This is....um..embarressing.

Please don't look at the date of my last post.

I almost didn't even remember what my blog address was.

Its been that long.

I know.

Embarressing.

Moving on.

We have been crazy busy.

What with?

Just everyday stuff.

School.

Canning and freezing produce from our garden.

Potty training (Audrey).

Camping.

Wood cutting.

The mountains of laundry that can't seem to conquor.

Oh and I didn't even get on here to announce some really BIG news.

You know I'm growing a little one in me.

ITS A BOY!

Yup, 5 boys!

We definatly love boys around here:)

(Now that is embarressing that I never got on here to tell y'all that!)

I'm not sure I'll ever get caught up on here but for now I'll just start with the present and if I can find time to get on here again soon I'll show you lots and lots of pictures of what has been keeping us busy:)

This little guy growing in me has been sucking my energy completely dry. I don't remember being this tired with the rest of the kids but maybe because I have 5 other kids and being prego makes me this tired.

Just thinking about it makes me yawn.

Have I ever told you how much I love my bed?

I do feel like things are going to start calming down a little bit.

So I will be on here again soon, I promise.

(Ethan and I did a little Pregnancy Photo shoot today of my baby bump at 27 weeks today ....here's a little peak)

CRASH

Some of you might know of my wish and prayer to have a bigger house.

We moved in here when we got married 10 years ago, renting from Ben's parents, with plans to live here a year or two. Years went by quicker that we thought they would and we just kept adding to the our family with more and more kids. We ended up buying the place from his parents, thinking that we would soon be able to tear down the house ( I wanted to burn it down and be the one that lit the match!) and build a new house in its spot.

As it happens, things just haven't worked out that way and now we are in a tiny house with no money to do anything about it. And now our adding a 6th baby to the mix soon has made me feel the pinch that comes when I think about 8 people living in a 2 1/2 bedroom house.

So, there is this really BIG oak tree that is very close to our house. It has to be 200-300 years old. We've been noticing that it seems to be splitting down the middle. I've been nervous about it because it looked like it could very well demolish our house if it fell. I kinda hoped and prayed a bit that when it fell, we wouldn't be home and that it would destroy the house. It was one of my only hopes that would get me that new house.

Then, this last Friday night, after a big rainstorm, we woke to Ethan yelling to us that the big tree fell. And it did, split right down the middle with it just barely scraping the side of the house, taking a few shingles with it. I have to say I was a little disappointed that it hadn't worked the way I had hoped. But I am so very thankful that God protected our children from that monstrous tree. It could have very easily went through the roof and landed on the kids' bedroom where they sleep on bunk beds.

So now, I have to have hope that God has already decided how we will make it in this house or how He will get us out of it. He showed me that HE's in charge and I need to trust His timing. I may get a little cranky and anxious about what we are going to do, especially in the long winters we have here with all of us squished together all day, everyday. He has a plan for us and I just need to be patient and wait for it. ( if you know me at all- this is soooo hard for me) 

Thanks you, Jesus, for your protection!

1 Fish 2 Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

You might be wondering why I'm posting this much in one day.

Ben and the big boys are fishing.

Ben has fishing on the brain.

Which is nice because its putting fish in our freezer.

He has been trying to go out once or twice a week with the kids and they have been catching their limits of Sunfish every time.

Which is over a 100 at a time ( or more depending on how many kids he has with!).

He even taught Clint and Ethan how to clean and fillet the fish so he's not the only one out there cleaning them for hours at a time.

They even took this crazy mama with once.

He made me put my own worms on ( and you need to realize that I even had to break the worms into smaller pieces with my bare fingers to make them last longer ) and take my own fish off the hooks. That was NOT the fun part. The fun part was watching how excited the kids were each time they pulled one in. Fishing is a really fun thing to do for really cheap. And I'm glad I have a husband who knows how to fish and where to catch them. He is quite the fisherman if I do say so myself:)

Oh, a camping we will go....

The kids were thrilled that we finally taking them camping.

I mean, summer is about over and we hadn't taken them even once this whOOOle summer. Such mean parents!

But when your daddy is a truck driver its hard to make time for camping.

A big group of our friends were all camping together and we'd really wanted to go with them but didn't know until the night before if it would work out for us. So we hurried up and packed the camper up and headed out there.

I think we all really needed it. The kids rode their bikes all over, swam alot and just had fun being together. My favorite part is after we get the kids to bed and all up grown ups can sit around the fire and laugh and relax. We only stayed 2 night but we were thoroughly wiped out by the time we made it home.

I'm hoping we can get one more camping trip in this summer or even this fall.

Enjoy some of the pictures of our fun there.

( notice I don't have hardly any pictures of the older kids because they did their best to not hang around me:)

 

 

It's About Time!

Someone in our house has been impatiently waiting to lose some ivory.

Someone who is 6 years old and thinks that he has waited long enough.

Especially since his younger cousin has lost multiple teeth before him. How dare she;)

 It finally happened.

First a little wiggle.

Then when he couldn't wait any longer he had his older brother pull it out with a pliers.

