Just a few more pictures!

This just kills me when my kids fall asleep in the middle of the walkway. He is even still holding the crayon he was using! I love this stage. Isn't he just precious!Toby and Gabe raked up the leaves in the front yard. Promptly after they were piled Julie and Gabe jumped in them. They look foward to jumping in leaf piles all year long.
It has been chilly, so momma made hot chocolate and the three older ones shared a cup. I just thought it looked so cute!


Yes, Julie has two ponytails in her hair....so people won't recognize her.....that is what I was told at least.

We thank the Lord for this beautiful fall! We always have so much fun in every season.

THE DEER!!!

I am sure you all knew that this was coming! This is Toby's I am sooo tired, but sooo happy look! The hide.
Toby imparting bits of wisdom on the children.

They all felt the fur and the eyeballs and the horns.
I know this picture is a little fuzzy, but I love the look on his face! This looks like the look on his face when we got married. I guess he waited a while for that deer so I will just be okay with that. :)
Yes, even Tinkerbelle got in on the action.

Thanks to Todd for helping Toby soo much! Now we have a deer carcass hanging in our garage and pretty soon I will be fixing it for dinner. Yea!!! I thank the Lord for the deer and that He kept the guys safe as they were hunting!

Fun in the new house.

Momma made cinnamon rolls and Noah got caught snitching some of the frosting.JuJuBee who was Santa Claus that day. :)
Belle is spoiled by her siblings. She stares at Gabe and he knows that she wants him to push her. It is soo funny! So here is Gabe pushing the stinker!

Daddy with our sweet swine flu boy!

A few pictures of the house.

Okay, so these aren't great pictures, but at least you can kind of see some of the house. This is the upstairs bathroom. This is the girl's room.
Boy's room

The living room
The kitchen
This is the dining area. Don't you just love the mirror. Where is my gag a maggot icon. It is glued to the wall so I can't take it down quite yet. I am not ready to fix whatever is under it.

This is most of the top of the house. When I get other pictures taken I will post them. We praise the Lord for blessing us with this beautiful house!

Family Hunting Adventure.

So...our little family was getting antsy from staying at home due to the swine flu. When Toby got home from work this was very evident to him. He suggested the whole family go for a car ride. This sounded fine to me. I would bring my crossword puzzle book and enjoy not having to do anything for a few minutes.
We all pile in the car and off we go. We stop by the North Hiway and when I asked what we were doing there, the hunter replied,"Getting my gun, it is in the truck." I rolled my eyes, thinking that we weren't going to see anything. He asks me to load the magazine and after a little instruction I got 3 bullets in the magazine.
We start driving. We drive out to Bone Road. Anyone who knows this area knows that it is dry and brown at this moment and not what I call scenic. The hunter just keeps commenting on how "that would be a good place for deer to hide" and "isn't this beautiful". I mutter a half hearted,"Yea", and quickly try to lose myself in my crossword puzzle. Meanwhile, we are flying along this dirt road and I make some comment about staying on the road. The hunter says,"This is a beautiful road, you should see some of the roads we go on." We talk briefly about some roads that have ruts three feet deep and if you get stuck in them you are done. Then when the hunter is satisfied with that topic, I dive into the puzzle.
All of the sudden, we are in reverse and the hunter is saying,"Butts, Butts, I see two butts!" We are now parked on the wrong side of the road, turned at an angle. The hunter jumps out of the car taking his gun in one fluid motion. Looking back I should have been impressed, but at the moment I calmy remind the hunter that it is illegal to shoot from the road. He knows this and informs me he is just "scoping" them to see if there are any bucks there. No, just one doe, but he is sure there were more butts than that.
So...me being the good wifey I am say,"Go on up and see. We will wait for you." Secretly thinking.....They won't be there once he gets there and he will be back to the car in no time. The kids and I watch him dissappear up this little hill and then we can't see him. We break open the snack bag and pass fruit roll-ups around and share a pop. The minutes go by and no dad. We have to move Cinnamon (our Surburban) because as other hunters are leaving we are getting stares that aren't on the kind side as the come right up to our front bumper and slowly go around. Cinnamon is moved and after assuring the kids that the hunter could still find us, we settle into our snacking routine.
It is getting dark (15 minutes later) and we see the hunter walking toward us, tearing grass apart. As I start to remark that the hunter must not have got anything, the protests begin. Julie informs me that she thinks he has it in his backpack. (he has no backpack) Gabe informs me that some deer are so light that the hunter could carry it on his back and we wouldn't even know it. To which I snidely remark to myself,"Sure, the invisible kind."
The hunter is now here and the story begins...."I got up there and I could hear them racing me to the top of the hill. So I started running. Then, there they were. A doe, a two point buck and a huge 4 point buck. This was a big buck, a gorgeous animal..."At this point I interrupt and ask why he never calls me gorgeous. The hunter brushes over this and continues...."If you go online and type in huge four point buck then you will see that buck. It was huge. Anyway, it turns at me broad side and looks at me. I don't even stop to take a breath I just shoot...twice. I miss both times. I could have sworn I hit it with one of them, but he just looked at me and ran off. Man, that was a huge animal. If I would have gotten that I would have mounted that. That would have been sweet to have gotten that and had it be my first buck"...The would haves continue the whole way home.
After looking at huge four point bucks online for 15 minutes. I was finally allowed to drop into bed. Plans have already been made to go find that buck in the morning. Luckily the hunters family is not part of the plan. We will stay at home and have a yummy warm breakfast and await on the news from the hunter.

