Full House

This past weekend we offered to watch my best friends kids while she and her husband had a weekend getaway to a marriage conference. We were a little nervous wondering if we would be able to handle things ok seeing as how it would be me and Scott alone with 10 kids! However, they were all wonderful and we had a great time!!

Friday night when they got here Kimberly and Emily went to a God's Girls event. The rest of the gang just stayed here at the house and played games. Fantastic contraption was a HUGE hit with the guys. They also played the Wii.

That night they watched College Road trip and ate some smores.

On Saturday we went to Centennial Park for a picnic. We spent about 2 1/2 hours there. The kids had a great time playing and exploring.

Since there were so many of us some road in the van while the other's road bikes to the park.

There was a tree that had a vine hanging from it. Everyone had fun swinging on it.

After the park we came home and started taking baths to get ready to go to the Church for the Valentines Banquet that was being put on by the youth as a fund raiser for camp and mission trip.

Afterwards it was time to get ready for bed. Miracle and Smeagol really liked Zack.

The whole gang!

I was really sad to see them all go on Sunday. They are a great bunch of kids. :)

Valentines 2009 continued

After I got back from my letterboxing adventure. I took the kids to Marshall for the ETHF Valentine party at Ci Ci's, then to a field trip at the Humane Society. We had such a good time! The past month or so all of us in ETHF had been collecting money to donate to the humane society since they are run strictly off of donations. Our goal was to raise $50. We raised $111.28!! The lady at the humane society said they know EXACTLY how they were going to spend the money. They said just that morning they were talking about a dog named Emily that was there that had heart worms but they didn't have any money to treat her. Now they have the money to make her well. This made the kids VERY happy!!

Since there were so many of us they divided the group into two. Kids 6-under went in one group while the older one's went with the other. So all the pictures I got at the humane society were just of the younger three.

Here are pictures of the party and the field trip:

This was at the Human Society when we gave the cards with the money we collected.

Here the kids were getting ready to watch a video about how to act around dogs they don't know.

Then they taught them how to lay if a dog did start to bite them.

Next we went to the room where they did the surgery's.

Then it was time to play with some of the animals.

Valentines 2009!

Today was the best day ever! It started out with us celebrating Valentines early b/c we are going to have the Beck kids with us on Valentines day. So the kids woke up to their presents laid out on the table. After we did school Scott gave me my present. It was the most romantic, wonderful, exciting Valentines present I've ever gotten!!!

(Warning: if your a letterboxer you may not want to read the following information. I have to give details and pictures of where this box was hidden b/c it's part of the surprise Scott did for me. It's just too cool to keep inside. :)

He told me to get in the car and find a radio station that was playing our song. (Our song is Chasing Cars by the Snow Patrol.) I scanned through all the channels until I got to 107.7 which was playing our song! Turns out Scott had rigged up his MP3 player some how to where it made our song come over the radio!

My next set of instructions was to take our GPS and scroll through the favorites until I found a location that was titled 107.7. Once I found it I hit Go and had to follow the directions to a location where Scott had hidden a letterbox for me!!

It led me to Lake O the Pines. Once there I was told to reach under the passenger seat to get my next set of clues. There it told me to park where we did the last time we were there and go to the picnic table we sat at the last time. Then I was to look toward the right and see a shape of our signature stamp. The box was hidden behind there.

When I found the box and saw the stamp he had carved I started crying. It said Scott and Pam forever and always 1992 on it. (That's the date we got married.)

The front journal page had 5 pieces of paper bound together by hearts to represent our 5 children.

This was the sweetest, most thoughtful present he's ever given me for Valentines Day. I told him I always thought Valentines you were supposed to get flowers and chocolate, but now my favorite is letterboxing and chocolate. (I forgot to mention he gave me a big bag of M&M's also. :)

Here are the kids presents along with my bag of M&M's.

Finding our song

Driving to location using "Sophia" our GPS.



Final Clue

Tree shaped like our signature stamp

Getting box

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Today the kids got a surpise in the mail. It was a box of chocolate covered strawberries from maw maw and paw paw for Valentines Day. They were SO good!!!!!! The kids loved them!

Here they are enjoying them:

Hot Hearts

We took the youth to Hot Hearts this weekend. Hot Hearts is like a youth evangelism conference. There was close to 3000 youth there. The David Crowder band performed. He was awesome! He is a very "interesting" looking individual. LOL His voice just doesn't match his looks.

One of the highlights of the trip was when one of the youth taught me a secret to texting faster. It was so cool. Now I'll be texting even more! :)

Here are a few pictures from this weekend.