Fish On!

Looking through my notes of "missed blogging opportunities" I saw that I had wanted to blog about the first day of fishing season here but never did.  This past Saturday the base held a fishing derby for the kids (families) on base. Now that I'm about 90% over the awful cold I was seriously suffering from last week, I decided to sit down and blog about both!

First things first, the beginning of fishing season was back in April.  Josh was SO excited for it that he got up and went fishing at, like, 6:00am or something ridiculous like that.  By the time the rest of us woke up and started moving around, he returned triumphant.

That's right, he caught TWO decent sized trouts(?). Clearly he was very pleased with himself. As well he should be.

Later that day we took all the boys, and Tante, fishing. I don't know that anything was caught that day except for the one Finn got. Sweet Boy managed to catch a fish with the net we have. The fist was already dead, but he was still pretty excited about getting it himself.

Doesn't he looked thrilled? He actually was excited but when he went to pose for the picture he fell backwards into some sticker bushes (which is why Josh is directly behind him here - to stop him from falling again and to keep him somewhat still so I could snap a picture right quick).

After this Finn got bored and so I took him to play in the sand box (the volley ball court by our house) while everyone else stayed and fished on.

All in all, a pretty good day!

Now, we come to this past Saturday. As I said in my intro, the base held a fishing derby thing for kids and their families. There was also food, and archery and rifles set up for the kids to try out. (Everything was supervised by experienced and qualified adults.) This time my mom and stepdad came up. Josh and Pappy took Zeke and Deacon fishing while my mom and I stayed home with Finn.

After a nice day visiting with my mom and dad, Josh took Pappy back out for some "grown men fishing time." (No one called it that, but that's essentially what it was.)  None of them caught anything that morning, but Pappy sure was the big winner that night!

As you can clearly see by the picture that fish was at least eleventy feet long! And, I heard it took both of them to pull it in, plus three other guys who were out fishing as well.  In fact, the fish was SO big, and it pulled SO hard, the line snapped in the process, and Pappy had to dive in and wrestle the thing ashore! Well done, sir. Fish on!

We All Got Older

Since it's been awhile that I've been diligently blogging here, we have all had a birthday come and go. I'm almost embarrassed by that. Looking back, the last birthday I posted about was Deacon's 6th birthday. I never posted how big he weighed in at his physical that year, and now I can't find my numbers anywhere. I think he was 47" tall because that put him at 1 inch too short to ride the big slides at Frog Falls last summer. As for his weight, I don't know. Moving on.

After Deacon comes Josh in the birthday order of things.  Josh shares a birthday with his mom, so the weekend before we went down to visit his parents, making a short visit to the beach.

On his actual birthday, I had PWOC. Before I left for the evening though we had a nice dinner and some cupcakes (Katherine joined us for those), a little celebration for the birthday boy.

Following Josh is Zeke, with Me being right behind. I actually did post about our birthdays here. See? I'm such a mess. What I didn't post then was Ezekiel's height/weight numbers. Those I do actually have and will post here for any future time when I may need them - assuming I can remember where I posted them, that is. So, at 8 years old, Zeke came in at 52 1/2" (85ish%) and 56lbs (50%). This means, once again, Zeke is tall and skinny just like his dad.

This brings us now to Finn, who turned FOUR in May of this year. Finn's birthday was celebrated in the usual style - family over for dinner, cake and presents (not necessarily in that order).

Finn weighed in at a lot of pounds for who still insists on being carried around almost everywhere (42lbs [90%]) and measured 42" (90%). He's a big kid. When we pick up the boys from school, most days I just look at how Finn is either as tall as or taller than quite a few of the kids in kindergarten and first grade. I get that he's trying to keep up with his brothers, but this is a bit ridiculous.

Now we come full circle back to Deacon who turned SEVEN (what?!) this summer. Another birthday, another family party (this time some friends came too - hello Davis and Aguerra families!).

This birthday was a little extra special because a new member was added to our family. I wrote a post about The Turtle Stark (what I've been referring to him as recently), but here's a pic from the day he arrived.

On Deacon's actual birthday we had cinnamon rolls in lieu of cake. Yum!

Deacon, at his most recent physical, weighed in at 56 1/2lbs (about 80%) - he now weighs more than Zeke does, and measured 49" tall (about 70%) - which means he grew 2 full inches in the past year. Sheesh.

