Jacob Abshire.....Basketball Great!!

Well here it is, the basketball post that Grandma has so anxiously been awaiting. Jacob had his first basketball game last Saturday (the 10th). Practices started in November but with the weather we've been having he had 2 practices canceled and then a 2 week break through Christmas. So these kids only had 3 practices together before their first game. Add that to the fact that they are all in first grade and most of them have never played the game before, it was very interesting and fun to watch. There was so much confusion when they started playing but Jacob is having a blast and that's what matters! He is playing through an organization called Upward. When we signed him up we thought about doing it through the YMCA but I'm glad we chose Upward. It is a Christian run program and they really focus on learning the game not really who's winning at this point. For now, it's what we want for Jacob. So, here are a few pictures from the game. I need to apologize for the pictures though. My camera did not perform like it should have. Maybe we need to get a new camera huh? My birthday is a short 5 1/2 months away (hint hint) :) Anyway, this is about Jacob not a new camera.....as I was saying some of the pictures are a little dark so I'm sorry about that.


This first one is in the "locker room" (aka Sunday school room) before the game started. They all meet in there to mentally prepare for the game As you can tell, Jacob is very focused on game time....

It's pretty cool, they have a little tunnel that the kids get to run through as their name is called. Jacob is right behind #24 there.

My friend Jill came to watch his game with us. I didn't tell him that she was coming and this was his reaction when he saw her.Here they all are, praying before they start the game.

I thought this was pretty funny. Jacob didn't start in the first game so he was sitting on the "bench" between the coaches. Looks like he was learning the plays!

Here he is getting some instruction on where to stand. There's so much to this game! I'm not sure what he was doing in this picture but I thought it was a good one of him. Look how skinny he is. Ok, last but not least, here's a video. Now I feel the need to remind you that they are first graders, 6 or 7 years old. The other thing that I need to tell you is that Ben is not the coach but you will hear him because the real coach doesn't say much. Jacob really had NO IDEA where he was supposed to be. It was so much fun and I can't for next Saturday and his next game. I'm sure in about 5 years I will be exhausted from all the different sports that my kids will be playing but for now, with just one playing, I can sit back and enjoy watching my son "play" basketball. Enjoy the video and feel free to laugh along with me!

Luke is 5!

Well, Lukey finally did it....he finally turned 5!! He has been so excited to turn 5. I don't know, maybe it's because he knows he gets to go to school this year. As I was looking at pictures to put in this post I decided to look back at some baby pictures. Once I did that I couldn't help it but use a couple of them. As you look at Lukey as a baby focus on the cheeks....they were huge!!

So here we are 5 years later and for his party he wanted to go bowling again. It was so much fun and he really had a great time with his cousins, grandparents, uncles and aunt and of course his brothers. We can not believe that he turned 5. I guess that is what's supposed to happen right? You have kids and then they grow up. It just all seems to be happening too fast for me.

Here are a few pictures of the bowling. I didn't take as many pictures as I should have but you can tell we had fun.
After bowling and pizza we had an ice cream cake party up at Papa and Mamaw's house and Luke got to open presents for the 5th day in a row...but this time it was all about him!!

Look at his smile in this next picture. Can you tell that he LOVES the attention? He was so happy and loved that we were all singing just for him.

Catch up time!!

I was just looking at my last blog post and realized that it's been whole month!! And it had been awhile before that one too. I have no idea where December and the first half of January went but they're gone! As far as my blog goes, I really am not sure where to start. There is so much to share. I guess I will start off with the Christmas stuff and we will go from there.....

Here's our beautiful, tall, skinny tree! My favorite kind and quickly becoming Ben's first choice also.
Sarah totally got into the festivities of it all too. Problem was...she wanted to climb all the way to the top of the ladder and it made me very nervous!

As you can tell here, we had quite the "group" of red balls. I think I went back and moved some around (shh, don't tell).

Our Christmas pretty much started on the 20th of December. Becky and her family came to our house for a couple of days to hang out. It was so much fun. They hadn't seen our new house yet, the kids (who love to play together) hadn't seen each other in several months and most importantly I (and my family) hadn't met Benjamin yet!! He is so cute and I couldn't believe that we had to wait 5 whole months to meet him. I tried to hold him as much as I could while they were here. Sarah got a little jealous a few times but Aunt Becky was always there to hold her. We decided to let the girls and Ben-Ben open their presents from us and the boys and Sarah open their presents from them while they were here. The main reason was because the gift from them to the boys was huge and there was no need to haul it to Omak just for us to haul it back. Plus it was fun to have just a couple of things to open up early.

