I Wanna Rock & Roll!

On Sunday night, Luke had the experience of a lifetime! He went to his first concert! Our church sponsored the Hungry for Love Tour with The Afters, Leeland, and Sanctus Real. Lance and I had been talking for about taking him to his first concert and then this opportunity came up. It was perfect! VIP tickets were only $25, so that's what we got. And we got front row seats! Plus, he got to meet all of the bands. It was really cute, because a lot of the band members are dads and Luke was the youngest person in the meet and greet line. They all were so nice to him and gave him a little more attention than all the teens in line.

The Afters

Leeland

Sanctus Real (minus lead singer Matt), he was sick and resting his voice.

Which leads me to the coolest thing of the night! Some close friends of ours are good friends with the drummer from Sanctus Real. After the meet and greet, James and Ruth headed to the tour bus to visit with him and on the way out, Ruth grabbed Luke! He got to go on the tour bus!!

Hangin with the lead singer Matt

Hangin with Mark, the drummer

Can it get any better than this?!?!

I told Luke that he peaked at age 8 with regards to concerts! Never again will there be VIP tickets, meet the band, front row seats AND get to go on the tour bus!

A Fall Review in Pictures

I finally bought a new card reader and can upload some of the pictures of our fall! Whew!

In October, we went camping in Branson with some friends of our. We stayed in a great campground that had all kinds of fun activities for Halloween. The kids had a BLAST! One day we drove up to Springfield to visit Bass Pro Shop. They had some fun activities for the kids.

Luke roped the "calf" on the 4th try!

Everyone got to stamp a leather key chain

Oh MY! A bear!!!

Aaaah! A wolf!

On Saturday night, we got to go trick or treating at the campground. And ride a hay ride. But the funniest thing was Luke at the haunted house. He wouldn't stop bugging me about going through it. The campground had posted that it was "strongly PG," but that didn't detour Luke from wanting to go. We didn't make it past the first spook and he was done! ha! It was a blood and guts kind of haunted house, ick. So I started hollering for the kids to not scare us and let us through. After we got out, Luke said, "Momma, I didn't like that. It wasn't PG. It was PG 13!" haha!

3 cute fairies,

and a handsome cowboy!

Fun on a hayride!

Then a few days later, we went on Luke's field trip to a drive through zoo in our area. It is the coolest place!

Ewww! I cringed taking this picture!

Later in October, Sara had her first field trip. Hope, Emma and I had a lot of fun going with her. We went to a corn maze and pumpkin patch.

Love my girls!

Cool Cow Train!

I love this picture!

Then came Halloween! We had so much fun at our church's Trunk or Treat!

My little Green Fairy

NINJA!

Look closely for Luke! ha!

Mom's booth was face painting. The girls' loved it!

No caption needed! Ha!

And the final stop on our parade of pictures...

Toyland on the Square. Lance and Luke didn't get to go because they went hunting for the first time at our deer camp. (and unfortunately, no deer) But the girls and Mom and Dad and I had a lot of fun!

The girls got to meet Barbie!!! :)

Overwhelmed and Some Potty Words

It's been a while since I've had the energy to blog. Just sitting down and gathering my thoughts takes mental energy that I haven't wanted to exert. We've had a busy fall and I have lots of pics to post. I'll get to that hopefully tomorrow. I've been trying for a couple weeks to get on top of my house. It was starting to take over! Today, all of the kids rooms and closets are cleaned and organized! Woo Hoo! But. (and big but!) my room is a disaster. Hopefully Friday it will get done. On a positive note, my closet it clean, so that is one less thing to worry about. :)

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly this house can get out of control. I've been having a little bit of a pity party lately, because it gets so frustrating to constantly work in my house and it never look like I did a thing. Oh well. I'm trying to embrace it and not stress so much about it. It is what it is. This is my life right now. And I don't want to miss out on the impromptu duck, duck, goose games with my daughters and their stuffed animals because I was cleaning the kitchen.

Now, for a funny story from today! :) This afternoon when I picked up the kids from school, Luke told me he was reading the book, "Holes." I told him they made a movie off of it and he asked if he could watch it. I was thinking about the wrong movie when I told him that I didn't think he could because it had cuss words in it.

Now fast forward to this evening at the dinner table. Someone brings up the topic of bad words and I hear my precious, almost 6 year old daughter, whispering s*** to herself! Imagine my horror! I looked at her and asked, "what are you saying?!?!" She froze. I was totally and utterly confused! Luke then tells me that the girls asked him what cuss words were. He was scared that he was about to get in huge trouble, so he starts saying, "I didn't want to tell them! They wouldn't stop asking!"

He tells me that he told me them that cuss words were words like shut up, crap, and s***. Now, in his defense, the sweet boy has never said that word. He heard it as school last year and asked me about it. We had a talk about really bad words and he hasn't used them.

So, needless to say, the girls and I had a talk about not saying that word EVER! Once again, fast forward to tonight on the way home from AWANAS. The kids and I are having a good talk about holding each other, as a family, accountable to better behavior. We all were telling what we needed to be held accountable for. Luke said his (mouth, getting angry), Sara said hers (sassy mouth), and then Hope starts saying hers. Doing what she's told, not getting mad a Luke, and not saying bad words like s***. Hahahahaha! What do you say to that?!

