sum sum summer time

Yep. Summer is here. We're doing our best to enjoy the hot days and warm nights :0)
(Oh, how I wish I loved the heat like my younger sister P' does!)



We tried a blow up pool! That was fun (and more work than mommy thought it would be, but daddy was excited for them to have some new kind of fun and THEY DID! YAY DADDY!) We let it dry after two days of splashing fun and then brought it in the house where they played in it in the middle of the living room floor for the rest of the week. It has now been happily deflated, folded, and stored back in its box in the closet til the next time we loose our minds and think, "what fun... we'll let the kids splash a while." This will require forgetting the joy of inflating the thing (hint of sarcasm intended). :0)

We went to a wedding -- here's mommy and company all dressed up (the last wedding we went to, I posted a pic of the kids with daddy, so we'll trade this time)








Risky Business (remember that movie? all I recall is that scene where the dude was dancing around in his underwear, socks, and a dress shirt). After the wedding, B' took off his pants and ran around in his dress socks and shirt for a while. Hee hee!

We cleaned out some old files and in proper mommy fashion I saw all those paper shreds and thought... oooh FUN! SOO.... we emptied the toys on the floor and filled the toy buckets with paper shreds, pulled out toy shovels, and made a rainy day go away! Afterward I thanked the Lord countless times for the blessing of having a vacuum cleaner!
Those shreds were EVERYWHERE.

We had a painting day. We learned the difference between watercolors, and acrylic-type paint (textured). They had the best time painting and filling our art-clothes-line from one end of the twine to the other with pictures of all kinds of things. I love how what looks to me like a random mess of smeared paint colors looks just like a boat, the sky, or a house to them. I loved this activity -- all indoors -- out of the heat! Praise the Lord for air conditioning! Did I mention it's HOT outside. :0)

Pretty lady!

B' on the "rocking cow" that Auntie Pamela brought for baby E'. Since she's still too small, B' is enjoying the cow for now. :0) Notice his beloved cowboy hat is on!

HAPPY START TO SUMMER!

and week 38...

We've begun week 38 of this pregnancy. I've never had this much baby belly! :0)

My hips are all out-of-whack, uninterrupted sleep is a distant memory, and I have no lap when I sit down but PRAISE THE LORD there's an end -- sweet baby will surely decide to come out and meet us any day now.

Thursday night my mom came by and gave me a much needed haircut! YAY! I hadn't felt that pretty in a couple of months! It was sad to say goodbye to three inches of hair, but since it was only growing that fast in two places, it was much nicer to welcome a style with some shape.


Here are a few little arrow updates:

The kids ask daily when babynew will be out of mommy's tummy and we just keep saying, "soon."

N' is all about spelling right now. He really wants to be able to read. He's constantly asking us what some set of letters spells when he spots something on a box, book, flier, etc. He loves spelling words on the fridge with the magnetic alphabet and proudly announcing that he's spelled a word. I'm so excited for him. I LOVE to read -- we're talking serious addiction here -- so it's fabulous to watch N' grow more and more interested in making sense out of letters and words on a page.

J' is in a pouty phase the last couple of weeks that will prayerfully end super fast. Everything is worth wailing over: she brushed her elbow against the wall, B' looked at her and she didn't like it, there's a bird in the yard that she doesn't like (usually a crow), someone took the red block she wanted (even though there are 9 more red blocks exactly like it in the set of blocks)... You get the idea. We're working on talking her through it and helping her understand that the drama and false-cry are not effective. More important, they are not pleasing to God as they exhibit a lack of self-control. I can say she's at least trying: if you call her out when she starts faking a cry, she'll just stop and move on (provided that she isn't too far into her dramatic presentation to step out of it quickly) ;0) On the positive side, she's a great conversationalist. She'll come and sit down and just chat about whatever she can think of. We can't wait to see God's purposes in gifting her with such eloquence at such a young age. She loves to watch my belly for signs of action and then point out, "that baby is wiggling in your tummy mommy!" So sweet!

B' surprises us with new words and phrases everyday! We've also discovered that he's great at playing memory. We've been playing board games instead of doing more physical activities since mommy is sort of unable right now. I really didn't think he'd be able to play successfully at all, but he gets a huge kick out of matching up the pictures on the cards and telling you what they are. He's my best helper. If I declare it's time to clean up and say I need helpers, he comes right behind me saying, "I help." Now if only his attention span lasted as long as the average clean up at the end of the day requires :0)

Christmas

One of our favorite times of year -- the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ! It's such a great blessing and privilege to share our faith with our children. We spent this Christmas at home to save money we would have spent in travel and to start to establish our own family traditions for celebrating on Christmas day.



