Labor Day

For Labor Day we decided to do something we had never done before and planned a family picnic at the lake. We rarely go to the lake, although we should! So we got out there about 4:00 and the kids headed for the water right away. The rest of Dave's family was going to show up about 5:00 for the picnic. About 4:30 the kids were mostly done swimming and we unloaded all of the food from the van into the picnic shelter. About 4:45 Dave lighted the charcoal so we could grill hamburgers and hotdogs. About 5:00 it started to downpoor! Jacob tried to use his body to protect the fire from the rain, until he realized that was obviously not going to work. About 5:15 the rain somewhat stopped and we quickly packed everything up. By 5:30 we resumed our Labor Day picnic in my in-law's house. So much for trying something different this year.

Here are some pictures of my kids enjoying the water.

Benji wasn't too sure of the water so he stayed nice and safe on shore. Clara got this water squirter thingy for her birthday and thought it would be fun to bring it to the lake with us. Little did she know how NOT FUN this would actually be for her.

Chris thought this water squirter was great fun also. He liked to squirt it into the air and have it rain down on him.

Here's Clara looking around and checking things out.

Here are my 2 little fish. Jacob and Debbie loved swimming in the lake! Debbie was a little too comfortable in the water! As long as she had her arm floaties on she thought she was invincable. It's funny to watch her swim along and then all of a sudden flop over and float on her back. Her and Jacob had fun playing together.

Here's Jacob dragging Debbie back to shore when she would get out farther than I thought she should go. Left alone, she probably would have ended up in the middle of the lake.....and not minded at all! Notice that it's the end of the swimming season and we can't seem to find a matching set of arm floaties.

New School Year

Well.....it is very quiet in my house right now. Debbie is watching Wonder Pets and all the rest are.........gone! Today is the first day of school and it is so quiet in the house! Not that I'm complaining.......it's just going to take some getting used to. Of course I took the standard pictures this morning. Here are what grades they are all in:

Jacob - 4th

Clara - 3rd

Chris - 1st

Benji - 1st

Debra - Preschool

Have you ever wondered how many school supplies you would need to get if you had 5 kids? Well, this is what all those supplies would look like:

Here is the bunch of them this morning. Debbie doesn't start preschool until Sept. 2 but she HAD to be wearing her backpack this morning so we let her be in the picture.

Here's another one that shows Jacob's cowboy boots. In 3rd grade he refused to wear jeans to school. He didn't like them at all. Now......he's all into the cowboy thing. I think it has to do with the belt buckle he just HAD to have this summer while we were on vacation.

This last picture was taken last year on the first day of school. My.....my babies are growing up.

25 Little Piggies

It was July 0f 2007 when I thought to take a picture of my kids' hands all together and I love how that came out. A few weeks ago the idea came to me to take a picture like that of their feet. So here it is.

Home From Model T Tour

A few days ago we got back from our family vacation. We attended the 100th Anniversary Celebration of the Model T Ford. This big event went on last week in Richmond, Indiana. There were just under 1000 Model T's there and it was a great time!!!! We went with Dave's parents, and his brother and his family. There were 13 of us altogether. We drove a Suburban and pickup, both pulling big trailers with our 3 Model T's in them. Dave, along with his dad and brother, own a body shop and restored these T's for us to bring. The one that we drove is, in my opinion, the best one! We drove a 1926 Depot Hack and it is very awesome looking. The guys started restoring this about the beginning of this year and worked with a carpenter friend to do the wood work. While at the celebration we went on a different tour everyday. One day it was a nature lover's tour, another day we visited Amish country and went to a house that used to be part of the underground railroad. Yet another day we visited Annie Oakley's hometown and a museum there. We traveled anywhere from 40-100 miles a day in the Depot Hack. It was lots of fun! One of the greatest things is that when the Associated Press wrote an article about this bige event, they used a picture of our Depot in their story!!!! Our picture have been in countless newspapers throughout the county, along with online. Here is a link to the article on MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25786751/wid/18298287/

These are 2 of the 3 T's that we brought on the tour. The one on the left is a 1927 Roadster, the other one is our 1926 Depot Hack. We also brought a 1919 Touring.

