August at our house...

Solar oven S'mores with Michael, Nathanael, Benjamin, and Emilie

Christopher on the back of the rocking chair

Emilie being herself

Benjamin and Michael made bread... Benjamin's was kneaded with the kitchenaid and a different recipe than Michael's, below, but both turned out GREAT.

Michael's bread

Nathanael grinning

Christopher, age 17 months

Samuel, close up.

Timothy being particularly photogenic.

oh and our solar oven again.

This has been a great month. Finished up some of our summer homeschool stuff, got a lot of Scout stuff done, getting ready for school, Timothy using new words, no major illnesses or accidents or ER trips, lol... started the month with a temple trip... Michael got his Star in Boy Scouts and Benjamin got his Webelos and is well on his way to earning his Arrow of Light. Emilie is busy with Activity Days and working hard on that. She starts ballet again on Friday and is very excited. Tonight is a pack meeting but we've also gone to two Court of Honors, one for an Eagle Scout we know. Our project right now is organizing everything in our dining room to be ready for our homeschool year. Another project is getting ready for baby girl.

Just our updates!

Baby 9 has a name :)

We have decided on a name for our baby girl number 2, or, baby 9 as we also affectionately refer to her.

Liberty Rose :)

Tom's grandmother's name was Emilie Liberty... and we already have the Emilie... Liberty seems to fit our little independent mover here. We like our tradition of using scriptural/Biblical/traditional names for our boys and family names for our girls...

Rose comes into play on both sides of the family, if you look back far enough.

We don't usually share our baby names once we decide on them, either, but we did with Emilie... so here goes with Liberty, too :)

We can also be cute and say the poor girl, she was born during this administration and her parents chose her name accordingly....

Anyway, wanted to share. No pictures this time, though we might have another ultrasound to share before she's born in 10 weeks or so.

our family, July 25th

This is from our trip to the Lubbock, Texas temple as part of a Primary activity with our ward. It was a great activity! It was hot and everyone was thirsty and tired after the long car drive and then walking around the beautiful temple grounds in the sun.

However, still very worth it, the kids will remember this for a long time.

less than 100 days...

til baby girl will be here.

We can count down now in just 2 digits, eek!

I'm not ready!

At least we still have 3 months left.

We do NOT have any names yet.

We do have a few clothes, I figure we have everything we need for 0-3 months as far as clothes go. It's bigger sizes that are short... after 9 years we just didn't hold on to a lot of girl stuff :)

Time to move Christopher into the younger boys' room and get our room set up for another newborn. Not too much longer before I start washing baby clothes and receiving blankets.

We have the car seat, we know how we're moving around car seats in the car also... Samuel goes back a row, Timothy goes back to Samuel's seat and baby girl will be on the same row as Christopher.

Weird thinking that baby girl may be born during cold, hot or in between weather. Here in Texas it could really be all of the above the last week of October, first week of November. Usually cooler but not cold yet.

Just thinking out loud. The one who is the most excited is Emilie. We did find a matching dress for the baby, it matches (or is close in color and style) to one of Em's dresses. We have Emilie's blessing dress too and planning on blessing the baby around Thanksgiving.

Are we ready to be a family of 10? (11 counting Joseph!) 10 people in a 12 passenger van... crazy. Oh, and we will have to add a sticker to the back window, haha.

No pictures to share this time. Just talking about the next few months!