Is it possible???

Can it really be? Do I really have 2 posts in a single day? Well lest any of you think I have acquired new hours to my day I will just tell you that I am completely ignoring my children. We just got back from the gym, I smell like a locker room, I am eating a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch (I know, I know, I just went to the gym for an hour of gruelling aerobics so I could eat not one, but two bowls of sugary cereal that daddy bought knowing full well that we don't buy sugar cereal but he got it because it was less sugar that Raisin Bran and therefore was doing good by the kids).
The older boys are playing Legos in my closet, Titus is trying to get beyond the locked door that keeps him away from said boys and their Legos and the girls are upstairs probably playing the tons of Polly Pockets that we came home from Texas with. It's nice having young cousins who have way too many toys and grow out of them to consequently give them to my kids! We had so many Polly Pockets that we supplied our house, my mom's house and Eden's friend Abby, and they all still had more than any one girl needs.
While they are busy running rampant I will try and post another entry and eventually get through the month and a half that I am behind. Seriously you all, you must manage time better, think faster, clean sooner and visit with your hubbies earlier than me to have time to keep up with those blogs out there...either that or you never watch TV. That's the only thing I can think of. It's frustrating not keeping up but when..? I'm losing my mommy of the year status as I type. What? You didn't know that was my title?
Ok, so this next post is from July 4th weekend...forever ago, but important nonetheless.

Tim bought a bunch of fireworks and once we got the kids ready for bed, we went outside to light them up. They were so excited, as you can imagine!

I thought it was funny how Titus nearly jumped out of his skin here.Just before it started getting dark, I took a picture of the smoky haze across the front of the yard. It looked more like a morning fog or the opening scene for a Twilight Zone or something. Once it finally did get dark we got to really see some pretty colors, but the kids didn't care either way! They were thrilled to be lighting fires and not getting in trouble for it.
Lots and lots of smoke.
Makes for neat pictures, or at least I think so.

So the main reason for going to the farm so quickly after getting back from Texas was to go to Tim's grandparent's house to be at church on that Sunday to see his granddad become a member of their church. This was a weekend to remember as Tim's granddad had to become a christian before joining the church, something many of us have been praying about and talking to him about for years. All in God's timing, right!?!
Rarely do we catch good glimpses of granddad smiling and so I really like this picture. The pastor brought them in front of the church to pray with them and explain all that had happened in the weeks leading up to this day.

This was so cute. One of the deacons had just taken prayer requests or praises and then started to pray for them. If you can hear me, I am just trying to get her to close her eyes for prayer...the looks on her face are, to this proud mama, adorable and priceless as she tries to close her eyes.

If you look carefully you will see what finally dawned on me to be a funnel cloud. This is the first I have ever seen and it was taken on the way home from the farm. Way cool. Nothing like Dorothy's, but cool for us 'Bodas.

VACATION post...at last!!!

I have a girlfriend in southeast Texas that we were going to stay with and she only lives 15 minutes from my uncle John and his family. Then there is my mom's family who live in the north central part of Texas (I think) and that was 3 and 5 hours from my friend Sam, so we did a road trip tour of Texas. Ready or not, here we come.

Mom and Toby came on the trip with us and at the rest areas the kids took turns walking Toby. Micah was not going to be left out and let you know it loud and proud if she thought she was going to miss an opportunity to "hold it" (the leash).

I love how this rest area had a little park for the kids to burn some energy on. If it were up to me they'd all be this way!!! Unfortunately half of them barely had toilets. Well, as you can see it got crazy hot while we were there so we went off to a water park. With a total of 8 kids it could get expensive really quickly but Sam found some water park that cost $5 per person and it was great!!!

My cousin Laurel was able to come with us and what a help she was! Two extra eyes were priceless that day, let me tell you. The girls loved her and had a great time playing with her. I think perhaps she enjoyed herself too!

Now Micah surprised us. She may be the baby of the family but she still takes on so much. She wanted to go down the water slides and she did great. She went down, got up, walked around to the stairs by herself and went up the stairs to do it all again. She loved the slide and I loved that she could do it all by herself!

I certainly wish that the water park by our house was as cost effective as this one was. The kids loved the water (that did not exceed a foot in the kiddie area) and mostly loved the fact that they didn't have to wait on me or Tim to do their own thing.Elijah and Caleb, who I don't have a picture of for some reason...hmm...they got to walk the water park by themselves. I'm telling you, this park was awesome! If I had to, I could see Elijah no matter where he went and that allowed him to have some independence and it allowed Tim and me the comfort of knowing what he was doing all the time. It was the best of both worlds.

Levi wasn't given that same freedom, though he didn't seem to care. He was too wrapped up in his poor foot. He was such an active little fish jumping in and out of the water but he caught the bottom of the pool with his heel and it scraped him up pretty bad. I felt badly for him for a couple of seconds, but apparently he needed more. Thanks Sam! Then there was Titus...let's just say that Paul was taking care of things perfectly!

Thursday evening we went to my uncle John's house where he had rented this awesome bouncy slide. It was so hot that we burned our feet on the ladder going up so we decided to wet the whole thing down and that worked wonderfully. It really is true the saying "slippery when wet."

Besides the slide, uncle John and Amy had this pool blown up for the kids to cool off in. There was also this baby pool that Micah rather enjoyed with Aiden, uncle John and Amy's absolutely adorable grandson.

Thank you uncle John, Amy and Laurel (and Carrie) for a fun visit with you.

Later that night we were able to celebrate Eden's 5th birthday along with Keaton and Bailey who were born one week before Eden was. They each had their own "princess-like" cake and they loved them, bling and all!

I couldn't help but get all three girls a matching shirt for their birthday. Sam, how about triplets? Just a thought.

