Samuel's birthday

Samuel blowing out his candles for his 9th birthday

He is so excited to eat some of his huge peanut butter cup cake!

Malachi is happy about eating pizza for dinner

Joseph loves cake too!

Caleb is silly

On our wagon ride

wagon ride

kids enjoying themselves at the party

Our wagon ride

Playing Twister at the USO game night

Caleb and Malachi eating big carrots that we got from bountiful baskets!

more wagon ride photos

So Samuel is now 9 years old!!  He had a good, yet simple birthday.  He really wanted an electric scooter, but they are quite expensive so he didn't get a party, or going out to eat.  The only present he received was the scooter, (we even used both grandparent's money too)  But, he was super happy!  He loves his new scooter.  I thought I got a picture of his on it, but I couldn't find it on my phone.  We did have cake and sing happy birthday too him, but it was really nice that it was so simple, since I really didn't have the energy to do much anyway.  We did make some gluten free blueberry muffins that he took to school and shared with his class.  I taught joy school at our house this week on Monday and Thursday, it was exhausting, but it is my last week to teach until February, so I'm happy for the break.  Caleb loves Joy school, so I'm happy for him, and grateful he has something to do.  I took Betsy in to the doctor again for her back, it has really been bothering her the last couple weeks.  We took her to get another x-ray, and they are referring her back to physical therapy.  Thankfully though, giving her massages and rest seems to help.  We will get the results of her x-ray back next week.  I had my OB appointment this week as well, I'm 36 weeks, hooray!  Everything looks good, and the doctor said the baby looks good to come any time now.  I'm sure he'll wait at least a couple more weeks to come though.  I'm working on my to do list, for being prepared for the baby to come still, so I'm not quite ready yet.  We did have some fun this weekend.  We went to the USO for a family dinner/game night.  Joseph was on a campout, and Austin was babysitting, but we brought Betsy's friend Jessie with us, so I still have 5 kids with me.  We had a good time playing games.  Betsy is really good at twister!  Towards the end Samuel started going a little crazy, but other than that everyone behaved really well.  Saturday, we had a busy day.  We got chores done, picket up bountiful baskets, including 2 40 lb boxes of oranges, they are delicious.  Picked up Joe from the campout, Samuel had a rain gutter boat regatta for scouts that he enjoyed, and had fun racing his boat.  We went to a deployed families Thanksgiving dinner giveaway, where we got two free turkeys, and a bunch of canned and boxed goods for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was awesome!  We also went to a party at Travis' troops commander's wife.  She had a horse drawn wagon ride that we enjoyed, as well as a chili dinner.  The kids had a lot of fun (Joseph had to stay home and finish his chores and homework).  Then we rented a movie on the way home, and had a movie night.  This Sunday went better than last week.  We had Samuel sit with another family, and their daughter sat with us, it worked out well for us, anyway.  I still played the organ, so the kids were all sitting by themselves for the first 30 minutes, but I noticed a lot less commotion coming from our row, so they did great!  The weather has definitely gotten cooler, I had to start turning on the heat this week, as the house was getting below 60 degrees. I'm finally getting over my cold now, so I'm happy about that!  And, I actually got Joseph to ride his bike to school once this week, so hopefully he'll do better this coming week, now that he's realized he can ride his bike to school when it's cold out and survive.