Yup, he was desperate!

Then after another day or two, he thought the tooth next to that empty space felt a teensy bit loose too. He didn't even wait for it to loosen up more. He had his brother with the trusty pliers there to yank it out.

He looks a little crazy here, and I think he might be if he would let that brother of his near him with a pliers again.

He is always testing out his other teeth now because he "needs" money, he says. That tooth fairy gave him a whole paper dollar for each tooth, and to him that's some easy money!

Lets just ignore the fact that its been close to a month since I've been on here and the fact that I'm going to skip over a bunch of stuff that we've done because I don't want to bore you all with my catching up- maybe I'll get to our anniversary trip at some point but not today.

After some of the hottest muggy weather we've had in a long time, we've been enjoying a few days of almost perfect sunny days. This last week, Ben decided to get out the fishing rods much to the glee of the kids and take them sunny fishing from his parents dock. I don't think the boys could have had a better fishing day than that one. They were bringing in fish left and right and as fast as they could get the lines in the water. Ben had a couple of his youngest siblings with as well so he didn't get to do any actual fishing himself, he was so busy taking fish of hooks and dealing with all the fun stuff you have to when your fishing with kids:) At one point Owen dropped his rod into the lake and Ben's sister had to go in after it:) Ben figured they had caught at least 140 sun fish but after throwing the smallest ones back he ended cleaning 92!!! That means we will be having a BIG fish fry here soon. I stopped over there when they were about finished and took a couple pictures of some of their catches.

Blake haulin' in one of his fish

Clint, proud of one of his many fish

Ethan loves fishing:)

Needless to say, they are hoping Dad takes them out again this week when he gets a chance!

Since the boys were out fishing, Audrey and I decided to do a little Photo Session of her. We packed up her doll and her purse and headed to Paynesville to try and get a few shots. We had fun, just her and me:) I promised her a treat when we were done and ended up getting some donuts and juice for her and iced coffee for me.

Here are a couple of the shots I got. She really doesn't like to look AND smile at me at the same time. Next time I'm going to have to bring someone with me to get her to do that.

I took a couple at Ben's parents while he was cleaning the fish too. And of course Owen wanted in on them as well:)



The Story of Us

Once upon a time {about 15 years ago} there was a 14 year old girl and a 16 year old boy. They had some big crushes going on for each other. He called her. He asked her "out". She said yes. Their parents thought they were pretty young. Thought they didn't know what they wanted. They fell in love. The boy was always telling the girl that he was going to marry her. She liked the idea but really didn't want him telling her what she would do. So she broke up with him. She started to believe her parents, that they were too young for this kind of relationship. The boy was heartbroken. He was mad. He decided that he would get her back by making her incredibly jealous. She went on with her life, having fun with her friends. But there was always that little spark of love in her heart for him. Meanwhile the boy started to lift weights, get a pickup, start to hang around some other girls. After about a year of being without each other, the girl started to miss the boy. She started seeing him with his cool pickup, his big strong muscles, hanging out with different girls and she got jealous { just what he wanted}. He wasn't about to ask her out again, so the girl had to call the boy up this time and get him back. The good thing was, he still wanted her back so it wasn't too hard. They fell in love again. They were a little bit older and knew what they wanted.

They dated for a few more years. Then one night the boy came over to her house and sat on the porch swing with the girls dad. He asked for the the girls hand. The dad said "Are you sure you want her? She's kind of a handful" Thankfully the boy said "Yes".

The next day the boy and the girl were going to go take some carpet to her sisters house. The girl picked up the boy. He said he had to run up to his room to get some socks. She followed him. Instead of pulling out some socks he pulled out a ring. He asked. She said yes.

Ten years ago, she wore a beautiful white dress, he looked handsome in his black tux. She walked down the aisle. He was waiting. He smiled. She smiled. They both said "I Do".

Ten years later, the boy and the girl now have 4 boys and 1 girl and 1 more little one on the way. He works hard to provide what his family needs. She takes care of their children. They have gone though the trials that most married couples go through, but they've made it through with more love than they had before. They might not have alot of money, may not live in a fancy house {or even a big house}, but they have a big love.

They would do it all over again.

I've been wanting to get on here to write for a while but just haven't mustered up the mind power to actually come up with anything interesting. This little baby inside of me is sucking out my brain ( what's left of it anyways after the 5 previous ones did there best to rid me of it!).

Random things that I can somehow remember that have happened since my last post. They will probably not be in order of when they actually took place. I'm too lazy to look at a calender to try and recreate the order of events.

{1} There is in fact a real live baby inside of me! I heard the proof! The little heartbeat was be-bopping away in the 160's range:) Such a fun moment! I LOVE hearing my babies heartbeats for the first time!

