This is what we woke up to this morning. The boys had a blast throwing snowballs at Joe!

We went to walmart and got krystals ears pierced, not one tear! her earrings are her birthstone. she stared at herself the whole way home. (look at me i'm pretty)

This is all the kids at the beach, (Casey, Tristan & Madison are Joe's sister's kids.) Madison (the youngest girl) introduces her cousins Joey & Nathan as "the good one & the bad one!" I'm sure you know which ones she's refering to. This is also the last time I will leave Joe alone with his father b/c he decided to trade our truck for a newer one while we were at the beach......no he didn't call me or anything.....he knew I would say no!

Kaelyn & Joe after riding a water ride. Poor Kaelyn had to ride a lot of kiddy rids!

Madison, Joey and Nathan after the day at Magic Kingdom.

So, it's almost a year later, but here we are at Disney World. This one is in front of Magic Kingdom. I believe this was the longest day of my life. They had record attendance that day and we were there from 9am to 10 or 11pm. I ended up having to take a muscle relaxer on the way home.

This past week I went to the Habitat ReStore to look for bedroom furniture. While I didn't find any, I did find a china cabinet for $50.00. It wasn't really fancy, and it needed some work, but it was big. We are trying to find a new apartment and wherever we move, we won't have as much cabinet space as we have now. So, I thought it would be great. Toufik came and looked at it, but we decided not to buy it that day because you have to pay extra for them to hold it more than two days. So, we decided he'd come back the next morning and buy it. Of course, someone else bought it. We were kind of sad because we were imaging how it would look after we fixed it up, but I am sure that's exactly what somebody else thought too when they saw it.

I had listened to this story on NPR about how this lady furnished an entire model home with thrift store buys in about 3 weeks. So, I decided the next day to go to Goodwill and then another local thrift store. The second one I went to had stuff scattered all over the huge store, and I was feeling dissappointed that I didn't find anything when I came across another section with furniture in it. I stopped suddenly and realized that right in front of me, and directly in front of the entrance (although I didn't see it when I walked in) was a beautiful china cabinet. Amazingly, they only wanted $149.99 for it. I tried calling Toufik, but for some reason, his phone had no signal. I bought it and drove home to tell him, so that he could arrange to go the next day to pick it up. All this was on my lunch hour! I put some pictures of it below. All it needs is a good cleaning and we need to get new shelves for the inside and touch up a couple of scratches.

This weeks pictures

Here are a few pictures from this last week. I was taking pictures of Simeon on his blessing day. (We give them a name and a blessing at church when they are born) The girls were loving it and decided to get in on the action. I'll have to put the ones of Simeon on another post later. Bekah loves to make silly faces for the camera.

Here's Rebekah in the uniform we bought for Joseph, but he literally won't touch the thing. It fits Bekah and Sariah great though. They have a lot of fun wearing it. Notice the color of the backyard? Yes, it's January and BEAUTIFUL here! Don't you all wish you could visit me? Personally, this is the only time of year that I think Southern California looks pretty. Once we get to June the rain has been gone for months and it's dry and brown again. It's only rained about four times this fall, and the summer too actually, and it get this green just from that.

Spaghetti face Joseph. Pasta is his favorite food.

And last but not least is Elizabeth. We started potty training with her today. We bought a training toilet for her. (All I can say is ewwww!) I have never used one for any of the other kids simply because I think they are disgusting. She is now terrified of the real toilet since she fell in all the way while Uncle Timmy was watching her. We now know that almost her entire body will fit in a large toilet bowl. Before that you couldn't keep her away from the toilet. So far she has peed on the floor four times today and pooped on it once, and the total for the potty chair is a big fat zero! Yes, I know, that's exactly the information that you were all looking forward to reading today. For some reason Joseph is convinced that the chair has to be outside and he keeps taking it out there for Lizzie. She is loving it. I found her out there like this this evening, and just had to take a picture. Some day she's going to be dating right? Gotta have those blackmail pictures!

Oh, and here is this one. It reminds me of a shirt I got for Joseph from Nancy's boys. It has a restroom style stick figure on the front that is falling down, and it says, "I do all my own stunts." The stick figure looks just like Joseph in this picture. He actually belly flopped off the wall this evening, picked himself up, dusted his shirt off and went at it again. It was seriously a belly flop. He landed flat on his tummy just like a pancake. Crazy kid. So far he is the only one to get a concussion out of all my kids. Twice actually. Funny thing though...he's to chicken to go down the slide at the park!

Christmas Sunday picture

Here is our family picture on Christmas Sunday, just a few days after Jacob came home. Now he is gone to Ft. Rucker Alabama. Hopefully we'll all be together again soon in Alabama.

I love how the more kids we have the harder it gets to have a "perfect" picture. I love how Lizzie is trying to comfort Simeon while he cries and Bekah has a weird look on her face while Sariah sucks on her fingers as usual. I think I actually like the pictures where the kids don't look picture perfect better than the good ones where they are all smiling and happy. I like looking at the kids and remembering how they were at that age. It's fun.