Our summer in Borger

For our time in Borger this summer we stayed busy.  However, we also spent a lot of days at home playing, goofing off, and just being together!  I loved this season of life and the kids ages.  They really do great together and enjoy being with one another!  The little ones loved having Gavin home from school.  

Here's some highlights of our time in Borger:

- 4th of July fun (see other post all about our fun day)

- We bought a blow up pool to have on hot summer days, which was a HUGE hit with the kids!  

- The kids found a turtle wandering the neighborhood so he came and lived in our backyard for a week or two, until one day we came home and he was gone.  They loved looking for "Foxy" and generally found him walking the fence daily. 

-  Naptime meant alone time with Gavin, which I realized how much I've missed that while he was in school!

- Lazy mornings meant fixing your own breakfast.. check out Brooklyn's willingness to pour her own bowl of cereal.

- MILES spent time teaching Brooklyn the ends and outs of timeout and the need to obey mommy's words (I think he's had lots of practice)

- The kids took swimming lessons and did an amazing job learning important skills.  Besides the water being freezing-- they loved it!

Our church had VBX and we had an awesome turn out.  It was held in the evenings and an absolute blast.  Brooks signed he and I up to be in charge of and work the games portion of VBX!  That meant we saw ALL the kids and got to play with each one of them!  The best part was that Brooks didn't realize he had business meetings in Houston that week and unfortunately he missed out on a few evenings!  This picture describes me after one of those nights... I sent this to him via phone without a caption!  While I was exhausted and it was hard word, it was a BLAST and we loved living our old camp days together playing with all the kids!

A few times we needed to go to Amarillo so I made sure to let the kids have some fun!  I'd bring a baby sitter with us and we'd go to Chucky Cheese in between running errands.  The kids would have a blast and would be exhausted on our way home!  

We potty trained Brooklyn, which wasn't THAT hard, except trying to teach her only boys teetee outside standing up!  She still hasn't figured that out!

The weather was gorgeous and Brooks had a few weekends opened for us to work on our landscaping.  I'll be completely honest... other then going and picking out plants and buying the soil and mulch, Brooks did it ALL!  He has a better vision and idea for it all and gardening has NEVER been my thing so I let him have at it!  It all looks awesome!

Something I did do was unpack our LAST box from our shipment from August 2013.  We've had our shed out back full of junk and odds and ends that had no where to go and didn't need any immediate attention.  I pretty much neglected it all since it was out of sight out of mind, but Brooks was ready to build cabinets in the garage and we needed to move some of that stuff into the shed, which required it to get some attention.  It felt GREAT getting that taken care of and to feel like we were officially moved in... after a year of living here!

Over all, it was a great summer in Borger.  

Easter Celebrations

Easter week was a special time for us and we spent time really focused on teaching the kids what Easter was all about.... Jesus dying on the cross and his resurrection!  Our church held Easter festivities throughout the week including a Maundy Thursday service.  I had the priveilege of being a part of the service and by God's grace, had my sweet husband and his creative brother, Bran who helped write, develop, and create the material I performed for our church.  I was approached 2 weeks prior to the service to see if I could perform a type of spoken word poem, I agreed, and then anxiously began studying what spoken word poems were, how to perform then, and after a week of not finding any SWP regarding the two subjects they wanted, we set out on writing our own.  It was a neat process and extremely humbling to express thoughts of Judas betraying Jesus and what Jesus endured during the days leading to his death.  I share one of the two videos with all of you and in a very vulnerable way... but pray that the words penetrate ones heart, even after the Easter season!  For some reason my youtube video won't pull up, so you'll have to click on the link below.

http://youtu.be/qFFBrzEID6c    

We were fortunate to get to spend another holiday with family, something we weren't able to do much while living in Saudi.  A few weeks before Easter while talking to my parents I offered to them to come spend some time at our house and they agreed!  We decided to plan a few things to do together and first on our list was to go to Cadillac Ranch- its a place where there are 10 Cadillacs that were buried into the ground and instantly became a tourist attraction.  People from all over are encouraged to bring spray paint cans and "decorate" the cars, which we did!!!  

The kids loved, loved, loved getting to do this.  Thankfully, I thought to bring a paint holder gun to make it easier for the kids to use and it came in handy!  Miles was beside himself by the fact that he could actually spray the car and laughed hysterically while he did it!  Gavin thought it was the coolest thing ever and was very interested in figuring out how the cars were standing up.  Brooklyn, well she was precious walking from car to car trying to turn the wheels and not get sprayed by the paint.  

 

 We found this sign that was the hood of one of the cars and it was so appropriate for Easter weekend!

My parents helped the kids paint and were just as amazed as we were with all the cars!