Here's the girls opening there Karaoke machine from us....it was fun! Although the boys weren't too big on singing songs for "The Little Mermaid".

Sarah got a set of 8 books written by an author named Karen Katz. They are her favorite books by the way. And I've heard from a very reliable source that a little girl named Amy picked them out especially for Sarah.
Now, here are the kids playing with the boys' totally awesome gift! They got an air hockey table! It has been lot of fun to play and it's fun for kids of all ages (even 30 year olds!!). The other cool thing is that the kids can totally play each other and have fun at it.

So now to the next part of our Christmas. We did things a little different this year. We weren't planning on driving to Omak until Christmas day but there were some storms coming and we were afraid that if we didn't head out while there was a break we may not have made it. So we ended up celebrating our Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with our little (hum..not sure it's too little) family on the 22nd and 23rd. It was a little different but still very fun. Ben had taken a couple days off and ended up having a whopping 16 days off in a row!! That gave us the flexibility to take off whenever we wanted to. On Monday night (the 22nd) we did all of our Christmas Eve stuff which included opening up Christmas jammies and games....

Yup, that's right....even Ben and I got new Christmas jammies:)

Can't really tell here but they got Hi-Ho Cherri-O and Memory from us and they also got a game from Scott and Kimberly.

So after the jammies and games we went ahead and opened the rest of our gifts that we had under our tree. Like I said before, we were really trying to miss the upcoming storm so we wanted to get out of town as early as possible. Funny thing, even with all the prep to get out early we didn't leave until 3 I think it was. I tell you, getting out of the house with 4 kids, 1 dog, 4 suite cases and a bunch of "stuff" is not easy. Plus we had a few last minute stops. Ok, back the the Christmas Eve...sorry about the side track....

We got the boys the Transformers movie in BluRay and this was Jacob's reaction. He was pretty shocked.....

and very excited about his very own Transformer movie!

Sarah figured out pretty quickly how to open up the presents. It was really fun to watch her this year. She wanted to help everyone.

Jacob made us an ornament at school in art class. He was so proud of it. He said "I made it too look like the earth mommy" and it sure does.

We made a call into Santa and asked him if he could come to our house a couple of days early and he said that he would!! He told us that it would be a good practice run ;) The kids were super excited to head down the stairs to see what was down there and I guess, from the look on his face Zac wasn't too happy about having to wait for me to take pictures.

It was so nice that Santa put the first letter of their names on one of the presents so they would know who's was who's. And how in the heck did he know that they needed socks and white t-shirts and that they love bubble gum??!!?

After all the Santa gifts were opened we had a big breakfast and headed out the door to Omak. Once we finally got out the door and on the road the trip was great. The roads weren't bad at all and in the end we were glad that we left the couple of days early. Here's some more pictures of actual Christmas day at Papa and Mamaw's.....

Jacob got a Superman costume and he was thanking Mamaw for it. Do you think he was excited?

I knew that I had some super heros in my family but I had NO IDEA!!

So I guess that about sums up our Christmas. There were a lot of things that I didn't get pictures of that I wish I would have like our wonderful Christmas Eve at Uncle Beetle, Aunt Kelly and Krita's, the fun time we had opening Christmas presents at Grandma and Grandpa's, the great time our kids had dancing with their cousins and much, much more. I do hope that this gives you a pretty good glimpse into our fun though.

I should probably also tell you about our drive home. I'm sure most of you have heard about or experienced our crazy weather. Well when we were trying to figure out when to head home we had to try to miss the storms. So we came home on Monday the 30th thinking that we were missing storms. Well, we were wrong, so, so wrong!! Things were fine for the first half but once we got to Wilbur, the half way point, the weather turned from not so bad to really really bad. It was snowing and it was very windy. They don't mix well when you are surrounded by wheat fields! It took us 3 and a half hours to get from Wilbur to Airway Heights and that's normally just over an hour. The kids did good considering they were stuck in the car for 6 hours, Ben did a great job driving in it but me on the other hand, I didn't do so hot! I thought I was going to lose my mind. I guess I'm a wimp when it comes to winter driving and this was not something that I handled well at all. There were times when my poor husband could hardly see 5 feet in front of him but he kept us on the road and got us home safe and sound. He is my hero!! Not only did he have to deal with the roads, he had to deal with a crazy wife! He did an amazing job and still loves me.

There we go, my first blog in a month is complete. I plan on adding a few more before the day is over but I can't promise. I do promise however not to wait another month....