{haiti}

now that my husband is safely tucked here back at home, i can share about his trip to haiti this past week.  austin shares an office with a local pastor, william.  william has been to haiti on several different occasions and really has a heart for the people of that country.  he and three other men had plans to go on a mission trip to help build housing at the good shepherd "compound" for future missionaries to stay in.  at the last minute, one of the men had to drop out of the trip and austin felt lead to volunteer to take his place.  pretty much, the decision to go and them actually leaving all happened within about a week. 

now, he and i have been to guatemala on mission trips (austin has been twice) and we had seen some true poverty there.  but i don't think there was anything that was going to prepare austin for what he encountered in haiti.  and that wasn't the only way that this trip was vastly different from any guatemalan mission.  you see, when you are in Guatemala, there is ready access to internet and phones.  when we went together, we skyped each night with our kids  when austin went with some other men from our church, we called/skyped every night.  and we always felt safe.  and we flew out of an actual international airport. 

this time?  the guys drove 8 hours to fort pearce.  then they boarded a tiny little crop duster (not true.  but it may as well have been!) in a hangar.  it was the type of plane that austin was able to "co-pilot" in the cockpit.  try THAT on a boeing 747 ;)  their flight was 4 hours long....with a 15 minute stint in the bahamas. 

once they landed in cap Haitian, they had an hour long ride in the back of a flat bed truck to the village of milot.  he said that customs going into Haiti were like nothing he'd ever seen before.  basically, they had to buy their way in. 

and communication??  a little sketchy for the first few days. i found out through twitter that they had landed, and then didn't know if they had arrived at the "compound" until i spoke with william's wife later that night. 

 

austin was able to put in a 3 minute phone call on their second day there (which cost about $10!) and then they sent out texts from time to time to let us know they were okay.  after the 3rd or 4th day, they were able to use their host's internet phone to talk for about 15 minutes.  WAY different than skyping every night!!
 

once they made it home, austin was full of stories about the people they worked with, the culture that he had seen, the awesome Bible studies they participated in with local believers each morning, and a new appreciation for how truly blessed we are here in America.  although i love that he has a heart for going and serving, we are so glad to have him home!

 

 

a-pontooning we will {go}

every now and again my family loses their minds and says, "hey!  we should pack everyone onto a boat that we cannot escape from and have us a pontoon day!".  so we did.  my mom, step-dad, my uncle,  my brother, his wife and two children (ages 3 and 1), my sister and her son (age 3) and her boyfriend, me and my three kiddos (ages 3, 5, and 8) and a buddy of my brother's were all on one boat.  then you had my aunt, uncle, two cousins, and two of matthew's friends on another boat.  crazy?  yes.  insane?  most likely.  fun??  you betcha!

i'll explain austin's absence from ye olde boating excursion later.  ;) 

we boarded the vessel at 1:00ish (there's ALWAYS an "ish" when you're dealing with my family!) and puttered on over to crab island.  i probably haven't been to crab island since the last time my family lost their minds and put together a pontoon trip (which was about 2 years ago!). 

the kids LOVED it!  and due to my lesson learned during memorial day weekend when i managed to aide in ava's acquiring a nice case of sun poisoning (what can i say....hannah and chandler are like two little tan sun loving kids.  ava is my "scandinavian" baby.  white white white with pale blonde hair and blue eyes!) i made sure that we were ALL coated from head to toe in high SPF sunscreen.  you'd think after living in the SUNSHINE STATE for basically my entire life, sunscreen would be second nature.


anyhoodles, during our day out, ava managed to sneak in a nap: 

chandler learned to pilot a ship (or a pontoon boat.  what evs): 

and hannah befriended the local sea life: 

and ALL of the kiddos on the trip proved themselves to be rather seaworthy! 

although having my kids in a watery environment is never exactly relaxing for me (especially when i'm parenting solo during said excursion), it was still a pretty fun day!  we managed to wrangle all 6.5 kids (my brother and his wife just announced the other day that they are expecting.  that kiddo was the easiest one to keep up with!  lol), we didn't run out of food or water, and we managed to come back to shore with all the floaties, towels, and other items that we originally left with.  i'm still trying to locate the sunglasses that i was sporting that day....but that's a pretty regular occurence for me. 

overall, i'd say the trip was highly successful!  and MAN, did we sleep good that night :)

{VBS}

last week the kids had their annual VBS at church.  this was the first year that all three of them TRULY were able to participate!  ava and chandler were in the preschool class, so they didn't rotate quite like the older kids through the different stations....

 

 

but they still had a blast! 

 

 

 

they had story time: 

 

 

 

and outdoor playtime: 

 

 

and each night began with praise and worship.  it was so wonderful to see all of the children singing their little hearts out for Jesus! 

 

 

 

and MY favorite part?!?!  no cooking dinner all week ;)  hey, i'll catch a break any chance that i get on the food front! 

they absolutely loved their week at "kingdom rock" and they learned so many different things about God and His love for us.  they also learned how to work together with their friends as well as learning a ton of fun new praise songs!  and due to the weather, i didn't brave taking my camera out at the end-of-week water slide celebration.....but just rest assured that they had an awesome time!  a little rain never hurt a kiddo....but i wasn't risking my precious betsy louise (my camera) to the elements! 

