Noni got to go see the Texas family for Spring break!
We were very happy for her but the girls missed her terribly! Especially Peaches...after asking me 100 times when Noni was coming back I suggested she make a calendar to count down the days until her return. It helped, but she still burst into tears at random moments throughout the ten days and had to text and or call Noni every single day.
One afternoon we went to Mama's to hang out for a few hours. The little ones did great! We brought McDonald's which was their choice, and had lunch together and then they played sweetly for a while.
They made "goggles" among other things.
Funny girls. You can hear Lou saying, "Don't picture me!" She and Peaches are opposites. E wants to be "pictured" as often as possible, and Lou does not. :P
I didn't know if it would work but I put Lou down for a nap on Mama's bed and she slept almost two hours! We were able to play three games of cards and when she woke up I realized she had "made" the bed before coming out. So sweet. It was a wonderful afternoon!
During Spring Break Buggy will be going on her first Mission Trip! They have a group of 7 kids and 4 adults and will be gone for four days and three nights. They have done a number of fundraisers throughout the year and their last one was a Pie Social. Bug (and each of them) had to make two pies, one to serve and one to auction off.
She's had a list of things to work on for the trip. She learned to write a Missions letter, she also had to write out her testimony and a devotional for the group. She had to memorize the Romans road and present the gospel to her group, and she had to read the book of John. She had worked hard completing all those tasks and is ready to go!
I really appreciate how their youth leaders are teaching them how to run events like this and be responsible for all the aspects.
The other girls just appreciated eating multiple slices of pie. Haha.
Each teen had to get up in front of the group (probably 40-50 people) and say why they wanted to go on the trip and what their goals for it are.
And the kid who raised the most money got a pie in the face! :P
It was a fun night and they raised just over $1,000 which put them over their goal for the trip! We are excited to see how God uses this trip in Bug's life! Prayers very much appreciated!!
The youth group has been raising money for their upcoming mission trip and we needed some help cleaning up the property of brush and debris so we hired a handful of kids to come out for a work day! They worked hard and did a great job!! They stayed for about five hours and made a huge difference!
T had gone around with his chainsaw trimming trees and the kids stacked what firewood could be saved and took the rest of it to the burn pile.
I made about five loads with the tractor bucket full of firewood.
The little ones thought they were just as big as everyone else and jumped right in there with the rest of them. :)
I didn't get a good before picture but it made a huge difference! We hope to plant some fruit trees on this bank.
I spent the rest of the day dragging wood from the giant pile to the two burn piles T had going. The kids went around and cleaned up the Carigana and stacked a bunch of leftover metal and wood from our various projects. We took a time out for lunch to roast hot dogs and marshmallows!
What a great group of kids! We really appreciated their help and the place looks much better!
Hopefully one more burning Saturday will get us rid of the giant pile of wood from all the demo we've done around here!
We found some really old videos on T's phone and I downloaded them so they wouldn't get lost. I don't think I've ever shared them before, but I might have.
These first two were from before we moved! E must have been around 2 1/2. She was doing a funny hoarse yell/roar and then would get startled when everyone laughed.
Peanut reading to Peaches...not sure why a car seat was in the kitchen. Also before we moved.
Peaches birthday car when she turned 3. We had been in the Farmhouse a few months.
We lived with two "burn" marks for years from where they spun out and sanded the paint off the floor. :P
Sliding down the freshly installed slide before we moved in.
I have more that I need to continue uploading. Will post those later. :)
It was Pinata night at Awana the other day. I bought the candy off Amazon and then brought the Pinatas (someone had donated a bunch) home from church and let the girls stuff them.
And they had a blast! The pinatas held up really well and each kid was able to take more than one whack at it before it finally burst open.
We tried a new game for game night...Backseat Drawing. It's like Pictonary except another person tells you what to draw. It's a lot harder than it sounds! You have to say stuff like, "Ok I need a two inch, horizontal line near the top right corner." Definitely an exercise on the brain, but the girls did well and we had fun!
I feel like Buddy is growing a lot! This day he cracked me up because he didn't have his right leg on the rock, it was just dangling there with his big belly sprawled out. I don't know how they are in the wild, but he is very inactive. He rarely does anything and spends most of his days sitting on his rock under his heat lamp. If we take him out he just sits there and looks around. I hope he is happy with us, but I don't know how to tell. :P
Man we just can't seem to catch a break health-wise. Since my surgery in early January we have only had a couple days where everyone was healthy. Because of all the recovering we went to church two times in two full months. :( I am so ready for Spring and better health!
After we were finally done with all the Covid weeks we were healthy for a couple days until Peanut came home from dance and said she hurt her back. She moaned and complained all week about it...we did ice/heat/rest/massage/ibuprofen and it just seemed to be getting worse. Three days later she seemed to be coming down with a fever about the same time that Bug's school called and told me she was sick and I needed to come pick her up. She had a fever as well so I thought the two of them had caught a bug somewhere.
Thank God (literally) that T swung by and talked to her doctor about it and he said it would be a good idea to do a urine test. She ended up with a terrible kidney infection! If we hadn't caught it she would have ended up in the hospital. We did end up taking her in to the doctor a few days later to get some more tests and blood work done because she was doing so poorly...she refused to eat and her neck started hurting. Thankfully she was drinking lots of water. She was still having a fever on day 5 of the antibiotics before she finally started improving.
The cold Bug brought home was a nasty one, but she and Boo were the only ones who came down with it. They were bed ridden (or I should say couch-ridden) for five days straight. Zero energy, high fevers, and bad congestion. They went through two full boxes of tissues. Thankfully they were negative for Covid, but it was a bad one!
They ended up camped out on the couches for days on end.
The little ones miraculously never caught it and enjoyed the perks of Mommy trying to come up with something to tempt everyone to eat...in this case milkshakes. D refused to look at the camera. :P
Another day on the couch.
It was decently warm so I made them go outside and sit in the sun for at least 15 minutes every day. This day they were all so weak they couldn't even sit up so I brought a blanket out for them.
That Sunday while they were inside resting Daddy and the little ones worked on a special project!
Lou was cracking me up. I am trying to soak up every minute of these toddler days that will soon be behind us. :'(
Goofballs.
Normally she clams up when I take a video so I covertly got this one...so funny.
All finished!
It was a big hit!!
Here they are the next day playing on it. I grabbed these through the window.
Come on Spring! We are ready for that germ-killing sunshine!
Grand Prix was a big success this year! The girls chose some amazing designs! They worked on their cars while we were at Grandma and Grandpa's for the weekend.
Boo picked a tornado and it turned out so cool! Grandpa let her use a couple of his train set pigs and trees. She found a motorcycle and SUV from Daddy's old Micromachines that were broken, and she painstakingly painted the rest.
Peanut picked a banana and when she was finished painting it looked so real! So much so that Grandma kept trying to put it in the fruit basket. Haha.
Bug made a golden arrow!
Lou was super excited to race her Hot Wheel!
I was working in the kitchen so I gave Peanut my phone to take a few pictures after I took this one.
Boo and her friend K.
Lou ran into the kitchen after her race and proudly showed me her ribbon. :)
Then it was time for Sparks!
Peaches won third place for speed! She was SO happy!
T&T was next.
Peanut won third for design and Boo won first!
Meanwhile Lou was thrilled with the ice cream sandwiches and talked me into letting her eat two. :P