Since it was Easter, we took time to do normal activities like dying Easter Eggs.  The kids were amazed how the eggs changed colors and had fun mixing different colors together.  A constant and I mean constant game the kids played with my mom was "hiding" eggs in the backyard and finding them.  They did this 10 times a day and it never got old to them!

Easter morning was a little hectic.  Between cooking and prepping lunch, making breakfast, giving the kids their baskets, opening and playing with all the new goodies, and then getting to church early, our morning was a little hectic, but still fun!  The kids were so excited to get new swimsuits and a few new toys.  Their favorite might have been the chocolate bunnies!

Our church had 2 services for Easter (and I was asked to perform the spoken word poetry again, and ended up combining bit and pieces of the two poems and shared it in between songs in the Easter service-- talk about being nervous, but all went well!) Between the services, they had a massive Easter Egg Hunt for all the kids.  Each age group had their own area around the church to search and the kids had a blast!  They were so excited for eggs and kept opening each one to see what was inside.  My favorite item they received.... free sno cone certificates at a local shop in town!!

 

After church and eating lunch at home, we spent the afternoon playing!  The kids hunted for more eggs, played pac an egg, and Gavin was in for a BIG surprise during egg toss when an egg thrown to him cracked!  He was shocked and decided it'd be a great idea to throw it at his dad! We laughed all afternoon and goofed off with the kids!

It was great having my parents come for a visit and getting to spend time together.  The kids always love when any of their grandparents are around and they get that special attention!  What a great Easter week to celebrate Jesus resurrection!!  

February

February was a BUSY month for us.  Our daily lives seem hectic and chaotic and sometimes non stop--  but we manage to have fun and enjoy whatever we're doing together!  

We celebrated Valentines Day and made it as special as could be!  Our morning started with the traditional heart shaped choc chip pancakes that the kids helped me make.  I took a few cake orders for some friends and donated 1 cake to an auction event our church was having that evening!  These are just a couple of the cakes I made.  

Gavins class had a valentines party that I was in charge of (since I'm the room mom) and it was a lot of fun.  The kids played musical chairs and did the chicken dance for half the the party.  Parents helped out and brought sweets for the kids to enjoy and they had a lot of fun.

We got a few special packages from grandparents on Valentines Day so the kids got to enjoy some cake pops and new puzzles!!

Valentine's Night our church youth group hosted an event called Second Chance Prom to raise money for summer camps.  Our group of friends decided it would be fun to all go together, dress up, and party it up at the dance.  IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!  We had a catered meal, tasteful music to dance to, silent auctions where we bid on a few items, and just had a GREAT time celebrating Valentine's Day!!!  

Gavins school hosted Dr. Seuss day the week before his bday and the kids were encouraged to dress up as a character from one of his books.  Gavin and his buddy, Jeven decided they wanted to be Thing 1 and Thing 2.  The only problem was they told me 2 days before the dress up day.  I frantically searched our town for red t-shirts, but ended up driving to Target in Amarillo where I found some and then decided to use printable, iron on transfer paper to make the shirts.  I found the images on google and 30 minutes later had 2 shirts made just in time for the boys to have the next day at school!  Gavin and I met Jeven and his mom at McDonalds before school started and got the boys into full costume-- blue spray painted hair, white faces, and bold eyebrows!  They truly were in character from that moment on.  The school had special activities all day and we went to the book reading that afternoon.  Miles and Brooklyn were grateful to participate and even got to see The Cat in the Hat perform!

February was our coldest month yet and I don't think we've adjusted to such cold weather.  When I say cold.... I mean COLD!!  What makes it even tougher is the wind that generally accompanies us daily making the air feel even colder!!  Snow days are still fun and the kids enjoy playing in the backyard making snow angels, snowmen, and having snowball fights!

Miles has been sick and we're still battling monthly episodes or outbreaks as I call them.  I started monitoring his food intake, took fast food out of his diet along with most dairy products and he was still getting sick so our doctors here agreed it was time to run some more tests and pursue other options to get his body healed.  He did really good for getting pricked 3 times and having multiple pokes.  He was brave and only cried a short time.  His favorite color is blue-- like, he's almost obsessed with anything blue, so the moment they started putting a blue bandage on him he was fixated on that!  His results showed us his body had some form of infection so we were encouraged to see a Pediatric Gastroenterologist to get a better idea of what was going on.

Gavin lost his 5th tooth, which was one of his front teeth and he was so excited that it finally came out.  We tried pulling it off and on for days but it never would come out.  He ended up losing it at school during PE when he jumped for a ball and fell to the ground!  I'm pretty sure he loved that 1000x more then having us pull it.  He said all his friends thought it was so cool how it came out!  Our little boy is growing up!