All Saint's Party!

So since the good camera is on the fritz, the pics aren't great, but they are all I have...so here are some pics from our homeschool saint's party.

ROXABOXEN

Autumn means Roxaboxen time in the Harper house, umm, outside the Harper house. If you've never read the book, check it out...my kids loved it!

Katherine & choir

Katherine is in her third year of choir in high school...probably the only reason she is in public school! Their recent competitions earned them the highest score of Grand something or another. We are so proud of her! Now if she could just get her mind wrapped around driving a car!

Facebook heralds in death of telephone and blogs!

Ugh! Since Facebook is now the quick and easy method of communicating, I find myself lagging behind my blogging. I realized this morning that it has been almost a month since I posted and yet, my mind is spinning from how busy we've become! Paul has been in and out of town now that his retraining into the new airframe is completed. We all got WAYYYYY to attached to having a daddy around with "normal" hours! Now we are chaotically trying to maintain the new normality. Right after our last post (with out of town guests), the kids and I got onto a plane and flew up to my mom's home in Washington. I can't say it was an easy task, but not nearly as horrible as I feared it to be. Had to keep up the strong front for my worried husband, but it went very well. Got to see old friends and hear all the lavish praise over my mom...who I never doubted would receive it, just love to hear it...although I have to laugh that every story everyone told dwindled down to alcohol, strip parties or how she told off this person and that person and she still actually was gainfully employed! Her retirement party actually netted her more job offers than she's had in years! I think it is wonderful that she has set such good examples for her daughters on working hard and putting up with shit so that years later you can throw it back at them and they have to listen because you've already proven yourself as an invaluable, hard working, truthful employee.
When we flew home, we were blessed by an anonymous donor...someone bought our whole family lunch! I was in tears I was so humbled. When we got back on soil in Little Rock, the car lot attendant, drove us to our van, loaded up my bags in the back and helped with the kids. Laughingly he said, "me and my wife got six kids, I know what it's like!" I thanked him (it was pooring rain out) and handed him a huge tip. The drive home was worse than anything! Pooring rain, slow driving, traffic delays and screaming baby! We finally got in and found my neighbor had cleaned my house and left a fresh plate of brownies on the kitchen counter for us! Just when I think we are at our worst...He shows me what wonderful people exist in this world! That whole trip was a lesson in placing my trust in God and affirmed to me that we made the right decision and that all is going to happen the way it is supposed to! Well, I will get back on later and update the rest of October for y'all. Lauren is home sick from Church, and I hear her up now!

old friends are always welcome!

Some old friends stopped and spent their night on the way up north. Her husband has been reassigned to Minot, ND. At least they didn't go straight from the deep south...they were in WA DC for 3+ years, so it shouldn't be such a shock to their systems! (I think it has been longer as they added another one to the mix and the "baby" isn't such a baby anymore!
So what do you do in a house of 13 kids (16 & under) and three adults??? Bring on the booze...just kidding! We had a great time catching up, playing, talking and praying...of course it always pays to have a friend who is an excellent cook. I'm honestly quite amazed at how quickly the kids just jump into instant best friend mode, even though several of mine didn't even remember them, LOL! My kids can't even remember to pick up their clothes, how could I possible expect them to remember friends from 3/4 years ago?! Our lives have so changed and flipped around since then! We met the Lobash family while Paul was stationed at Barksdale and I have to say that Nikki helped me to find my place as the mom of a large Catholic family. My confidence was severly lacking in that department until they came into our lives and I will be forever grateful for that!
I feel like a complete idiot for not getting more pics (didn't think of it until they were loading up)! But here are a few:

Soap making

Right after the camera was rediscovered it was time to make soap...Lauren set out to help (science and math were done that day!).
Ingredients are easy. We've tried several different recipes and methods and finally found one that works well for our family. For more ideas on homemade recipes go to tipnut.com. This recipe actually costs us about $3 to make (estimate) and lasts us almost 2 months. I've tried to make dishwashing detergent, but have never found one that I am satisfied with, so I gave up! But the new dishwasher is much more efficient and larger inside. Runs so quietly we forget it is even on...really miss the noise when Veronica has colic though as the dishwasher was a guaranteed sleep inducer for her!

Lauren turns eight!

Lauren, my fifth and only "waterborn" baby, turned eight the end of August (yes we go broke in August paying for all these birthdays in our family)! We always do a small celebration with just the family when the kids are on their "no party" year, but since Lauren hasn't ever had a birthday party before, we did both. My camera went AWOL after this and stayed missing for quite awhile, until a good friend of mine (thanks Carole) gave me the idea to offer a reward for the missing camera...amazingly enough Becca found it within two minutes....in someone else's room (yeah, right)....so I have NO pics of her gymnastics party, but at least had these two to share. She got tons of Littlest Pet shops and she picked her own cake out since it was a "busy day" we had no time to make one. I'll have to scan a pic of my m-i-l later so y'all can see just how much they look alike!