Sister's wedding and our own home

Time is just flying by me. I can't believe how fast it has sped up in such a short time. Last month my mom and I took my three boys to Seattle for my sisters wedding. We went a week early to help her with some final things. Flying with the boys went well. They were really good and no ear problems at all. I brought along Brens machine and I'm really glad I did because he needed it a few times while we were there. The wedding itself was beautiful and I am so happy for my little sister. I believe that she really has found her other half. My sisters and I sung Johnny and June for them at the reception which was scary and a mess but the meaning was important since it's a song that she loved. I got to see my best friend in Wa and we got a little hanging out done we really wished it could have been for a longer period of time but weddings are busy. I really liked meeting her son and niece they are both so cute.

Ok so now for the huge news: we have our own place! Ok well not yet but our move in date is for May 1st yay! It's a trailer but hey it's a stepping stone in the right direction. It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a deck, a firepit, a large yard, it's a little secluded, it's three miles from the beach, it's closer to my church, MOPS, and bible studies, and it's affordable yay again! Oh and they allow our pets. I can't wait. This does mean I need to pack again but it's worth it I'm going to be alone with my family again. I'm going to have my own room with just my husband and my own kitchen the boys get their own room I'm so excited I just can't stop wanting to bounce around! Ok I need to breathe lol. Isn't God good? He heard my small cries...ok my loud begging and whining which was probably like a mosquito or fly buzzing in his ear lol, anyways he heard me and he provided. The people I will be renting from are very sweet and their daughter homeschools and is in my group. They also are Christians woot. I can't wait!

I've been dreaming of a....camera like this!!

Ok so I am extremely happy because....yep I have a camera!!!!  I finally just went online and bought it since no stores had one in.  The camera is a canon powershot sx30 woot.  It's big but it works great!

So I have been taking a lot of pictures thought I would share some with you here.

Pumpkin is playing one of the file folder games.  This one has cards that have either a fruit or a vegetable and they have to sort them into the right buckets.  He of course is not that good at it but he has fun sliding them in and out of the buckets and with time he will figure it out.  All of these games I found online at different sites I saved the list and will give credit later since it's on my other computer.

Monkey loves this game.  This file folder game is actually two in one.  Since they had the same animal pictures I just put them together.  For the younger children they have the magnifying glass to look at the tiny pictures and match them with the larger ones.  For Mr A there are cards with the names of the animals and he has to match them up (he also loves to do the magnifying) I really need to get a set of small flat magnifiers they would fit in the folder and be easier to carry around with us.

Mr A playing the Dino Bones file folder game.  In this one the bones have addition and subtraction problems on them.  After he figures out the answer he has to count the dots on the dinosaurs to find the match.

Here is Mr. A practicing with the Tag reader.  We love our Tag reader!

These are the bird houses I have been talking about but unable to take pictures of.  They are so cute.  I need to put new sticks in them but otherwise they are holding up well.  I did take them down off the tree while we where having the crazy weather but they are now back out there.  We've had a few friends visit us already.

This is a cloud that came by one day me and the boys thought it looked like a gingerbread girl :)

I was tired of the toys being in a laundry basket so I bought this to corral them all better.  You wouldn't believe how many toys are in this thing!  Of course I have them all organized by type lol.  I bought two more drawers (I had grabbed single cream bags instead of the double like with the brown ones) to make the pattern look right and fill the empty spaces.  I also got a short cream basket to go on top to hold random toys like the large cars.  I am so happy that I did this and so are the kids when they go to find one of their toys it's not so hard to find them.  (oh and the birthday bag is gone to lol)

Mr. A and Monkey at Pizza Hut.  Mr. A has been doing Book-It the reading program put on by Pizza Hut so we took him in for his reward...A personal pizza just for him!  We had a lot of fun and the pizza we got was delicious.

Aww brotherly love!

This is one of the square foot gardens...again the measurements are wrong lol but they work.  We still have not built the lids but the cage is working for now.

Some or our veggies I can't wait to eat them!

Here is our herbs and pepper one.

This is a tree in the far out backyard I think it looks so cool.

Two little birdy friends that our making nests in our carport.  They only look innocent right now lol.

This is our plum tree in the front yard you can also see the area we run the horses in to the right and the chicken coop in the left but just a little.

We don't really know what the red berries are that grow on this tree...at least I don't remember.

My sisters pet bunny.

Mr. A dumping his compost into the bin.  Like his cowboy boots?  He also dressed himself lol.

Here he is stirring it with a stick.

We rehung the bird houses since the storm seems to be behind us now.

