Part of the Christmas Pictures

While the older kids were away at school we had a little fun with the little ones! Fun for me anyway.
They were actually quite willing, Elliot was especially willing once I promised him he could put on basketball pants after we were done! Whatever works!
I was quite happy with the results, now I have to get the older ones seperately and then all four of them together (they are SOOO looking forward to that)!

Wow...

(This first paragraph is completely copy and pasted from my photography blog)
Do you ever have one of those "Oh my goodness, I..." moments. Relatively ordinary moments that make you go "WOW!". I just had one, your going to laugh too... "Oh my goodness, I have a baby". Yup, she's 7 months old. No, this isn't the first time I've had this moment with her, in fact I have these quite often. "Holy cow, I have 4 kids". Or, even stranger is this one, "Oh my, I'm a grown up". Does anyone else have a hard time wrapping thier brain around that one? I know my age, but I don't feel it (although I don't know how I'm supposed to feel). Anyway, just had to share that random thought for the day!

Have a super Thanksgiving!

Be Thankful (Author Unknown)
Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire.
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?
Be thankful when you don't know something,
for it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.
Be thankful for your limitations,
because they give you opportunities for improvement.
Be thankful for each new challenge,
because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes.
They will teach you valuable lessons.
Be thankful when you're tired and weary,
because it means you've made a difference.



Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. Psalm 107:1


Thankful for Each Other
Dear Lord,
As we gather together around this table
laden with your plentiful gifts to us,
we thank You for always providing
what we really need
and for sometimes granting wishes
for things we don’t really need.
Today, let us be especially thankful
for each other--for family and friends
who enrich our lives in wonderful ways,
even when they present us with challenges.
Let us join together now
in peaceful, loving fellowship
to celebrate Your love for us
and our love for each other. Amen.
By Joanna Fuchs


For All that You Give Us Dear Lord,
On this Thanksgiving Day,
we are thankful
for all that You give us,
for all that You do for us,
for all that You teach us.
Thank You for guiding us
to live our lives
in Your will,
in Your purpose,
in Your plan for us.
Thank You for Your protection
from worldly influence and danger.
Thank You for bringing us gently
to a deeper knowledge of You
and what You want from us,
with Your love, mercy,
compassion and grace.
And thank you, Lord,
for the blessings
we are experiencing right now
at this very moment--
the food,
and the precious people
who are with us
to enjoy this meal
and this day.
Thank You, Lord. Amen.
By Joanna Fuchs

The Answer

Well, BOTH blog readers have guessed, Tonya you were the closest (b/c Sarah, that's just rediculous, he DOES NOT need a haircut... ever again... ok, maybe, someday, but not now) ;). He was sucking on a "Shockers" candy, which happened to be quite sour. I have a whole series of this face, quite funny! Sorry, no prizes this time though, not in the blog budget!

Any guesses?

Can you guess why E is making this face or what it could possibly mean?

Sale Alert

Are you a fan of Peek-A-Boutiqe on facebook? If not you should be... SALE tomorow if you are! Go check it out!
http://www.facebook.com/lynette.bell?v=feed&story_fbid=210619969055#/pages/Holland-MI/Peek-a-Boutique/242340520111?ref=nf

More Pictures

Our life in pictures from the last week:

She loves her basketball, but would never admit it!You can't really see it, but they wrote BELL and each sat on thier respective letters!

We did "Lila" too...
Deep in thought, must be a smart group of kids.
A good looking group of kids, I'm not biased at all!
Me and my baby (yup, the mirror needs to be cleaned)
Bath times just got a bit more fun with two!
Nap time on a beautiful sunny day!

Need/Want/Wear/Read

Just read this post here from this blog and I think we will try it this year for the kids, I too am overwhelmed by CLUTTER. There are SO many toys around my house that need to be either pitched or donated, either b/c they are no longer played with or they are broken or missing pieces that make them unusable. I'm SICK of it! This is another post on the same blog that I found very useful. I've always felt this way. If I'm only going to have 3 shirts that I can wear, I want them to be good quality shirts. Better to have stuff that is going to last through lots and lots of wears than an abundance of stuff that is going to fall apart in a month.

