Waiting for Grandmommy...

David's mom, Grandmommy, is flying up to see us today. We are SO excited for her to come visit us - Callie has never met her before, and we don't get to see her as often as we'd like since she lives all the way down in Memphis. She missed her connecting flight, so although she was supposed to be in at 2:30 pm today, now she won't make it until almost 6 pm. The bummer is that we won't get to pick her up - we are singing in the praise & worship concert at church tonight so she'll come straight to church from the airport. We're very excited though!! The boys are trying to be patient, because they thought she would be here when they woke up from their naps, but alas....

Free Movies!

My friend Judy reminded me that the season of free movies is here!!! Regal Cinemas do free G & PG movies on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during the summer. Here's the schedule for the theatre closest to me - I wonder what we'll go see first! :)

06/17/2008-06/18/2008
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (G)
Ice Age: The Meltdown (PG)

06/24/2008-06/25/2008
Pirates Who Don't Do Anything - Veggie Tales (G)
Evan Almighty (PG)

07/01/2008-07/02/2008
Everyone's Hero (G)
Bee Movie (PG)

07/08/2008-07/09/2008
Arctic Tale (G)
Shrek The Third (PG)

07/15/2008-07/16/2008
Running Free (G)
Hairspray (PG)

07/22/2008-07/23/2008
Clifford's Really Big Movie (G)
Alvin And The Chipmunks (PG)

07/29/2008-07/30/2008
Mr. Bean's Holiday (G)
Happy Feet (PG)

08/05/2008-08/06/2008
Charlotte's Web (G)
Water Horse: Legend Of The Deep (PG)

08/12/2008-08/13/2008
Wallace And Gromit (G)
Surf's Up (PG)

mommy ALWAYS knows best!

When I took Josiah to his bed today at 2:00 pm...literally kicking and screaming "I don't need a nap", I gently reminded him that it's been a full week, up LATE last night because of small group, and we'll be up late again tonight for a rehearsal at church David & I have to be at for the praise & worship concerts this weekend at church. He insisted he was NOT tired, did not need a nap, etc, etc. As I knew he would be, he was completely asleep in 2 minutes, and is STILL asleep after 2 hours. Mommy ALWAYS knows best!

This is what you may find if your husband and 5 year old disappear on a Monday afternoon...

David put Josiah up on our shed and they had a bit of a photo shoot! It's a good thing I wasn't around to see it happen!

First Popsicles of the Season

Callie was supposed to be just having licks from mine, but quickly determined she wanted to hold her OWN!

Saturday at the Beach

We seem to have a knack for meeting other families at the beach with two boys! Our boys all had so much fun playing together. This was their 4 year old, Matthew - he and Josiah were doing push-ups together!!!
Here are our 2 boys and their 2 boys (Matthew and Mason). Mason was their 2 year old, and reminded us SO much of Jackson (Williams). He is the one with the blonde hair, and really resembled him! Beth, I wish I got a closer picture, but I didn't want the parents to think I was a freak!


The boys were just chillin' while Daddy was working hard on their tunnel.

Happy Fake Monday!

The Tuesday after a long weekend always feels like Monday to me. We had such a GREAT long weekend - lots of pictures to post with later. Just a quick check in because I've got to get my house in order - our small group is meeting over here tonight, so I have a FEW things to try and get in order after all our FUN FUN FUN this weekend! My run this morning was a hard one - I don't know if it was the heat, or if my legs were tired from yesterday's run, or WHAT - but I skipped Mile 6 and stopped with 5 miles. Oh well. After Callie's morning nap (which always has to be abbreviated on Tuesdays), we headed to our last storytime of this session (hence the reason callie has to be woken up early on tuesdays). It was great fun and then we headed to the pool with the Judd boys. Other than my kids being upset that the judd boys weren't coming HOME with us, it was a GREAT morning! :) Now, off to clean!

Chapman Family

I just read on FoxNews that Steven Curtis Chapman's 5 year old daughter was killed yesterday by an SUV driven by her teenage brother. So tragic and so sad. Pray for their family - what an incredible testimony they have had in the world throughout his music career, and also lately with their adoptions of 3 of their girls from China. For a mom whose kids are constantly riding bikes and playing in the cul-de-sac, I can't imagine the grief they are feeling. Pray for the Chapmans.

DVR Disaster!!

