Mother's day pictures

So on mother's day I used my rights as mom and forced all of my children to dress up and get pictures taken. Needless to say it's not their favorite activity, but I really like to take pictures of them. Here is our mother's day feast: A picnic of freezer burritos in our luscious back yard.

Michelle

Nathan, he was hilarious. I couldn't get him to give me a normal smile and he ran up and changed into play clothes while I wasn't looking.

gangsta Nate

Blue steele. His attempt at a model face.

Samantha on the tire swing.

Samantha.

Samantha

John

Joseph

All the kids plus a crying baby on the trampoline.

The boys minus Nathan.

The girls.

Kate

The girls taken by Joey.

NEW CAR!

So, at the beginning of the year I had a goal of posting new things here at least once a month. I did pretty well until May, and then it all went to pot. To begin with, some time around the last week in April our minivan died. I was driving all over the countryside trying to round up applications for cub scout day camp so that we could get the early bird discount when my car just died at a stop light in the middle of Ansonia. I got some strangers to help me pull off the road and waited for Justin to save me. That was about the 5th time that had happened this year and I was just done. So, we started car shopping. There really weren't a lot of options out there for large families. Having lived with a minivan for the last 5 years I was sure I was done with those, just not enough space. That only left 12 passenger vans and large SUV's. THough the SUV's were definately cooler, they still didn't allow us to haul any extra kids. So we bought a 2008 Ford E350.

We were loving the extra space, but kind of hating parking and driving next to semis . . . fast forward 2 weeks and the transmission started going out. What. . . WHAT!! I just paid tons of money for a new car so I wouldn't have to deal with these problems any more!! Luckily the car was under warranty, so we took it in. Ford of course had to fix everything before they finally were able to really pin point the problem. It took 6 WEEKS for us to get our car back. Luckily we got to drive a cute little chevy traverse during that time that the dealership paid for. It was annoying but in some ways it was kind of good to remember why exactly we had decided to go big. We've had our big van back for 2 weeks now and it's great to have the extra room. I was able to drive all the boys in our pack to cub scout day camp (and my extra kids). Also, we were able to take some friends with us to Rhode Island on Friday for a fun beach day. It was great! I think we made the right choice.

Anyway, back to my original point. My camera was in the van while it was being fixed so I couldn't post any new pictures. For what ever reason I can't seem to make myself post anything without pictures so that's why I had such a long absence. Hopefully from now on I will be able to keep up my once a month posting schedule.