We got to do a good amount of swimming at Sam and Paul's house, one of the most anticipated events by the kids. Levi was thrilled that there was so much gear to put on. It just fed his imagination.

Even Titus began to enjoy himself. Now, he didn't let us throw him around, but he did eventually let go of us to "swim" by himself. Micah, on the other hand...well, remember how much of a independent she was at the water park? In the pool we were throwing her up pretty high and dropping her into the water and she loved it! She'd push away from us in order to try and kick her legs to swim by herself. It was so cool. I suppose she could learn how to swim if we had pool access here at home!

On a side note, one of the reasons this post took to bloomin' long to do was because all the videos that I wanted to add to this for some reason wouldn't load. Every time I got on to add to my post I'd get so frustrated with the dern thing and so I'd just save my work and exit only to pick it up again a week or so later to the same end. How frustrating is that??? There was some great video.

When we left Sam and Paul's house we drove north to Celeste to visit uncle Jeff and his family. They didn't have much for little kids to do but they did run through the sprinkler one day. That was the day we learned what fire ants were. Micah got around 20 bites all over her chubby little feet! If it wasn't so sad it would have been funny the way she started "dancing" to get them off of her. It was cute! Is that mean?

We had beautiful weather the whole week we were in Texas, but not even 20 minutes after we left we hit black and green skies and a whole bunch of crazy rain.
Fortunately the rain didn't keep the kids from sleeping or otherwise traveling nice and sound. Now, being that it is 2am and I was so bent on actually finishing this post, I am starting to fall asleep while typing and that makes for some interesting words...did you know I start typing what I'm dreaming that way? It's cool.

On that note, I have a month of stuff to post. Hopefully John Paul won't be celebrating any anniversaries before I get to his wedding!!!

Love notes from a lover boy

Levi is one of our kids that I would have said was higher maintenance, but that just means that he can portray such a wide array of emotions on any given day, and ever since he started learning how to read in k5 last year, he has been writing notes. He wrote love notes to Gracie and put them in her seat sack last year. He writes notes to Tim and me instead of asking us a question and he writes notes just to say "I love you."

One day we were at my friend Erin's house and Levi took some sidewalk chalk and scribed an ode to mommy on her driveway.



If you couldn't read his writing (he hasn't got the grasp of vowels just yet) this is what it said:
"I Love you mommy love Levi you ar the best mom in th hole wide wrold."

Some days I want to pulverize him for being so drastic in his emotions and other days I want to melt because he is a little love bug who shows his love to me by hugging me, sitting in my lap and best of all, writing me love notes. sigh.

The graduate

Levi graduated kindergarten (good grief, it's been a month ago now) and I am finally still enough to sit down to post about it. I'm on vacation in Texas and have nice pictures to post but have other things to do first, my being slightly compulsive about chronology and all. I'll try and get caught up soon, but you all know right well, it won't last long.

Levi got to do most of the speaking again, starting with the opening lines, and clearly they emphasized to him that he needed to SLOW DOWN and enunciate his words. He did that perfectly.

By the end of the program, they had all been on the stage way too long and boys being boys, they had to fight...who knew a scrolled diploma could be a light saber?

Afterwards we had to stop and take a whole lotta pictures and poor Levi was not game for too much of that. Well, until his friend passed by.

Romeo stopped to pose with one of the little girls (Kayla) that would always run up to him and hug him or lift him up and not let him go. It actually was a bit annoying. Well, to me anyways.

Grandpa G...

This is the best a photographer can do with this bunch. We were way too tired to stand anymore, so what do you do with a bunch of wound up kids itching to run around like lunatics???

You take them to Dairy Queen for ice cream, of course. We went to Steak and Shake for Elijah's graduation and this year, Levi chose DQ. I like that choice much better.

Leviboy we love you, we are proud of you and we are excited to watch you continue to grow up into the young man God will have you to be. Happy graduation!

Vacation for a day...with Daddy

Tim had to go to Michigan for a week for one of Moody's Share's (week long on-air fund raising that takes care of a year long budget) and his hotel was only a couple hours away, so mom and I drove up to see him one day after the boys got out of school just to go swimming. It was a great way to spend an evening.Eden was quite the little fish. Once she had on her floaties, she was in her own little world jumping in the pool and swimming from end to end. She loves the water!

Titus on the other hand needed a fairly long break-in period. He wasn't so sure he liked the water and wouldn't let go of me and Tim when we were holding him. Ever.

However, by the end of the night, he was a new little guy and I was so excited for him.

This little girl...I just want to eat her up, chubby thighs and all. She was so cute waddling along the side of the pool and the hot tub. She didn't mind going up and down the stairs of the pool but she was not at all fond of going out into the water. It wasn't until I blew up the floating thing she could sit in that she somewhat enjoyed herself.

This little guy started out the afternoon not too certain he even liked the idea that there was a deep end, but by the end of the night, he was having full faith in his floaties and even got the fabulous idea that he didn't need them anymore. Nice try!

Here is an example of Eden and her new found love for jumping.

Here is Titus. He is pouting, as you can see, and when Titus pouts, he completely drops his shoulders and his head and does the complete dramatic presentation of pout. If it didn't tick me off, I would think it was completely hysterical.

Watch at the beginning and you may catch the terribly ugly face he makes...he is a character indeed!

Mr funny guy here was just spending his time improving his ability to swim. He did wonderfully going back and forth the length of the pool. I was so proud of him but I still don't think he is ready to be on his own unattended just yet. He would disagree.

If I had one word to stick to this picture I would put IMP!!! Oh my word she was killing us with the arm crossing and goofy face. So darn cute. Is this how the youngest gets spoiled??? Doggone her! She's got some mad skills for sure! What she was doing here was basically dancing for her food...

The video quality is terrible, but I think you will still see the imp at work here!!!