Happy 42nd Birthday, Maynard!

Today was Maynard's birthday. He had to work, but it wasn't going to be too bad of a day for him. 

I was going to go buy him a bday cake when the kids declared they wanted to bake him a cake instead. So we headed to the store. 

We went to the Dollar store first and I let them pick out a few decorations. It was totally up to them what they chose, but the rule was they all had to agree on everything or I would choose instead. It's amazing how well that threat worked. 

Somehow we ended up with a red and white polka dot theme and a few shark items thrown in. They picked out plates, cups, napkins, gold crowns, table cloth, party blowers, poster board, banner, and candles. 

We made a quick run to Krogers and they chose chocolate cake mix with chocolate icing. Amelia chose the sprinkles. Gotta have lots of sprinkles. Ha ha

We got home and Josiah got started on the decorations while I helped Amelia and Titus get started on the cake.   They all worked together so well. 

The cake sat out to cool and we met Maynard out at Cheddars for lunch. Then we beat Maynard back to the house and the kids finished up decorating the cake. Now we just had to wait on Daddy to get there. My kids were super excited!!!!

SUPRISE!!!!!! 

Sprinkles anyone?????

So the banner was Josiah's doing. I asked why he folded it. He said because it kept saying the same thing over and over again.  Ha ha 

Sign posted on the front door. 

These kids love Birthday parties!!!!

Need your next party planned?  Give them a call. They love to spend dollars!!!

Happy Birthday, Maynard. We love you!!

Easter 2014

I have decided that I like Easter being later than usual. The weather was so much nicer and it was just beautiful. 

For the past few years we have been spending Easter here in town with our church. We would have a dinner and an egg hunt (gasp) at church. This year we decided to go home and be with my family for Easter because we hadn't been home since Christmas. 

Maynard has to work every Saturday so we couldn't leave until he got home. I spent Saturday packing for our overnight trip. I hate packing. It's not so bad if you just need casual clothes and pj's threw in a suitcase, but throw in a church service and it gets crazy. Especially when you have a girly girl. It's not shirt, pants, socks, and shoes. It's dress, sandals, sweater, hairbow, slip, accessories, and on and on. Easter is extra stressful too when packing. You want them to look their best, but yet it's all new clothes and you ain't real sure everything is gonna fit or look right. You aren't going to be home to make any quick fixes or changes so this it. (Yes. I have issues. Deep rooted issues) ha ha

Oh and I had to worry about getting all their Easter basket goodies into the car without them seeing it or praying the chocolate bunnies didn't melt on the way. 

See. One thing you all will soon learn about me is that I worry about frivolous things. I sweat the small stuff and just don't worry about stuff that would actually make sense to worry about. Lol

Now that I got that off my chest.........

We had several egg hunts to choose to go to that day and I had lots to do, so I chose one about 2 miles from my house. I figured let the kids hunt eggs, get some candy and head home and pack the car. Except when it was time to go to the egg hunt the kids were asking for their baskets. Which was a legite concern. The only problem was they were already packed cutely and hidden in a garbage bag ready to be packed away. I kinda groaned about forgetting about that small detail. So I ran back in the house and dumped their baskets out into the garbage bag and carried the empty baskets back to the car. Oh well. That wouldn't take me too long to redo. 

We got to the egg hunt and I discovered I had to be in 3 different lines since I had 3 different kids fitting different age groups. So that was interesting, but it worked out. I may or may not have went behind the tables and grabbed registration slips rather than getting back in another line. After we registered we went into the gym of the church and sat down at tables. We waited and waited. 12 o' clock came and passed. But it was worth it. Lo and behold there was pizza and Capri suns laid out before us. So what if we had to sit through a Christian band playing loud music and singing songs that I never actually heard the words too. (I thought only holiness churches were guilty of that). We even got to hear a small sermon about an empty Easter egg that represented the empty tomb of Jesus. Except no one was listening. I felt horrible for the preacher dude who just kept on talking as if he had everyone's attention. Finally it was time for the egg hunt.   Once again my kids went in all directions. I decided to hang tight with Amelia though. She might would stop and stare at someone's pretty shoes or sparkly outfit and forget to pick up the eggs. My kids each found probably 40 or more eggs. Let me clarify the word "found". Why is it when we were little we really had to "hunt" for the eggs? They wasn't just thrown all over the ground for you to just bend down and pick them up. By George we climbed trees and crawled under bushes to find our eggs. And not only that......  We actually dyed eggs and hunted them without even expecting prizes. It was just for fun. We might have one lucky egg where we would win money, but that was it and we didn't care a bit. Now every egg has to have prize even if they didn't have to "hunt" it, but just reach down and pick it up. 

Ok. I'm done with that now. I know, I know. I may consider a bit of counseling in my future. 

They got sooo much candy. What I thought was neat though was Amelia's candy was mainly stuff she was allowed to eat. I done prepared her about having to trade a few things with her brothers and she was ok with that. There was just a few things she couldn't have and it worked out great.  No tears and no drama. 

We went home and I literally watched in horror as my carpet became egg and candy wrapper covered. Are my kids the only ones who has to devour everything at once???

Kinda made me glad I put beef jerky in our eggs for the Harper egg hunt. 

I know I took a risk of every dog in the neighborhood joining in on the hunt, but at least it wasn't more candy. 

Maynard finally got home and we headed out. 

A few hours later we had arrived and was greeted at the van by cousins who were excited to see their cousins. 

We ate a quick supper and soon it was time for the egg hunt. 

At the words "go" kids came flying out everywhere. 

I gave up trying to get pictures with 13 kids running all over the yard. I did get a few of this pretty girl because she wasn't as fast as the others. Ha ha. Her Mom may disagree. 

