Picnic Sunday at Church

We had a wonderful day on Picnic Sunday.  Many church members stayed after church and had a picnic and some time of fellowship.  The kids did bubbles, kites, swings, and just ran around.  It was lots of fun!

Nathaniel enjoying being outside!

Austin ready to take someone on in baseball!

Elizabeth enjoying her kite-she actually ended up getting it up really high-so did Austin.

Josh is loving his freedom to just run and play.

Joshie taking a rest to sit with Papa for a couple minutes.

Nathaniel is kicked back and enjoying sitting on grandma's feet.

Joshie playing with a little friend.

Nathaniel is 9 months old.

Wow, how quickly he is growing.  The kids are having so much fun playing with him.  He gets in to everything, but he is such a joy in our home and makes us smile and laugh all of the time.  The second  and third pictures are of our visit to McDonald's playland and Elizabeth took him up in the playland for the first time.  He LOVED it so much and of course was not content to come back down and sit with mom the rest of the time.

Youth Conference 2010

The Lord allowed for Mike and I to take our teens to the Youth Conference at West Coast Baptist College.  We had a great time and got to see some friends that we hadn't seen in years.  The whole time their was great.  The sessions, the preaching, the activities, the food, was all wonderful.  We didn't get many pictures and not really any of the teens, but I did  get a couple cute pictures of Nathaniel, but we did have a great time and I believe that the Lord is trying really hard to work in the lives of some of our teens.  How much we need to pray for the youth of today.

Nathaniel loved the Merry-go-Round.

 Mommy and Nathaniel had a fun time together at Six Flags.

 Nathaniel really loves ice cream......well, I mean, who doesn't?

 Our group of girls at Six Flags.

Easter Sunday!

We had a great Easter Sunday.  Mike and I were able to share the good news of the Gospel to the JR. and Primary age children in church like we always do, the choir sang some great songs on the death, burial and resurrection, then after church we headed over to Grandpa and Grandma Benefield's for Easter dinner with family.  We had delicious food: ham, lamb, vegetables, salad, yams, scalloped potatoes, fruit salad, and beautiful fruit arrangement, rolls and homemade peach cobbler for dessert.  Then on to church for evening services.  What a wonderful day to celebrate Christ's Resurrection.

The girls waiting for the candy hunt to begin at church.

 Joshua enjoying the candy hunt too!

Lots of good yummy candy!

Mommy was excited that they didn't get a whole lot this year. :)

Little do the kids know that most of their candy gets put back into the Jr. church bucket of candy.

A quick Easter picture before eating and getting messy.  I want to take a quick minute to voice how thankful I am that God sometimes provides things that aren't needs but just wants.  I love to have matching outfits and I love to buy matching Easter outfits every year, but that doesn't always work now that we have 6 kids.  Well, there was a couple in our church that came up to us on Wed. pm before Easter and gave us these dresses for the girls.  I was so amazed and shocked.  It was such an unexpected blessing.

Our little Meggie girl just being crazy at G-pa and G-ma's house.

 The girls excited about lunch!

 The boys waiting anxiously for lunch.

There is such a joy in a parents heart when they see their children happy and content.

Birthday Parties!!!

For the past couple of years we have had individual birthday parties for the kids and my in-laws would come down, well we have decided this year to combine some birthdays.  So this past weekend we celebrated Megan's 5th birthday (March 18th) and Elizabeth's 10th birthday (April 19th).

Megan's Birthday Cake

 Elizabeth's Birthday Cake

 The girls had a great party and were very blessed with the things that they recieved for gifts.  These two girls are very much a like,  they like to be girly, but they can be very rough and tough too.  Elizabeth is our "lets get messy and play with the boys" kind of girl.  Megan is our "Drama Queen".  They both are such a blessing from the Lord and I thank God for them.  I love them so much.  I pray that we have many more years to celebrate birthdays with them.  Thank you to Grandpa and Grandma Farrell and Auntie Leslie for driving all the way from Modest to come to our party.  We love and miss you!

Elizabeth did a wonderful job at competition.

After many weeks of memorizing, practicing and preparing competition was finally here.  All of the kids did a wonderful job on all of their events.  We were very proud of Elizabeth and all of the hard work that she put into this competition.  Many hours were put into all of her events while her brothers and sisters were playing.  She didn't complain but put her whole heart into all of it.  Mike and I were blessed to be able to spend some special time with her helping her and listening to her practice.

She played hard at volleyball, but the other teams were much better.  They didn't place, but they had fun.

          
She really enjoyed working on her science project.  It was the Life Cycle of a Butterfly.  She purchased caterpillars and watched as they changed into butterflies, and then researched about the different stages.  It was really neat.  She placed 1st on her science project.

The Jr. Bible Quiz team studied and did a really good job.  They were really nervous and froze up a few times, but they ended up placing 3rd.  I think that it was just as nerve racking to watch it as it was for them to be in it.  Our pastor was a great coach!  Just an interesting fact:  when they were practicing before-hand, the Jr. team beat the Sr. team.  Go Jr's!

 Elizabeth is waiting to sing her solo.  There were about 11 or 12 Jr. female solo entries.  She did a wonderful job.  She placed 2nd and the girl who won 1st(who was also from our school) only beat her by one point.

Our Jr. Ensemble did an amazing job.  They got a late start working on it and they ended up singing, "Keep Walking With the Lord" and the had three parts and won 1st place.  I was impressed and proud.

 Elizabeth also placed first in her poem and 2nd in Jr. hand chimes.  All together she did a wonderful job.  They all did, and I believe that the Lord was pleased with all that took place at the competition that week.