Liliana and Sarah at park

Checking the newspaper

Qorban needed to pick a newspaper story for a school assignment and Sarah was helping.

Caleb 9th birthday!!!!

                                            Pizza and legos, two of Caleb's favorite things= one happy boy!

 Sarah likes eating the peppers off supreme pizza. She even swiped mine when I was distracted.

 Caleb waiting to blow out candles on his cake. I was disorganized and picked up a cake at the grocery store, just before they closed. I hope to make him some cookies to eat when we celebrate with daddy. But Grandma was here so we shopped at walmart for birthday presents, picked up pizza, cake and ice cream and headed home to enjoy.

fun day

 

 Cub Scout fun day
The kids shot BB guns, used a sling shot to try to hit a metal pole in a pond with beans and shot arrows at targets with bows. We avoided the nature hike. Then we had hotdogs for lunch and headed home.

                                       Caleb shooting arrows. He did really well.

                                      Liliana shooting arrows.

                               I tried to help Christopher shoot arrows.

                                              Boys playing tag after lunch.

                         Liliana and Caleb waiting for the others to finish their turns with the slingshots.

Qorban shooting arrows.

baseball practice

Qorban's baseball practices last an hour and a half to two hours. It gets long for the others and mommy to wait. Caleb tried Malachi in a regular seatbelt. He was cute sitting there like a big kid and slobbered all over the seatbelt happily.

playing with Grandma's umbrellas

 It was cloudy and the kids got Grandma's umbrellas out of her car. She had three umbrellas. The kids were jumping up pretending to fly like Mary Poppins. Caleb in the black tshirt.

                                             Qorban jumping from the trampoline

                                             Liliana

                                                      Christopher

and a little excitment!

                                                           Sarah

                                                Liliana and Sarah  in the princess castle

 Sarah just sat at the top of this slide for a long time. She blocked the other kids who wanted to slide, would push any kid who tried to push her down the slide. She wouldn't climb back down thru the house because the kids who were waiting to go down blocked that way. I couldn't quite reach her.

                          Qorban driving lego police car. This was one of his favorite things about LEGOLAND.

                                                         Caleb driving his car.

                                              Liliana driving her car.

                                             Christopher driving his car. He was just barely tall enough to drive. This was his favorite thing here.

 Caleb and Christopher admiring some lego creations. This room had some really cool lego especially of the Dallas area. They had the baseball field and the football stadium, the major downtown skyscrapers, the airport and other stuff. This was Caleb's most favorite part.

                 Sarah loved this hot air balloon. She would point and reach and scream at it in excitement.

 Malachi was really good in the stroller. Maybe it was all the activity around him but he was extremely content the entire time we were there, even during the 4D movie that blew wind, water and fake snow on us.

    Sarah was a little firecracker, never staying still for much. She didn't want to build but just to run and run and run.

 She really wanted on the animals in the dubulo village but signs said to stay off. I wouldn't put her up but every time another child was able to climb up or a parent lifted them up, she was watching and would point and holler as if to say, 'if they can, why not me?'

                                        Caleb

                                             Christopher

Christopher and Qorban racing some lego cars down a racetrack.

A weekend away

  Malachi liked being in the pool but took a nice nap in the stroller at the hotel pool.

 This was a huge pool especially for a hotel pool. It had great seats. The shallow end was three foot and Christopher could easily touch. The deep end was 6 foot and the older kids had fun jumping.

Here the boys were playing some version of David and Goliath.

school at the lake

 We picked up Eric's car from the repair place in Atoka and since we were half way to the lake, we continued on to the lake. This time I brought their school work. They were not excited that I remembered it. This is the first time we sat where the picnic tables were. There were nice grill pits there. Maybe next time we will bring some charcoal and hotdogs or hamburgers.

 Sarah was so cute exploring the site. She found sticks, rocks, leaves, pine cones and the ashes in the fire grill.

                                     Christopher climbing around. I was going to have the kids sit still on the ground and look at all the different living bugs right in front of them that we don't notice cause they are so small but yet God was so creative to make them with amazing details. But the biting ants won out and we didn't try this. We will have to go further north to do this.

                                             Sarah too small to climb down where Christopher jumped off.

                                    The older ones still sitting at the table. Liliana was the only one who really got hers done. The boys were expecting to be allowed to swim even if their math wasn't done.

                                       Sarah and Christopher walked over to this rock and climbed on it. Then Christopher got down and moved on. Sarah stood on it yelling "Mama" loudly. Qorban and Christopher went to rescue her.

                             We left Liliana's tennis shoes in Ripley so she has been wearing this pink dress shoes everywhere. Sarah loves to wear them.

 Sarah, Christopher, Malachi and I walked out on this fishing dock. Sarah was excited to point at the water over the side but was a little unsure of the water that she could see between the boards where we were walking.

 There were two fishing docks. This one was clearly newer. It had this little rectangle of water in the middle. Christopher liked to lower his self down and put his feet in the water here. It made me nervous but he was able to pull himself back up each time.  We headed back to the other kids very soon.

Malachi slept most of the time that we were doing schoolwork. After he woke up, I fed him and then walked to the fishing docks trying to give the older kids time to finish their work. The boys chose not to and so I didn't let them go swimming when we went to the water.  We didn't swim long. We were hungry and it started thundering. I was hoping that it was the ammunition plant testing explosives but then we saw lightening so we got out.  It was a good day.