February 2016

February 2016 was a rough month, sickness-wise.  Poor Chandler had pneumonia and ran a fever for nine days!  In the picture below (taken at MOPS) the big boys were off from school, so I had them join in for the picture.  Chandler was diagnosed with pneumonia later that day.

Here's part of the Cherub Choir getting ready to sing a song about Love for Valentine's Day!

Posing with Lexi

The annual pinewood derby was a success.  The boys enjoyed building their cars and both won a trophy for their efforts.  Brighton was for originality in design, and Chandler was 2nd place in speed for his division.

The Cub Scouts at the Derby!

Lexi became a momma this month.  Five puppies survived and were all males.  No surprises there!

January 2016

January 2016 is here!  We started off the New Year by having fun with some of our Christmas presents.  A family trip to the Launching Pad was a fun treat and a workout (for mom and dad) at least.  

We also went out with Grandma and Nanny to Kanki to celebrate.  The boys love the show and the food too!  Wish we had a chef that would cook like this for us at home.

The most eventful part of January was the long-awaited birth of baby Sauls!  Jett is finally a big brother.  I agreed to be on call for when Kim went into labor, but an induction was scheduled so I never did get the call in the middle of the night.  Jett spent the day with us while mom was induced and had a great time.  I love how these boys are best buds!

Dinner time with lots of testosterone!

Baby Allie arrived that afternoon, and Jett waited till the next morning to meet her.  He was more excited about spending the night and playing with our dog than his baby sister, which was a little funny!  I know he's going to be a great big brother!

The new family of FOUR!!

January also brought some snow and fun sledding time for the family.  

Both of the older boys participated in Upward basketball at a local church this winter.  They really enjoyed playing and being part of a team.  

Brighton gained confidence each game and towards the end of the season would shoot a few baskets rather than just passing the ball away as soon as he got it.  Hopefully next year, 3 boys will be on teams!

November & December

For November and December we did many of the usual holiday activities.  

One of my favorite things is taking the boys for our Christmas card picture in November.  I like to have my Christmas cards in the mail on black Friday!  The boys are usually cooperative to a point...

For the past few years we have gotten together and walked around the lake on Thanksgiving morning.  This was our largest crowd yet.  We had a great time!

Right after Thanksgiving, Derek and I took our FIRST TRIP EVER away from all four boys!  We went on a cruise!!  We flew out to California and cruised to Catalina Island and down into Mexico.  

A view of Catalina Island at sunrise.

Here I am on the boat with LA in the background.

While down in Mexico, we got to hold a lion cub.  Her name was Chanel and she was about 5 months old.  The power in her paws was incredible!  A local group was raising money to help make improvement to a zoo nearby.  The best thing about Mexico was the fish tacos!  They were SO GOOD.  Derek was not adventurous enough to try them.

Immediately after coming home from the cruise, we jumped right back into "normal" life with 4-boys and took them to the Pullen Park Holiday Express with some friends.  Derek and I were both very jet-lagged, but managed to do it somehow!

Ever since Maverick was born, we have gotten a live tree.  Here I'm unwrapping the growing-too-fast collection of ornaments for the boys to help decorate the tree with.  There is hardly any room for ornaments that were Derek's or mine.  I'd love to have a second tree, but I'm not really sure where it would fit!

In mid-December, I had a baby shower for my sweet friend, Kim.  She is having her first girl and is super excited to say the least!  I made her the cake we are about to cut and it was quite the under-taking.  I think it was FIVE layers of my grandmother's wedding cake recipe.  When I started it, I didn't think it would take so long, but then I ended up spending a good part of a day (and night) working to finish it.  Oh, and our kitchen sink facet broke in the middle of this process, so that certainly didn't help!

Here are the gingerbread houses that we decorated with family when they came to visit in December. We had so much fun!  Hopefully this will become a tradition!

Here's Joel and Ruby.  She is a cute little doll!

Christmas morning and the boys were excited to see what Santa had brought!  Of course there is usually always one (or two, three, or four) that is unwilling for a photo-op.  Guess who that was below....

We had a lovely Christmas and everybody was so thankful for their gifts.  The older boys are really showing their appreciation more with thank-you's and hugs instead of the "gimme, gimme" attitude we are hoping to teach them not to have.  

October!

Hello Faithful Readers.  I have fallen WAY behind on blogging....

I will be posting "catch-up" months until I can get back on track...

October is always a busy month.  I don't remember much about Octobers as a child other than the fair and Halloween.  How did they get so busy for my family?  

We had multiple visits to pumpkin patches where we picked out so many pumpkins I didn't know what to do with them all!  We had had rides and train rides and played in corn pits.  Lots of fall fun for sure!  Here we are at Savannah's birthday party catching a train ride!

Of course Halloween is the big finish to October!  This year my boys wanted to be SCARY!!!  I was perfectly fine that my sweet 2-year-old was not on board with the new plan and he chose to be a frog.  I was his princess of course.  Too sweet!

Don't we make a precious pair?

Dad and Maverick were matching skeletons.

I also helped my good friend, Heather throw a surprise 50th birthday party for her husband.  It was a lot of work, but a good time as well.  

We got these vintage glass bottle cokes and I had my favorite cookie baker make up some cookies.