This is the whole family next to our Depot. We were all very hot and tired for this picture, but managed to hide it somewhat well for the picture.

This is a line-up of a bunch of T's. One day all almost-1000 of us lined up for a picture. I can't wait to see what the picture looks like!

If you ignore the paved road this kind of takes you back in time, doesn't it.

Here are my 5 kids looking out the "window" of the Depot.

Here are my 2 girls and my neice in their vintage dresses I found on ebay. They looked adorable!

Another picture of the girls in their pretty dresses with me and my attempt at looking like I lived in the 20's or 30's. Good thing you can't see my Birkenstocks or the girls' Crocs!

3 Years Old

Debbie is now 3 years old. I took this picture of her yesterday and thought I would post it. It's shows a sweet, angelic type girl. I won't tell you any different than that but if you read the post previous to this you might know different. LOL!

Debbie....

Here is a picture that I happened to grab while Debbie was playing outside this morning. Now......I know all about the controversy of letting kids play with guns. I try to limit the violent type of play that the kids do. But.....come on...........there are 3 boys in our house! As long as they are not shooting at people........the guns are OK. Debbie must have gotten ahold of one of Benji's guns and brought it outside. Not the best of toys for a little girl. But..........isn't this just the cutest picture?????

Don't Eat Batteries!

Yesterday turned out to be way more excited that I had expected. I had expected to have a fun afternoon swimming in the pool and then going to church after supper. All of that changed when everybody came downstairs after rest time and the first thing Benji said was "Mom, Chris swallowed a battery." Eeek!!!!

Within about 15 minutes I was on my way to Dave's grandma's house to drop off the other kids so Chris and I could make the 45 minute trip to the closest x-ray machine. The x-ray was actually kind of cool. A perfect picture of Chris's neck area, with a perfect circle right in the middle. It looked like there was a hole in the x-ray. At this point I still wasn't too concerned. I was thinking "Give the kid something to make him throw up, we'll get it out and go home." Little did I know.........

So...."Scott" (a doctor? a PA? I'm not sure) came in and said "It needs to come out." Duh???? Getting it out would not be so easy. They needed to put a scope down Chris's throat to get the battery. BTW, the battery was from a toy and was about the size of a quarter.

The town we were in has a new small town type hospital. There was a problem..........the only doctor that could do surgical procedures was on vacation. UGH! This meant that we would have to take him to a bigger hospital, over 2 hours from where we were. And......they had to take him by ambulance.

I guess there was a lot of concern because if the battery moved it could cover the opening of the windpipe and he wouldn't be able to breathe. So in the ambulance we went. The medic in the ambulance warned me that if anything happened I would have to move to the front of the ambulance while he worked on Chris. If Chris started throwing up there was a good chance he would start choking.

About 20 minutes from our destination, Chris started throwing up. Instant panic!!!! But....praise God....the battery came flying out of his mouth. Relief! I now thought......good, we'll get the hospital, meet up with Dave and go home. Nope!

Once at the hospital, the doctor who saw him was very concerned because the battery was very coreded (and it was!). I guess that the stomach acid, when mixed with the battery, causes electrical charges to happen. The doctor was very concerned that this may have done some serious burning to Chris's throat.

After another x-ray to tell us that there was not a hole burnt through his throat the doctor felt a little better. He said that kids often die from those little batteries. He had Chris eat some toast and peanut butter and while it was a little painful for Chris, he ate it all. We were then free to go.

Today Chris's throat is very sore but I don't know if that's from some burning or from just having a big thing stuck in his throat for a few hours.

I'm very thankful that the battery came out safely but please pray that his throat heals quickly and feels better soon.