2013 Hills Alive

This year for Hill Alive we kind of did our own thing. It was so nice not to have to be stuck there all day. And the weather was (mostly) gorgeous. Usually Hills Alive is 100 degrees and terrible. This year was unseasonably cool with upper 70s and lower 80s. Beautiful. And that was fortunate since even baby 7 week old Ezra came along.

After we watched For King and Country (we really enjoyed them), we spent a couple hours at the bouncy castles for the kids. Then we went to get some balloon animals. The workers were talking about a big hail storm coming. Terry was not about to get out of line and listen to the kids whiny annoying complaints. So they got their balloon animals and we had just enough time to run for shelter under a big cottonwood tree. Thankfully, the people in the tent next to the tree pulled us under with them. Just in time too because Evie got smoked on the shoulder with a hail stone. She didn't even end up with a bruise, but she freaked out. The storm started out with just marble size hail but it grew in size...

Our view of the storm from under the tent.

When the storm was almost over, the clouds started dropping some wallops. I'd never seen golf ball size hail before. They looked like they'd been frozen twice. Scary stuff. We joked that someone on stage said something blasphemous so God sent the hail. 

In the parking lot, our van received very little damage. Just some dings to the roof that are kinda hard to see. When we got home a half hour after the storm passed, our lawn still had a ton of hail on it.

These were some of the larger hailstones we could find. And this was after they'd melted a while!

The big stones even left divots in the lawn. Most impressive.

2013 YG Waterslides

Halfway through July, Terry organized a fun day at the Waterslides in lieu of Wednesday night Youth Group. He even took Noah and Evie along to lessen my load for the day. Awe. Some.

When Daddy wasn't around to take her down slides, Evie hung out with her friend Mia. After Mia left  some youth group girls would hang out with her. She had a great time. And didn't drown. Mommy was happy about that.

Grown up girl. 

She can even plug her nose under water! Haha. All the kids were doing that and having Terry take their pictures with his new underwater camera.

Noah hung out with Lindsay. 

Shivering on the deck. 

Kiddie pool sliding. 

How much fun does he look like he's having? Really, Noah and Evie probably had a good day off from me. 

For some reason when I saw this photo, it really struck me how old Noah is. Wow. 

About to go down the river run with Daddy. 

Then he went down with Lindsay. He looks just a little happy. :P I'd say the day was a success.

ranch hay

I'm a city girl. But Terry grew up on a ranch just a half an hour from me where I grew up. I always think it's crazy how when I was little and dreamed of getting married, he was only like 20 miles north of where I lived! Anyway, this city girl is now able to appreciate what childhood was like for Terry. It's lovely out there.

On July 4th Terry went out and helped his dad rake hay. It's just so pretty.

Terry's view. Hopefully Noah can do this someday.

Terry's dad bailed behind him. 

2013 YG pool party

This was the second year that Terry had a youth group pool party. Somehow I missed last year's and didn't want to again. So we all went.

I was worried about Samuel for good reason but he did just fine. Terry gave a general announcement for everyone to keep an eye on him and there were no close calls.

Noah had a blast. He just floated around in that inner tube and tried to take part in some of the games. Or perhaps he tried to interfere... Either way, he was having fun. I'm thinking about trying to get him on the swim team in town...

Samuel stayed close to daddy the entire time except when he had to go in the pool to play some games...

...Like here!

airborne Terry

He's so cute!

They had such a fun time. I enjoyed being photographer while some mom's inside the pool house watched Ezra.

Daddy was nearby so this little punk didn't drown.

Evie makes friends pretty easily. 

I took a ton of photos of the leaders throwing kids in. What's not fun about that?!

I uploaded this picture to the Oreo website :)

Zach helps Steven and David squeeze into some inner tubes. Love those boys. They even got one more tube over their heads.  

JUMP! 

 How happy does Samuel look?

Total happiness.

Before long she'll be too big for this. 

little bros

Samuel wanted to hold Ezra the other day and he does pretty well at that. He seems to like his little brother. He wants to give him a kiss every time he has a nap, just like Noah and Evie do. I'm hoping that when Ezra is big enough to play, these two littlest brothers will get along well. After all, Noah and Evie are each other's playmates. It'd be good for Samuel and Ezra to have each other. 

swimming

It seems like ever since last summer ended, the kids have been asking to go to the pool. But I wasn't about to go by myself with a nursing five week old baby and a Destroyer Toddler who had come pretty close to drowning two days before. So in stepped Terry and saved the day. Two weeks ago he took a day off so we could all go to the pool together.

