Beware, 3 new very long posts ahead!

Sorry everyone I got a little behind, so there are 3 new posts that range from the end of June until now. Enjoy! Please leave a comment if you get a chance!
Thanks

My Trip to Utah!

I got to go home and see my family. Kid and husband free for a whole week-end. It was crazy. It was a whole new world. My parents came home from their mission and Shelly and Brett cashed in some frequent flyer points to get me home. Which was totally great of them to do. Thanks again guys! Anyways, I got to spend some time with the Pynes and the Zellers. It was great! It was so fun to see everyone again and meet some new additions to the families! Since we have been in Georgia, Kevin and Kris Pyne both got married, and Emma had her baby. By the time we make it back again, there will be even more additions to both sides of the family. It's amazing how quickly things change when there are a lot of kids in the family.

The Pyne's had a BBQ in my honor and everyone came over to visit. It was wonderful to see everyone!
We took some pictures at my parents house after church, since this was the first time in a long time that all the siblings have been together, of course, minus my oldest sister, who passed away. Here's the picture of me and my brother's and sister's. In order of birth. Despite the fact that the ground sloped down on my end, I'm still being towered over, especially by my brothers!
Here are all the Zeller grankids that were there. My kids of course were not there. We were missing 7 of the grandkids from this picture.
I had to get a picture of the mountains before I left. This was taken from the car on the way to Salt Lake. It just happened to be in front of UVU, but the picture is actually of Mount Timp.
The last night I was there I stayed with my sister, and she gave me a ride on her motorcycle! Very cool...until my butt started hurting! Let's just say, I was sore for a while afterwards.

Elizabeth's Ice Cream Birthday Party!

For Elizabeth's 7th (and last) birthday party, we decided to have an Ice Cream Party. It was a lot of fun! We had lots of friends come and play ice cream games.
Here they are lined up for "Pin the cherry on the Ice Cream Sundae"

Then they played "Hot Potato" Thanks Tina for being the fun adult in the circle! Here was one of my decorations. There were about 5 of these around the house, as well as the paper ice cream cones that everyone decorated and hung on the walls. Look around in the pictures and see if you can find them!

Then we played a n ice cream scoop game. The kids had to scoop as many cotton balls into their dish with only their spoons. It was really fun. It's harder than it looks, but I must admit the kids got better the more they watched it. These kids were the first.Time to decorate their ice cream cone cupcakes!

Here are our ice cream toppings. They had a lot of fun with those, but gummy bears and gummy worms were by far the most popular!

Here are some examples of their creations!

Believe it or not, 11 kids eating ice cream on our cream colored carpet and we didn't have any problems!

After getting the kids all hyper with sugar, we lead them outside for a little pinata fun.
Erik finally had to take over to get the thing to break...I'm sure he didn't mind.

After the candy fest, it was time for presents. I won't bore you anymore with present pictures, but I'll let you see our group picture! Lizzy had a wonderful time with friends from church and from school. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it a special day for Elizabeth!HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELIZABETH!!!!
We Love you in our family!

Happy Late 4th of July

I just realized that I never posted the 4th of July pictures. Bad me! That's what happens when you go on a vacation and come back to a very busy holiday week where Erik is busy almost every night. Then, of course, I got sick, and forced my self to get feeling better for Elizabeth's birthday party (which I haven't posted either...oh brother) then I had another relapse into sickness after my busy Sunday substituting in Nursery...need I say more. Anyways...
We had a very busy 4th of July. I volunteered to play with the Fort Gordon Band for their 4th of July concerts, and that left me scrambling to get babysitters during practices and performances, which was fun. Luckily the wives of other band members helped me out and watched the kids. Not to mention my wonderful friend Tina who after taking my kids for MOST of the week-end that I was away, she even watched them for me during the performance at Fort Gordon! Thanks Tina! For great pictures of her kids and mine enjoying the concert check out the Bastian family blog (link to the side of my blog) She got some great pictures of me playing and as soon as I get them I will put them on here.
So on the 2nd of July, I traveled with the band to Barnwell, SC for a performance, then we played at the 3rd of July celebration at Fort Gordon.

The band had to set up this temporary stage thing to carry their sound out to the crowd. It took forever to set up and take down, which they had to stay after the fireworks to do. This is probably the biggest performance of the year for the Fort Gordon band since there are a lot of people there for the fireworks!

I could have played for the 4th of July celebration at the Riverwalk but I decided that I had taken enough advantage of my friends good humor to push another performance. I was glad I didn't since it POURED rain on us!
Here is the Fort Gordon Jazz Band playing right before the rain started.
The kids had fun on the water rides. I didn't bring anything for them to change into, so they went down in their clothes. It was really warm, until the rain started, but by then the kids were already so wet they didn't mind the rain.

