Ahhh

Let me catch my breath. This weather has been absolutely gorgeous which means lots of days playing outside and all together busyness! On Friday night was the Sports banquet for the fall teams. Since GG was on the cheerleading squad she was able to attend. This was our first of many sports banquets I'm sure. It was really cute. And the best part is she won the Charger Spirit Award. I was SO proud of her. What a great award to win as a CHEERleader. Spirit is definitely something you should have an abundance of! I still haven't gotten a picture of her with her trophy...see we have been *that* busy. It is a really quality trophy with her name on it!

Jeff and I had been talking about whether we were going to go look at a van on Saturday all throughout the week with neither of us really committing to spending our Saturday van shopping again our curiosity won out! It was the best priced van we have seen for such low miles.The down side was it was an hour drive from our house. Since we had a ton of time in the van on the way there Jeff said he spent most of it praying that God would show us a clear sign if this was "the one". When we got there we were immediately greeted and shown where the van we were going to look at was. As we drove to the van the fan in our van started acting really funny. We turned the heat off and the fan started blower higher. It was so weird. First sign it was time to get a newer van. We looked at the new van and took it for a test drive. We were sold. Then we started talking price and they dropped the price a lot right off the bat and took our van for more than we were looking for and they gave us a FULL tank of gas. Which one dealership said they would absolutely would not do. This place was so nice and friendly. We drove away with a van with the lowest miles we have ever own in a vehicle. The only funny part of the day was the fact that all the kids loved the new van and wanted us to buy it and when we actually bought and we were driving away three of them started crying over leaving the old van. OY.

Another thing that stuck out in my head about the day was how many of the employees complimented us on the kids behavior. At least 5 people said something about how well behaved they were. I was very proud of them as we were there for at least 4 hours. Ok I'll tell you my secret. The three older kids have a ds and Peanut uses Jeff's ipod and we let them play games in situations like these. They don't have access to their ds at all the times so it makes it special when they get to play. Also they don't get bored playing them. It has worked great for us. I'm not a big fan of letting kids sit infront of a screen as much as they want. And it works in our house!

Today was Monkey's first practice of the season and it was beautiful outside. I think they are going to have a really great team this year. All the boys looked like they knew what they were doing. I am really excited for the games to start up. Plus, a boy whose mom I became friends with last season is on the same team! Good times. This week will probably drag though because on Friday I am heading out of town with some friends from church for a girls weekend/moms conference. I am looking forward to some free time.