The first Eagle!

Talmage has worked really hard to earn his Eagle Boy Scout Award.  It took several years, lots of meetings, service, and campouts, but he finally made it to the Eagle Board of Review!  Jeff went up with Jeff and after some schedule confusion he was all set to go in for his Review.  Talmage did well and came out approved to be an Eagle Scout!  It was very exciting! 

Here are all of the merit badges that I sewed on to get his uniform all set!

In the Board of Review.

All done! 

Way to go Talmage!  We are so proud of you and all of your heard work to accomplish this!

Real or Fake?

For Primary I was in charge of Sharing Time.  I did a lesson about what is real or fake.  I had fake flowers and fruit to try to trick the children to see if they could tell what was real or fake.  They didn't realize it was a game at the beginning (that I would actually bring fake things), but by the end they had figured it out and just started guessing things were fake.  One of the funny things were how good the fake fruit looked, especially the apples.  I ended up cutting the fruit up to see, taste, touch and experience what is real.  I think the lesson went over well everyone was engaged.  At the end of church I took home my left over objects.  I put the fake fruit with the kids toy food for them to enjoy. 

The next day I was teaching the kids for school when Lorna came in eating the fake fruit.  She had tried really hard to take bites out of that apple!  She was even in primary for my lesson the day before!  It was really funny to see how hard she tried to take a bite!

Satan uses lots of trickery and his tricks look really good ... just like this apple. 

I hope I can teach my children to avoid things that are not real and lasting for their future.  It is a hard lesson that even I am continuing to learn today!

Super Cute!

This year in Co-op Tiffany and I are teaching a sewing class.  It happens to be offered during a class that I wanted my kids to take, so I don't have any of my own kids in class this year.  Since the kids don't get to take the class we have been doing some of the projects at home.  Today we turned old t-shirts into capes and masks.  The kids had a blast.  The girls also turned some t-shirts into scarfs, but I didn't get any pictures of that.  They had a great time running around being super heroes!

Mhari

Sandra - Looks more like a wrestler :)

Attacking the sleeping Daddy!

They mean business!  This is tickle time!

Hurray for the Super Tickle Monsters!

10 Years Fun!

Sandra reached her 10th birthday!  In our family that is the year that you get to have a fun party with friends!  We pick 2 friends and go do something fun together.  Since Sandra's birthday is in December and we ended up fighting holiday schedules we pushed her party out to January.  She was a good sport about it.  She chose to go ice skating and took her cousin, Ella, and her friend Keslie with her.  We got there too early to skate so we spent time together exploring the mall.  Sandra enjoyed the sporting goods store and Barns 'n Noble.  It was fun to be there for Sandra's first mall hang out day :). 

Once we could skate we headed to the rink.  None of the girls had ever ice skated before so it was very slow going at the beginning.  Sandra caught on pretty quickly and really made the most out of the two hours we were there.  She is even asking for skating lessons now ;).  I tried to skate a little, but I think Sandra is braver than I am ;).  After a couple of rounds I was done.  I did get to hang out with Keslie's mom (my friend) so that made the day even more fun for me too!

Here are some fun photos of Sandra's party!

Just getting used to the ice!

Ella

Hugging the wall

Three cuties!

Ella may have had the harder time of it, but they all really did have a great time!

I was so glad I got to go and spend time with our Chica to celebrate an awesome birthday with her and some friends!  Sandra is so fun and daring!  She is willing to try new things, even if they are hard.  She loves to be different and adventurous!  We love our little Chica girl!

Bye-bye Baby

After over 13 years we no longer have a crib!  It was hard to let go, but it was a good change for everyone involved!  This crib has lasted through 5 kids (at one point we had 2 cribs) and 12 years!  We loved how sturdy it was and flexible as the children grew.  The side opened like a gate so once we took the lock off the child could just get in and out (more toddler style).  It was working great until Lorna decided she was too big for her bed.  She really hadn't been sleeping well so the time was coming.  Then Sandra was ready to be out of the bottom of the bunk bed and the bed rearrangement was planned.  We would get Sandra a new twin bed (and Talmage, his was just beat) and switch Lorna to the bottom of the bunk. 

As I disassembled the crib it was odd to think how long we had lived with this piece of furniture.  It was also really shocking to see how it was not holding up after all of the years.  It was time for it to go!

 Check out that mattress!  It can only be duct taped so many times ... ewe!