She also told about some kids at school saying bad things like poopy hole (hysterical). So then Emma chimes in and yells "shut up!" I about choked! Hope started laughing at the fact that Emma said shut up and Emma then says, "Poopy diaper, Hope!" I couldn't do anything but laugh. It was the worst words she knew! (but she did get a stern talking to!)

Paci Free!!

This is my big girl! Not a baby anymore. I have mixed feelings about it, but definitely the happy ones outweigh the sad ones! We've been trying to figure out when we were going to take it away from her. Luke is the only other one of our kids that had one. And being a first time mom, I was pretty anal about his paci! ha! I took it away from him at 12 months except for nap time and bedtime. Then at 18 months, we took it totally away. He was our only one, so I could handle the crying for 3 nights. But with Emma, number 4, it was a lot harder!

So we've let her keep it. I've been wanting to take it away, but haven't had the guts to do it! :) But this morning, when I went to get her up, and took her paci, I noticed that she had chewed a huge hole in it. That meant bye bye paci! I told her we had to throw it away because it wasn't safe for her.

I warned her on the way home that she wasn't going to have her paci for nap time, and she started crying, "My sassy! My sassy! Hope, I broke my sassy!" It was so cute!

When we got home, I told her that if she went to sleep without crying, she could pick out a piece of candy when she woke up. I hugged her and closed the door. She started WAILING! "My SASSY!!!!" I walked back in her room and told her no candy if she cried and she stopped immediately! Didn't hear another peep! Ha!

And tonight, as I put her down, she whimpered for a second, "My sassy." I told her it was gone and if she didn't cry, she could have some more candy when she woke up in the morning. Not another peep from her!

Proud of my girl! So the mixed feelings. Lance and I were talking tonight. We're not sad that we don't have anymore babies, but sad that she's not a baby anymore. I don't know if that makes sense. She's growing up and that means not much longer til we can't hold her, can't pick her up and tickle her, can't throw her up in the air, and can't fly her on our feet in the living room. :( But! On our way to no more pull ups, more independence, carrying on conversations, hiking without carrying, no strollers. Woo Hoo! It's so hard to see my babies grow up, but with each age, they are so much fun. So Emma is growing up. Sad, but exciting. She is so much fun right now. She has the funnest personality! I can't wait to see how her personality develops!

Hope-isms

Hope has got to be one of the funniest little girls I have ever known! Even as a baby, she cracked us up. My sis in law has said from the time she was a toddler, that she was hysterical and it's true! Lately, she has been saying (what I call) Hope-isms. :) For instance: "Momma, when I'm a grown up, I want a goat, so I can feed it." "Momma, my arms hurt from running." "Momma, when I'm a grown up and old like Mom, I want to keep a stuffed animal." And my personal favorite, "Sometimes I lose at tic tac toe when I'm playing by myself." haha!!! She just comes out with these things at random times throughout the day.

Tonight, I thought we were going to die laughing. At Luke and Hope. It was an entire conversation that we had at dinner. It went something like this...

Hope: Daddy, when you married Momma and you kissed her on the lips, did you love it??

Luke: Did it taste like sugar? I had a dream once that a girl kissed me and it tasted like sugar.

(insert hysterical laughter by Lance at this point!)

Sara: Daddy, Hope said she is going to kiss Eli on the playground.

Daddy: You'd better not be kissing boys!

Hope: Daddy, I'm old enough, I'm 4!

Hahahahahaha!!! I love my family! And after dinner, there was some serious booty shaking going on! I'll leave you with that. :)

10 years!

Who are these two little babies???

My how we have changed in the last 10 years!

We celebrated 10 years of marraige on the 14th. We've had so much going on the past 7 days, that we didn't even have time to celebrate it in style. Some close friends of ours are moving to Dubai and we organized a church wide garage sale to benefit them this past weekend, so on our actual anniversary Thursday, I was taking in donated items at the church. Then, the kids were out of school this Monday, so we planned a long weekend camping trip to Branson. And to think I have planned for the past 3 years to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary in Hawaii! :) But we are going back to Haiti in November and I honestly can't think of a better trip to take.

So here we are, at 10 years, and it's as it should be. Life. Four kids, church activities, family time, and mission trips. That is where we are. And I love it!

I am married to the love of my life, the father of my four children, the all around best man I know. Life is good.

10-10-10

Top 10 Things I Love About My Life (not necessarily in order)...

1) Being Lance's wife. I'm married to the best man in the world. He loves me more than anything, and he loves his family. He is kind, loving, and makes me wonder why God gave him to me!

2) Being Luke, Sara, Hope and Emma's momma. I never knew that I would love it so much. I was never a kid person and could not fathom how my life would change when I had my own. I was born to be a mother.

3) Being raised in a Christian family and knowing that Lance was, too. It is such a blessing to have that bond within all our family.

4) My church family. We are part of the best church in NWA! It is so wonderful to truly have a church FAMILY.

5) Spending quality time with my family. Camping, riding horses, hiking, riding bikes. We have fun together. That is special.

6) My friends. I am blessed with a lot of close friends. Godly women who challenge me spiritually, laugh with me, cry with me and support me. Everyone should be as blessed.

7) Cuddling in bed with my kids. Each of them. There's nothing better!

8) Laughing with Lance. Hard! He makes me laugh all the time. :)

9) Hearing, "I love you Momma." Melts my heart every time.

10) The fact that Lance holds my hand and hugs and kisses me in public. That was hard for him when we first started dating, but now it is second nature. I feel so safe with him.