Doesn't LOOK like a very comfortable nap...

Jacob asked if he could take a nap with David on the couch on Sunday afternoon. They were all cuddled up and cozy after reading books together, so we said yes. I came downstairs about an hour later and they had changed positions. Doesn't exactly look like the most comfortable nap in the world to me, but whatever works! :)

Elbow in the mouth? Hmmm.

not the best pictures, but you get the idea...

Callie woke up from her nap, but obviously wasn't totally awake yet. This is how I found her at the top of the stairs - she slept here for another 45 minutes! :)
I took these pictures at night, so you don't get a true idea of the color, but it will have to do for now! :)

I love the shade of brown that we got. It contrasts nicely with the couch, and really makes the white molding stand out. Not too dark, not too light - hooray! :)

Yes, those are my 3 kids reading 3 of my blog books! :) I love it!

a funk

rough day today. for several reasons. but it went from bad to worse tonight. started pulling up weeds and hacking at bushes in the backyard. (i HATE yard work - it makes me feel like a moron because i know NOTHING about it....but i was feeling like our house is the "loser" house of the neighborhood and needed some attention). was totally in a funk tonight. so much so that i went for a run. At 8:30 at night. I ran 7 miles. i hate running at night - but tonight was good. i needed it. and i haven't run more than 4 miles in weeks. but i needed that too. i have so little time that is JUST mine. and i've been feeling it lately. here's hoping i wake up tomorrow with a happier heart!

Goodbye Gold!

We invited some friends to join us at the pool today so we could stay out of David's way for several hours. The gold is finally going AWAY!! :) HOORAY! I'll post pictures of the AFTER when it's done - I'm SO excited! :)

AWANA Awards

Josiah (obviously) wasn't in the mood to pose, but he received his 1st AND 2nd book award at the AWANA ceremony on Wednesday. He has loved it this year and has blown through both books. He and Jacob are VERY excited that they will BOTH get to be in Sparks together next year (our AWANA here doesn't start until kindergarten). :) We are so proud of you Josiah! You have worked very hard this year at hiding God's Word in your heart and we know He is pleased with you too! We love you! Keep on filling yourself with God's Word!!!

Field Day at PHES!

Josiah had field day at school on Wednesday and he was SO excited about it! Who doesn't love a day of fun games and playing outside with your friends! :) The kindergarten and 1st graders were outside first thing in the morning, so the kids and I all stayed after taking Josiah to school so we could watch some of the fun. We had a great time!!

Josiah getting ready for his chance at the "hurdles"
He's running so fast his feet aren't even on the ground! :)
(He LOVED these pictures!!)

Josiah's cheering section - they LOVED watching all the fun! :) I was thankful they did so well - I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but they stayed right next to me and enjoyed watching the festivities!

During one of the relays, they were attached to one of their classrooms and then had to stand in the hula hoop at the other end of the gym and count to 100 by 5s - it was so funny! :) Josiah said he loved that part!

Can you see how big he is smiling? He has had such a great year. We love his teacher. LOVE the administration - it has been a really great year. He has SO grown up....even in the last few months. Grown in his confidence. In his self-assurance. In his social interactions with his peers - it's been fun to watch.

Jacob and Callie watching...very closely...

Caleb did well - I nursed him at home before we left and then brought his cereal and fruit with us. He ate it in the stroller and then ate some cheerios and was pretty happy. We left right before the last outside activity so we could get home for his morning nap. It was a great morning! :)

THIS is how I know my husband loves me!

Tuesday night...the night before his longest day of the week (Wednesday...because he has choir rehearsal AND band practice that he leads after a LONG day at work)...this is what he was doing for me!

