2 Years Later...

WOW!!!!  Why did I stop blogging?????

For some unknown reason, I decided to take a little looksie at our family blog that I started 3 years ago. I didn't have a lot of entries, even though I spent countless hours setting the blasted thing up.  I picked out the perfect pictures, used my most favoritist font, chose colors I thought really reflected WHO I WAS, only to let the whole thing flop!  Why????????  Who the heck knows.  What I do know is that I would really like to start doing this again <insert canned laughter>.

Doug and I read a couple of the entries, laughed our butts off while doing so, only to be left wondering how many magical moments did I miss putting on record???  Oh my goodness!  Waaaay tooooo many!!!!  Plus, holy guacamole, the changes in our kids over the last two years are astounding!!!!!  

So, as I sit here at my kitchen table regretting that I stopped blogging about the life of our family, I also sit here hoping that I can remember and record some of those real good moments plus keep up to date on the here and now so, in another 2 years, Doug and I will have plenty of material to read and laugh about.

Crossing fingers!

The BIG Question...

Will we or will we not have our 2nd annual family photoshoot this Easter???? 

Read this if you want more background info. 

Saturdays are for...

CLEANING!!

  

Yeppers that's what I said.  Is that what my kids like to hear?  Heck no!! You would think i asked them to mix up their own cleaning solutions, sew their own rags, and vacuum the entire house with one of those little tiny vacuums like the one I had to clean my gremlin that plugged in to the cigarette lighter. --->

So much to their dismay, this is how we spend a couple of hours on our Saturday.  Yep, only a couple hours out of 24 that is given to cleaning this house.  

Some quotes from my kids:

Saturday cleaning (fill in the blank)

     from corey:  "it stunk"

     from fahnta: " i like it a little bit"

     from maggie: " its okay"

     from ezeekai: " its kinda fun"

     from jaida: " is good"

Corey claims he is the only honest one in the family!!!  I think I believe him!

Nate's music choice while cleaning.  He also got
pumped up with a little
"Eye of the Tiger" but I heard that from upstairs and
didn't get there in time for a pic.



the shop vac is a popular tool on saturdays





Totally.thrilled.



The chicken vs. the rat

This is what our kids do when they are bored:-)

Well.....

Yeppers, totally a slacker!  I think this is my 2nd post for the month of April, i know, i know....slow down there Killer!  I didn't even add all the pictures for the last post which consisted of Jaida's bday and Ez's bday.  My goodness...i couldn't even give them their own post.  EPIC FAIL!

So, what can I squish all together in this post to cover the month of April?  Well, let's see....

Doug went a bit on the looney side and decided to get some chicks.  Seriously, we now have chickens living in our garage. (No, I will not post pictures of only chickens w/this post becuz, c'mon, how bad would that look that chickens have their own day, but I combined the celebration of Jaida and Ezeekai into one?  The truth would then come out...i am a totally lame mom!)

We celebrated Easter this past Sunday with a family photo shoot at Dickinson College after lunch.  It was a total success!  We got so-so pictures of incredibly

happy

miserable children who

thrive on

 dread this event.  Maggie's dress was too small and "itchy," Ezeekai attempted to throw a stick into the pond but instead threw it into Nate's face, and Doug offered no support whatsoever so we all walked away from this annual tradition  hand-in-hand and skipping through the tulips vowing never to do it again!

Our schedule has become incredibly full thanks to all these wonderful children and their sports schedules!  Actually, we enjoy this time of year.  I love seeing the kids learn new things, improve on the skills they already have, and just enjoy their time outside playing sports.  Corey is playing baseball, of course.  Fahnta is playing soccer.  Maggie and Jaida are playing softball.  Ezeekai was bat boy at Corey's last game...popular kid that boy is!  Nate is enjoying his time outside exploring and catching new life.  He just caught a painted turtle yesterday so he is all happy and skippy.  No more Debbie Downer for him!

The kids got to spend some time with the Denlinger's this past week during their visit for Easter.  A good time had by all!!!

Hopefully, I will post before the end of May.  I really need to learn to stick w/things!!!

beautiful

disaster

It's the big 1-1!

Yesirree, we are celebrating Nathan today!!  11 years ago on this day our nature-lovin kid came to join us on this big round ball!  He was a week late, but as his life has shown, when he is ready for something, he.is.ready!  I was in labor for only a couple of hours at home and by the time we got to the hospital, i was ready to deliver and *POOF* out he came.  (yeah if only it was that painless!)  Nate was a late walker but when he decided he wanted to walk, he was walking around the house that day.  Potty training is a whole other story.  :)  He wasn't too keen on learning to ride his bike, but when he was ready for it, he was zippin on down the road that day!  That is just how Nate is.  You cannot cojole him into doing something before he is ready, but once he is ready, look out world!!!

So today we celebrate Nate.  Our 11 year old nature lovin, frog catchin, snake sneakin (snakes are NOT allowed in our house), picture taken kid!!

You have opened our eyes to the wonders of nature and now you are ready to capture those wonders with your new camera.  I can't wait to see the kind of pictures you will take!!

