Panama City Beach 2018

Well, I realized that my last post was in January.

And a lot has happened since then.

We did spring co-op with our home school group.  Eleven weeks of meeting on Monday afternoons for three hours.  The kids get to take 3 classes each and I let them chose which ones they're interested in so they're not bored and dreading co-op.  The classes are different each semester based on what the parents have decided to teach.  Hannah leans more towards arts & crafts and history but branched out and tried P.E. this time around.  Sammy is more interested in P.E. and STEM classes.   Amos spends the first two hours in the K5 club where they do crafts, read books and have P.E. time.  Then he chose STEM for his third period (he wanted to be like big brother!)  Normally Shiloh is in the nursery or hanging out with me in the teachers lounge but this time there was a Pre-K club and he spent the first two periods making crafts, reading books, singing songs and playing dress up.  He LOVED it!

From March until we left for the beach this May, we watched a sweet little friend from church.  Her Mom moved from a second/third shift job to a day job and her Dad is a teacher.  But her Mom had been out of work for several weeks before starting her new job so they asked if I would watch her until she started getting paid and then they planned to put her in day care.  But when it came time, they asked if I would be willing to continue watching her and they would pay me.   It required me getting up early -and if you know me at all, you know I'm NOT a morning person.  But the thought of this sweet little girl going to day care instead of being with friends she knows and loves broke my heart.  So the kids and I said yes and never regretted it.  She's Shiloh's age and they play together so well.  So while they played, the older kids were able to get their school work done.   Having one extra kid wasn't a big deal either, we still went to co-op, the park, out to eat, wherever.  She loved it!

We finished AWANA at the beginning of May.  I will have to write another post about that because the kids got a ton of awards at the awards ceremony.  And then there was the Grand Prix and the Spring Fling.

So the end of winter and spring were busy.  Throw in a few illnesses and soccer for Amos and we were going non-stop.  So we were ready for our annual vacation to Panama City Beach when it came!

We played on the beach a hand full of times but the kids loved the hotel pools more.  There was an indoor pool with a lazy river beside it.  Two outdoor pools - one with a two story twisty slide with a kiddie pool beside it and one "boring" pool with a hot tub beside it.  The hotel also had an arcade, laundromat and ice cream shop.

Bobby helped me with lunches and supper each day so it was more relaxing for me this year.  When it was time to leave I was actually sad to leave -though I was definitely ready to be back in my own bed and see our Rosie girl!

While looking for shells on the beach, Hannah and I found the top to a blue button jelly fish.  It's so beautiful!  Look up a video on them, they have pretty blue tentacles!

It rained several times while we were there and one evening there was a beautiful rainbow.  I happened to have my phone in my hand (trying to get a good picture of Hannah) when I glanced over and saw Amos & Bobby at the end of the rainbow.  So I was able to snap this picture!

We saw a sea turtle and several sting rays close to the shore.  The minute we saw the sting ray, Sammy promptly exited the water.  Hannah, however, loved it!

The day we left I snapped this picture from out balcony.  The beach is so quiet and peaceful at 7 in the morning.

Bobby and the kids loved the pool with the twisty slide.  They would go down feet first, head first, on their backs, on their bellies.  Meanwhile, Shiloh and I were safely floating around the shallow end.

It kills me that Shiloh is wearing water wings AND laying on a pool noodle.  That kiddie pool was dangerous!!

Pistachio almond ice cream from Tasty Waves.

We always go out to eat one evening to a seafood buffet and another evening we go to Pier Park to the Candy Maker.  The truffles are my favorite!

Samuel @ 10

Whew!  The last of the birthday's until April.  It's a good thing because I honestly can't handle anymore changing and growing.  My kids insist of getting taller and older.

Sammy seems to be getting taller by the day.  He's so athletic and loves basketball.  He's still playing for our homeschool team, the NEACHE Eagles.  He's expressed interest in soccer (after watching Amos' practice) and possibly football.  Another thing he loves is video games.  We've recently acquired an XBOX and he's been enjoying playing games on it as well as his Kindle.  He's also interested in cooking and normally wanders in to help me at supper time.  And he often makes lunch for Shiloh -grilled cheese or quesadillas.

Sam isn't as interested in school as Hannah.  She breezes through her work but Sam drags his feet.  He's incredibly smart and can do the work, he just doesn't want to.  Some days he does great, other days are such a battle!

He's very affectionate and is my child that will randomly come up and hug me.  I love it.  I'll take ALL the extra cuddles.