Me and Ezra just sat pool side under a big umbrella and chilled out. It was wonderful.

"Ah ah ah..."

"AH CHOO!"

"Oh that's much better."

We stayed for three hours and Terry kept the three older ones busy while I relaxed. It was just what I needed. Yeah, I could use a day like that everyday.

Playing catch with a water ball.

Destroyer Baby runs away

Nearly two weeks ago we went just down the road to Canyon Lake Park for a surprise birthday party for one of our friends and youth group leaders. The whole family went and waited for Meghan to arrive while it rained, poured and hailed on us. The kids were kept happy with juice.

Then Meghan arrived and they all attacked her with Redi-Whip cool whip stuff. Poor girl. Then they threw water balloons at each other. 

Even Noah and Evie helped.

Now, Canyon Lake Park is beautiful because of all the water. There are water channels and ponds running throughout the whole place. I loved playing in the water as a kid. But now I have this ongoing fear of my kids drowning, especially in a place like Canyon Lake Park where they could fall in and get sucked under ground and passed on to the next pond. But there were like 30 people at the party and we were in the middle of the park where water was at a minimum.  

After dinner together we all played volleyball. Terry and I were both playing while the kids hung out  right next to us. We were keeping a close eye on them.

Terry's pictured in the back in the navy blue of the opposite side.

However, all it takes for Samuel the Destroyer Baby to get into trouble is a few moments. Before one play of the game, Terry and I saw him nearby. After the play was over, we could not find him. 

Terry stopped playing and called out "Where's Samuel?" and started wandering around calling his name. Russ immediately ran over to the water channel, because that's where he'd play he said later. And then everyone fanned out calling for Samuel. I kept looking over by the food tables thinking he was just behind a tree or under a table. After a few moments when he didn't appear, I started to panic inside. 

Just then, someone on the path near the biggest and deepest pond called out, "Hey! Is someone looking for a kid?!" And there was Samuel. Meghan's mom was nearest and reached him first. He was just fine but he was all alone near the biggest and deepest pond in the place! If he had fallen in, the water was all murky... He could have been pulled along into the creek and found miles away. Or stuck in the bottom of the pond. Those are the thoughts that kept me awake that night. 

I never saw the man who shouted out to us. What I kind of really think is that he was an angel. 

squirt guns

Two weeks ago Terry brought home a "surprise" from Walmart. Much to Noah's disappointment who was hoping for Legos, they were squirt guns. But Evie jumped right in and tried to get daddy. Oops, she got the trampoline here...

Noah joined the fun after a bit though.

But Evie definitely had the most fun. Look at her hair swing. Makes me smile.

6 pack

A couple weeks ago when Ezra was five weeks old, we finally got around to taking a photo of all of us as a Six Pack of Biers. So, enjoy this post because it's the closest thing to a baby announcement that we are going to do. 

And seriously, when I look at this photo, it still blows my mind a little that we have four kids. We have FOUR kids. Crazy.

Destroyer Baby strikes again

We should really begin calling Destroyer Baby the Destroyer Toddler since we have a proper baby in the house again. Nonetheless, he has struck again. 

Can you see anything amiss in this photo of the new furnace venting? Samuel isn't even included, but his work is...

Earlier that day Samuel and Evie were playing in the dungeon with flashlights while Terry worked away at drywall. They went upstairs and outside and after a while, I heard a very distinct "clunk" sound which came from outside and registered in the corner of the dungeon. I told Terry he should check on Samuel because of the venting (I was nursing) and he misunderstood me about the venting but intercepted Samuel with a running hose outside nonetheless. Disaster was averted because we are fairly certain he was about to fill the furnace venting with hose water. Because, you see, it was a flashlight that he dropped in that furnace venting right before he grabbed the hose!

We discovered said flashlight in the new furnace venting when Terry turned off the sprinkler later that night. He asked me why the venting should be glowing and I just knew that it had been a flashlight which made that "clunk" sound and Samuel was the one who had thrown it down there. Evie verified this the next day.

So here's Terry getting ready to try to retrieve the flashlight with a clothes hanger.

He tried to grab it for like 20 minutes and was almost successful, but had to give up in the end. The following day he used our super powerful shop vac to try to suck it into the hose, but that didn't work either. He told the repair guy about it a couple days later when our brand new furnace was making terrible noises (grrrrrr! come on, it's brand spanking new!) and the guy just laughed and laughed and said they'd have to get the flashlight out before winter. So that's where we're at. 

After Terry tried the shop vac, he built a cage around the venting to keep Destroyer Baby out.