First Patch

Levi earned his very first patch at his Pack meeting last night and me and the girls tagged along to see.  

They started the evening with carving a pumpkin...bless this Scout Leader.  There were 10ish 1st grade excited boys and that guy kept his cool.  Controlled chaos for sure.

After the pumpkin carving, it was time for the ceremony.  I love that Levi and Shawn have their own "thing" now.

First patch complete!

They celebrated afterward by roasting marshmallows....all those 6 and 7 year olds with burning marshmallows on the end of long wooden sticks....it was a little nerve racking, but somehow not one person was burned!

Back to Tennessee

My sweet friend Lauren, who I've been friends with since we were working with the youth group she was in back in Tennessee, had her second baby just about 1 1/2 months ago so I went to see her and help out for almost a week!  I got to hold, rock, feed, change and cuddle a sweet baby and it was wonderful...though I will say, it was nice to go back home to people that can do all those things (except cuddle!) all on their own.  Lauren is a friend that truly makes me laugh HARD and I don't do that very often!  Here are a few pictures I managed to take while there...my hands were too full to take many!

Here's the view from her front porch.  This whole area of TN is gorgeous...so many trees!

Sweet Darcy, such a sweet easy baby!

It's tobacco drying season in TN and this was a barn that was air drying them. It smelled exactly like tea smells. They also have barns that dry the leaves by smoking them at night and it's really cool to see....maybe just don't inhale.

And I headed home by way of Washington D.C. and this was all of saw of it.  Sigh.  

I will say that I had an AMAZING view of the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capital building, possibly the White House (I'm not sure because we were taking off and going QUICKLY past all of this which is in one area) and the Potomac River....all from my airplane seat!  So I guess that's better than nothing.

Builder

My husband can now add "Builder" to his resume.  At this point in our relationship (almost 20 years!)  there isn't much that surprises me anymore...we just really know each other...until he decides to build a playhouse from scratch for our kids and FREAKIN ROCKS IT!  Months ago we saw a business in town that built wonky wooden playhouses.  All of our kids loved them and begged for one!  We asked the price and gulp they were SO expensive...like thousands of dollars.  I wrote that moment off as just another extremely expensive thing we'd never be able to have. (the list is long.) Fast forward a bit and we happened to have some old fence panels that we'd gotten for free from a neighbor.  After Shawn made me a gorgeous plant stand out of a small fraction of the wood, the rest just sat around.  I finally told him it had to be used or gotten rid of by the end of September.  He decided to build one of those wonky playhouses for our kids!  I had no faith, I'm sorry to say.  I had no idea that he had any ability to build stuff.  Not only did he build an AMAZING playhouse, but the ONLY thing he bought were screws and braces for the roof..altogether about $50!!! FIFTY.DOLLARS.PEOPLE!  This is one time that being near new house development works in our favor.  They throw away wood like crazy!  So here's the progression of pictures.  The kids love it and I do too!

And it begins:

One of the inside views

This is on the inside right next to the door.

Raingutter Regatta

Maybe the Raingutter Regatta should be renamed, "Make Cub Scouts Almost Pass Out From Lack of Oxygen." MCSAPOFLoO for short.

Either way, Shawn and Levi made a boat from a kit and then met with the rest of his Den for a competition to see who's boat could win a race.  The boys were the wind power.  They had to compete over and over and whittle it down until there was only one winner.  Levi came in second!!!  I think he was very much about to pass out and the winner used a straw which probably gave him an advantage, but either way, we were super proud of him and it was fun to watch except when I thought he was going to faint.

Cherokee Football

We finally got to have a family slumber party with the Valdezs and it was wonderful!  We headed to Cherokee on Friday night to watch a 6 man football game.  I liked it way better than the other because it went way faster!  Unfortunately for Cherokee, it went a little too fast....they forfeited when the score was a 45 point difference!  But none of that really mattered because we were just enjoying spending time with our friends!  Afterwards we stayed up till about midnight watching Willie Wonka.  (well some of us watched and some of us snored and some of us asked to be put to bed early.)

Found this leftover from Homecoming under the bleachers...they didn't kick booty this time.

Pheebs...such a big girl now!!!

These two stinkers (sometimes literally)

Lots of friendships going on here :)

Besties for the Resties

Shawn and me under the Friday night lights :)

Two biggies, friends since they were about 14 months old!

The five of us headed home from our first family road trip to Cherokee.  Can't wait for the next one!

New Sister

I have three events to post about, but let's start with the most exciting one by far!  Last night, Elle decided to be baptized and become a Christian!  It's a bit of a surreal moment in a parents' life to watch your child became a sister in Christ!  We are very happy that she made this decision.  It was too late to celebrate last night so tonight, as is the tradition of our family when anything needs to be celebrated, we shall indulge in icecream!  

Thank you so much to our church family who came out on short notice late in the evening to surround her with love!