Gobble Baby Gobble Baby Gobble

We sure are dancing around our house a lot lately..the kiddos have learned to do the "wobble" and instead of singing Wobble Baby....we sing Gobble...its much more festive. I am not really sure what the wobble is either so I am hoping that encouraging them to say Gobble as they shake their shoulders and sway (picture one of those big tube shaped figures that has air blowing up it that you see on top of buildings announcing sales)..is also more socially acceptable :).

7th grade Community Service Day at Hope Farm in Fort Worth...see my Goober helping? He worked hard that day!

We also made posters for their upcoming fall festival.

We DID IT!!! We hosted the first annual neighborhood fall festival. We blockaded the street (with permission from our police of course), set up games, face painting, popcorn, photo booths, a potluck food area and invited everyone within our little area to come hang!!! It was a success, more people could have come, but those who came were energetic and eager to meet neighbors. We formed bonds and I will be glad to say that we now know that the "couple who always walk the little dog have names like Jim and Denise and "two boys who are always in the road and love football" are Rocko and Lucas. I am also no longer "that women who runs at the ungodly time every morning"...or "that couple with all the kids"...we promised the all that while we have kids running around our home at all times that we only claim 3 of them....hehe.

The best compliment I got all night though was from our neighbors who we already knew fairly well but hadn't had the faith conversation with yet. She said " you are a christian right?, I thought you were but after tonight I'm pretty sure you are".....YES!!!!!! She is too!!!!

Pumpkin Patch field trip with PK4. The sweet girl in the pink bow is Collins, who we have mentioned and asked you to pray for. The day after this trip they discoverd two more cancerous tumors in her left lung.

Watching this was stinkin hilarious!

Sweet PK4 class.

I love this little pumpkin the most!!!

The sweetest part of our neighborhood fall festival was when Mr. Adam and his wife Millie, who are both in thier late 80s led the whole group through the singing of God Bless America...two rounds...while we honored the Veterans in our neighborhood. Millie, who is normally in a wheelchair, demanded to stand and stayed standing until we had recited the Pledge of Allegiance as well. We were all in tears at how proud Mr. Adams was...he asked us to pray for our nation..it was fantastic.

Me and the hubs got away for to attend the wedding of a friend that Adam grew up with in Alabama. It was beautiful!

Great run with Carrie...training for my next marathon has been a butt kicker. We had great times the after effects can be brutal.

Hehe, I found this picture after I let Little Man play a game on my phone during our American Heritage Girls meeting.

Our friend James after a fun baseball game!

The kids had the most fun at the fall festival as they road their bikes and scooters up and down the road for the first time without having to worry about cars!!! They were little sweaty messes and slept hard!!! I love feeling so secure in our neighborhood now and creating a neighborhood directory that will allow us to have peace of mind even if we were out of town.

Collins had surgery to remove more tumors from her left lung..this will be her second round to fight cancer. Ribbit and Little Man kept her entertained before surgery...it got pushed back 3 hours so they were grateful for some distractions!

Field trip to the Sistine Chapel Exhibit at the State Fair with 10th grade. It was fabulous!

We now get 4 white eggs and one brown egg a day....The brown egg is a prize for sure!

Pumpkin patch trip with American Heritage Girls!

Corn Maze with all the girls!

Other than that we have outdone ourselves with costumes this weekend already..and its just now HALLOWEEN today. Of course, they don't want to wear what I made them more than once so we have worn at least 12 different costumes to all the different trunk o treats, fall festivals and Reformation Day parties we have attended. Good thing those kiddos are cute.
Goober of course is way past the cute costumes and you would have thought that I bought him a sports car when I handed him his very own package of fake scars and blood to wear with his "scary black star wars outfit".

Look at his puffed up chest as he shows off his Daniel Sticker....this was a HUGE deal for my little man and we are so proud of him!!!

Hanging out with Champ at Donuts with Dad!

Happy Halloween or Reformation Day or Trick O Treat or whatever you choose to do today!!!

Inside Outside

I love listening to Little Man talk as he gets dressed. He always ask us " Am I putting this on inside outside?"....or "Look how big I am" or " I only need to grow this much (holds up fingers) and I will be as big as bubba!". Little Man's baseball games are a toss up between super annoying as he is much more interested in the dirt and writing words in the air with his fingers .....and being completely cute as he is overly dramatic about every point they score and slides into every base, not having any clue where the baseball is currently at.

