Eli's 9th birthday!

Eli turned 9 on March 13th. He's getting so big. I still baby him a lot and try not to let him get the "middle child" syndrome but I can't help it. LOL He always wants his birthday party at Chuck E Cheese since he's so picky about his food. (Everyone else goes for either Olive Garden or Wasabi.) Eli's a quiet till you get to know him kind of kid. He's sneeky, very smart, forgetful, and loses things ALL THE TIME! But he's my E.I. :)
I made this! :) All by myself!!!

Eli's soccer game pics

I've not posted in a while so I've got several to catch up on. Here are some pictures from Eli's last soccer game. 75% of these games were played in the D1 indoor soccer arena but the last couple had to be outside due to scheduling conflicts (or something like that.)

Funny boys

I just had to post this because this made me laugh so hard. The other day when the boys got off the bus Jacob told me that he had "beat up" a kid at school. He was actually smiling about this like he thought he did something right. I told him that he wasn't supposed to do that and it wasn't nice. (Of course his idea of "beating someone up" involved pushing a kid. LOL) Anyways, here's how the conversation went.

Jacob: I beat a kid up at school today.
Me: Um that's not nice why did you do that?
Jacob: He pushed me and I pushed him back, then he pushed me again and so I pushed him in the back and he left me alone.
Me: You're not supposed to do that.
Jacob: Yes you are! They said so at church.
Me: What are you talking about?
Ryan: Matt (teacher at church) said it's ok.
Jacob: Yeah, Matt said that if someone punches you, you're supposed to punch them in the cheek.
Me: THAT'S TURN THE OTHER CHEEK! He didn't mean punch them in the cheek, he meant you're supposed to just walk away. (By now I'm trying my hardest not to laugh out loud literally.)
Eli: But Matt said that if someone hits you in the eye, you can hit them in the eye too.

By this time, I gave up. I wasn't even going to attempt to explain the "eye for an eye" to 8 and 11 year old who watching wrestling because that would never turn out good. I'm glad they listen in church but this was just so funny. :)

Extreme Home Makeover - Knoxville build

The Extreme Home Makeover: Home Edition was in Knoxville for over a week building a new house for a family. My friend David worked as one of the electricians on the house the entire week. I think he ended up pulling 70+ hours just from Thursday night til Tuesday morning. Me and Heather went down and put in 5 hours on Friday night delivery coffee, hot chocolate, food, and whatever else the workers needed. It was a great opportunity and we had so much fun. The people working on this house were all doing this based on volunteer work and they were smiling and laughing the whole time they were there. I never heard one person complain. People don't all kinds of food/drinks/supplies and there was a ridiculous amount of people there. Everyone was doing something to help out though. It was awesome to be apart of all of this.

West Virginia

Me and my dad made a trip to West Virginia with all the kids. Yeah, ALL 5 of them. We will never do this again by the way. The kids are (usually) ok when they're separated but when you stick all 5 of them in a car (and me) then that makes for one awful road trip. We left after everyone got off work on Wednesday night so it was a little later and everyone did semi-ok. But Thursday afternoon when we were on our way back was a totally different story. But we did get to see some family that we haven't seen in a couple years. Not glad that we had to have a funeral just to be able to take a road trip up there but this was kind of unexpected. I took some pictures of Addison and my dads cousin's grand-daughter and a couple of the pictures that they had set out of Mary Lou. She was cremated so they didn't have a viewing but there was a "burial" which I think is kinda weird (I thought the purpose of being cremated was to skip this part.) But I really did enjoy seeing family and learning some new stuff about my grandmother as well that I didn't know. Once I get all that together, I'll make a blog about that too.
This was at Wendy's on the way up there. Addison ditched her hamburger and took over my salad. :)

Yes, I know there's no pictures of the boys but they stayed away from all the comotion as much as possible because they were being threatened with their lives. LOL Nah they stayed out in the hall and played to keep from falling into boredom. :)