Moving in, Starting school, birthdays, anniversary, and hurricanes!!

Joseph climbing the tree near our house

Samuel approves of the climbing tree too!

Gideon can't climb too high, but he sure tries!

Travis put a swing in the tree for Gideon!

Gideon loves getting his toy truck back!

Malachi got a batman hoodie towel for his birthday from G and G Hardy

Caleb made Malachi this birthday crown all by himself, and it fit perfectly!

Malachi loves his birthday cake (Daddy is crazy)

First day of 6th grade!

1st day of 2nd grade

18th wedding anniversary dinner cruise!

Betsy 9th grade (she's in high school!)

Austin 10th grade 

Gideon loves hanging out on the couch with blankets and pillows

Gideon climbing on the rocks at a fun park

Gideon trying to feed the ducks, but the chickens want to be fed too!

Gideon and Malachi found a turtle!

The birds and ducks really like Gideon

Playing at the beach!

Samuel practicing his surfing!

Gideon gets really nervous about the waves, but with Daddy there he is all good!

Austin told Gideon she was going to leave for college in a couple years, and he said "no leaving" and kept grabbing her face and laying on top of her and not letting her go.  

Gideon does not want Austin to leave him

Gideon is obsessed with pillows!!  We ended up buying these to pillows for Gideon from Costco, and I was trying to find him one afternoon, and I finally found his leg sticking out from underneath his pillows and he was fast asleep!  

Betsy's birthday cake (don't worry she had two Costco cakes, this is just all that was left when we sang to her)

Austin helped Gideon push Joseph off the couch.  They were all pretty happy about it!

Daddy and Malachi building tall towers!

August was a very full month!!!  We moved in the first day of August.  It was a crazy weekend full of getting everything moved in.  We had movers from two different shipments dropping stuff off at the same time (I'm so glad Travis was there)  We had to check off the package numbers on a list that they would call out as they brought everything off the truck.  Then they had to put everything in the right room and unpack and put together all the things they took apart, which was everything!  They took apart everything the possibly could and put it all in little boxes when we moved out of Kansas.  We had some things damaged, and many things that were missing pieces, or that the guys couldn't figure out how to put together.  But overall it wasn't too bad.  We had to repair our expensive bikes, and just trash our "Walmart" bikes.  We had to buy a new bed frame and have a neighbor make us a new rail for our bunk bed.  The most annoying thing was having our freezer not work properly.  We got it to plug in and get cold, so we bought a bunch of freezer food and filled it up, only to have it stop working and not keep everything cold enough, then it would get cold again, then it stopped working completely again.  Needless to say, we ended up having to throw out a couple hundred dollars worth of food, and the moving company wouldn't give us anything to replace our freezer, since we couldn't prove that it worked properly before we left.  Anyway the kids loved exploring our neighborhood and finding all the climbing trees, and meeting all the kids in the neighborhood (there are a ton of them!)  Travis was able to get 10 days off to move us in, which was so nice!  We were able to get everything put away and set up mostly before he had to go back to work.  We also celebrated Malachi's birthday and had our anniversary. We went on a dinner cruise that was really nice, except I got a little motion sick, due to the rough water (storm coming) We had a couple hurricane scares, but nothing hit us directly.  We also had Betsy's birthday during one of the hurricane scares, and had to reschedule her party, and ended up having a McGyver marathon and ate her two cakes instead.  She didn't seem to mind too much.  The kids all started school (Caleb and up).  Everyone loved getting all their school supplies together and starting their new schools.  I think they have all adjusted well (except for Joseph) to their new schools, and seem to have good teachers and friends.  Our weeks our usually pretty busy now.  I started teaching piano lessons the 3rd week in August and currently have 13 students (the most I've ever had).  I keep telling people, that I'm full, but somehow end up adding more students anyway.  I love teaching though, it is just a little hard on Malachi and Gideon, but I've worked it out, so that their TV or kindles can only be used during piano lesson time, so now they want me to teach piano all the time!