Ribbit is on a kick of telling us when we are wrong. We must not say "I am starving"...because starving means you have not eaten in a long time and we in fact have eaten.
She also loves wearing her hair in fun different ways with bows and headbands...she is a walking wardrobe. She definitely  has her own style. She loves reading and reads several books at once, sounding out huge words and laughing at herself.

Goober loves MOVING. He is either riding his ripstick, scooter, bike, throwing a football, wrestling, dancing (oh yeah), shooting bows and arrros or playing a team sport. Therefore he is always covered in scabs, bruises and dirt...i mean the boys needs 3 showers a day and we are doing good to get 1. I am teaching some after school drawing classes and he is one of my best students by far..he loves drawing architecture and shading.

We are all working hard on badges for AHG and Trail Life, the kids are learning a lot. We are all working on the yard, setting out hay for the chickens, decorating for Fall and loving the cool weather.

God has really been speaking to our family over a series on Jacob and Esau that we are studying in Sunday School....how birthrights were stolen, the idea of forgiveness, family love, how parents shouldn't have favorites, how God used a very dysfunctional family as a part of his rescue plan for the world, ....Genesis is such a fascinating book and I could read and read and read it and never once be bored.

This is the whole family (minus Aunt Micah and baby Levi) at my cousins beautiful wedding!

Little Man, Papa and Jad doing their thing.

Uncle Chris and Daddy doing their thing..watching Auburn as close as they can to the TV, over reacting to everything and smack talking....i secretly love it!

Practicing archey with Papas bow.

We scooped out pumpkin guts, roasted the seeds and made clean pumpkin bread with crasins....it was sooo stinkin good!

Walking home from church...Ribbit got a ride.

My sweet cousin Mason and my little brother, who was officiating the wedding...everyone was in tears ..Mason was sooo nervous.

The lovely bride coming in!

Beautiful sunny day, beautiful couple!

Getting our dancing on!!!!

I think we danced the whole time ;)...love dancing with my kiddos...I have a lot more pictures but they wouldn't upload this morning!

They really wanted to run to the bridge...so we RAN...took our picture and RAN back to dance some more!

CUTIES

Mason cooked all the food for his own wedding and Goober LOVED it!

I am so proud of my little brother and how he desires to serve Christ in all that he does.

Pray for Collins!

Life is happening. We are in the thick of baseball ..with 3 games alone this week-one of those is a make-up game. Good thing these are 4 year olds who make watching 3 hours of baseball super FUN!!! We get all kinds of emtions from tantrums to cheering that they ran backwards around the bases...oh and snacks, no matter if they win or lose there are always snacks at the end.

We are busy leading girls and boys in Trail Life and AHG too. We have been focusing on "Our Flag" badge and Ribbit can tell you everything about the flag, its history and our national anthem and pledge. She knows how to be in the color guard in a flag ceremony and how to display the flag in every situation. We are working on our rockets badge next!

The boys are working on getting started as Adam is starting the first troop. They want to build their own flag stands and of course all Goober currently cares about is archery, camping and paintball!

We have been to more weddings in the past 2 weeks then in the past 2 years and each one has been filled with lots of great friends and family...dancing (lots of dancing) and good food.

Our main focus this week has been on Collins, Baby Boy's best friend. You have seen pictures of Collins on the blog several times...she was with us in PK3, she takes karate with us and we requested that we stay with her in PK4. Her parents have become our good friends and they were starting the foster care route when....Collins cancer came back. She had a Wilms tumor removed last year did some radiation. At her routine scan (every 3months) last Friday they found 2 more tumors in her left lung. Friday was hard....everyone cried, everyone prayed. We had just gone on a field trip Thursday and Kim (collins mom) and I held our kiddos on hay rides, ran after them together in the corn maze, ate lunch outside and compared how big they both were to the extra large pumpkins. We couldn't get over how much Collins hair had grown and how it was starting to curl...and then Friday happened.
The whole school community prayed over Collins and she had surgery yesterday morning to remove both tumors. Ribbit and Baby Boy went and played with Collins in the morning before her surgery, hoping to distract her as the surgery time got pushed back from 8:45 to 10:15 and then 11:15. Adam prayed over her parents and took care of their dog. Its hard when your friends are hurting and you want to physically help them but you know the best thing you can do is PRAY FOR THEM. You know it....but its hard to just do that and let God work. I just got off the phone with Kim and Collins is blowing the doctors away with her quick recovery and is starting to want to eat and sit up. She loves that she is "gettin more toys" and having lots of visitors. Please pray for our sweet friend as she now faces 6-9 months of hard radiation and chemo this time as well. Please pray for her parents Kim and Clint and their little girl.