{2} As most of you know- I have had to deal with Blood Pressure issues since they made their appearance when I was pregnant with the Oyster (Owen). I've been on medication since then and have figured I would always be on it. But when I found out I was expecting again I stopped taking the med mostly because there was a warming to NOT take if you are pregnant. I hoped that things would be ok until I would go to the Dr. So when I had my first appt. my BP was really high- like 160/96 or something. They figured I was just freaking out a bit from worrying about what my BP would be like at the drs. They let me lay down for a few minutes and took it and it had dropped quite a bit. So now I'm just monitoring it myself and it hasn't gotten out of control as of yet. I"m really hoping I won't have to go back on the meds because the ones I can take when your pg have annoying side affects. Please pray that I can avoid these this time around!

{3} Last night at last minute we decided to go to the carnival in a nearby town. They kids were super excited and I just really wanted some mini- donuts! When we got there people were lining up for a parade that we didn't know was happening. We had some really happy kids to get parade candy and they made out like bandits with all the sugar they were able to score! The kids got to go on a couple rides each ( because when you have 5 kids I gets spendy really, really fast!) They enjoyed the ones they got to go one and Ethan was screaming and Blake was pretty scared but they had a blast.

{4}I feel like I'm getting out of the sick stage of this pregnancy. I usually have a bad day every other day now. I'm 13 weeks now so I'm guessing it should end very soon ( I'm hoping!). I'm so tired though- I have to try and get a nap in everyday or I end up feeling really sick by the evening. Its nice that Owen and Audrey still take naps and I can usually get the older boys to watch a movie or  do something quiet while I rest.

{5} Ben and I are looking forward to this week. We will be celebrating our 10th anniversary on Thursday. We have always said that for our 10th we would do something BIG like a cruise or a some other amazing vacation. But when you add 5 kids in, more bills than you can handle and Ben's busy work schedule with no vacation time trying to make that dream possible isn't very easy or realistic. I had at least hoped to get out of this state! But alas, it was not meant to be. I'm just thankful that we are able to get away, just the 2 of us, for some fun and be able to relax. We are doing it major cheap-O! We are going to pull our camper to Taylor's Falls and go camping and maybe some canoeing, go on a ferry boat tour, try the Alpine slides and if I can convince Ben, maybe some go-carts:)  I am sooooo excited about this time we get to spend with each other. We haven't went anywhere just the 2 of us for longer than one night since we got married so this will be a very big treat! I'm so thankful to Ben's sister and her husband for their willingness to stay with our kids for a couple nights and fro Ben's parents for taking them for a night also. It is insanely difficult to find people to watch all your kids for 1 night much less 3 nights!

{6} We have some new pets. I do not like them. I despise them. Raccoons. Two of them. A couple weeks ago we had a whole family of them living in a tree next to our house. Ben went out with his manly self and disposed of them in a typical manly way. With a gun. Of course it had to be his biggest, baddest gun because let's face it, he really doesn't have enough chances to use that spendy, scary gun enough. While he was out ridding our place of those pesky varmints, I was crouched on the floor covering my ears from the scary thought of him missing the raccoons and the bullets going into the house. Thankfully my Benny is quite an excellent shot and was able to get a few of those naughty things including a big mama coon. Unfortunately, this left a bunch of baby raccoons wandering around our yard wondering where their mama went. We killed a couple of them but then the boys decided they wanted them as pets and caught 2 of them with fishing nets and put them in a pet carrier. They've been feeding them and yesterday when I demanded that they let them go, the stinky little things refused to leave. Now we have to raccoons sticking close by our place. I'm really hoping they leave so this Mama doesn't have to take things into her own hands and dispose of those creatures! Coon Skin Hats anyone??!!

So now Audrey just informed me that she has a messy pants so I'll leave you for now and hopefully continue regaling you with all the very exciting happenings of our crazy household. ( being very sarcastic of course, our life is not very exciting- just loud!) I will for sure be writing some mushy stuff about my dear Hubby this week, I'm sure you all can't wait to read ;-P.

{Newborn Photos} Paizli

You might remember the pictures I took of my sister Jaclyn when she was pregnant.

She had her baby!!!!!!

Little Miss Paizli Adelle is here!!!

I had the most fun taking pictures of her. I think I was there for 4 hours. It took a while to get her to sleep but after that it was like a dream taking photos of her. She was like a little doll, so perfect! I could have spent even more time taking pictures of her but the card on my camera (which is actually quite small) only held about 300 shots.

Paizli is so absolutely beautiful. It made me very anxious for my little baby to get here:)

I had a very hard time picking out the pictures I'd share with you but here are my favorites....

 I love her little face in this one...she look like a little baby elf:)

{Newborn Photos} Jacob

So about a month ago, I had the opportunity to photograph a little sweet new baby boy.

Up until then, I hadn't taken pictures for anyone other than family  so when this mama asked if I'd take her baby's pictures when he was born I was really quite nervous about it but really excited too! I hadn't taken any pictures of babies before ( besides my own) and none since I had gotten my DSLR camera.

The family was very pleasant to work with and they were patient with my own inexperience. I think things went well and the pictures did turn out good:) Although the little guy decided he wanted to be awake during his session, we were able to get some good shots of him. His mama told me afterwards that he slept for hours! He just didn't want to miss out on all the fun I guess:) He is one cute little guy!