Big finale night last night - Idol's finale was on, and it was so GREAT! We started watching at about 8:45 (we don't watch anything live anymore) and really enjoyed the show. David's (my husband, that is) favorite part was the George Michael medley - he thought it was great. When they first started the song, he got all excited and said "they HAVE to have him here tonight...George Michael's got to be here!" He loved it. So then we get to the final moment - the announcement of who the winner is. Ryan Seacrest says, "And the winner...of American Idol 2008....is.....David......" and our DVR clicks off!!! The show ran long, and I never set the DVR to tape it 5-10 minutes over the allotted time (like sometimes I'm smart enough to do). It was hilarious! Literally - it cut off RIGHT before announcing the winner. Luckily, we live in the age of technology and were able to run into the office and pull up on the computer who the winner was. Very exciting. Good thing I voted 15 times the other night!! We missed his final song though, and it wasn't up on youtube last night, so I'll have to check tonight to here it.

Excitement!

Lots of excitement last night....MAJOR thunderstorms in the late afternoon yesterday. David came home and found us all playing cars in the boys room. He told us to come outside - our neighbor's (2 houses down) tree had fallen on a parked car in our court. Nobody was hurt, but lots of mess and craziness for a while after that (calling insurances, calling the city, etc, etc). We took a walk after dinner up to the mall that is behind our house to see where the roof had blown off in 2 places. We found the world's biggest puddle in the parking lot on our way home. The boys rode their bikes through it and played - it LITERALLY was up to their knees!! I was so mad I didn't have my camera. The boys thought it was the best! We got home and watched the American Idol finale and voted for David COOK about 15 times. I'm worried that Archuletta is going to win...sigh...and we're going to have to listen to ballads all night on tonight's results show if he does win. Ugh. Then watched the results show from Dancing with the Stars - I won't blow it in case someone DVR'd it, but it was fun! Love finale season!!! Today we played outside and watched the city's trucks come and chop up the tree and get most of it cleared out of the street. Lots of fun stuff. Thankful that we were fine throughout these storms. Josiah just came in a minute ago all excited and told me I HAD to come and see Jacob RIGHT NOW (sometimes that is a BAD thing). He was so excited to show me what a GREAT job his brother was doing coloring. How I love these boys and how much they LOVE each other!

Guess what book we got at the libary??

GREEN EGGS AND HAM!!!!
Josiah actually mentioned it to me yesterday that he wanted to make this. So after storytime today, we checked out the book again and made this for lunch. Of course the boys LOVED it!
Don't let her face fool you - she gobbled it all up. She was just annoyed that I was interrupting her lunch to take a picture of her.

Carnival Fun

We went to our city's local carnival on Sunday afternoon. The boys definitely enjoyed the rides, but this little craft tent was their favorite. They got to make some sand art, and this picture shows them doing "spin art" on some frisbees they got to take home. Free fun - this was the best part!
They were going too fast for the action shots to be any good, so this will have to do. They LOVED these swings!
This is how Callie saw the fair!
Me and my boys on the ferris wheel - it was the first time for all 3 of us!! My stomach definitely lurched forward a bit the first time up...there's something about rides that can be packed up on the back of a truck that makes me a bit nervous....
The kiddie roller coaster - they thought it was hilarious (again, don't mind the duct tape on the handlebars!!!!)

It was fun - we walked there to avoid paying for parking (it's just a money trap - these fairs) and made it back to our car JUST before the rain started!!! We had fun, and we were able to go home and make our first batch of homemade ice cream of the season. We intended to do strawberry, but Jacob requested Oreo ice cream first, so that won out. We'll have to wait until next weekend for the strawberry ice cream.

Bad to Worse

Good thing the first part of our Saturday was so wonderful, because the last hour of it has been ROUGH! Tonight was David's first softball game of the summer with the church league, and unfortunately, the schedule was for him to play at 8 & 9 pm. You all KNOW that is WAY past Schrodt children's bedtimes. However, with strawberry picking fun this morning, they all had late naps so we decided to try and make an appearance to cheer for the first game at least. We lasted about 30 minutes before having to take some fit-throwing boys home early. Good grief. The evening went from bad to worse when, while washing them off in the bathtub, I found a tick on Jacob's back. Sigh. At least everyone's in bed now...off to hull some more strawberries!

Strawberry Picking Time!

Strawberry picking May 2007 - LAST YEAR!!! I can't believe how much Josiah has grown (and thankfully I have shrunk...good grief!)

Josiah and Jacob - I just can't believe how little they both look!
And this was Callie last year in her strawberry picking outfit!!

STRAWBERRY PICKING - MAY 2008

Callie had SO much fun walking up and down the rows of strawberry plants...happy as can be!
The two best buddies - they were good workers too!

We asked a lady to take a picture of all 5 of us...and she took about 5 pictures like this - before anyone was set or ready! It was so funny when we got back to look at them!

We all wore RED today in honor of strawberries! (Josiah wanted to wear green shorts like the "stem" but I forbade it....)

They were SO intent on getting only the perfect ones. Josiah, my little pleaser, showed me EVERY berry he picked - he was so proud of them!
Got one shoe off...the other one followed closely behind!
YUMMY!

