Last month in Greenville

With school out and all the kids at home while trying to pack and nurse infants you would THINK we wouldn't get much else done.

But the kids had other things in mind. 

The older three boys would golf a lot. Three or four mornings of the week we would just drop them off at the golf course and pick them up four hours later. I just love thinking of them walking together and all the things they talked about. #bonding

One day Camden came home with a turtle from the pond there. He was pretty excited.

The turtle? Not so much.

My summer beauties..... These two are the CUTEST, CLOSEST (and SNEAKIEST) sisters.

I threw away the Father's Day cards before I could take a picture of a few gems and all the comments on how dad makes them mow the lawn, etc. But I DID snag this picture. 

In Primary at church their leader had the kids guess who's Daddy's hands were in the picture. 

My kids came home and said there's was the EASIEST! According to Emerson, "Dad's messed up finger gave it away." Which is WHY he now wears a sylicone wedding ring to fit up over his giant knuckle.

The twins just kind of go with whatever. They have no choice.

Like when Wynn sat next to Royce in the Yeti......sometimes you will just get drawn on....

with permanent marker. #ithappens

I think this is how Wynn feels about our family sometimes....

Dad took the kids peach-picking in Greer. 

The girls posed with their lovely peaches while the boys were having a rotten peach-throwing war.

 Reminds me of all the rotten apple wars me and my family had growing up by an apple orchard. But my kids didn't have the luxury of sporting a garbage can lid as a shield.

Every Wednesday has been deemed "Food Fighters" Day. The kids and I LOVE any kitchen or baking shows. And I DID need to go through my food, so we would set up rounds with a theme. 

"10 minutes to make your best carrot dish" next round something with apples, or bacon or best sandwich, etc.  Everyone in the first round. Four move onto the second and then two in the finals with one winner. Obviously, there must me a winner and losers, right?

The ones eliminated are then judges with me. I've eaten some pretty interesting stuff. 

But nothing quite made me as gaggy as Royce's mixture.
The theme was animal crackers.

(I'm a master at smiling while choking, and then distracting them while I spit it out)

There's a LOT of lessons they've learned in these competitions:
1) as far as vanilla is concerned, less is best and more is lethal
2) turns out Hershey chocolate syrup DOESN'T go well on everything
3) you almost have a guaranteed winning dish if you add bacon and mom is the judge
4) eggs CAN and do explode in microwaves
#lifelessons

While moving, everyone was so nice to us. I had people come pick up kids right and left to take them to movies, throw them tea parties, take them swimming, going away parties, etc. We even went to two different trampoline parks for free because of people's generosity. Our good friend owned Gravitopia and let us all barge in. We will miss them like crazy (like all our friends!)

Another time after I picked up the boys from golfing Emerson ran in really excited and started unzipping his golf bag. In the little ball-zipper-part he had shoved in 4 crawdads (or crawfish.....depending on where you're from).

They would put them in that pan to "battle".....Gladiator style.

Entertained the kids for a looooooong time. 

But you had to be VERY careful around their pinchers Camden told us. From personal experience he said "it felt like needles going through my finger and connecting!"

They researched online how to cook them too. Just what I wanted to do.....unpack my giant pot to cook seafood. Kinda my least favorite smell.

But they were so proud of themselves and thought the bright red color was so cool

They tried them and actually LOVED them. Bronson said, "This is amazing!"

Which only ENCOURAGED them to look for more crawdads the next time they went golfing.

They came home the next day with 45.
(I've got such handsome boys)

You have to rinse them a bunch of times or something. Then they would devide them into medium, small and large. I'm telling you, crawdads took over my kitchen for a while.

They cooked them, divided them and then set some aside for Brooks when he got home.

(Don't you love the crawdad-parts that were in my sink-drainer-thing) #theThingsIdo

But crawdads are the gift that keeps on giving!!!! When your toys are packed up, you can resort to playing with crawdad claws and legs that were broken off for a few days afterward!!!!

DESPITE every picture I ever post on my blog indicating my kids are never dressed or their hair is always homeless looking..... I promise, I do get them ready sometimes.

All my kids together before church. #love

It's official.....we got the 24 foot truck early on a Monday morning and had it filled by that night.

The "plan" was to pick up Brooks' dad from the airport that night at midnight and start on the road the next morning around five. We planned on his dad driving the moving truck, Brooks driving the Yeti with 7 kids and me driving the smaller car with the twins and Aleeya (to entertain the twins). The idea was ALL Brooks' and I was MORE then thrilled to go along with it. In fact I was REALLY looking forward to driving a SMALL car (a luxury I never have) with only three kids!!!!

Well things don't always go according to plan, do they.....