A few more pictures

Monday morning, Ethan came in my bed and fell asleep. A little while later, Sarah and Rachel joined us! They stayed asleep after I left. The first picture is blurry (someone had played with the settings on my camera). After I figured out the camera problem, Ethan left. But, the girls were still there. They are so cute when they're sleeping :)














Ethan was playing in the water later in the morning and got all wet. He absolutely hates having wet sleeves or wet clothes. Rachel went and changed his clothes for him. He came out with his hands in his pockets, looking all cute and smug. He even smiled for the camera :)

Some pictures from the past few days

Peter and Andrew made a bridge out of project bricks for their Civil War guys!

Where's Ethan?!?! This stage is so funny--he still thinks that we can't see him when he covers his eyes :)

Last night during History (Dad is the teacher!), Ethan decided to ride on horsey-Daniel!! He only fell off one time.

Andrew got Ethan a piece of paper and some pens, crayons, and pencils. Ethan did his own school this morning and was so proud of himself. He showed his picture to everyone who was around :)

Sarah finished her school early (as usual--she loves to do all the pages and workbooks!!) so she decided to draw. Andrew is at least looking like he's doing school :)

Rachel decided to draw, too! What a cute little face :)

My little leftie!

Not too much is going on around here lately. The kids are all much better from the whooping cough, though it's not completely gone yet :( Someday a whole day will go by without the sound of coughing!!!

We're looking forward to hearing Mr. Herman preach tonight. We're continuing to pray for Joy and Don Widmark. Please pray for Tom as he gets to preach this coming Sunday. (I'm sure the other 2 men would appreciate your prayers as well!)

We're also going to miss Jacob and Bethany as they go back to college on Friday. Please pray for a safe trip and a great semester. Pray for them to be wonderful testimonies there on campus--it's hard to take a stand for the right among lukewarm and/or carnal Christians. Pray for them to find some friends who will do right no matter what.

I'll try to make something happen in the next few days so I can post something exciting :)

Christmas Pictures

Yes, it's pretty much way past Christmas, but here are a few pictures anyway :)

Dad and Ethan vacuuming!!










Our Christmas tree with way too many presents!

Daniel and his cool, smug look :)

Andrew and a new shirt.








Rachel and Ethan with their new hats (Rams)!



These next pictures were taken at my brother's house.

Nathan with a new shirt.


Dad and Ethan--way past nap time!


Daniel looking cool :)


Nathan and Ethan playing cars!


I'm still working on the formatting of this new blog. Help!! I upload 5 pictures in the order I want them, and they post on the blog in reverse order. I know, I could just put them on backwards, but is there any easier way??

Bepi comes to visit!!

On Tuesday, Bethany came over to play with Ethan...and the girls. The other 4 boys scattered to the four winds when a girl (ewww, yuck) came over!!! Ethan and Sarah and Rachel had a fun time decorating a gingerbread house and eating more candy before noon than they're allowed in most weeks :)







Notice (in his mouth) one of the 257 marshmallows that Ethan ate :)


When the boys realized that candy was involved, they came up to see what was going on!


The finished product!! Beautiful, huh?!?! The girls had so much fun :)


Reading time




Thanks for coming over, Bepi--I'm glad Ethan was able to play with you for a few hours!

2010--New Year, New Blog!!

I've decided to change to this website for my blog because adding pictures is so much easier. That was part of the reason why it was getting harder to keep up the other blog. Adding pictures was quite a long process. Anyway, here we are.

Christmas this year was interesting because of the...whooping cough!!!! All 7 kids were exposed at church and all 7 of them have it. We were home for the first time ever on a Christmas. It was nice, quiet (except for the coughing), and a little strange. Since none of them is contagious any longer, we were able to celebrate with my family the day after Christmas. However, the cough is supposed to continue for several weeks/months--like, about 100 days. UGH! We're keeping them home as much as possible because they sound bad. However, they won't be spreading it--they were on the antibiotic and the Health Department told us they were fine to be in public. So, I guess it's official :)

Now, we're onto a New Year. I'm not sure how we're supposed to say 2010. We were saying 'oh 9' for 2009, but we can't just say '10'. Any suggestions?? I haven't heard anyone say it yet. Maybe we're stuck with 'two thousand 10' or '20 10'. The first is a bit long and the 2nd sounds weird.

Here are some pictures of the kids I took for the cover of a calendar I made.





One more thing--I opened the fridge this morning and found some interesting things. Take a look and see if you can see them. (Thankfully, Peter helped me clean the fridge yesterday--if not, there would be no pictures!!)









That's it for now--we'll see how this goes and if I can stay caught up :)