Spring Break

This week has been pretty exhausting....and all our 2 hour naps today proved it.

We started off with a full day of painting sets for our schools musical on Friday. The older two kids did great, playing with the students who were not rehearsing and helping out when they could. Our school is putting on Beauty and the Beast this year and Ribbit loves the older student playing Belle. She was memorized when she put on her Belle wig and started singing, she said "mommy it really is Belle!". Then Ribbit got to try on the wig and ran around to steal kisses from the boys....high school boys :). On Saturday we had a yard sale from 8-11 and sold a lot of things that were taking up space in one of Baby Boys closets. The kids had fun and said good morning to everyone. One man looked around, commented on how cute our kids are,and how they were such big helpers and then sat in his car in front of our house for 10 minutes looking down. We were about to approach him when he got out and handed all 3 kids rings he had made from one dollar bills. He was so kind and folded them perfectly. We begged him to take something from the sale but he refused. We spent Sunday through Wednesday doing all kids of things, from painting Ribbits bed and dresser white.....helping Goober sort out all of his toys into bins and organizing his bookshelf....to packing for our camping trip later on this week....to having lunch at the park with friends....to tackling the 8 loads of laundry that had piled up....to slowly inching away at the house remodel. The kids enjoyed their times outside, our neighbor friends and catching up on Disney movies :). We left to go camping with 3 other families from church on Thursday. We set up around 3 and the kids (8 of them at that time...2 more joined us Friday) were on their scooters within 5 minutes. We basically had a crash or boo boo every 10 minutes and the kids were all yelling car to make sure everyone stayed safe when people drove by. They all played in the dirt together, shared books and toured each other's tent. We spent the next 2 nights there and got rained out on our last one...but I think we all needed to sleep in out rooms, in our own beds, with a potty really close by, and the warmth of our home:). We did have a blast though....we went fishing, she'll collecting which turned into a sweet art project for all the families, did nature bingo, took long walks/stroller rides around the campground, played a game of family kickball ...... Let me set up the scene. It was Goober and 3 moms and 3 toddlers versus the dads and 4 4 year olds. The adults got pretty competitive which made it fun and dangerous. ( that last sentence took 10 minutes to write on this dumb ipad, this why I don't post that much anymore....seriously?). We all had fun, got really sweaty and sunburnt that afternoon. Each family also cooked a big meal for everyone, we had hobo packets, sausage and hot dogs, sandwiches, hamburgers, pancakes, bacon, sausage, s'mores, baked apples...anything over a fire....and we ate WELL! The kiddos did pretty well sleeping in the tent and except for a car alarm we had good nights. Goober had a bout of sleep walking the second night and needed lots of direction and repeating to get back into bed...he doesn't remember it that well. And can I just say that you know you are old when you see college kids pulling into the campsite beside you and automatically roll your eyes and hope they are a church group...unfortunately the ones beside us were not. After a good mommy talk from me though one night they were good :)... Even got a personal sweet apology the next morning for saying curse words around my kiddos....don't mess with momma bear on our family camping trip :). I have been a little obsessed planning our Disney trip in May. My in-laws are graciously taking us as a gift and I'm booking character shows, firework seats and character encounters like crazy...I got lists and spreadsheets and all kids of Disney knowledge in my head from hours of research....I don't know if I'll be able to keep it a secret too much longer...I want to run and tell them that they are going to be made into Ariel and Capt Jack Sparrow and then sing "a whole new world" together. But for now, I'm just forcing them to re-watch every Disney video we own and encouraging Goob to keep his quarters for all the penny press machines there. In other news, through the guidance of God and getting our tax returns from 2010 ( it was a weird year with 2 adoptions and lots of back pedaling through paperwork)...we paid off ALL of our student loans! We had thoroughly felt what the bible says as the "borrower being a slave to the lender" and we were done. It fells wonderful to only have a mortgage and regular bill payments every month. We strictly live off our income and besides our home will never enter a loan or credit agreement again....but like I said before it wasn't anything we did to pay all that off in one lump sum it was totally a God thing and we would never had received the money without guidance from our adoption agency and praying fervently!