My mom came over on Christmas Eve along with my grandmother who was in town for the holiday. The kids had a grand time eating a special late night (well, it was late for them) snack of popcorn with Nana and getting cuddles and play time with Shirley-the-Great! (Somehow I didn't manage to get a good pic of my mom all evening.)

My mom brought them a pop-up storybook nativity scene with little figurines the first of December, and they re-enacted the Christmas story for her - again! They were pretty good at the story by Christmas Eve. N' loves the angel Gabriel figurine! He mostly enjoyed flying Gabriel all around the family room and skipping the rest of the story. What can I say, he's only 4 :0)


It snowed late on Christmas Eve and continued intermittently into the morning of Christmas Day. We knew from the weather report that it wasn't likely to last long, so before we even ate breakfast, we bundled everyone up and headed for the yard to play in the snow. J' thought it was GREAT! She would have played as long as we allowed.


B', who loves all things athletic, especially throwing and kicking softballs, footballs, and soccer balls; was in love with snowballs! He liked throwing them in the air until he noticed that they broke into a powdery pile when they land so you can't throw them again. Then he took to crushing them between his palms and watching it snow on his shoes. Only hitch, mommy had to make the snowballs for everyone. They didn't catch on and daddy was snapping pics and blocking them from the icy driveway.



N' was the most eager to get out the door to see the snow, but after about fifteen minutes he announced, "This snow is cold and wet. I want to go back inside." With that, he went straight for the door, stepped inside, and waited patiently for the rest of us to follow a few minutes later. They were ready for breakfast after a half hour or so anyway :0).

When the sun's rays reached the backyard around 10am and the snow melted, N said he was glad his grass was back. Hee hee! O well, they can't all be snow lovers like their mommy. PT has some company in N' for preferring to spend wet, chilly winter days indoors.


We had a lovely, quiet, sweet Christmas day. We snacked on fresh pineapple! (That pineapple also helped to glaze the ham.) I made a sour cream pound cake with a brown sugar struesel top for Jesus' birthday cake and we sang Happy Birthday to our precious Lord and Savior!

company came...

My cousin Joe and his wife Michelle were in town the weekend after Thanksgiving to attend a wedding. It was so much fun to have them visit our church service and then come over for dinner at our house.
Here are B' and Michelle after a diaper change. (B loves to run free in his cloth diaper after a change before he puts his pants back on.) He and Michelle were fast friends! There's nothing better than cuddles!

New Mexico is a long way away! What a blessing to see them and spend some time! We had a great day!

giving thanks

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name. Psalm 100:4

We worked on a Thanksgiving unit the past two weeks. We learned about the Mayflower, the Wampanoag Natives, the Pilgrims; and the thanksgiving event of 1621. The bigs didn't like the idea of eating muscles or duck and N' was really concerned about why the native men didn't wear shirts everyday :0) The best part of our studies was learning about giving thanks to God for all of the wonderful blessings He bestows upon us, for who He is, and for His daily care of us.

The kids LOVE collecting fallen leaves in the backyard. They'll move them into piles, sort them into buckets and baskets, gather them in their plastic shopping cart... and then pour them out and do it all over again. So, we made a pile of leaves out of construction paper and wrote whatever they wanted to thank God for. Then we took out the tape (wow do they love tape) and hung them on the back window so they would look like the falling leaves outside. So many precious ways to complete the sentence: Dear Lord, thank you for...


Both N' and J' thanked God for our family, for "leaves that fall down from the trees" and for "mommy and daddy's friends" (which is what they call the praise team singers and band at church).

..........

N' thanked God for "corn that grows" and "[his] toy computer with the counting game on it."
J' was thankful for "[our] crayons." :0) B' enjoyed sticking blank paper leaves to the window, pulling them off, and sticking them on again.

PT and I have a long list of thanks this autumn season, not the least of which includes little B' getting in a good long nap today. He's teething again - two merciless molars on the top - and the discomfort is interrupting his overnight sleep. Is there anything sweeter than watching babies sleep?

Thank you Lord for fall. It's beautiful outside and we're so beautifully blessed in the wonder of Your love for us and the warmth of our love for one another.