Adventures with 4 kids

We have been watching our nieces, Taylor and Madison, on Saturdays while Sarah has been working.  It is always fun, because the boys absolutely love their cousins.  It has also been kind of like an experiment seeing what it would be like if we had 4 kids. 

Two Saturdays ago we thought it would be a good idea to go bowling with the kids.  They were so excited!  So we piled into the car and off we went to Rancho Bowl in Santa Maria since our local bowling alley was closed a couple of years ago.  Boo hoo! 

We originally thought we would rent the lane for an hour, but the guy working there thought it would be a better deal for us to play 2 games.  We get the kids set up with bowling shoes and off we go to our lane.  Of course, along the way, Caleb wanted to try to pick up the bowling balls.  I don’t really know what the guy working there was thinking because he put us in a lane right in the middle of everything.  After playing a couple of frames, we realized we would only make it through one game, so John went and got a refund on the second game.

Micah just didn’t want to smile for the camera, but you know I have to take a picture!

 

All 3 of the big kids had to go down to roll the ball down the lane.

 

It was my turn to bowl, so I went out and promptly lost the ball while I was trying to bowl.  It went backwards!  I have never done that before.  This is a picture of me trying to catch it.  Thanks, John for your amazing photographic skills!  We’ll just chalk that up to the fact that it’s been years since I bowled.

You may be wondering why there are no pictures of Caleb.  Well, that would be because he was having a meltdown.  I really should have taken a picture so that you could get the full understanding of how much he enjoyed his visit to the bowling alley.  There was a great photo op of him face down in the lane crying his heart out.  He wanted so badly to pick up the bowling balls…it didn’t matter whose they were, and to roll them down the lane.  I just kept picturing little broken toes.  John tried to help him roll the ball, but when the ball got halfway down the lane, he wanted it to come back.  He didn’t have much patience for that.  So John and I ended up taking turns keeping him otherwise occupied while the big kids bowled.

Madison and her look of triumph after rolling her ball.  That thing is just zooming down the lane!

If you look closely at Micah’s ball, it looks like he might make a strike.  But it would get that far down the lane and then veer left.  So no strikes were to be had that day.

And here is Madison demonstrating the perfect posture for the granny-style of bowling.

You might think that we had had enough of attempting new things with 4 kids.  But you would be wrong!  We are gluttons for punishment!  We decided to go to the mecca of bulk buying…Costco!  On a Saturday!!!

We decided to go with really fine dining for our lunch.  We ate in the food court at Costco.  It really is quite good for the pocketbook for a family of 6.  Then there are all the samples.  No trip to Costco is complete without roaming up and down the lanes in search of the best samples.

We decided that the best way to get our samples was to send John and the rest of us waited out of the way of traffic.  Saturdays at Costco are crowded!  Here are the big kids waiting in the Costco jungle while John retrieved their samples.  They are pretending to look through their binoculars…you know, since they’re in the jungle.

Here they are holding hands on the way back to the car.  All in all, I think it was a pretty good trip. 

 

Our experiment wasn’t done yet.  This past Saturday, Toys R Us was giving away free Thomas and Friends trains.  We had already decided to take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese, so we went to Toys R Us as well.  They got their free trains, and of course we had to pause for a photo op on the Mickey Mouse fire truck.

There are no pictures from Chuck E. Cheese’s because it was just too crowded. 

So, what did we decide about having 4 kids, you may ask? 

1) We enjoy our two boys

2) We enjoy spending time with our nieces

3) We love them, but it is nice at the end of the day to only have 2 kids to get ready for bed.

4) We’ll just have to see what God has in store for us, but it will never be boring!

Thank You, Lord

I just wanted to share a sweet Micah story with you.  We were in big boy church yesterday…that’s what Micah calls it.  Here at North Avenue, the kids come into the church service at age 3 and then go in to children’s church before we have the sermon. 

We usually have something in Micah’s backpack to keep him occupied…aka quiet.  But the past couple of weeks he has been wanting to sing along with the songs.  He can’t see above everyone so John normally holds him so he can see the screen, even though he can’t read yet. 

Well, yesterday we were singing, “Thank You Lord.”  Micah was telling John that he wanted to sing too.  This was perfect because most of the song is pretty repetitive.  So John is holding him and every time I look over, Micah is moving his lips.  At first I couldn’t hear him, but towards the end of the song he was really singing the song.  And I could hear him singing the words.  It sure makes a mama proud!

As you know, I’m a pretty mushy person, so of course I started getting tears in my eyes.  Don’t tell John I told you, but he teared up too.

So yesterday afternoon the boys are playing around.  John had fallen asleep on the couch and I’m cleaning up the kitchen.  Micah is playing, and then I hear him start to sing…"Thank you Lord.  Thank you Lord.”  It was SOOO sweet. 

He then started to make the song his own, as the judges on American Idol would say.  He started singing, “Thank you Lord for making Mama and Daddy and Caleb.”  And the waterworks began again!  Stupid hormones!  But it was just so sweet.  I was sad that John didn’t get to hear him sing his song since he was asleep.  He sure missed out!

I love that sweet boy, and I’m glad to be able to hear these beautiful things he says…or sings, and share them with you.

The HD Raceway

This morning we took the boys to Home Depot.  On the first Saturday of every month, Home Depot has a Kids Workshop where the kids get to build different things.  This month was the HD Raceway.

 

This is a nice thing that Home Depot offers.  It is free for the kids, and they get a cute little orange apron just like the employees wear with their names on them.

Here’s the boys getting ready to start making their projects.  They both wanted to wear hats this morning once they saw John putting on his hat.  They want to be just like their daddy!

Micah did really great, even though this project is geared for ages 5-12.  He helped John put the pieces together, and helped apply the wood glue.  John even had him help hammer the nails into the racetrack.

Caleb was a different matter.  He did great at the beginning but he also wanted to use the wood glue.  Except that he wanted to put the wood glue into his mouth.  And when I took it away from him, that was the end of the world.  I’m such a mean mama!  Things just proceeded to go downhill from there.  He was a little cranky from then on out.  That was most likely because it was getting close to nap time. 

Here’s Micah with his finished project.  He didn’t want to look at the camera while I took a picture.  We decided that we were going to paint the racetrack when we got home and then apply all the cool stickers that came with the kit.

We had a lot of fun.  It really is a great thing that Home Depot does to get kids interested in building things.  We are planning on going next month, where the project will be building window birdhouses. 

The Stults Family

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