Veggies and Vacation

Here's our first zucchini from the Barker family garden. Jonah was so proud - he just kept running around and saying "We're gonna eat it!, We're gonna eat it!". We fried this zucchini up that night and Jonah and Caleb gobbled it up. It's amazing how much better vegetables taste when they are fresh like that... One look at their faces and you can see how hot it was outside!

We went on a little mini vacation on Sunday - Tuesday to Glen Rose Texas. We went with some of our very good friends here in Bonham. Up above is a picture of the boys doing the fossil dig at Dinosaur World.
He doesn't look too concerned about being swallowed by a T-Rex!





Help!!!!

From left to Right top: Jonah, Adam, Michael, Caleb, Cameron, Mandy, Elizabeth, Hannah, Olivia

We call it our Bebarkation! (Bebers and Barkers)

Fossil Rim Wildlife Park in Glen Rose. This is our second time to visit and it is so awesome! I would recommend going at a cooler time of year, but it was still so much fun! The giraffe eats right out of your hand!

Funny story with this one - The ostriches were very aggressive. They would take your bag of food if you had it in plain sight. Adam was feeding one ostrich through the driver side window, while Jonah, Caleb and I were watching intently...I looked over and there was an ostrich staring at me about 2 inches from my face. Needless to say, I screamed and grabbed onto Adam (while Caleb is just sitting there staring at our very close animal friend). I kept screaming because the ostrich just kept coming inside the window. Adam was having the best time watching me scream and be terrified that he was going to bite me or something. Looking back it was a little dramatic, but it's how I felt at the time!...So I kept telling Adam to roll up my window, because he has controls to my window on his side. He just kept laughing, and I kept screaming "Roll up the window!"...Finally, I decided he was having too much fun and he was not listening to my request so I resorted to violence! My instant reaction since my head was buried in his chest was to grab his nipple and twist it so he would know I was serious! I know, I'm awful. He still thought that was funny too...eventually he did close the window. I think he would do it all over again, just to watch me act like a crazy person...and just so you know no one was seriously injured in the process of our vacation!!

Isn't this little baby zebra cute!?

Caleb & Jonah brushing the goats at the Petting zoo at Fossil Rim. Hannah and I watching!

Adam and I posing with the dinosaurs at Dinosaur World. It was probably 103 degrees out there - we did a double time tour of Dinosaur World!



Okay, this is how close the animals get to you at Fossil Rim. This Zebra kept trying to eat our windshield wiper controls! Slobber, slobber everywhere!


Ejoying the animals at Fossil Rim: Mom, Caleb, & Jonah

Relaxing in the pool with the Bebers! Hannah loved her first experience in a pool. I think she could have stayed out there all day! Jonah is getting really good swimming. By the end of the trip he was jumping and swimming under water. He was so proud. Caleb is also a pretty good little swimmer. He is fearless - age 2 and fearless is not a good combination at the pool!

All our sweet kids - Jonah, Caleb, Cameron, Hannah, and Olivia

Enjoying our giant hotel rooms. These were the best hotel rooms, because we each had a separate bedroom and giant living area, so we could put the kids to bed and then the adults could hang out and play games. Fun times!

By the way - Caleb is getting very close to being fully potty-trained! Hooray! I've been begging him for 3 months to do this and he was not having it. A few days ago he just went in the bathroom by himself and went! Ever since he's been doing great, not perfect, but great. We even filled up his potty chart with stickers and went to Chuck E Cheese yesterday! Diaper bill dropping as we speak!!

Summer Days

She's gettin' close to crawling. I feel like I've been saying that forever. She can scoot all over the floor, and pick up every microscopic piece of anything that she can find. I guess my cleaning habits are going to have to pick up a little bit!

This is the result of a mobile little sister...watch out ice cream sandwich!

She even pulled up a few days ago - well, to her knees. She's getting so big. She just bounces up and down when you hold her. She's no longer a still baby - look out world here she comes!

Here's a picture of our first day playing in the sprinkler. You can see Caleb in the background with a bucket on his head. He is always doing funny little things like that. Both of my boys are hams - but each in their own little way. Caleb seems to do it and not care if anyone is looking, and Jonah enjoys the crowd.

Jonah's first baseball team getting their trophies at the baseball ceremony. We had a great season, won every game. Jonah really had fun and learned a lot about patience and diligence. When he came home and showed off the trophy, Caleb wanted one so bad. Daddy went up and found a 1987 trophy from when he was in baseball and gave it to Caleb. He carried it around for the next 2 days, and I think he even slept with it.

Here's a picture of the sanctuary at VBS during one of the music classes. I don't know if you can see it, but on the left there is a 15 foot real sailboat! This year, we were crazy and we wrote our own VBS. Treasure Island: Seeking the Ultimate Treasure. Adam wrote the dramas and helped me get an outline for what we would study and then I wrote the rest. It was a lot of work, a lot of late nights, but a lot of fun! It was great because I could customize it to how our church does things. Adam and I always have fun working together on things like this - I don't know if it would be considered quality time, but I'm so glad I have a husband that loves what I love (and vice versa). This is the preschool/kindergarten class. We had over 95 kids enrolled this year. Praise God! We had one little boy accept Christ as His saviour. And everyone, including workers had a blast! You can see Adam and Mark (our music minister) dressed as pirates. They did the drama every night during the opening ceremony and did an awesome job!

Jonah's 5th birthday party - blowing out the candles. I can't believe my baby is 5!! That sounds so old. He's no longer a preschool age kid. Wow time flies!

Playing a water balloon game. The game sounded good in theory, but after one round I realized there were too many age groups for any sort of organized game so we just all got some and threw them! All that work filling up 100 balloons gone in 30 seconds.
Caleb and Asher hanging out having a conversation. Who knows, maybe they were discussing how to prune this tree?!

Jonah and his buddies hanging out. We had a slippin' slide party.

Mama Gina and Hannah hangin' out trying to stay cool. We were very blessed because we were under a big shade tree and there was a good breeze.
MMMMMM! This was only the beginning of his messiness that night.
Too many kids, not enough blow up thingies.

Woo hoo! At first I thought the kids were not even going to like the slippin' slide, but after a few older boys got there and showed them the ropes they had a blast. We had almost 30 kids there! Pheww!
Here' s the monkey cupcakes - we had a Beach Monkey theme.

And the beach cake. I was very sad, because halfway through I realized I had used the wrong kind of icing. I got whipped icing, so it was too runny to decorate with. It was too late to fix it though, so I just went with it. I really love cake decorating. I obviously do not want to do it for a living. But it's a good creative outlet every once in a while!