Check out Remodeling This Life for more interesting reads!

It could have been worse...

It's been a bad week. If you follow me on facebook you already know that my purse was stolen out of my Jeep (which was in the garage) on Monday night/Tuesday morning. That was just wonderful, but I'll admit it could have been MUCH worse. I NEVER carry cash. Really. Except of course for the time my purse is stolen. There was almost $50 in there. Gone. But, I still have all my credit/debit cards (still cancelled, just to be safe, but one was immediately replaced), I have my gift cards, I had a receipt for a jacket that i just purchased that went on sale after I bought it so I was able to get a price adjustment, the thief didn't get into the house... really we were lucky. God was definately looking out for us.

Today was another one. Another bad day. Got up this morning got ready for work, gave the kids baths, laid Lila down for her nap, life was good. Babysitter comes at 9, but shortly after realizes that she doesn't feel good (totally not her fault, I fully understand), but that meant I had to figure something out for the kids. Thankfully Mary was able to take them. But that also meant that I had to HURRY! Get the kids loaded in the car, packed a diaper bag and I was off with not one minute to spare. Ha! Joke was on me as I was speeding down the road. Sure enough, I got pulled over. I was technically going 16 over, which could have been a very hefty fine and I think 3 or 4 points on my license. But being the "nice guy" that he was he only gave me 5 over. ("only" $90 and 2 points) he claims that's the LEAST he could do, but I know full well that with my clean license and a little sympathy he COULD have let me go with a warning. Good grief. But again, it could have been much much worse.

So, that's $140 gone in 2 days with NOTHING to show for it, plus I'm sure my insurance will go up now. Wonder what tomorow will bring? Maybe I should just stay in bed!

Picture heavy

I still need to upload the halloween pictures, but you get these in the meantime!

My 6 month old beauty!

My chunky beauty!



Raking leaves!
Taking big baths now, w/o the baby tub! What a big girl she is getting to be!
Playing outside Saturday! She loved it (despite her look here)
Starting the tradition of sitting on daddy's lap and eating toast. You should see her when it's gone... she get's MAD!!!
SUP-er MAN!!!

A few of my favorite things...

In no particular order...

1. The weather today! My house smells like spring! I love the smell of spring and am choosing to ignore the fact that it's not spring.

2. Tassimo... it's get's me through the morning. And the afternoon if I make it again. Otherwise I can't make it through the afternoon with my eyes open.

3. This makes #2 taste so much better. I'll admit, I'm a little addicted to trying all the different flavors. Unfortunately I've found a few that I find to be gross.

4. BSF, so good for me and necessary for me.

5. My camera. I would really love this one insead, but can hardly justify a new camera already! There are some new lenses that I would LOVE too, in time!

6. Here and here. Did I mention I got a part time job, working just one to two nights per week. I like it!

H1N1

I'll admit, I let all the hype scare me. Petrify me actually. But now that it's here I'm not as scared anymore. I don't know if it's because I'm trusting God to contain it and care for her or if it's because it really just doesn't seem to be that bad. Sure, she's miserable, and hot, and crabby, and tired, and doesn't like to eat, but it doesn't seem any worse than any typical illness.

On top of this, she also seems to have an eye infection, which seems to be related to her tear duct being clogged still (since birth). We've started her on an eye drop 4 times per day and Tamiflu 2 times per day. Heres to praying that it ends quickly and we can all stay healthy...

She was able to get her H1N1 vaccine today and her seasonal flu shot today also, they wouldn't/couldn't give it to Elliot, which I was torn on, I almost wish he could have had the H1N1 instead of Lila, she already has it, doesn't that make her immune now?

What we've been up to...

