February Spring!

Today was an unusually warm spring like day for the end of February. I decided to pull out my camera and document Princess in one of my favorite steals off the sale rack. It doesn't really get much cuter than this!

She complied with a smile but wouldn't dare put down the breakfast bar she stole out of the snack box.

This is her new face. She makes it whenever one of her brothers poots. For the record, I did NOT poot while taking this picture. She made the face spontaneously. Really. She did. Promise.
We spent about 30 minutes just walking up and down the driveway. I think she was really enjoying being outside. That's a word she wears out...."Owwsiiiiid"!!
When I downloaded the photos this ended up being one of my favorites. She looks like a model taking to the runway. She also looks like she's about 7 and I don't like that one bit. Two things never get old......taking pictures of my beautiful baby, and warm, sunny days in February!

The Eighth Year

Grant had been counting down the days to his birthday party since the end of January. He scrapped his idea for another laser tag party and went instead for a sleepover. It started off with a little Papa Murphy's.

Grant's not a huge cake fan so he asked for birthday brownies (which I made) but Bobby came home with a smores dessert pizza. So, I threw some candles on that and we went straight to singing.
Grant blew out the candles.....
Well, he tried.....
and tried.....
and tried. It turns out I had some of those tricky candles but I didn't know it!
Everyone got a big kick out of that.
Before all the boys scattered for nerf gun shooting, "base" building, and flashlight tag, I made them sit still so I could get their picture. I love how no one cared that Grant's little sister was tagging along. In fact, I think they liked it. (Give it a few years and I'm sure it'll change!)
Silly business.
Grant was thoroughly excited about having his buds over and to top it off: presents!
This was the year of skylanders, little figurines that you have to purchase in order to beat the skylander wii game. The boys are LOVING that game right now and it's a racket to have to purchase all the little men. They always think of a way to get into parent's wallets, don't they?

Group shot after presents:
The best part about having a Friday night slumber party is that Star Wars the Clone Wars comes on with a new episode. It saved me a buck, too, as I was going to rent a movie for them. Grant nixed the movie and said all he really wanted to do was eat popcorn and watch Star Wars. Sounded good to me!

And, as usual, what birthday party is complete without a little wrestle mania with Mr. Bobby?? This is going to be bad news for Bobby when all of these kids are 16. He'll emerge from the basement with a sore back and black eyes!

At 10pm it was lights out. We spread out the sleeping bags. A few insisted on sleeping in their "base". We rounded out the night with an episode of Phineas and Ferb (that goofy show is on all hours of the day and night. Does it ever end??). All was well and quiet until 4:13 in the morning when everyone was up and playing like it was totally normal to do so. I put on my mom hat and ordered everyone back to sleep. I'm such a hag.

It was a great time with all of G's buddies. Each of them is a blessing to him and I'm so thankful for all of them!

The festivities continued on into Saturday with a little family celebration of my second-born. Out came the ever so delicious brownies (homemade Paula Deen which means low fat, high protein and low carb with minimal calories) I had made the night before.

Tracie and Jared came up to party with us.

I was so excited to give Grant his present from us. We usually don't even get the kids a present per se because we shell out the moola for a party somewhere. But, Grant had opted for the "free" kind of party and asked instead for an ipod touch. I pulled out a little tom foolery though! He opened....
only to find another box to open.....
thought it was hilarious that there was yet another box to open...
hold up! There's another!
Down to the last tiny one!
Ohhh!! Just what he wanted! I must admit, that was one of my favorite things ever. Watching him open and open and open and then being so excited. Being a mom is ever really glamourous but it sure is joyful!
Happy birthday, Grant! I pray for at least 90 more birthdays for you filled with as much fun and excitement as this one. ( Preferably with a gradual decrease in the amount of crude armpit noises.) Love you!

Building in Haiti

The Nashville crew didn't exactly spend the first day in Pignon as we had expected. Pretty much immediately upon arrival at the orphanage property, we were recruited to help in the building of the trusses for the roof of the future orphanage dining hall. Here's what it looked like when we first got there. (And we were told it's been sitting unfinished for about 18 months!)

We quickly got to work with the help of Mr. Joe and his "truss template". We were short on hammers but I went into the tool shed and found this sledge. It worked great for me and all the men got a chuckle out of me using it. I'm proud to say that I hammered for 2 days and never once hit my finger. That alone is one visible miracle that Jesus sent us on this trip!
Even though Pastor and "Boss" (the Haitian hired worker) tried to take our hammers and do our jobs for us, we were resolute.....we were on the job for the duration! We hammered, climbed, carried, handed, measured, hammered some more, tossed nails and laughed. We did a lot of that!
By the end of the next day we had gotten a few of the trusses set and ready to be put up.
It was a lot of teamwork as we had to keep the trusses from flipping over before they were secure and we also had to keep Sam from falling over with the ladder given the crazy terrain of the floor of the dining hall. We attempted to start leveling it with shovels and elbow grease but quickly found that an hours work had barely made a dent. We quietly scrapped that job and moved onto something else.
We all took turns being the truss holder.
Making progress.....

Despite the look of this picture, Steve actually WAS doing a lot of hard work.

What would we have done without Sam's muscles to hold Dave up??
It was a lot of fun getting to know Dave, our "stowaway" over these couple of working days. He's a contractor by trade and came along with Steve last minute to work on the roof. It was obvious that these two (and three, counting Joe) men were the real deal. God loving, people serving, hardworking Christian men.
When you dig around in the dirt in Haiti you'll do doubt find some interesting, harry critters. I'll be honest, I'm glad we found him in an open area where we had room to run and scream. Much better than meeting up while I was unclothed and vulnerable in the shower!
Amanda, who is deathly afraid of any type of spider, put on her big girl panties and decided to face her fear and hold the tarantula.....safely inside the jar.

We were all much more relaxed and playful with the thing when it was trapped and it's hairy legs couldn't crawl on us.
After the screaming was over it was back to work. We worked until the sun went down and we were forced to quit.

By the time we left on Friday morning all the trusses were up and secure and half of the roof had the tin. We left the other half in the capable hands of Boss and it will be a couple day's work, which means a couple day's pay, which means provision for his family. There is still some work to be done but this place is well on it's way to being the main dining hall for lots of deserving kiddos. I'm so glad to have been a part of building it!