What's been going on

Easter afternoon

The 2 "K's" on Easter

Easter Baskets given the day after Easter. We dyed our eggs, opened Easter baskets, and did our Easter Egg hunt the day after.  (Sure made for some cheaper baskets! )

All the Alma ladies at Serenity's Easter egg hunt

Blake dressed up for his Titanic play at church - He did such a good job!

 

Jakeb had to go to the ER for stitches. He was messing around at church, and he collided his teeth through his lip into his brother Kaleb's head.

 momma and the girls.

 Indy Children's museum - Lego display

Blake and Peyton

 Zak and Mommy on the carousel at the museum

 
Look who's sitting up now!!

Eric and I at the Rave getting ready to watch the AVENGERS!!  (yup, got a new do!)

Life in general

Life has been great and of course slightly crazy, trying to balance 6 kids and a newborn, homeschooling 4 1/2 of them. (Yes, four and a half. Poor Makenna gets shafted half the time but since she's only four it's okay. The boys didn't start school until Kindergarten.)

We just added a little more craziness to our lives by going to Gatlinburg for a week, and boy was that fun. We seriously just vegged at our chalet the entire time. I think we went out to eat twice while we were there. We did a little hiking, but like I said most of the time was just relaxing.

However, now we're trying to get back into the swing of things, and that is sometimes hard when you don't want to get back in the swing. We would all much rather be on vacation!

Anyways, here's some pics of the past couple of months. Maybe eventually I'll get to posting about Christmas, birthdays, and Zak's birth, but for now... this is all I got for ya!

 all 7 at our chalet

 Blake's motto

 daddy playing with his girls (I think he makes a great Flynn!)

 the last night there, they realized that they could squeeze behind the hideaway bed on the sofa. It definitely made for a fun hiding place

 Our favorite restaraunt in Gatlingburg

 the view outside our chalet. Cute, huh?

 my new "mommy' do

 Happy boy

Don't you just want to squeeze him?

 

(These are all my Instagram pics from my phone simply because they are so much easier to load!)

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you all have a great one. Sometimes we get wrapped up in the gift giving, shopping, and worldly views on Christmas that we forget what it's all about. I encourage you to remember that if it weren't for our Christ, we would have no reason to celebrate. Because without Him there would be no hope. He truly is the reason for the season. Happy Birthday, Jesus!

PS. What are you getting for Jesus this year?

He's here!!

Zak Grayson Alma made his grand appearance on November 1, 2011 (11/1/11) at 2:02 p.m. He weighed in at 9 pounds 4 1/2 ounces (just like his big brother Blake), and was 22 inches long! He's been a blessing already to the family as I'm enjoying seeing the brothers and sisters dote on him and love on him. He's the sweetest thing!!! We just can't get enough of him.

We went in at 8:00, ahem...8:15 (we were a little late, ha!) to be in induced on that Tuesday morning, and by 9:00 was hooked up to the pictocin. They came in and broke my water about an hour later, and joy of all joys the contractions started.
The nurse checked me and I was only dilated to a 2 which is what I was dialated to for the past couple weeks. (I'm telling you he did not want to come out.) I eventually broke down and got my epidural which makes any labor and delivery so much more pleasant.

It was probably about 1:30 when she checked me again, and I had progressed to a 7. yay!! The nurse, Gayle, left to go call the doctor just to keep him updated. Literally minutes after she left to call the doctor I looked at Eric and asked him, "Should I tell the nurse that I have the incredible urge to push?" "Uhhh...yeah!" was his reply. Gayle came back in, checked me again, and bod-a-bang, bod-a-boo....it was time. She had to run and call the doctor again who was thinking it was gonna be another hour. He made it to the hospital in an 10 minutes. (Thankfully, his office right down the road.)

Everyone started rushing around like crazy getting everything ready, begging me not to push. The doctor gets in, and Zak Grayson arrived to this world minutes afterwards. Talk about CRAZINESS! But oh, it sure does make the story more fun.



We thank God for this new little one. He is so awesome!

Harvest Party

The kids all dressed up for the Harvest Party at Serenity Baptist - Blake didn't want to go.
During the hayride, they stopped at the little pumpkin patch to get pumpkins.
The Princess Pirate





The cowboy Makenna, Nolan, and Kaleb on the hayride
Bumblebee

School Room

The game cabinet and some other stuff. It's not completely organized yet nor filled.

Here's where Jakeb does his school work. The desk is in the bottom of the picture.

Here's the view when you first come in the basement door from outside. The kids do their school work on the tables....obviously, right? Ha!

Here's the view from when you come down the stairs

And here's just another view

Yes, it's in the yucky basement with cement floors. One of these days we'll get around to doing something with the floor, but until then, it works and the kids don't complain about it...not the room that is...maybe the school work.

Fairy Sensory BIn

Okay, If I haven't told you all before, sensory bins are great! They're cheap because you use the stuff you have on hand, and the kids love them. I made a fairy one this time to go with our "F" fairy theme. I had
squinkies balls
some links from the $$ store
Tinker Bell Fairies that I bought a long time ago
Flowers in my scrapbooking supplies
bells
pom-poms
rice

Pretty simple right? They played with it forever transferring everything. Yes it gets little messy, but that's what a broom is for.

Even with the girly theme, Kaleb got in on the filling up of the Squinkies balls.
Making bracelets with the links

homeschooling

Makenna practicing her cutting
Klaire transferring q-tips got the tray at Goodwill along with about 6 other ones. It took me a while to figure out what to use it for, but I'm assuming I saw this idea somewhere and apparently it stuck.

Who would have thought Klaire would have loved this. She spent quite awhile shoving the pom poms down then holes at the top of the bucket.
Our new small dry erase board. I love it!
Makenna practicing writing her letters Klaire enjoying the pompoms again - transferring them with tweezers. I know...it's the little things. She loved it. Who knew?
Playing with Wedgitsgetting bored with the Wedgits and making bracelets instead Big brother Jakeb getting in on some Wedgit time
Got this idea from Here
and even though ours didn't turn out as well, they were still fun to make. I think I just had some junky oil pastels. First day, you make a spiral web out of the glue, and then the second day after it completely dries you color it with the oil pastels. You're supposed to put spiders on it too, but that didn't work for us. I"m thinking of having the kids add some 3D spiders to it instead. That would be fun.
Here's Blake showing how much fun he's having doing the craft. (He sure does love them. Can't you tell?)