We got a group picture of all the cousins. We were missing 3, but here is 13/16. 

I sure do love these kiddos. 

The kids played and had a blast. I was glad for warm weather so they could enjoy being outside instead of cooped up in the house. 

After baths that night it didn't take long for my kids to go to sleep. It had been a long day. 

The kids were up early Sunday Morning attacking their quick, thrown together baskets. If you look closely you will see new toothbrushes. Ha ha. I figured they would need them for all the sugar they had been eating. They only got a choc bunny from us that was sugary and everything else was snacks or bubbles, etc....  I just cringe when they get so much candy. 

We went to my parents church and enjoyed their Easter service with them. 

Took a few pics afterward and then had lunch at Texas Roadhouse. And so you know, I totally chose to go there. Ha ha. I love their steak kabobs. 

The Mom and Dad. 

The sisters. 

I have 3 brothers but they wasn't at church with us. 

Mi familia 

 I know. We didn't match. Amelia refused to wear her gingham dress that matched the boys gingham shirts. But in her defense she was with me when we picked out her dress and shoes that she is wearing. Her heart was set on that outfit so I didn't push it. At least they all have bright colors on. My outfit was very last minute and maynard just picked something out of the closet. I need to do better next year. I'm slowly losing my Easter outfit Matching burden. Lol

After lunch we made it back to our home church and was glad we did. We had a great service and it just felt good to be back home. 

And I don't want to close out this post without giving thanks to God for sending His son to die and rise again so that we all might be saved. That's truly what Easter is about. I remember one year I was so upset because I had bought the boys matching socks to wear with their Easter outfits. They were the cutest socks ever and completed their outfit. I searched high and low looking for their socks and couldn't find them anywhere. I knew I had packed them, but they were no where to be found. It just ruined my day. I was moping around when The Lord really pierced my heart. It wasn't supposed to be about how good my kids looked and if they had matching socks on. It was a day of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. I remember bowing my head in the bedroom and asking God to forgive me. It wasn't a few minutes later I came across their socks. All was right in the world again. Ha ha. Sometimes The Lord just needs to line us out real good. 

We had a great Easter and hope y'all did too. 

This was our Easter picture in 2011. Amelia was 1, Titus 3, and Josiah 5.  I can't believe how big they have grown and how fast it has flown. 

I need to do a collage of our past Easters. I may do that soon. I'm too lazy to do it right now. 

Spring Break 2014

Since last October, Maynard's new job requires him to work on Saturdays. We absolutely hate that!!!  Saturdays have always been family days for us and we hate so bad that he has to work now. On the other hand, I should also add that at the same time, we are thankful for his job whether he has to work on Saturdays or not. So between Maynard working on Saturdays and with us being away from the kids so much during the sickness of their Mamaw, we were really needing to spend some time with our kids. I can't even believe how it worked out.

Maynard ran into his boss Sunday morning at the gas station and his boss said he had something he wanted to run by him. He asked Maynard if he would be ok with just being on call this week instead of actually driving a route. Maynard hesitated because worried about how financially that would work out. The boss added that his pay would be the same, he was just going out of town and needed someone to be on call for breakdowns and such. So of course Maynard jumped at the chance to have some paid time off.   What couldn't be better than that???

The kids had their spring break that week.

Of course we couldn't go out of town because Maynard may get called in, but we kept the kids busy around here finding things to do. 

Our first exciting day included bowling!!!  The kids have never been before and it's their most favorite game to play on the WII!  They were super excited when I told them the news.   We had a lot of good laughs that day. Josiah happened to be a pretty good bowler. We figured Titus would be because he always beats everyone on the WII every single time. 

http://youtu.be/u7nn3MEhdmw

I have included a 15 second clip of our bowling bloopers. It will crack you up. Here's a few pictures. 

Miss Priss had a blast!!!

Titus went at it 100%. I wouldn't expect any less. Ha 

Josiah beat us all the first game. 

Maynard was a bit rusty, but he managed to get ahead the second game, much to Titus' dismay. 

I think I got 2 strikes and then the rest of the time it was gutter balls for me. I think the ugly shoes were throwing me off. Of course next time, I'm using the bumper thingees. 

I know a lot of people spaz out when you talk about going bowling. We went during a weekday and there was maybe one other family there with kids the whole time we were there. I would not have allowed my kids to have bowled at night when all the critters and the atmosphere would not have been kid friendly. There ya go. Another one of my disclaimers to keep the tongues from wagging. Ha ha

We spent Wednesday at the library for story and craft time. Then we headed to the park for a pizza picnic. The kids played awhile and then we started making plans to take our church kids to play putt putt that evening. We our spur of the moment people. Can't help it. That's just how we roll. It doesn't work to make plans because something always happens to cancel those plans. 

We ended up having a blast!!

Best picture I took of our picnic, but oh well. Maynard is looking at me like I'm crazy and Amelia has no doubt some sort of boo boo needing attention. 

Here's a few putt putt pictures. 

After we played putt putt, we got slushies from the concession stand and let the little ones play at the playground for a few minutes. 

Of course this wasn't all our church kids, but it was a few that we could get together. Some already had plans and were out of town. 

We went and had supper with Maynard's brother afterwards and the kids enjoyed playing with their cousin. 

The rest of the week was dreary and rainy so we stayed close to the house and got a few things done. If we wasn't home than we were at Tara's house getting things done there. 

Maynard went back to work on Saturday and we were all so pitiful. We were so happy for the few days we got have of family time though. 

Oh. This also happened on spring break too just in time for school pictures. 

He also has one missing on the bottom too. Poor fellar!!!

I just thought I would share our spring break with you. Now the countdown for summer break is down to just a few weeks or so.