Sandra's Surprise!

Last week Sandra came home from school super excited.  She came running up to me smiling...

(come on can't you see what's so exciting?!?)

Well, she didn't tell me, but the necklace in the picture above was a pretty good clue!  She lost her first tooth, at school!  She got to go to the nurse and get the fancy tooth necklace too.  Such excitement!


Now here's the look at the cutest little gap in her smile.  See, now you can tell right :)?  (she even has her tongue poking in the hole)

Yay for Sandra!  She's happy to be joining the toothless club with her older brothers!  

Pumpkin Picking

Our friends grew pumpkins this year and harvested right around Halloween.  I saw all of the vines and cool pumpkins before the harvest.  There were so many pumpkins that I asked if my kids could pick some if they had extras.  There were still tons of tiny green ones and some big ones too.  Here are the kids examining the vines... 

Grant picked the biggest one left.  Check out that huge leaf!

Punkin with her pumpkin ;)

Sandra's pumpkin

Clark thought the little pumpkins were balls and kept throwing them :).

Talmage took forever to pick... because his siblings had taken all of the last big ones and he didn't want a tiny one :(.

This one was a decent size still.  Look how big it was in my hand... there were tons that were the size of grapes.

Clark loving being outside!

Clark looking at the pumpkin vines.

Talmage finally settled on a collection of pumpkin flowers, tiny pumpkins, and cucumbers.  Here he is showing off 2 of the flowers :).

Clark - because he's just too cute ;)

Happy Fall!  Thanks again to our friends who shared their harvest with us... it was tons of fun!!

Fencing

Our red fence has been slowly deteriorating.  Here in TX there are tons of wood fences and so they all eventually rot and fall over - great times.  Too bad the dirt is too filled with sand and clay to do a better fence because I would love a block fence I never had to worry about again!

Saturday was the day of the fence project.  Jeff decided to take down two of the panels that had lost the post in the middle.  It had been windy again and we figured the fence would be falling down anyway so why not get it fixed right?

After a couple of hours of work - most of that work removing the old posts and cement, here are the finished posts!  They looked fabulous!  Next to finish up with some wood next weekend....

Well, that was the plan until our home teacher showed up with the missionaries to help with our fence project.  We had called him because he had a jack hammer - almost a necessity when working in TX soil - man rocks and cement are nasty down there.  Well, unfortunately the jack hammer wasn't working, but bringing two strong missionaries was almost the next best thing.  


They started by removing the rest of the wood panels - that is a big pile of fence if I do say so myself :)

Then it was time to dig out the remaining 11 posts!  Some were easy... and some took way too long!

Such a hard worker!

Bro Blair with is long metal pry bar - that extra torque came in handy!

The boys had a great time helping too :)

So cute when they work together.  They had been Jeff's helpers with the first two posts - they really do work hard!

Baby had fun hanging out during all the excitement!

Everyone working!  Good times!

Well the posts are set and today the kids finished filling in the holes with the remaining dirt.  

It really is great to have little helpers!  

I am grateful for a hardworking husband and family!  It was such a blessing to have our extra helpers come by too!  It is hard for me right now because I'm not able to do any of the physical help and it could have taken Jeff a really long time to get this far by himself!  
It's exciting to see this project coming along ... maybe soon enough I'll have a fence to show for all of that "fencing" or rather, de-fencing we did ;).

Dancing Soccer Players...

I guess that's not exactly true, but the kids were Dancers and Soccer Players for Halloween this year ;).  

It was a great idea for Mommy because they each already had uniforms/outfits from their teams and classes!  Seriously the easiest Halloween ever!  Here are some pictures of the cuties:

Sandra and Mhari

Cute Mhari - bun hair :)

Silly Sandra!

Oh, let's not forget the soccer mascot - the Giraffe!  Clark sure was cute in the giraffe outfit (that we had used when the boys were little - again, no work for me!)