We love you buddy!  Happy birthday!

Celebrating Fahnta in a Super Bowl kinda way

February 6th was a huge day here in Thomasland!

Our Fahnta turned 10!!! Wow!   It is amazing to think she is 10 and that we have only known her for about a third of her life.  Cah-razy!!!   She has come a loooong way from her first few days/months in our home.   She has grown, physically, so much!!  It is amazing how she has shot up.  Education is such a huge challenge for her, but she is a hard, hard worker and that will get her far.  She is a silly girl who thoroughly enjoys her time w/friends, cousins, and her sisters.  She does like to tick the boys off !!  What little sister doesn't though??  Since Super Bowl sunday fell on her birthday this year, we chose to celebrate on Saturday so she could have all the bells and whistles!  She got to open all her gifts, pick her birthday dinner and eat Daddy's favorite cake.  Uncle Scooter, Aunt Stephie and Cali were able to make it to celebrate with us and that was just the icing on the cake! *smirk, smirk*  We love you Fahnta!

No easy transition here, so i am just diving right in to talking about Super Bowl Sunday.  We had a houseful of people and it was AWESOME!!!  We had more food than you could shake a stick at and we should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves!  (pix below!)  We had Steeler's jerseys in every corner of the room.  And we had puppies (we didn't physically have puppies, they were brought along w/the cousins).  Can I say that they were adorable?!  And no poop!  They did not pee or poop in our house.  Thank the Lord!  Okay, enuf words, now on to the visual aids so you can fully appreciate how incredibly ashamed of ourselves we really should be!!  Sorry Steelers, maybe next time!!

A little FYI!  The final picture is one of whoopie pies!  Yes, whoopie pies!!  and YES...i ate many of them!!  I don't make them often therefore I don't eat them often.  So, when given the opportunity, i decided I would make up for the lost time!!! =)

I absolutely love the family I married into!

Family is priceless!!

>The Invisible Ninja

>So.....last night we had the "what do you want to be when you grow up" discussion.  Let me tell you...we are NOT a family of extremes.  No, not at all.   So, here's the rundown.

Corey (age 13)-sit around and do nothing, but be a millionaire (although he doesn't know what he would do w/all of his money)
Nathan (age 10)-discover new animal species
Fahnta (age 9)-a teacher...maybe college teacher...maybe 3rd grade
Maggie (age 8)-a farmer...with horses of course
Jaida (age 7)-an art teacher
Ezeekai (age 5)-an invisible ninja

So, as you can see, we have some kids with half-way decent goals for life and others that are, how can we say it *pause for dramatic effect*????  more creative.

>It's fun to stay at the YMCA......

>

Soooo, we have joined the YMCA!!

Yippee, yahoo!!  All of our kids have a membership therefore all of our kids are taken there on a Sunday afternoon to get their energy out exercise.  The girls and ezeekai are enjoying the swimming pool and the boys are enjoying the gym.  Of course, I forgot to take my camera to take pictures of the fun and frolicking...maybe next time!!

>First snow and farm show

>So, last week produced the first lame major snow fall that resulted in the first 2 hour delay for the school year!  YEE-HAW!  I think we may have gotten about 2-3 inches, but it was enough to spread panic and delay school and allow the kids and their friends to attempt to sled in the front yard!








 We also took the kids out of school on Friday so we could take a family trip to the farm show.  Good.time.fun!!!  I was asked by one of the kids how much the farmshow cost.  Soooooo, in order to spread more panic, I told them we would probably have to leave one of them at the front door to cover the cost.  Silence amongst the troops!  Once they realized i was pulling their leg and that there was no cost to get into the farm show, they were all for it!  We did all have a great time.  We saw lots of animals (duh!), smelled lots of smells (that caused Jaida to cry....even more duh!) and ate food that we were charged waaaaaay too much for (even more and more and more duh!).  The $5 funnel cake was worth every penny though!  Corey's $3 Mountain Dew....not so much.

>Shopping with grown-ups

>

We just got back from a Saturday night shopping trip to Wal-Mart and Target.  We needed some groceries plus the kids had some Christmas money that we decided we would be nice parents and let them spend.  They caught us on a good day!! 

 The kids were patient and waited until we were completely done w/the groceries and then they were able to go through the aisles and choose some toy that w/in the next month will be broken, lost, or eaten by the dog.  It's all good though.  


Trips like this are rare for us...for many, many reasons.  What we found out after this trip is that our kids are growing up.  It is unbelievable that when all was said and done we walked out of Target w/happy children, happier parents and not one shed tear.  This has not always been the case. I remember before Nate's 4th birthday I told him that he did NOT have to cry every time we left wal-mart without him playing a game in their arcade.  I let him know that once he turned 4, he was all done w/that.  That worked for a little bit.  =)


It is now 9:15 pm and our girls are busy w/their new liv dolls, ez is playing w/his cool beyblades, corey is listening to his ipod w/his new case, and nate just put away his cool new remote control hexbug.  Such bliss post-bedtime is unheard of  awesome!!!

Our kids are growing up!