Well, now that this is finished, I feel better. I also managed to get this done before Josh's birthday came around again. Of course, this year he'll be in Florida on his birthday, so there probably won't be a post about the amazing party we had for him. Yes, that is why there won't be a post - he will be out of town...

First Day of School

Thursday (the 4th) was the first day of school for Zeke and Deacon. Boy, were we ready for it. My boys do get along with each other pretty well, but we needed a change of pace, and school provided just the thing.

Zeke is in 3rd grade now, and his teacher is a new teacher. She's been in the school the past few years as a classroom aide, but this is her first foray into soloing it. Deacon is in 2nd grade and he has the same teacher Zeke had for 2nd grade. We are all (teacher included) pretty excited about that. The boys seem to be making the transition from summer vacation to school year pretty seamlessly. Finn and I on the other hand...well, Friday, when we had no plans for the morning sort of sat around wondering what to do with ourselves for the day. (Answer: iPads whoo! I'm only partially kidding about that.)

This is the first full week of school. I also registered all 3 boys for soccer on base which will start in 2 weeks. Next week is the kickoff for both the evening and morning PWOC studies here. All of this means I'm about to become a very busy girl again, and I'm looking forward to it. I know it's going to be a really good year all around, and I'm excited.

And that's all the news for now!

Photo Dump - May 2013

Taking It WAY Back

After blogging the other day I put all of my pictures into folders by month, then went through each folder writing down possible blog posts based on the pictures I have. I then went through the blog (starting with May of 2013 since that's when the pictures I have left to figure out begin on my computer) and crossed off all of the posts that I've already written. Looking again now, at both the list and the blog, I feel like I've written about some of these things, but don't have any posts for them. Could things be missing? I really, seriously feel like they are. For example, I'm fairly certain I wrote a post about pumpkin picking/carving, and taking extra hay rides just for the fun of it, but there's no post on the blog about it. It could very well be that I just thought about it and planned it in my head, but never actually got around to writing and posting it. That does happen. I guess all of this is to say that when I write posts from back in the day, and it's one that you've already read, I apologize. I guess this is why I need to keep up with it a bit better. Also, I think I might do a photo dump post for each month, as I catch up on things, just because some pictures are worth sharing but not necessarily worth blogging about.

That being said, on to today's post, which is about things that happened in both May and December of 2013. Up until May 11th-ish, all 3 boys had their own bedrooms. For whatever reason Josh got it into his head that the older two needed to start sharing a room, and for whatever reason I agreed. We moved Zeke and Deacon into...um...into...into Deacon's (maybe?) bedroom.

We then moved Finn into what was Zeke's room.

After that, we turned Finn's room into the Lego room (okay, Lego/music room since Josh put his keyboard in there to play on while the boys build). Josh designed that table which his dad then built and painted. We also have a bin set up for storing the Legos now. Pretty sweet, eh?

All of this happened in May. Fast forward now to December, when the older boys got this for Christmas:

(SIGH. Apparently I don't have a picture of this so I have to upstairs and take one right now. I'm glad I made the boys make their beds today. Geez.)

One more time, fast forward now to December, when the older boys got this for Christmas:

Bunk beds!

This brings us up the current status of all sleeping arrangements within the house. We have been toying with the idea of switching some things around again (switching Zeke and Finn; putting Finn in with the other two; on days I'm super stressed out putting all of them back into their own rooms and getting rid of the Lego room) but I'm sure this is how it'll stay for our last year here.

Let's DO This Thing!

It's time for school to start again! Tomorrow, September 4th, is the first day of school for the older boys and I think it's safe to say we are all ready for it. Not that it hasn't been a great summer, because it truly has been, and I'm hoping to blog about some/most/all of it in the coming weeks. 

Actually,I'm planning on getting back into the swing of blogging things as the boys get back into the swing of school things. We shall see how it goes. Today I'm doing my best to get all of my pictures from the past year(!!!) in some sort of order to make it a bit easier for me. However, looking at the myriad of pictures I have to sort through and label and what's it, it might be a 2 or 3 day job. In other words, don't be surprised if you don't hear from me again until Monday.

Until then, here's a side-by-side from last school year. The first day of school is on the left, and the last day of school is on the right. 

It never ceases to amaze me how much they quickly they grow.