Funny things the kids have said this week

Zeke just told me that Greta is a funny girl. We all knew that, but Zeke being able to communicate it is hilarious!
He also told me about 1/2 hour ago that he needed more medicine. It turns out, he was right! It had been about 4 hours since his last dose of ibuprofen (he woke up with a fever this am). Since when did my baby become so mature that he could both sense and communicate something like that?

Yesterday afternoon Zeke was wandering around the house asking, "Where Habey go?" Habey is his name for his little cousin Haley (combination of Baby and Haley, we think). She was here Thur-Sat when our families were in town for Steve's graduation and he obviously misses her. It was so sweet.

Carly tells me that on Saturday she was having a conversation with Greta about Greta wanting to be a mom when she grows up. Carly was telling her how great that is b/c our society need good moms -- some kids don't even have moms, she told Greta. Greta's response: "Yea, they get to watch TV!"

Grace is attending an American Girl themed Bible Daycamp this week hosted by a really cool girl at Grace Community named Annie. This morning when I dropped off Grace and her friend Hannah, Annie's mom told me that yesterday when discussing the best parts about summer Grace (in very dramatic fashion) added "A Break from SCHOOL!" 2 day a week preschool must be really tough :)

Introducing Dr. Lindemann!

Oh, what a weekend! Including our own family, there were 8 adults and 5 kids living at our house Thur - Sat, and I have to admit I was a little nervous about how that would work out. Although, we love to open our home to our family and friends (we truly believe that God has given us a home to share it with others, not just to use it for ourselves) and were recently lamenting that we haven't done so more in our "new" house, so we were looking forward to the opportunity. No matter how much you love each other, though, that's still a lot of people in a relatively small space. (Hopefully) everyone would agree that it really was a great, even strangely (despite the chaos) relaxing weekend. We planned a few activities to get everyone out of the house and proactively minimize the obvious likelihood of people getting on each others' nerves, but ended up not even doing all of the few things we had planned.

Steve did such an awesome job not only this weekend in presenting and defending his work, but also in actually doing the work during his career at Iowa, that I hear his committee didn't really even question him, much less grill him as one might expect. Ben (one of his committee members who hung out at our house the rest of the afternoon on Friday) described the defense as "much more of a discussion".

Some pictures from the weekend:

First, the fast-becoming obligatory shot of Haley and Elias together.

Steve looking very relaxed just prior to giving his seminar, despite the need to call for backup on getting the powerpoint up and running.

Steve looking even more relaxed celebrating his degree completion.

All the girls prepping favors and notecards for the big party!

The final product


Special thanks to Amanda and Abbie Chidister for Steve's awesome "Rabbit Fever" cake! It just happened to be Elias's 5 month birthday. Most of you probably know this already, but for all 4 kids we've always baked a cake and taken a picture with whoever we happen to be with on the evening of their month birthdays until they're 1 year old. I'm pretty sure the is the biggest crowd we've had to date! It's also just cool to have a photo record of so many of the people that came out to celebrate Steve's accomplishment.

Probably the funniest thing that happened all night was this long row of black curtains that had obviously been set up for Sunday morning crashing to the floor and Zeke just waltzing out from underneath it all as if nothing had ever happened. I could never describe it well enough, so here's what you have to do. Mentally merge the next two photos (replacing Grace with Zeke and pretending that the curtains are on the ground). If someone could actually do that for me with photoshop or something, I would be forever grateful. I was so bummed that my camera wasn't in my hand at that moment.



A few of our awesome friends and family that traveled to come celebrate with us:

Linda (with Ethan)

Aunt Betty, Uncle Davis, Yiayia, and Papa

Ashleigh and Paige (with Elias)

Val and Madelyn

The Funston/Calaway Family

Party Snacks

My girls, especially Greta, LOVE to help in the kitchen, so I thought making a tasty snack mix would be a super-easy way for them to participate in prepping for Steve's grad party. Our concoction consists of all of the orange picked out of 2 huge bags of m&m's and 4 bags of reeses pieces, 4 boxes of Annie's bunny graham's, 1 box of golden grahams, the largest container of honey roasted peanuts I've ever seen, and most of a huge box of honey nut cheerios. They had more fun that I even expected sorting all that candy (and eating a few, of course!).

A boy and his dog

My favorite holiday!

To illustrate why we call our blog "Crazy 8" here we are -- all 8 of us in the minivan! Despite what should be an 3.5 hr ride taking more like 5 hours, our car DVD player being out of service (a big thanks to Papa for fixing it over the weekend!), and it being Mackey and Keady's first ride together, everyone was in remarkably good spirits!

Unsurpisingly, the fireworks were a hit with the kids. Zeke was so funny! His running commentary during the display went something like this:

OOOOOOOOOOOH! BIG! BIG! REALLY BIG! BIGGIE! BIGGIE BALL! repeated in a continuous loop.

Praise God for giving us a nation where we can celebrate freely and with such an abundance, and even more importantly have corporate, public worship and fellowship that his Name may be praised and glorified loudly and publicly. Sunday morning we were priveleged enough to spend worshipping our Abba Father in Centennial Park with all of our Munster/Hammond family. The Calaways et al pulled off an amazing tribute to God and our country.

I'm convinced that it's required for it to either be raining or have a heat index of at least 100 on the 4th of July in Munster, IN. At least, I can't remember a year that was anything different. As you can see below, this was a hot one. We tried everything we could to keep cool at the parade including seeking shade, an umbrella and Nate's broken umbrella chair thingy, a baby sun tent, stripping, purchasing things at Dairy Queen mostly to take advantage of their AC, at least a dozen slushies and frozen lemonades, and lots of water.

Finally, the parade is coming! The kids were so hot that by about 1/2 way through they weren't even picking up the candy thrown directly at their feet.

Notice the popcicle in 1 hand and lollipop in the other. Can you say sugar coma?

Later at Nonni and Poppi's house -- Lovin our Haley May!

It was a fantastic weekend celebrating my favorite holiday with our families, especially my sister who is my July 4 buddy. My mom managed to instill in both of us that 4th of July is unquestionably the best holiday by doing everything from hand sewing 4th of July print outfits, to letting us light fireworks in the driveway from a very young age (a tradition we continued with Grace and Greta this year -- only we did it in the backyard. It was fun, but the trees complicated things a bit!), and co-organizing a neighborhood bike parade complete with police escort. Thanks mom! Somehow my brother has decided he prefers Thanksgiving, but we're pretty sure that's just because he likes to eat!