I remember blogging about strawberry picking last year, because it was one of my first posts. I remember posting about the strawberry ice cream and how yummy that was! It was so funny to look back at the pictures from last year and see how much the kids have grown. We had a great time this morning - although we missed our extra helpers...last year Mom & Kristen were here to help!!! It was a perfect morning!

Two Giraffes

Callie and Carter both had on giraffe shirts today - go figure!
Boy Giraffe...
Girl Giraffe...
Somehow, scraped knees on girls look much more pathetic than on boys...they sort of look like they "belong" on the boys - because they are ALWAYS there. Callie's a tough one though - I didn't even notice she had this until I picked her up to go in. Whenever she fell and did it, she just got back up and kept going!

I have the Power to Read!!

We discovered a new show on PBS while we were at Tutu's house last week. It's called "Super Why" and is fabulous! It's about a little boy named Wyatt that dresses like a super hero, and his power is "The Power to Read". He has little friends who have the powers of spelling, etc, etc. When they have a question, they "look in a book" - it's all stories and reading. Beth told me about this show several months ago, but we never got around to seeing it. The boys normally watch either Curious George or Little Einsteins after they wake up in the morning, and then that's it for the day. Well, they LOVED "Super Why" last week and have chosen that as their show each morning this week!


It's really resonating with Josiah because his reading has really taken off in the last two weeks. I pulled out this set of "Bob" books that my mom had gotten him a few months back, and he went to town reading them this morning! He has always loved books, and he thinks it is so cool that he can read them himself now! I couldn't help but record him! I'm so proud of my little super reader! There's something about seeing it all click into place that just excites the teacher in me! It's the beginning of a whole new phase of learning for him. So this video is primarily for daddy, Tutu, & Aunt Kelli who I KNOW will love seeing this! (Well, never mind about the video - for some reason I can't get it to upload. Oh well!)

Another Convert!!!

It's official - David is signed up and registered for HIS first half-marathon!! He'll be running in the Rock & Roll Half-Marathon here on August 31, 2008!!! He's going to do GREAT!!!

Happy Mother's Day!

We had dinner at Pei Wei's - it's owned by PF Chang's, and is the same food, but more of a "fast food" type environment...and cheaper. Totally delicious..and of course the boys loved the chopsticks!! Notice Callie posing?!
Mom opening her present from the four sisters...
We had a book made with all our pictures from our Williamsburg trip back in February. It turned out SO great! Took lots of colaboration and cooperation, but we were so excited to see the finished product, and Mom was so excited. The book turned out so great that all four sisters got a smaller copy of it too to remember the weekend!

Seriously - how many shoes can my family possibly bring? Actually, Mom bought the kids Crocs, so that added to the pile, but this was hilarious! Sorry mom!
How blessed I am to get to be the mother to these sweet children!
Callie LOVED playing Tutu's piano with her!


What a wonderful weekend we had with my Mom. I was so thankful to be able to spend Mother's Day with her. My kids have an incredible relationship with her, and I am so grateful for the bond that she has with each of them. She is such a tremendously encouraging mom to me, and I strive to emulate some of that for my own kids. Thanks for having us for the weekend, Mom!

We got home safe and sound last night a little before midnight. The weather was terrible driving home - it was a monsoon! - but we were safe, and the kids slept so it worked out. I always love the drive home because the kids are all totally out and I have 3 hours of quiet to catch up with all of my sisters on the phone while I drive! It was great to see David when we got home, and he showed me all the things that he was busy doing while we were gone. He finished several projects that we've had laying around for quite a while - painting doors and trimwork in the hallway, building a shelf for our new entertainment center, staining the cabinet we replaced over the microwave, fixing the doorbell, replacing the hardware on our fence - he was a busy boy!! It was a great Mother's Day present for me!

Mothering is a hard job - the hardest one I've ever done. I know that I fall short so many times. It's exhausting some days to have 3 small children at home with me all day every day. I know that there are things I wished I had done better. But I do my best and I want more than anything else for my kids to know that I love the Lord, that I love their dad, and that I love them wholeheartedly. I don't care if they know other moms that keep a cleaner house, or that has made a better scrapbook than me, or can decorate a house like a catalog. I just them to grow up to love and serve the Lord with their whole hearts, and to know just how much they are loved.

Fun Food at Tutu's House

The kids always get so excited about the special treats that Tutu always has for them - one of them is Fruit Loops! It's such a big deal for them to get to have sugar cereal in the morning! She also had gotten them some special ice cream bars for dessert one night - a big hit, of course! I took the picture of Callie in the high chair because of how she had her feet. She would hook her toes on the ledge of the tray and sit like that the whole meal - I guess she was getting settled in!