All About Samuel:

Favorite Food:  calzones
Favorite Drink:  Big Red

Favorite Color:  Blue
Favorite Movie:  Real Steel

Favorite TV show:  Spongebob Squarepants
Favorite Book:  Diary of a Minecraft Zombie

Favorite Song:  God's Not Dead by the Newsboys
Favorite Game:  Werewolf (and Guesstures)

Favorite Person:  Shiloh
Favorite Hobby:  basketball and shooting his BB gun

Hannah @ 12

I can't handle all of these babies of mine growing up.  In a matter of two months we celebrate three birthdays.

On January 1st, Hannah girl turned twelve years old.  Twelve.  On the verge of being a teenager 😳  She's at that stage where she's becoming more independent and needs us less and less.  Yet, she still needs guidance in a lot of areas and loves to play with her brothers and friends.  Like play - play doh and American Girl dolls.

She's getting taller and more and more beautiful with each passing day.  Hannah is a blessing to me when it comes to her younger brothers, she's especially helpful with Amos & Shiloh.  Our biggest arguments stem from her lack of motivation in keeping her bedroom clean (she's worse than the boys!)

She's still just as artistic and loves to draw, knit and work on coding.  But her interests have expanded to include herpetology.  She saved all of the money from my parents + her birthday money and bought the aquarium and supplies for a bearded dragon.  So our gift to for her birthday was the actual dragon.  She wants to go to college for herpetology (for the moment) and work at a zoo.  I love how diverse she is with her interests!

All About Hannah:

Favorite Food:  Rice (some things never change!)
Favorite Drink:  Cream Soda

Favorite Color:  Aqua
Favorite Movie:  Despicable Me 3

Favorite TV show:  Spongebob Squarepants
Favorite Book:  The Giver by Lois Lowery

Favorite Song:  ???  blank stare
Favorite Game:  The Game of Life

Favorite Person:  Shiloh
Favorite Hobby:  Coding

She chose to have a Beauty and the Beast birthday party.  A sweet friend from church made her personal cake as well as her Ms. Potts cake pops.  Her decorations were really simple but she loved it so much.

Shiloh @ 3

Our sweet buddy is now three years old!  I really can't believe.  Time is a thief!

I can not even begin to imagine our lives without Shiloh.  He's incredibly verbal.  At his well visit, the doctor asked if he could talk in 2 to 3 word sentences.  Ummm, this kid yelled, "I'm so frustrated right now!" when his block tower kept falling over.  Yes he can talk in two to three word sentences.

Shiloh has a good imagination and loves to pretend that he's a firefighter putting out fires.  He also likes to take our wooden blocks and pretend that they're hotdogs and his bed is the grill.  He loves to be read too and play with us but he's also perfectly content in entertaining himself.

All About Shiloh:

Favorite Food:  chicken nuggets and mac & cheese
Favorite Drink:  chocolate milk

I love this picture of Sammy & Shiloh sleeping together while we were home in SC.

Favorite Color:  Orange
Favorite Movie:  Boss Baby or Zootopia - it's a tie.

My Daddy & Shiloh are twins!  Though my Daddy can't see it for some reason.

Favorite TV show:  Paw Patrol
Favorite Book:  Creepy Carrots and Creepy Underwear

Favorite Song:  Diamonds by Hawk Nelson
Favorite Game:  Yeti in my Spaghetti and the firefighter game on his Kindle

Favorite Person:  Mama, Daddy, Hannah, Samuel, Amos
Favorite Hobby:  playing with Play-Doh

Shiloh playing near Naomi, not with her.  He really loves her.

Shiloh started wearing underpants during the day pretty early.  But he was still wearing a pull-up at night.  Until this month, when something seemed to click with him.  He's been waking up dry so we let him start wearing underpants to bed and he hasn't looked back!

Shiloh can be such a handful sometimes but he's so stinking adorable that we all readily forgive him anything.  He's quick to say, "I'm sorry!" if he's done something wrong and will randomly walk up to someone and hug them as he's saying, "I love you."  He loves Rosie to pieces and is constantly feeding her "nibbles" (snacks).
As sociable as he is, he takes up with certain people and will let them hold him and play with him.  But others, he'll just walk away.  He loves Ronald and will play with him but doesn't like Mariah.

He still loves to be snuggled up when he sleeps and will often have two extra blankets plus his three snuggle bunnies, a Snoopy and his Rosie dog that he got at the zoo.

