Keeping the White's

7 kids is no joke.  I thanked my lucky stars no one was in diapers and everyone was fairly self-sufficient.  Only one kid missed getting lunch one day and everyone left alive, so I call that success.

Just sitting at home was not going to fly, but Yuma can be scarce on activities, especially now that the heat has set in.

Friday was especially hot, so we started the day at the library...everyone loves the library, it had to be a hit.  It wasn't until we were walking into the building that the thought hit me "I didn't think this through."  Do you know what 7 kids do in a library?  They scatter.  And fill their arms with mounds of books.  My ideals of spending hours in a quiet, cool building just reading books went out the window and instead I began negotiating who could check out what and trying to figure out how to get all these books home.

That afternoon, we went to the Children's Museum.  It sounds great, doesn't it?  The boys basically played with this control panel for an hour and the girls were bored out of their mind.  It would be nice if they advertised that it was intended for much younger kids.

Saturday, we took the kids to the base pool.  No pictures were taken because there was no time to even think about that when were trying to keep 7 kids alive in a giant pool.  I now have a whole new respect for parents of large families.  From the pool, I took the little boys with me to the commissary and let them ride in the car cart and pick out a snack.  Tolson said this was the highlight of the trip :). Ben took the rest of the crew to Chili Peppers.

Sunday...well, Sunday was Father's Day and I don't have a single picture from the day or a fun post for Ben...but I love you Ben Shear and you are the greatest! and I survived the day!  Ben preached and I wrangled the 7 kids in the congregation.  Ironically, it was Colin who was the most challenging and kept asking when daddy was going to be done talking.

Monday was cool enough to go to the park in the morning, so we went to check out an addition to our favorite Castle Park.

We went to the White's house to swim that afternoon and then started to do their laundry and get them packed up.

I didn't get very many pictures and I started to feel bad, but then I realized it's because they never stopped moving.  

Never in my life have I had to say, "No playing war before 7am!".  

This was literally the only time I caught the boys still enough to get a picture.

But really, this is what was going on:

Did you notice the girls have not been in any of these pictures?  They were hiding in the school room most of the time, just reading or making bracelets.

Alright, we did sit down for a few minutes here and there.  Tolson was really missing his mommy and would ask me to snuggle quite a bit, which made Colin a little jealous so he would jump in too.

It was a loud, crazy, couple of days and our dishwasher broke in the middle of it all, but really I'm thankful that we have friends who trust us with their kids and I'm sure someday I'll miss being woken up in the morning by shooting sounds and swords hitting.