8!

So yesterday was just like every other day... Wake up, take the kids to the park by myself, come home, eat lunch, play outside... There was really only one little difference... you could hardly even notice it........ 2 kids, 8 kids, what's the difference?


Alexis, Christian, Chase, Harrison, Ethan, Tucker, Autumn and Mason!

Wow, it's been a while.

Okay, so we have been BUSY this summer. I have been planning on adding vacation pictures, but we took SO many... (like between all of us, over 600) so figuring out which ones to put on the blog isn't going to be quick and easy. But Amy sent me these pictures tonight so I thought I might as well add them, and do the vacation pics later. Enjoy!

Chase has learned to ride a bike with no training wheels! I feel bad that we have never worked with him on this, but where we live there is just no place to ride so we never really thought about it. He has literally been on a bike WITH training wheels only like 5 times... really, I counted up all the times I have ever known him to ride a bike with training wheels and I can only think of 4... So, he has officially in one week rode a bike with no training wheels more than he ever rode one with them on!?!?!?!

Here he is on his cousin's little 10 inch bike... We bought him a 16 inch Spiderman bike (and a horn and a kick stand) so he thinks he is big stuff. On Saturday he rode 2 miles at Ju Ju's house!


Here are a few pictures taken at Erick's cousin, Crysi's wedding in Indiana. It was a beautiful wedding and we all had a blast. Here are two out of my three handsome boys.


Here is my big boy dancing with me to a slow song. You should have seen this boy out there dancing by himself. He pretty much stayed on the dance floor all night. As shy as he normally is, and as much as he doesn't like everyone (especially strangers) watching him, he was a whole different guy out there gettin' his groove on.


The dip :)


Thanks Amy for sending the pictures, and getting me back on the ball!

Good Post

If you have never gone to Amber's link on my blog, you should. Here is a link to one of her posts. It is really really worth your time to stop in to her blog from time to time. I have dial-up and I take the time to click on her name, you should too.

It must have been a very gradual process....

..Me turning into a total dork, that is. Because it happened without me ever really realizing it?? I think it all started with the mini-van, then the mall walking, blogging... you get the picture. But tonight we took it to a new level, riding down the road on bikes pulling our two kids in a buggy. See for yourself :)

I refused to put the kids in until we got to a road where there is little/no traffic. So Erick decided to ride by himself rather than try to load it all up, and we followed in the car. When I saw what a dork he looked like, I ran back in and grabbed my little camera! This is him waving to a semi-driver like a big goon, pulling a buggy with no one in it.


They're loaded and ready to go!






We had to stop at Ju Ju's for water, it's a LOT harder to ride a bike pulling a 5 and 3 year old!!!!!!

By the way, Erick rode 3 miles pulling the buggy; I rode 5. Just thought I'd throw that in there :)

Some more summer pics!

Skylar wearing Dav-O's hat... She's cool isn't she?



I had my hands full at this concert in the park :)


Chase and his friend, Harrison.



Melissa and Valerie with their babies


Here are a couple of pictures from their second horseback riding lesson.

Our little buddy, Isaiah

I got to go visit a very special little guy tonight, little man Isaiah! He was born 4 days before Mason to my friend, Nicki and her husband Timmy. Kyla called me this afternoon and asked if I would like to ride with her to go visit him, and so I made babysitting arrangements and we jumped in the car. He seemed to be feeling great considering all he's been through the last few days, he was in the cutest little mood! Here are some pictures of him laughing and playing with Kyla.






And this is him being a tad mischievous... He took "Bernie" off (his trach) and threw it on the floor and just laughed and thought it was a pretty funny trick :)



Please keep him in your prayers as he is trying to fight off a very serious infection. To read his updates, you can click on Isaiah in the 'Chase and Mason's friends' list.

Woodworking 101

Chase loves to work in the shop like his daddy. In fact, once when he was two, Erick brought me out to show me what Chase had done while Erick was outside. He had taken a cordless drill and screwed a bunch of screws into a board all by himself. As I was arguing with Erick that there was no way he had done that by himself, Erick was swearing that there were no screws in the board when he went outside and Chase was holding the drill when he came back in... We kept debating on how else they could have gotten there, (like he wasn't standing right there listening to us) when our little 2 year old interrupted us and said, "I can do it again!!" And he did, all by himself... the drill probably weighed as much as he did, but he could do it. Here are a couple of things he and Skylar built last week while I was inside cleaning the kitchen!


I think they were going for a house here... They've got 4 walls, good start :)


Here is a snowboard that Skylar built with only a little help from Chase... I don't think I could have made this :)