This kid is such a sweetheart and adds so much to our little family!

Reflections From 2017

The past few years I've been really spotty with keeping up with our family blog.   One of my goals for 2018 is to get back on track.  It's been a great family photo album and I love to come back and look at all the adventures we've been on and to see how our children have grown over the years.  Our lives are full with school, sports, and our community -among other things.  So I want to slow down a little and try to document what's happening with us so we can look back and see how blessed we are and remember God's faithfulness.

We've now been in Arkansas for two years now.  It was so hard to leave my family when we first moved here.  I've never lived away from my family and the kids & I were used to see my parents almost daily.  Upon arriving, my main focus was on settling in and making our house a home.  Honestly, I didn't want to make friends and not because I was mad that we had moved halfway across the country.  But because I was mourning being separated from my family and friends I had known since elementary school.

I didn't want the kids to be too upset about moving so I (we - Bobby and I both) made every effort to make it all a big, fun adventure.  We set about finding our local library and seeing what other fun things there was for us to do.  It was a little slow going but they made friends with kids in our neighborhood (how awesome that we live in an actual neighborhood!)  And when we joined a local church family, they were able to make friends there as well.

Bobby, thankfully, gave me a little time to adjust but then pushed me to reach out and get to know ladies from our fellowship and to begin making new friendships.   That was such a new experience for me!  As I said before, most of my friends I had known since school days.  So having to start new was awkward.  Was I talking too much?  Not enough?  Did they really like me or were they just humoring me?  It's crazy but that's some of the things I struggled with.  But God is so faithful and brought so many ladies into my life to love me and encourage me -Tracy and Mariah especially.  In turn, He has brought other ladies into my life for me to love and encourage.

In SC we had so many friends that home schooled that I didn't feel the need to join a home school support group.  So one thing we definitely needed to do in AR was join our local Christian Home School support group.  I'm so glad we did.  We've joined the co-op, gone on numerous field trips and Sammy has been able to play basketball through this group.  It's been such a blessing to us.

At the end of summer last year Bobby had an on campus interview for Kansas State University.  When we initially moved to Arkansas, I thought that it wouldn't matter where we moved after leaving South Carolina.  I'd already left my loved ones so who cared where we moved after that?  How wrong I was!  I was slightly (I know God is in total control and His plan is better than what I can imagine!) worried that we would be moving to Kansas.  I have made so many wonderful friends and love our life here that I didn't want to leave.  Praise the Lord that He worked it out that for us to stay in Arkansas and Bobby got a raise!

I'm so spoiled living in a city.  It's big enough that there are fun things to do and we live close to everything.  But it's not so big that we're overwhelmed.  Bobby is 15 minutes from work.  We're 5 minutes from co-op on one side and our public library the other direction.  As I said before, we have an actual neighborhood.  We can walk to Dairy Queen or Firehouse Subs or McDonalds or Starbucks.  We have a Walmart within five minutes of our house.  The mall is 10 minutes away.  There are numerous playgrounds for the kids to choose from and Bobby's work has an amazing museum to explore.

More and more, this little city is our home.  When we go to South Carolina we say we're going home.  When we're returning to Arkansas we say we're going home.  It's still hard being away from my family.  And so much has happened with them since I've left.  I have to pray and trust that God is taking care of them better than I could anyway.  Now I can't imagine my life without the community that we're a part of -without these wonderful crazy people that we get to fellowship with daily.   A part of me wishes I could bring my SC family and friends here to AR.  Yet, I miss the mountains and rivers.  I miss the beauty of the leaves in the fall.  I miss Clemson University.

I'm learning more and more that God's ways are most definitely better than my ways.   While I dig my in my heels and don't want to leave what's familiar and comfortable, He knows what I need and pushes me forward.

We went home -SC- in August for the eclipse and to sell our house!

Amos is really enjoy City Stars soccer.  This was his second season.  City Stars is completely free for anyone who wants to participate.

I love our community that the Lord has blessed us with.  Hannah & her husband, Mariah and her fiancé, plus Bobby & me completed the Whole 30.  To celebrate we all went to the Memphis Zoo then out to eat to the Cheesecake Factory (to make up for 30 days without sugar or bread ya know!)

Our sweet buddy, Bentley, who we meet through our home school group and now get to babysit every Friday.  We love him to pieces!!

Sammy has really enjoyed playing basketball through our homeschool group.  This is his second year as a NEACHE Eagle.