Mommy/Daughter date at Six Flags....little thing was in charge the whole day and we rode all of the little rides several times through!!

We trick or treated with the Looney Tunes gang.

We had to ride every pretty horse on the carousel!!!

See our Cheer Oil Day?

In Alabama, digging the deepest hole with CiCi.

You can't visit Uncle Chris without wrestling.

They didn't know what to do with both sets of grandparents around. We made all kinds of beauty products with essential oils!

Lavender Lemon chapstick! I AM IN LOVE!!!

Making deodorant....smells so good I want to lick my armpit!

We made chapstick, face moisturizer, mouthwash, deodorant, body wash, shampoo, detergent, hand sanitizer and much more!

Making detergent!

Goober picked out my "sick new shoes"-his words and I ran to all of  my old friends homes in Alabama :). 

Cheer Oil :)

Good Morning!!!!!

I wanted to share a personal breakthrough we have had in our home using oils. My youngest was having a very hard year. His teacher, along with Adam and I were constantly frustrated. He loves learning but has so much energy that self control was hard. He also lives in 6th grade boy world, with his older brother, and uses phrases and smack talks just like a 6th grader would...so that was complicating things.
My oily friend and I were running on Saturday morning and God spoke through that time to both of us. He needed to form a physical bond with that teacher as that is his love language. He also needed to feel like he was in control of his behavior.
So, Sunday afternoon we sat down and he smelled all of my oils. He chose one that he loves the scent of (whisper) and we mixed that with some peppermint in a roller bottle. We labeled it his "cheer" oil...so that he would want to cheerfully obey God and obey his teacher.
On Monday morning we showed his teacher how to roll it on his forehead and wrist. After that they would hug and she would say "Now you are ready to be who God has made you to be".
HE LOVED IT. We not only get emails from his teacher daily about his great behavior but also his elective teachers on his transformation.
I think its more about feeling empowered to take control of any situation...which is why I love the oils. I don't fear when I hear there is a virus going around. I don't fear when my kids have a fever. I don't freak out and rearrange my day when I wake up with a headache. We go to the oil box and see what we can use to heal it.
I am beyond thankful for a safe, side-effect free way to heal and encourage my family!!!

Update-that was two weeks ago. Yesterday morning at his parent teacher conference she said that getting his oils on is part of his morning routine and she loves starting the day with his oils!

I love this picture. Its a birthday party and the girs are posing and Little Man is giving shots :)

Oh those sweet girls!!! and boy!

Ribbit and Goober came with my LHS group to serve refugees family at a community outreach.

They were so helpful and when we got in the car Goober said "Mom, i was so hungry the whole time but I didn't want to say anything because those people don't get a lot of food"

Ribbit handing out zucchini

Zucchini, arugula, eggs and salsa

She sure does look cute when we head to American Heritage Girl meetings!

Roasted chicken, zucchini and carrots. YUM

Mommy, look what I did to my hair!!

A sweet picture from her teacher!

9th grade field trip to the Kimbell Art Museum...A LOVELY DAY

Teddy bear Parade!

Family Campout for AHG and Trail Life...such a sweet time for us..we spent some alone time in our tent singing silly songs as a family..a memory I will always treasure!

Earning their archery badge

He is lefthanded but shoots so well using his right hand!

Earned her badge too!

Rock painting with the girls!

Making tye dye shirts! They turned out beautiful!

A true hike..complete with barb wire, old stairs and waterfalls!

Earning his camp cooking badge

Ribbit and her sweet friend playing in the tall grass

The boys playing tag

Bedtime in the tent!