Harvest Time!

We were very excited to gather all this from the garden this morning! Looks like we can even make a small batch of sauce!

Deer in west Virginia!

Selah very much enjoyed the deer and watching Grandma feed them when we stopped in west Virginia for the weekend. In fact, they're her new favorite animal.

Nap time!

It's not often that Daddy gets to enjoy a napping kid! But I'm pretty sure he'd prefer 30 minute naps on him to the 3 hour variety!

Kids' night continued

Kids' night!

We stopped at chick-fil-a for dinner on the way home from Hilton head today...and it just so happened to be kids' night. Selah got a hello kitty ballerina, Noah an airplane flown by captain America, Micah a Thomas the tank engine, Jonah a sword, and Elijah a rattle-man. Quite impressive, the kids loved it.

Caught!

Someone was sneaking the leftover green beans. Given that they were a vegetable and not sugar...I didn't stop her.

Trouble

I asked Selah to bring me my phone that I had left in the kitchen. After a significant delay, she came back looking like this. When I asked what she was eating, she growled, "POWDERED SUGAR!"
And all I could think was I had already brushed her teeth for bed.

Sleeping baby

Driving back to grandpa and grandma's house after church. So sweet.

Fort Knox

We found an old playground to play on while Bryan was returning his gear. The kids are very spoiled and used to nice, new plastic playgrounds
And were very disappointed with this old rusty wooden playground that was the norm when Bryan and I were little.  So they went with the natural playground of the forest and grassy area.

~Sarah

United States Bullion Depository

It wasn't the layers of physical security, alarms, video cameras, mine fields, barbed razor wire, electric fences, heavily armed guards, and the Army units based at Fort Knox that deterred us from attempting to obtain a few bricks of gold. Nor was it the granite walls of the vault or the 22 ton blast proof door. It was totally the "unmarked Apache gunship" that was what made us realize we couldn't do it. (You can see the Apache in the picture. UNMARKED Apaches are scary. Way scarier than marked ones. Marked ones rate with mine fields.  And we all know mine fields aren't all that scary.) Given the unpredictability of the way the Army numbers their buildings, we felt that the Apache was a potential lose Cannon. We'll continue researching and consider it again next time. This time we're rolling out with less than we rolled in with...Much to Noah's dismay.

~Sarah

Getting there...

Made it out of Michigan, through Ohio, and into Kentucky.  Yay for being in the state we are spending the night! We are stopping at Fort Knox to return deployment maybe take a golden souvenir. ..

~Sarah

Catching up

Turning over a new leaf... going to try to keep up better on here. And maybe even catch up a bit. I had thought I'd really keep up well while Bryan was deployed, so that he wouldn't be left out.  But as it turns out, one of those creepy things with technology, he was able to view all the pictures I took on my phone through google plus. Which was awesome because I didn't have to do anything and he could see each day what we had been up to-and even saw videos.  The negative was nothing got on the blog.  And while I thought I'd have extra time to do things like blog with him gone,  I was sorely mistaken. A single mother of 5 does not have the time to do necessities much less extras like blog. And Bryan does a lot more than I ever gave him credit for. My stress level has dropped 90% since he got home, both from the help and from not having to worry about his safety.

I'm not really sure where I left off, but Bryan did make it home safely May 31. In June, my parents came up for a few days and he and I took Elijah up North to a cabin for a couple days. Then we came home and took all the kids back up for a few more days.  It was very nice and quiet- though quite buggy! The remainder of June was spent catching up on projects around the house. .. as was July and August! We've done a ton of yard work. Planted almost 100 trees.  Shoveled yards upon yards of dirt and mulch. Stayed up until midnight working in the dark more nights than we can count. But it's done for this year!
That led us literally into birthday season.  Elijah turned one on August 15. Noah turned 8 on August 18. Selah turned 5 on September 2. Whew. 3 down,  two to go!

Now we are finally off on our "post- deployment" vacation to Hilton Head Island. While I'm not a fan of the beach or sand,  we rented a house with a pool and I do love the quiet beauty of the island. So we are praying for a low stress, relaxing week mostly hanging out in the pool! And maybe some time catching up on this year! (If I haven't already mentioned it,  the kids and I drove to California and back this winter and had some fun while Bryan was gone. Lots of pictures from that.)

And I'll leave you with a picture of Elijah, our big one year old, peacefully sleeping.

~Sarah