My favorite 2-year-old is posing with some pumpkins at yet another pumpkin patch.  This one is just up the street from our house and we went there for pictures and to pick a LARGE carving pumpkin.

 Another fun thing we did this October was take a trip down to Charleston, SC.  My cousin was getting married so we decided to make it into a vacation as well.  We took the boys down for a few days ahead of the wedding and explored all we could in the Charleston area.  Here we are at Patriot's Point exploring the Vietnam exhibit.  I was so proud of myself for actually walking through the submarine there on display.  I have a little claustrophobia but was able to do it for my boys!

Here we are at the wedding!  My cousin, Jenny was the Maid of Honor for her sister.  Her daughter, Chloe was one of the flower girls.  

The wedding was on an island that we had to take a boat to get there.  The only bad thing was that we wanted to leave before the rest of the group (earlier bedtimes for this crowd) and we ended up having to wait about 1 hour for the boat to come back to the dock.....slight miscommunication, but it turned out fine in the end.  I guess!

One of my favorite things about NC Octobers is the fair!  I wouldn't miss it.  This family of 6 is proving to be rather expensive though!!  Derek had just gotten home from a business trip and was tired, so we didn't actually stay very long.  I didn't get to walk through many of the vegetable and art exhibits like I would have liked to, but we'll hopefully do a little more next year!

Our budget allows the boys to play one game each.  They chose very carefully!

Our gracious neighbor allowed us to project a movie on their garage door for Brighton's birthday party.  It was so much fun for the kids.  They had a great time and the weather was perfect!

Can't believe seven years have gone by already!

Finally to wrap up October postings, I can't forget about our newest family member.  Lexi turned one in October.  She is a very sweet girl.  We are fostering her for a local breeder.  It will be interesting to see how we like this experience.  I know we will miss her when she is away taking care of her puppies though!

Lexi wishes she was a lap dog.  She thinks she still fits!  Ha!

Boone Family Reunion

God works in mysterious ways.  Where did this phrase come from?  God was surely at work today for my family, especially my father.  Today was the annual Boone Family Reunion at White Oak Church near Nashville, NC.  The boys had a good time and got silver dollars from their great Uncle Warren.  My dad had been out of town that weekend, and didn't think he would come to the reunion, but came home early.  

Since our car was full, Derek's grandmother (Alice) rode with my parents, along with my dad's aunt.  On the way home Alice started feeling sick and asked my dad to pull the car over.  He took the nearest exit as he certainly didn't want her to get sick in the car and she was already heaving from the backseat. Luckily, Uncle Warren's house is right off the exit and he was already home from the reunion so they stopped there.  While everybody waited on Alice, Uncle Warren told my dad that he had something for him.

It turns out that my grandfather (My dad's dad) had given his then 12-year-old brother-in-law his Navy issued knife when he got home from WWII and was married in 1944.  This knife was the only thing he had with him when his ship was sunk during WWII and most likely saved his life.  He had to defend himself against Japanese men in the water and also sharks.  My dad and I had both heard stories about my grandfather's WWII time, but never knew anything about the knife or that my great Uncle Warren had it.  Our entire family was just amazed about how God worked to show that knife to my dad that day.  Uncle Warren had never mentioned it to my dad in all the years he's been alive, or even at the time of my grandfather's death in 2003.  He gave the knife to my dad who treasures it and I know how it is a great reminder of the sacrifice his father and many others made for our country.  

Gender Reveal Party!

I had the privilege of throwing my first gender reveal party for my best friend, Kim.  She was super excited to find out the gender for baby # 2 and I was more than excited to be the one to surprise her and her entire family with the news.  It was a crazy busy day (like always) for me the day she got her ultrasound and so she dropped off a sealed envelope on my porch with the ultrasound picture inside.  She assured me that neither Jon nor she had peeked at the results.  I went inside my closet to open the envelope because I didn't want my face to show anything to the boys.  They couldn't be trusted with this secret!

I had just two days to make all the final preparations for the party.  Luckily I had planned out everything I would need boy or girl.  The big day arrived and I came over early to help put out the decorations.

Kim got this cute cake made, but it was not for the "reveal"

Everybody had pizza and salad and wrote their name down on Team Boy or Team Girl.  I think it ended up being tied for each side.  Kim had wanted an element of confusion for the reveal...

Originally I had filled up pink and blue balloons as well as some gold balloons with rainbow confetti. You could see the rainbow colors through the balloons so we decided to change that to black.  The balloons were filled with rainbow confetti and also a handmade scratch-off ticket that revealed the gender!  Everybody assumed that the confetti's color inside would reveal the gender.  One, two, three....POP!!!

I had prepped the crowd to scream out the gender as soon as they knew.  Even though the confetti was RAINBOW color...a few excited people screamed "It's a Boy!"  Kim knew that the real reveal would be the scratch off tickets, but with people screaming "It's a Boy!" she was confused....had somebody looked at a ticket already??

Then, Kim's Dad grabbed a ticket off the ground and yelled out, "It's a Girl!"  Kim looked at me, "Really?"  I nodded.  She burst into tears from excitement as her Dad showed her the ticket with the pink elephant proving he was telling the truth.  What a fun party and a super-fun memory!!  Can't wait to meet this little princess!