However, he didn't love wearing it.  He is not happy in this picture.. he had already gotten the hood part off and was working on the arms :(

Then the whole thing - silly Baby.

Let's not leave out the handsome soccer boys!  What cuties!

Here they are after making the rounds at the trunk-or-treat at the church Saturday night.

Oh, and Clark finally gave in and left the costume on :).  He was adorable!

Daddy was the soccer coach, or fan, and I was a soccer Mom - very appropriate ;).  

Here are the kids before going out in our neighborhood Halloween evening.

The kids also painted pumpkins that afternoon - so much easier than carving!

They had some fun faces on them too!

After all the trick-or-treating fun we ended up with a couple of "cow" girls trick-or-treating at our door.  It was a fun night hanging out with them!

Oh, and now the eating of the candy begins... for days and days.  Clark is really enjoying this holiday!

Hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween!  

O Baby!

It is time to share the family news...

Williams Baby #6 is set to arrive by May 7th, 2012.  

So far things are looking good.  Here is a quote from my Dr. "There is 1 healthy heartbeat."  And that would be music to my ears.  I was not really ready for #6, but especially not ready to repeat my last pregnancy experience... that had started out as twins (and possibly triplets).  I'm feeling mostly well and starting to get more obviously pregnant.  I'm finishing up my 12th week... already done with the first trimester!

We shared the news with the kids Sunday night and they are all very happy.  They really enjoyed helping us talk about baby names.  I'm sure this will all go by very fast... it seems like May will be here before we know it!  My baby is getting so huge it will be fun to have a small one again, even if it's only for a little bit before it grows!

Class performances... 2nd Grade!

It's that time of year again... time to share the kid's school performances.  Grant's was this month, Talmage's is next month.  Grant did some of the same songs Talmage did last year, but they also did some different ones too... 

Here are some pictures of Grant doing the songs:

First, waiting to start.  He's on the top row third from the left.

The first song they did was about Autumn colors.  They each had a different colored streamer to wiggle at different parts of the song.


Grant's was purple... not his favorite color, but the song looked really cool :) 

 Here is kind of a wide view of most of the kids so you could get the effect of all of the streamers wiggling :).

This was the repeated song... I think it's called "Them bones."  I think Grant liked it because he got to use a musical instrument.  

I think this is from the itsy bitsy spider... more movements.

There was a part where he was supposed to dance and twist... let's just say he didn't do that.  When I asked him about it later he said he doesn't like dancing... accept for the chicken dance ~

 Which is what we ended with.  The audience even got to participate - yay :).  

It was a fun night and Grant did a great job.  He's still shy and doesn't like to speak in front of people or dance, but he's come such a long way from when he wouldn't even sing during his pre-k year.  Way to go Grant!

Independence!

Clark is really becoming more independent every day.  He will go upstairs by himself and play or go find something else to do.  Mostly this is good and only occasionally do I find him getting into trouble.  It probably helps that there are so many kids in the house that he's rarely alone :).  Here are some fun pictures of what Clark has been up to ....

I found him in the girls room the other day.  First I found him on Punkin's bed reading books - couldn't get to the camera fast enough though :(.  Just a little while later he was playing with Mhari's animals.  Too fun.  He was having a great time hanging out in the girls room!

Happy boy!

Clark still loves books!  I mean, LOVES them!  It's fun, and usually he's really nice with them.  He get's possessive too... that's hard when it's a book he shouldn't have though.  Here he is enjoying "Green Eggs and Ham"

He also often looks at the books upside down... funny kid!

Oh, and while he lays down too!

Punkin was being cute and tried on Daddy's boots.  She does this often... well all of the kids do, but I couldn't help but take a picture.  She's growing up so fast!

The other day someone left a bag of chips in the living room.  When I heard Clark crinkling something and went to check on him this is what I found...

Just enjoying a nice little snack on the living room floor :)

He likes his picture taken if you hadn't noticed ;).

Clark is really growing up.  He's still a sweetie!  It's always fun when they learn new things and start being more independent!