the perfect mix of downtime, serving time and worship.  I didn’t get a picture with our group of friends but here is the entire group.

Slippery driveway

We woke up Friday morning to icicles hanging from our roof and ice covering the driveway.  When Stefan left for work that morning he slipped out of the garage and down to the street.  Before that though the kids enjoyed pretending to ice skate without skates.

The medicine crew

Jeff started everyone on a short course of antibiotics and put Hadley on a full length course to try and stop the strep that would not die.

Bottoms up!

Still sick

Here we go with round two of strep for Hadley.  I enjoyed my time with just him even if he was sick.  After dropping the little man off for a visit, we hit Starbucks for some hot chocolate and browsed through Target.  We also replaced every tooth brush in our house hoping to keep strep from re-occurring in every person that had it.

Cuties!

Check out these two cuties.  That little guy is getting bigger everyday it seems. It won’t be long before he stops accepting all that extra love he gets from Gibson.

Science Experiment

I was not impressed by the science experiment that we chose for the science fair this year but Hadley was into it and that’s what’s important.  Stefan was in charge and somehow I missed a picture with anything but his hands in it. This was our first time being a part of the science fair and there will only be more people in it in coming years so I’m sure experiments will get better with practice.

Brooks’ party

Fun crazy crew for Brooks’ birthday.  Capture the flag is serious business.

They are getting big!

They’ve learned how to crack their eggs, add milk, start the stove, season the eggs with salt and pepper, and cook them by themselves.  I guess the next step would be washing the dishes…. baby steps.

Giving back

I’ve been looking for a long time for a way for our family to serve in some way.  When Lauren mentioned that she had taken her kids to put together dinner with Mobile Loaves and Fishes I knew it would be a good fit.  It was awesome to see my kids jump in and help with happy hearts.  Right now we are going to try and do this monthly.  We’ll see how it goes.

My favorite trampoline picture?

This one, check out that hair!

Date night

It was my week to take Linden on a one on one date.  We went to the library, looked for books, listened to live music.  It was a great date!

Lunch is always more fun with friends

After church taco cabana lunch with the Thompson’s and Jones’.  Next time we decided everyone is just getting breakfast tacos.  We went back about 3 times to get more food. I guess we underestimated how much this crew eats.  It won’t be long before we’re going to need to find an all you can eat buffet for these boys (and two girls).

The changing outfits of Gib

The kid changes his clothes about four times a day.  Since he’s the fourth I typically don’t check out what he is wearing until we are already out. (This is one of his favorite choices, the double shirt and basketball shorts.)  I’m lucky if he’s wearing shoes or has shoes in the car and he almost never matches. These are all from the same day. I would guess I didn’t catch every outfit change that day.

Another one bites the dust

One day later, after all the boys (minus the baby) had strep, Channing finally got it.  We knew it was coming, it was only a matter of time.  She took it like a champ and thankfully Jeff called in a Rx without us having to go back in.

Of course

Of course, just as soon as the kids start back to school Linden got sick with strep for the second time.  It gave us some good one on one time to drink hot chocolate and figure out how to garden with chickens.  Linden’s ready to start!

Back to school

It was hard to get back into the swing of things after being off for Christmas vacation and instead of leaving history projects to the last minute I always make Hadley start on them a little at a time.  It makes it much more manageable since time is short around here.

Rollerblades have invaded!

Hadley got a pair of rollerblades for Christmas which didn’t fit.  Instead of trading them in, we gave them to Linden and bought Hadley a new pair.  We never dreamed Linden would enjoy rollerblading as much as he does but he has hardly taken them off.  They are still a favorite in and around the house.

Changing things up and sickness

Sunday brought about our first family meeting and the addition of the chore charts to our kids.  We are hoping eventually having a checklist of what is required of them will help them take some initiative and responsibility over what it means to be a part of this family.  They look thrilled right? The highlight of the meeting every week is getting to change their chores.  To be fair, we also now have their allowance flowing directly into an account for them every week.  We are no longer slacker parents, thank you technology.

Sunday also became the day that 6 out of 7 people in our family were on medication.  Stefan, Linden, Gibson, and Hadley were all taking medication for strep.  I had an abscess on Friday that needed to be drained (that was awesome) and was put on antibiotics for a MONTH! Baby, still on his medication….  That’s a lot to keep track of.

Changes to the tree house

Stefan spent a few hours on the weekend attaching the slide to the lower level and adding a railing.  Just like when we were building the house I think looking back and seeing the progression on the tree house will be fun.

My favorite from the day

I love this picture.  She is pretty proud she gets to hold baby and he was laughing at her. I love the look on her face, the shadow of her crazy hair coming out of her braids, his arms flailing and the outline of those chubby cheeks. It’s a keeper!

One more

I really wanted to include two pictures from January 2nd because this one…. it makes me laugh every time.  After a week and a half off of work Stefan had not shaved.  He went back to work on the second but decided to shave his beard off in stages.  Seriously, this looks like a creepy mug shot.

The Ricks!

Miss Hannah got engaged on New Years’ Eve and we still hadn’t met her love Cameron yet.  It had been a long time since we had seen one of our favorite families and since everyone was in town we had them all over for lunch.  What a fun afternoon!  There were people everywhere playing outside.  We may need to make this a tradition when everyone is in town.

Trying again

After 18 months of capturing memories of almost every day of the year I took a hiatus when I dropped my external hard drive and couldn’t recover the pictures.  When I look back at that year and a half, I’m grateful for the pictures I took and the extra effort I made to snap just one picture of whatever event to try and describe our day.  This year I felt like I was ready to try this blog again.  Here’s to 2014!

 

January 1, Stefan spent most of the day outside working on the tree fort.  A lot of work is going to go into this but I think it’s going to be awesome!  He drug those tree trunks all the way from the front of our lot to the back in order to use them for support, that was not an easy task!