Yesterday a few of us were under the weather a bit, so unfortunately our pumpkin carving plans had to be changed, normally our friend Kate would come help us carve pumpkins and eat dinner with us, but in the interest of not getting anyone else sick we carved by ourselves. We missed you Kate. The pumpkins weren't nearly as good without you.
Miss Lila got her own pumpkin... (Seriously, look at those eyes. I sometimes question whether they are turning darker/brown, but then I see something like this and I'm reassured that I just may have a blue eyed baby)


Elliot chose Donald Duck for his pumpkin, Landon & Bailey drew thier own faces and Miss Lila, well she wnated it to be all about her as usual!

Today was a beautiful fall day. I went out to rake some leaves with the help of the kids and neighbor (and his lawnmower). My hands are still hurting! Elliot found some worms that he was excited about showing off, unfortunately you can't see the worms in this picture, but look at those eyes!


Tomorow is supposed to be just as gorgeous, if not more so, than today, can't wait to get out and enjoy the beautiful colors!

Cranes

We made one last trip to Cranes for the season yesterday. We didn't get there until about 5:00 (they close at 6:00) so we didn't have a ton of time, but the good news was that it was not busy (probably b/c it was so darn cold).

We went with the intention of picking some mustu apples, a favorite of our, but one we seem to miss almost every year. They told us where the trees were and we headed out to the far parts of the orchard, down a very big hill... we walked through the whole section and found 3 apples. 3. So back up the hill we went to find something else to pick. We ended up picking some Jonnagolds which were plentiful on the trees!


Lila LOVES her apples! LOVES to suck the juice out of them. Matt made the mistake of letting her lick one once adn she got ANGRY when he tried to take it to take another bite. She also had a very dirty diaper after that. She is just getting so very very big!

Pictures & Upadates

I just shared them on facebook too, so not sure how interesting this will be...

Landon has been doing great in school, in fact I just checked the portion of his report card that is complete and he has all A's and A-'s so far (just waiting for social studies), not bad at all! (I was expecting much worse to be quite honest). He has had a lot of homework though, and between that and football we had to put an end to him going to the bridge after school, just til football is done, it was just to much for him, I don't think he knows what it means to be stressed out, but I think I could see that he was.


Lila has been doing great eating cereal and various baby foods, she loves it, athough it is causing her some problems with going to the bathroom, were working on that. She is eating twice a day typically, although some days we just skip it. We also recently started to give her the puffs, but she isn't quite thinking she's ready to pick those up by herself yet, so I have to put them in her mouth. She does like them though!
Lila had a fever yesterday and didn't sleep well the night before so I took her into the doctor, anticipating (hoping for) an ear infection. If it had been an ear infection we could have done antibiotics and been good, but nope, nothing seemed to be wrong except for the fever (and her not wanting to be put down, and the random bursts of screaming). She slept in bed with me last night while Matt slept on the couch, it was so nice to sleep with her again. I wouldn't want to do it every night, but it was sweet! She's sweet! At her doctor appt she was 21 pounds 12 ounces... 4 more ounces until new carseat, not quite ready for that yet.

It's been so long.

I don't think I've ever gone this long without posting. but there just isn't much to post about. Each day and week seems to be exactly the same. Monday - BSF and Football practice, Tuesday - Football, Wednesday - Church, Thursday - Football, Friday - WEEKEND, Saturday - Football, Sundah - Church. Notice a trend? Only two more weeks of football practice though, adn then life just might slow down! The kids and I have been finding ways to pass time though, otherwise those nights seem to get awfully long when Matt and Landon are gone.

We are on the hunt for a new vehicle. I didn't realize it would be so much work. I thought we would turn in our Jeep and lease a van and it would all be simple. Ha! Lease payment on a van are OUTRAGEOUS! So now we are on the lookout for a nice used vehicle. I say vehicle because we are still undecided on what. We need something reasonably priced (read: cheap), but reliable. Do those even go together? I would love to have an Oddysey or a Sienna, but they seem to be out of my price range. And I'm struggling to remind myself that the purpose of a vehicle is to get me and the kids from a to b, it doesn't have to be top of the line or extravagant, as long as it's safe and reliable. But I want something nice. But I shouldn't really care. The internal struggle within.

OK, I'm done blabbering, just wanted to check in. Lila is summoning me!