Look! No training wheels!!!

So...we have occasionally talked about Gabe being old enough to ride his bike without training wheels, although we have never made a serious attempt at it. He has tried a couple times and seriously resembled some other little blonde (me). He wasn't to excited about it. Well, we never had the energy to push it so he still was riding with them. He has been getting frustrated about not being able to ride on rocks and such (out at Gram's house). Last night, he asked Toby if he could try and of course Toby said yes. Toby took them off and Gabe just started riding. In under 5 minutes Gabe was starting by himself and riding around the back yard!!!! His momma is soooo proud of him! Oh......Julie has started getting serious about it too. So most likely there will be another training wheeless rider in our family before to long. :) I am afraid they got a little bit of Toby's and my competitiveness. :)

Seeing our new house.

So this is us showing the kids the house when it was finally ours! Their reaction was not quite what we had expected! In all fairness it had been a long previous 2 weeks. Later that day, the reaction was more what you would expect. Ahhh! I love how you just can't predict how they will react. It certainly makes life more interesting!

Our New Garage!

So, while we were waiting for both houses to close. The folks we were buying the house from graciously allowed us to move our stuff into the garage. This was one of the first days we started moving stuff in. We showed the kids the garage and what they were excited about just makes me laugh!

Gabe's Video!

This is a sweet video that Gabe made! It makes me smile every time I hear it! :)

The Battle for Truth!

The Galkin Ministries Team was at our church for a week. It was excellent. The kids had their own little meetings during the services. They were in the Battle for Truth. They were the Army vs. Navy (boys vs. girls) They learned these verses and had a really good time. I couldn't get Julie because some people were in the way, but boy doesn't Gabe look cute! There is nothing quite like your kids reciting verses. Hiding God's Word in their hearts!

Oh!! The girls won! Made one of mine very happy and one very sad, but luckily we managed to live through it! :)

I praise the Lord that we live in a country that I can post this knowing that there are no adverse consequences for doing so. We are so blessed and spoiled! I pray that my children become mighty warriors for God. Rushing hell's gates to proclaim the Truth and be missionaries everywhere they are!

New House!

I will post pictures later today, but thought I would just quick write for right now. We are in a our new house and everything is "almost" put away and I am wondering how long the "almost" lasts. :) Seems like I should be done by now. The kids are loving it and slowly our nights are becoming normal. (Waking up in a strange place did nothing for a good nights sleep) We left our washer and dryer at our Shelley house and yesterday after a week of not having them, I finally got new ones! Soooooo nice to be able to do the laundry!

The kids love to be able to go in the back yard whenever they want and everyday Gabe goes and practices "hoops". Yes, we have a basketball hoop. It amazes me how much he is like Toby! I LOVE IT! Julie has started really wanting to cook so she is my meal helper! If you just walked in our house you might just find us all in the kitchen, cooking, and singing and dancing to Buddy Greene or the Gaithers or some other music. :) I absolutely love being the mommy of these little people!

Toby is busy working and fishing and playing with the kids! Well, I think that is all until I post the pictures later. :)