The kids got their faces painted, which didn't last long since as soon as the rain started they got all wet and the pictures washed off.
We got very wet, but stuck it out through the fireworks, which started a whole new round of allergies for me. Oh joy!

On the 5th of July we had a BBQ at our house and set off fireworks in the front. It was really fun to get to know some new families and of course hang with our good friends the Bastian's.Jordan got a little scared and had to turn to Daddy for some love, but then he was right back out there with the rest of the kids!Here is Erik and Jeremy Bastian getting ready to light the next round.

Happy Birthday Elizabeth!!!!

Seven years ago today our little family became a little bigger with the birth of our first child, Elizabeth. We were so happy to welcome this beautiful baby into our family.
I thought this would be a good time to share a little about our oldest. Lizzy was the bright spot in the middle of a very emotional week. Many of you may or may not know that my oldest sister passed away the day before Lizzy was born. In fact, I was "due" July 5th, but when my sister passed away on July 9th, the doctor decided that they might as well induce me. Unfortunately, Lizzy was not quite ready to come. They actually started me on the evening of July 9th, but I didn't get started with the Pitocin drip until 7:30am on July 10th. After a whole lot of nothing going on for 10 hours or so (like I said Elizabeth was not ready to come), they finally decided to help things along more and pretty much started forcing her out. She was finally born around 7:30 that night.
You know how after they get the baby all cleaned up they bring the baby back to it's mom, well by that time a rather large crowd of people had formed to see this new little bundle of joy. When they brought her to me (Remember, I was EXHAUSTED! I had been in labor for about 24 hours from the time that they tried to start me to the time that she was born), they put this beautiful little baby in my arms and then suddenly about 20 billion flashes went off. (What a wonderful time to take a picture of a new mom...UUUGGHHH, those pictures were so...nice.)This group pictured here was only about half of the people who were there to share this joyous occasion with us that night. Mind you since my sister had just passed away my whole family was there getting ready for the funeral and what better way to console a grieving heart than to share in such a wonderful time.
But because of the circumstances surrounding Lizzy's birth things were a little different, maybe a little harder, but still wonderful.
Lizzy started sleeping through the night the day she was blessed (around 6 weeks old)...which was WONDERFUL for me! She started walking around 9 months and I firmly believe it was becuase she was around her cousins so much and they were always running around and having fun, that walking was all she could do to join in on the fun. As soon as she learned to walk she was off playing with the rest of the cousins! Being the first born, Lizzy has tons of pictures and hours of mind numbing video of her doing anything and everything cute! (unfortunately, all of those picture are hard copies and I have not yet scanned them into the computer, so I don't have any to show...sorry!)
As with any first born in any family, having a baby requires a lot of changes and with it you have a lot learning experiences, for example, don't leave your child in the car seat on a couch other wise when she kicks her legs...down she goes (not that I would know); or babies don't care if it's 3 o'clock in the morning, dang it they want to be entertained; and babies are really good at exploding when you are on your way somewhere and you just spent the last hour getting the baby all cute. Lizzy, of course, is the one that taught me all of these important lessons and many, many, many more!
Elizabeth is a wonderful big sister! She loves to help her brother and sister. She teaches Karlee math and letters and all sorts of stuff at night when they are suppose to be sleeping!(hey, I guess that's as a good a time as any, at least I'm grateful that they aren't fighting) She helps her little brother feel better when he is sad and loves to make Karlee and Jordan laugh. They love to play "make-believe" and dress-up together (much to the dismay of Daddy when Jordan is involved.)
It truly amazes me how long they can get along and play together without fighting. (Some days it's 2 hours, some days it's 2 minutes...go figure) I wouldn't be surprised if Elizabeth wants to be a teacher when she grows up, because she loves to learn and teach new things. She can't wait for her turn to teach the Family Home Evening lesson, she likes to play school, and she is always teaching her siblings.
Elizabeth is very considerate of other people's feelings, and I hope that this will continue this throughout her life. She loves to make things, or crafts as she would call it. And Elizabeth is the one to blame for the "blankies" in our house. She absolutely insisted that her sister and brother have blankies also from the time they were babies, and now all three of them can hardly sleep without their blankets. It's nice that she wants to share I guess.
I can't believe that my baby is turning seven! Her class just moved up to SR Primary (to help balance out the two), which I was not ready for. She's getting so big and I don't know where all the time has gone. Next year she will be baptized and I will probably go into shock. She's so smart and knows so much. We had to stop spelling things around her, because she could always figure it out, even if we talked super fast. She always has the answer for everything we ask, and more often than not have to ask her to let her brother or sister get a chance to answer first. It absolutely amazes me how quickly they learn and grow.We are very happy to have Elizabeth in our Family and hope she has a wonderful birthday!