This is the boys swing they got for their birthday. The basketball hoop is laying down because again the storm was knocking it down too,

A picture of the sky it looked pretty cool.

This is a close up of the same picture above.

Here I am finally a new picture :)

Well I hope you enjoyed the updates and there are more coming :)

Separation of Heads, Hands, and Feet

The reasons that I loved my mini van are becoming even more solidified in my mind now that I don't have one and I am stuck in a small car.  We have only been all squished in the car twice now and both times it has been for a long drive (long being an hour and about 15-25 minutes) and I hate it.  I find myself praying for my tax money so that I can buy a new van!!!  The boys usually sit separated.  My hubby and I sit up front, Pumpkin sits in the middle by himself, Monkey sits by the door in the back and Mr. A sits by the window in the back so that there is a whole middle seat between them.  There is no touching aloud!! 

Sure my dreams of my children riding in the car with each other in the beginning were beautiful.  A sweet Mr. A would loving play with his little brother and they would be best friends in the car but as baby Monkey was sleeping Mr. A would poke him and plug his nose (he was only two and a half at the time) so I began separating them in our little KIA as best I could.  When baby Pumpkin arrived we had bought a van for him.  There was no way the three car seats would fit in our car.  So I thought the kids could now sit together....do we ever learn?  The two older boys began fighting.  'He's touching my car seat!', 'he's poking me', 'he's putting his head on me', 'mom he's kicking me', 'mom he won't stop breathing on me', and so many other variations of personal space violation over load that I had to once again separate them.   Bye -bye dreams of brotherly entertainment.  I should have know seeing as how I myself have three brothers and three sisters but I thought it would be different crickets should go off right now at my ignorance with child behavior. 

I was on this awful trip (children behavior wise) today to take hubby to a meeting and then find something to do while we wait when I began to feel the overwhelming frustration with the kids.  It suddenly brought me to the Israelites and how they did nothing but complain.  No matter what God did for them they just found something else to complain about.  Just like today's "Boys hands off of each other", "but mom he's breathing on me", Monkey look towards the window and stop panting on your brother", "mom now his butt is squishing me", there is no fixing this it just becomes something else.  God must have felt that way when he decided to let the Israelites wander in the desert for forty years.  He must have seen the endless years of complaining and whining and said 'hey, no, I am not doing this, when you guys have been wandering and learned your lesson then we will see.  Catch ya in forty years.  Yes they did more than whine they also worshiped Idols, and disobeyed at every turn but I really think the whining was more than enough to drive God to discipline his people I'm just saying :). 

I hope that I do find a van shortly and can once again regain peace ahhh peace.  I will never complain about have a van again!!  I will thank God for it everyday!  Catch me if you see me complaining because I'm going to work on thankfulness.  Starting with I am thankful to have the car we have right now because without we wouldn't be able to go to the doctor's or our friends birthday party that we went to today.  I am thankful because I am willing to learn and grow from the things that happen in my life.  I am thankful because I am.  I am thankful that I have my children and that they are healthy and even have the ability to argue.  I am thankful for my hubby.  I am thankful.  I will continue to think on these things and find something to be thankful everyday and to stop complaining so much :)

Thanks for reading!  What are you thankful for today?

The end of MOPS for the year

Today was my last day of the year at MOPS. MOPS stands for Mother of PreSchoolers. It's a group of mothers that get together hang out and talk motherhood we also have guest speakers and breakfast. Our children are looked after by a group of women volunteers and they do such a good job. Today they had the children sing a song for us. It was so cute to see our children on stage singing and doing a little dance for us. We each got a flower pot with a few flowers in it in celebration of what we had accomplished this year. My accomplishments included homeschooling my five year old, getting our own place and giving birth to our third son. I look back over the year and it's so interesting to see the changes in every ones lives. The pregnant mommas have given birth, the newborns are now teething, new moms are pregnant, and some moms are graduating out of the preschool stage and we will miss them. Sometimes it makes me sad to think about all the changes and to see the children grow so much. I know one day I too will graduate and I will love to see the men they become but boy will I miss my little children. I will miss the bugs, dirt, lovingly picked flowers with no stems, tears, puppies, their little sayings, and I will miss the fridge art. I will miss everything even the things that make me nuts now. But life goes on and so will I one day it will be my turn to graduate and I will have wonderful stories to tell.

April and may

April ended bitter and confusing. We didn't know where we were going to turn. People in our loose circle were accusing us of things we would never do and we had no job. Bri finally found one at an Alzheimer place fifteen minutes from home.