Now before the new bed came Sandra had changed her mind.  She was now scared of getting a new bed and didn't want to leave her comfy bunk.  I knew the new bed would be too high for Lorna and that Sandra would want the new bed once she saw it.  We had an emotional talking to, but got her ready to switch beds when the time came.  Sandra was the best motivation during this whole process of buying the new bed that to have her changing her mind last minute was pretty annoying.  We all survived :)

Once the new bed arrived Sandra couldn't have been happier!  I'm glad she chose to trust me and get a new bed after all!

Lorna got a new princess curtain to help her feel happy as she got her sister's previous bunk bed.  She was very happy too!

It is crazy how fast they grow!  It is strange to have moved out of the small kids, naps, diapers, and such stage of life.  We are enjoying our bigger kids with a bit more freedom of schedule.  Why do they have to grow up so fast though?

Enchanted Rock!

On Saturday we woke up and headed out to Enchanted Rock.  If we made it to the trail head by 9 (I think) there was a ranger to follow on a guided tour up the rock.  Well, as it happened we missed the ranger.  We had a nice hike up the hill as a family though.  In the pictures it doesn't seem too impressive.  Really, it's like a huge hill.  It can sure get steep up the side of that hill though.  It was also a lot taller than it seems.  Once we got up the hill we found the ranger and his group and the kids were able to listen to the last part of the tour.  It was really neat.  The granite that these are made out of is what the Texas State Capitol building was built out of. 

Here is the distant view.  See the tiny specks towards the top, those are people.  Just trying to give some sort of perspective to this rock!

Closer up view of the ant like people as they ascend up the hill.

Our little rock climbers

There was lots of hidden cactus... Lorna finally found it for herself.  Good thing it wasn't too bad.

Talmage walking with Lorna

Daddy and Mhari

Made it to the top.  Talmage checking out one of the small pools that little creatures live in.  This is what the ranger was teaching about.

The view from the top!

 There were lots of beautiful clouds to make for a great view and not too sunny.  It also meant that it could start raining at any second and the path down would be a lot slipperyier!

The whole family!

At the end of the tour the guide took the group down into a cave area off the side of the hill.  We let the bigger kids go with the group and we hung out with our Lorna bug!

 It was a beautiful day and a great time to spend together as a family! 

Star Gazing

This year we decided to try to do more small family mini-trips.  Our first one was at Inks Lake for star gazing!  We headed out after co-op and work and got there in enough time to really enjoy the sunset!  After playing around we got to learn more about the stars and moon before it got too dark.  Then we got to look through the telescope and see the face of the  moon!  The ranger even pointed out lots of constellations and taught us how to read a star chart.  It was a really nice evening! 

Sandra, sporting her new coon cap :)

Amazing sunset over the lake
Talmage, Grant, Lorna, Sandra, Mhari and Clark

Playing in the water

Finding Shells!

So cute

Daddy helping Lorna over the water

The kids threw rocks into the pan of flower and cocoa.  Then we could examine the different patterns made by rocks from collision.  This really gave us a good idea of what we were looking at when it was time to look at the moon.

Everyone got a turn to use the telescope:
Grant

Sandra

Mhari

Lorna

Light almost gone... Jeff ;)

The kids had a blast and it was nice to be out enjoying the stars!  Once we were done we headed to our hotel to stay the night and be ready for the next days adventure!

Ranger Magnolia

We went of a field trip with some friends from a homeschool Texas History class we are doing this year.  We headed out to Waco to check out the Ranger museum.  We had a great time and the kids got to add to their awesome knowledge of Texas History! 

Lorna and Clark found the cute old wooden rocking horses :)

Seriously, he is so big, but it's hard to explain to a 5 year old.

There was a cool station that people could put together a hand gun and take it apart.

 Clark enjoying the real old jail door! 

The whole group

The Brazos River!

 Just the Williams' kids ;)

   

Grant and Clark

Before we left Waco we stopped over at Magnolia Farms for lunch.  There is an awesome show called Fixer Upper and they are based out of Waco.  This couple helps people buy a new house and then fix it up to their dream house.  They are a fun, quirky couple and it is a great show to enjoy.  It was really neat to get to see their new home base dream become reality!  Unfortunately we didn't run into Chip or Joanna, but it was great anyway! 

 Here are the old Silos that are still being refurbished for their offices and such.

 The grainery is now their store.  They had tons of cute stuff!

 They have a fabulous garden area.  The kids had fun in the sitting areas :)

Part of the garden area

 Part of the store front

 Super cute signs from the shop.

A little birdie I almost bought (if only the line had been shorter).

While at the Silos there is a large picnic area with food trucks.  They even have a nice lawn area with bean bag toss games.  It was the perfect family friendly hang out!  It was a great trip out to Waco!  Yay for Texas Rangers and the Magnolia Farms!