The Maxfield Family Photo Shoot

Sorry it took me so long - I only just realized that I never posted these!!! When our family went to St. Augustine in July for our family beach vacation, we hired a photographer to do a photo shoot with us on the beach. BEST money we ever spent! The last time we were ALL together and had our pictures taken (other than Kristen's wedding...) was about 6 six years ago...so there were a few children not pictured (Callie, Caleb, Matthew, and Joseph!), a husband (Chris) not yet part of the family, etc. Plus we crammed into Picture People to do it - it was definitely not ideal!! We were ready for some updated pictures!!!

Fall Playclothes

Doesn't everyone's children play outside in floaties and bathing suits in the middle of fall??

Happy 7th Birthday Jacob!

My sweet baby boy Jacob turns 7 today. I was determined to make the day special for him...even though it fell on a Wednesday. UGH! We started with breakfast donuts...as we always do on birthday mornings :)

He LOVES donuts. That's what he wanted me to bring in for his class. Since his birthday is in October, he always gets the pumpkin-shaped donuts from Krispy Kreme for his birthday. I had sent David to pick up the donuts last night and he came home with sprinkles. Said they didn't have the pumpkin-face ones that night. Made me sad. I'm a sucker for tradition stuff. Jacob asked about it this morning, but was okay with it. I take things like that harder than he does :) He was happy for donuts!

He had one little present from us to open that morning (a new water bottle...his teacher this year lets them keep a water bottle at their desk if they want...he's been asking since school started for a water bottle!) and then got to open my Mom's present that had arrived yesterday. I even let him play his DS for a few minutes (a HUGE treat - we have a "no screens" rule during the school week...)

The younger two and I joined Jacob for lunch...

...and found this smiley little birthday boy sporting a new birthday visor from his teacher. :) I love that he gets so excited about these things. You can always tell exactly how he's feeling from his face (unlike Josiah who is much more like David in his facial expressions!!!) He loved getting to pass out his donuts to his friends at school (and Callie & Caleb were SUPER excited to get in on that action!!!)

The younger kids and I went back home and put some groceries away. A little bit later, I dropped off Caleb & Callie with a neighbor and went to kidnap the big boys from school! I signed them out a bit early (much to their surprise and delight) and took them to....

...the movies to see Cars2!!! They were so surprised and so excited! It was playing at the dollar theatre, and Josiah was the only the one that had seen it (it was his date with David this summer). I had a great time enjoying my two big boys!! We headed home and Jacob got to open up his presents from Aunt Kelli & Gramps! We had about 30 minutes before leaving for church and they were so excited to play....so dinner was a grab & go thank heavens for frozen chicken nuggets kind of night before rushing them into the car...Whew. It was a day. But Jacob enjoyed himself thoroughly. I loved seeing his excitement over the smallest things throughout the day.

Jacob, I am so proud of you. You are growing up to be such a sweet boy and I am so thankful that God gave you to our family! Always remember that God loves you so much and has such wonderful plans for you! Happy 7th Birthday my sweet Jacob Aaron!

Dictionary Day

All of the 3rd graders at PHES were assigned a vocabulary word that they had to dress up as. They made signs at school with the definition and pronunciation on it that they wore during a vocabulary parade that morning. Can you guess what Josiah's word was? :)

AGONY. See how he's acting like he's in agony? :)

He was quite embarrassed about all of this. David drove him to school this morning and told me when he came home that Josiah started freaking out when David went to roll down his window a bit. He told David "Dad! Roll up your window! Someone might see me like this!" :) Hilarious.

Sweetness

Sometimes on the weekends, the kids ask to go to sleep in our bed. It's a funny thing to me - we always move them back to their beds when WE go to sleep, but I think it must be something about them getting to sleep all together. When we came to bed on this night, I found Jacob and Callie with their arms intertwined! :) Sweetness!

Jacob's Birthday Celebration

Jacob's birthday is next Wednesday. Not the best day of the week in this family to have a birthday on unfortunately. So we decided to celebrate on Saturday when we were actually going to be together! After a fun morning of football/cheer (and Jacob scored a TOUCHDOWN in his game), we headed home for Jacob to open his presents from us.

Jacob saw this "toypedo gun" in the store at the beginning of the summer. He wanted it so badly and I bought it on sale at the END of summer with intentions of saving it for next year for a "happy summer" present. I was shocked when he listed it on his birthday list but I went ahead and gave it to him. He was SO excited! :) Kind of funny that he can't use it for another 6 months though....

David came back from his run to find Callie sitting in her window...she was supposed to be having rest time....and she got a huge lecture from David about how the screen could have fallen out and she could have fallen out, etc, etc. Goodness gracious girl!

Caleb had a super hard time falling asleep. Cried for a long time (totally out of character) He's had a bit of a cold and so when he woke up after only an hour, I got him out of his bed and brought him downstairs with me where I was reading. He laid his head down, and so we both slept for another 1.5 hours!! Sweet boy. David took this picture but decided to leave my mouth hanging open :) At least you know it was a real picture!

The boys spent most of the afternoon playing outside with some of Jacob's new birthday toys. Then we headed to dinner at Outback - huge treat but we had our FREE steak dinner coupons to use! :) Great excuse! Jacob was SO excited when they brought his free ice cream and sang happy birthday to him! :)

After we got home, we put the younger two in bed and the rest of us enjoyed a game of Disney Cranium before bed.

Enjoyed some birthday cake...

...which Jacob ate one bite of and then said he wanted to "save" it because he was so tired!! :)

The Sing-Off

David decided that after showers, the kids ought to be introduced to acapella music...and they were fascinated! They watched about 5 minutes of "The Sing-Off" before we read books for bed and loved it. They especially loved the beat-boxers...my kids are great at making noises with their mouths so that's not shocking! :)

Cute Babies are Distracting!

During cheerleading practice, I was talking with my friend Allison and loving on her sweet baby girl, Alyssa (whom Caleb is totally in love with....). Callie kept watching us and eventually dropped her poms mid-cheer and came over to me and said "Mommy, can I just please hold her?" I made her wait until the end of practice, but I can't say that I blame her? Baby Alyssa is just adorable! :)

The Angel Gabriel

I'm afraid that my husband is losing it. He was helping to relocate the costume/prop closets from our old building today and he sent me this picture....oh my....(and now I'm feeling sorry for his sweet assistant who was forced to take this picture of him....)

We made it to Thursday. Short weeks usually feel nice and short - but not this one. This one felt just as long and crazy as a "normal" week. So I'm glad that tomorrow is Friday! We discovered McAlister's Deli tonight for the first time ever - did you know kids eat free Monday, Tuesday, AND Wednesday nights? And even better than that, you can get TWO free kids meals for each adult meal that you purchased. (Which means for our family, ALL four kids would be free when David & I buy dinner) Score! Good to know and file that one away.

My sweet baby boy Jacob is turning 7 next week. I can't handle it. Good thing he still LOVES to climb up in my lap and will ask me to carry him upstairs when he's super tired. 7 is very old. His birthday is on Wednesday. A hard day in this family, so I have some special things that I am scheming up that will hopefully make it special until we can celebrate as a family over the weekend....

PB&J

My kids are the only ones on the planet that do not like pb&j. I don't like it either, which is why David blames me for their dislike. Jacob is adamantly opposed to all things peanut butter or nuts, but they have both declared that they love jelly. So they decided we could give it a try...

Josiah said he "loved" it and asked for it in his lunchbox the next day...but he only ate half of it, so I'm not totally believing him yet...sigh...