Mother's day...take two!

Celebrating with MY mom is always a JOY!

Doesn't she just LOOK fun?





I have the most exciting news! My sister is getting married!!!! She has fallen madly in love with Eric and can't live another day with out him. (Okay...they will wait until the wedding, but you know what I mean) I'm thrilled and can't wait until I get to call Eric my brother-in-law and Uncle Eric.

(As fun as this picture is, it's not really how it happened. He really proposed privately (I couldn't talk him into letting me watch). But what a great photo opportunity!)

Mother's day

~I love Mother's day~

I love spending the day the kids while I get to watch them play. I love just celebrating the lives of these wonderful children that we have been blessed to have in our arms and in our hearts.

I love being able to take the kids somewhere special because their joy begins before we leave the house. I spent the morning giggling as we drove to the beach listening to "Are we there yet?...When are we going to be there?...AND...How many more minutes till we get there?..." Their excitement is priceless. It's funny to listen to Kadin mimicking his older brother and sister just to join in the conversation.

We went to Salt Water State Park. Awesome. I could have stayed ALL day but after about 4 hours our little Kadin was getting tired and needed some down time.

This log was a perfect way to cross the stream. Austin and Emma were able to cross it easily. In fact I'm surprised that they weren't running across! Kadin and I on the other hand...yep, that was a little more interesting.

It look many tries to get all three kids to sit in one spot long enough to take a picture. But finally success! All of them together (for a minute at least).

We couldn't leave Mocha out! And yes, I am holding a couple of them in place!

My one true love! Isn't he cute?

Mocha sure is getting big isn't she...he...?

Hunting for crabs. They were everywhere. We would flip a rock just to watch them scurry away. I believe that there must have been more then 30 under a few of those rocks. I loved the screams of excitement with each new rock.

Emma holding her treasures. I think that she is holding at least 3 crabs for this shot!

Sand... oops, I mean MUD!

Yummy...Chocolate!

Snake charmer

This is my amazing daughter. Evidently our little girl is quite the snake charmer. (Don't look Stephanie!) We went to Austin's school to see the reptile guy and Emma quickly ran up front to get the closest seat she could find. She loved seeing the lizards, alligators and snakes. The scarier it was the more she liked it. When he asked for a volunteer Emma stuck her little arm up in the air. I was not surprised when he picked her over the 100 other volunteers... I mean, she was the cutest little girl there!

Easter!

Just a few pictures of the cutest kids on the block!

WOW! Can you say grown up?



My little "cheesy" boy

Pretty as a princess...

Our little family.


Our kids were SO excited to get to Grandpa and Grandma's house after church...

I will give you one guess why...

Yep! That is all the candy that came home with us. It doesn't even include the amount that they already ate!

Gearing up for Easter...and an OOPS!

We have had such a great spring break! Much of the week was spent playing with friends, celebrating birthdays, and getting ready for Easter.

We love decorating eggs! The more eggs and the more dye the better. This year I was amazed at how quickly 66 eggs were colored (not counting the few that were broken). But when 10 children all have their little fingers in the fun (and the dye) it is going to go quickly!








Then we just had to have an egg hunt!! So we all hoped in the our cars for a short drive up to Ferndale and have the hunt with the Williams (just 2 hours away, but well worth the drive!).





And OOPS...



Here is a picture of our fish tank after someone (I will not mention the name of the small child that I am referring to..) feed our fish just a little too much food. I couldn't even see through the tank. We ended up loosing 3 of our 6 fish. But Emma was quick to explain to Kadin that God had taken them to Heaven and they would be in our hearts forever. She is so cute.

Before I cleaned the tank

After the big scrub out

Austin's First Slumber Party

Austin was so excited to have a night with his buddies! Mrs. Earnhardt had a GREAT birthday party for Jacob this weekend and to top it off she invited 5 of Jacobs friends to spend the night...


I think that they were a little crazy to have 6 little boys up all night giggling, eating, talking and playing. But I am really excited that Austin was with such a great family for his first official night away from us (not counting Grandma and Grandpa's house).


I hear that they had a great time... Mr. Earnhardt was finally able to get them to sleep at about 11:00 pm and they were up at about 7:00 am. By the time I got there to pick Austin up at about 10:30 in the morning the boys were running and playing outside so hard that they were sweating!

Happy Birthday Jacob!!