{sun} catchers

last summer i hired a baby-sitter each friday for two of the kids and took the third kiddo out for a mommy-and-me day.  i LOVED getting some one on one time with my little minions and fully intended to do it again this year.  and i still want to do that....i'm thinking maybe just one "solo day" for each kid this summer.  i have decided that i want to focus more this summer on the kids doing things together.  so each week, we will have a day where we all create something together.  and you KNOW this means that i have been hitting up the pinterest something fierce! 

today, we had our first "creative" day and the kids made sun catchers for the playroom.  we had the saunders girls come over for a play date and they had a blast arranging the beads into the pans to make their own personal creations! 

as the beads melted and then cooled, the kids ran amok outside, enjoyed a picnic lunch, and then some DELICIOUS cookies that rhonda made (i both love and hate people who can bake!  love them when they share their delights with me and hate them because i SO cannot bake!). 

at the end of the playdate, we popped the sun catchers out of the pans and the kids were super excited with how pretty they turned out! 

according to the pinterest recipe, you just layer the beads into the pan (you'll want to get the ones that are see through and NOT the ones that are solid.  i know that's probably a "no duh" kind of thing, but i'm just putting it out there!) and then bake them at 400 degrees for about twenty minutes.  do not be alarmed at the smell of melting plastic or the smoke!  (we just opened all of the windows and then instead of relying on the timer to tell me when they were done, i just watched them closely).  when they cooled off, we just turned the pans over and they popped out :)  we even made some smaller ones in the muffin tin.....they didn't pop out as easily, but a good whack of the tin onto the counter and they came out just fine!

this is the pinterest picture.  i'd give you the link to the actual pin, but it only takes you to the picture and not to a website.  so , i have no idea where this picture originated! 



we can't wait to get them hung up in the playroom window!  not all pinterest ideas work out as planned, but this one was a keeper!  i think we'll try it again a little later on and do thicker layers of beads to see if that works.  we just did a single layer and it turned out fine!  just curious as to what else we can do since i still have a pound of beads left over!!

{eight}

i completely forgot about doing one of these for hannah this year until i was going through some old pictures and saw the ones from last year.  so without further ado....here are her eight year old faves!

learning to say {goodbye}

chandler and hannah both had to say goodbye to their very best friends this year.

chandler's buddy grayton moved away right at Christmas.  chan and grayton had been best buds since birth.

seriously.  they were born about 9 days apart and have always been together.

grayton's  dad and austin were best buds when they were younger too.

to say that it was hard on my boy is an understatement.  he prays for grayton all the time and asks constantly when he will get to see him again. both boys loved trucks, superheros, and transformers....it was always a topic of conversation for them!

 the good news is that grayton only moved about 4 hours away and alot of his family is still here in defuniak.

so, he will be making visits here fairly often and will hopefully get in some play dates with chan when he's here!

hannah also had to see her best friend move away.  she and taylor have been in the same class since k4 preschool.

they have always been such sweet friends to each other and have never wavered in their friendship.

 we found out a couple of months ago that taylor's family was moving back to illinois.  just like chandler, hannah has prayed for her sweet friend.

she's had a rough time with the idea of taylor leaving.

we were lucky that taylor wasn't leaving until after hannah's birthday, so we got to have one last hoorah slumber party with the three amigos, taylor, hannah, and emma.

hannah made a photo book for taylor to take with her, and we got all three girls best friends forever bracelets.

although taylor will be MUCH farther away, her family still plans on coming back down to vacation at the beach so she will get to see her some when they visit.

my children have been very blessed with such sweet friends and it has broken my heart to see them so sad over losing them.  but we will continue to pray for taylor and grayton as they meet new friends and go to new schools.  it's like the song says:

make new friends

but keep the old

one is silver

and the other gold.  

they'll always have the memories of their first best friends, even as they make new friends :)

{twinkle toes}

we ended our crazy end-of-the-school-year chaos week with hannah's ballet recital.  this is her third year dancing at the northwest florida ballet company and she is loving her classes!  her teacher, ms. jennifer, joined the military and left mid-year.  hannah was sad to see ms. jennifer leave since she'd been hannah's teacher for 2.5 years.  but hannah's been loving ms. kaori who stepped in and took over for ms. jennifer.  so all was well :)  

we arrived at the mattie kelly arts center and got miss priss all ready for her big performance:  

her class was the second group to perform this year and they did a beautiful job!  hannah had some struggles with her costume, but she still did great despite the distraction:

and as per custom, we presented her with flowers after the show (which i think is one of her favorite parts of performing!)

next year, hannah AND ava will be performing.  we were giggling at all of the littles who were performing for the first time...mainly because we were envisioning ava being up there next year.  i can't wait to see her on the stage dancing her little heart out!  she's so excited to be a "weel bawerina"  ;)

and our annual family photo at the recital (one of the few times we are all in the picture):

so, my little hannahlina ballerina, you did a beautiful job and we are so proud of the dancer you are becoming!  but this picture here is a testament to why you will not be allowed to wear makeup until you are 40 years old if i have anything to do with it.  my precious 8 year old looks FAR to grown up in lipstick and mascara!!!