Just....

..some cute pics of the fam....

First Fire

Yep. We had our first fire in our house last night during Life Group. I am standing in the kitchen serving everyone pumpkin and apple pie when I hear Rachel yell "We need a Fire Extinguisher!!" and then someone else was like, "Glass of water, we need water in the bathroom, FIRE!". I am so slow that I just stand there while everyone jumps up and I slowly get a cup....by then 10 other people had already gotten the cup and water and had it all taken care of.....Fire out. Everyones fine. My bathroom is up in smoke. No, it really wasn' that bad.....I am just an idiot. Back up to 1 hour before Life Group. I am going around decorating fall around the house. Ya know, pumpkins and fall leaves and candles and cute scarecrows, and yes, cinnamon pinecones. Not thinking, I put a bunch of leaves in a glass bowl/candle holder and put the candle in on top of it. It looked really pretty. SO fast forward 1/2 an hour and I am lighting all the candles I just placed around the house.....while talking on the phone. Light the candle in with all the leaves. Fast forward another 2 hours and there is a huge shattering noise. I didn't hear it though. Rachel and Dan go looking in on all the kids wondering where the noise came from and then last place, they look in the bathroom and huge flames.........Yes yes yes, the stinkin candle caught the leaves on fire which made the glass explode.....my freshly painted bathroom is now black....and my toilet is now black and there are little burn spots all over the floor. Ay yi yi. I take it in stride. Ya gotta. What is getting all upset going to do about it? It doesn't change anything....there will still be black on my wall, and toilet and burn spots on the floor.....All I can do is re-paint, cover up the floor and somehow work on the toilet......oh yah, and never put a candle in with a bunch of pretty leaves.........

Pinecones

I bought some Cinnamon Pinecones today. You know the ones they sell every fall. I've ALWAYS wanted to buy them. Never have....until now. I've always told myself "I'll just get those next year" and every year passes. Until now. I'm so excited. My house is going to smell of those pinecones. And Pumpkin Candles. And fresh baked (from scratch--and when I say scratch i mean from the actual pumpkin) pupkin pie. I freakin love fall. I am wearing a scarf....i think i'm pushing it too much cause i'm burning up.....

9 kids + 6 parents = being outnumbered

Edwardsons, Lances, Gafners......absloute craziness. We threw around the idea of either locking the kids in the house and us having a quite ralaxful dinner on the patio, locking the kids outside and us having a nice quite dinner in the house, but there was the whole Pool issue, Seans idea was my favorite, padding the whole toy room, throwing the kids in there and locking the door.....you may be thinking "Really, Rebecca? thats a little cruel".......in which case I would say, come on over and experience if for yourself....we'd have no argument.

No really, fun night. Here's some pics I snagged. Once again, you may be thinking "Oh how cute the kids are standing there with a cute little stuffed snake". Not standing. Running around the house pulling each other along. And running. And running. It took me like 15 tries to get a picture that wasn't all blurry...I should have turned it to action on my camera....anyway, after Caleb taking an insane header (note the second head protruding from his forehead), Sophia getting stampeded about 10 times (poor thing, had a rough night), Caleb taking another header, Adia taking a face plant, Caleb, again with the header (he's hard core), we decided to call it a night. Fun times. Thanks guys. Until next time.....(hopefully by then we'll have a fence around the pool, however I still got my bets on Zeke).....

Renovation

The Fun begins....(If I only knew what we were getting ourselves into!)






Sean spraying the accoustic and Dan scraping














Me and my dad taped down the entire house














Primer....everything!!!














My brother Scott and Sean ripping out the bathroom





This picture explains the 20 hour days.....













So its now a liveable home, and we LOVE it!! The crazy sleep deprived days are now behind us, we are unpacked and settling in. I think we made some kind of world record.....

A HUGE thanks to Dan, who was our HGTV man....seriously wouldn't know where our house would be without him :) thanks Dan, and Alyssa for loaning him out. Thanks Mom and Dad, Aaron Hayes. my brother Scott, TJ, Jamie Hartley, who by the way, is amazing. She ended up organizing her whole Life Group to meet at our Apt. Tuesday night and completely move us!! I was totally blown away! But seriously, thats what our Life Group and Church SHOULD look like....I am so stinkin blessed by our family!! Anyway, Brams, Hayes, Hartleys, Pericia and Eric, Amy, Julie Reed, Erica.....shoot, I hope I'm not missing anyone....

Stay tuned for a huge Appreciation dinner for ALL of you that helped :0) We'll party it up....can't wait.

Boys will be boys

I took Skylar to school this morning and come home to this in my driveway.....

I was gonna use these boxes to finish packing today......

It was pretty cute though....Sean and Caleb were totally into building their "Castle". I came home and was doing just random stuff around the house and Sean comes in and is like "Well? are you going to come see THE Castle?" and I'm like, "Uhhh, yah, I'll be right out"....I come out to Sean and Caleb crawling through the tunels killing dragons......Sean is such a good dad.

Now I have to go find some more boxes......

Thermos love

As most of you know, I have a 4 mo. old....but what you may not know is that I am no longer breastfeeding....I stopped about 2 mo. ago due to chronic Mastitis. So now my days and nights are filled with bottles, and formula (which secretely I like SO much better...but don't tell my mom).....so I have this routine every night before I go to bed....I get a bottle, fill it with the right amount of formula, get our thermos, fill it with warm water, get the whole can of formula (in case he wakes up more than once). I put all these things within arms reach of my pillow.

So last night I am mid bedtime routine, I get the thermos from its usual spot by my bed, and go to the bathroom to dump out the old remaining water and refill it with new warm water.....THE WATER IN IT IS STILL WARM!!!!! 24 hours!!! I was amazed. I have so much love for this thermos now.