That's 1:00 IN THE MORNING!! But my kitchen got painted!! :)

ahhh...

sorry to have unloaded on you all last night! those posts were long and long-winded i know! at least they are all out there now! today has been good. well, other than the fact that callie BIT caleb on the hand at the grocery store - out of NOWHERE!! She was told she was getting hot sauce when we got home and she cried and cried the whole way saying "not the hottest kind!" It was all i could do not to laugh. david has several varieties of hot sauce and apparently some are hotter than the others - and the kids know which ones!! anyways, we dealt with it and moved on.

i went to a little paint store that my neighbor recommended to me to get an expert opinion on my colors and i think i finally got it! the guy was awesome - straight off of hgtv (complete with pinky in the air...) and he gave me two colors that i LOVE that i think will work in my rooms. I took them to lowe's to get samples mixed and got them up on the wall. we'll see what david thinks when he gets home, but i am cautiously optimistic!! tonight is a big finale night on tv, but we have a dvr so it shouldn't hold us up! surely in between coats of paint we can squeeze in dancing with the stars finale....or american idol finale...or biggest loser finale right? :)

Paint Colors

It doesn't help that the previous owners painted the living room a golden yellow color -which is messing with my head when I try to look at these colors!

Potential Living room colors on left, kitchen color on right

Kitchen


Trying to figure out the perfect color to work with everything, but mainly work with the couch!!

Now that we've got our new furniture in the living room, I am DYING to paint the downstairs. We did all the upstairs when we moved in, but now we are ready for the downstairs. We've got a couple of colors up on the wall and are trying to figure out the "perfect" color. We found what we want in the kitchen (called "brown buzz" - is a neutral, green-shaded color....that's a terrible description I know), what we want in the foyer entry and upstairs hallways (called "oatbran"...that pretty much sums it up), but we're still having trouble with the living room. Trying to find the perfect shade. Would love to do a chocolate brown color - but it has to be the right brown. Not too dark. Not too light. Has to work with the couch. and the carpet. and the furniture. and the green in the kitchen.

I had hopes of getting started painting tonight. But David was "hungover" from watching the 8 hour series finale of Lost last night, and I wasn't ready to commit to a paint color yet. So no progress. Feeling a little anxious because we are hosting a cookout for the praise team, band, and A/V team here on Saturday night. And the pastor's wives fellowship is here on Tuesday night. And it would be SO nice if it was all done. But I'm going to try to be patient! :)

A night at the Zoo

On Friday night, our zoo (you KNOW how much we LOVE our zoo), had a special "members-only" night. This was the first time we had been to one, but apparently they do it once a month. They stay open 2 hours later in the evening and open it up for their members. The kids (well, Jacob and Callie in particular) are always so excited to go, and I was looking forward to having a few hours of some fun family time.

The kids climb up on this big rock EVERY time we go to the zoo and ask me to take their picture. This time, they found a little friend already sitting on top of "their" rock.
Hello Mr. Skink! (and for the record, I think his cousin was in our garage a few days before...it about scared me to DEATH!!) Gross little suckers....

We were SO excited to get to go through the BRAND-new Kangaroo Walkabout exhibit. They built a trail through this "walkobout" thing so you can actually walk through amidst the kangaroos!! Tonight there were only wallabys - the kangaroos won't be there and ready to be "out" until next month, but it was exciting nonetheless! Did you know that kangaroos are a lot like deer? Interesting facts for you!

Caleb enjoyed a little of David's hair gel for snack!

Icees for $1...who DOESN'T love that? :)

Caleb, who was being a trooper as it was past his bedtime...again, went to crawl around and explore with David for a little bit. The other kids and I went through the lorikeets exhibit. Some kids gave us their little cups of nectar that they were done with so the kids got to feed some of the birds. This Jacob's ABSOLUTE favorite thing at the zoo, but I had told him we weren't buying the nectar this time. These boys just made his day! The birds were feeling especially hungry (they were probably happy for the extra late night snack for them since the zoo isn't usually open this time of night) and were all over the place. They landed on both Jacob and Josiah - which was a riot. The CRAZY thing is that Josiah actually enjoyed it! He usually can't STAND these exhibits where you can feed the animals - he'd rather stand back and take it all in. Jacob, of course, is the opposite. Of the 20 times that we've probably been to the zoo, Josiah has NEVER fed anything there except for the fish in the koi pond. Something came over him on this night, because he actually held his hand out to get the birds to land ON him! And of course I didn't have my camera with me to capture it - David had it! Oh well!!!

Is he not the cutest? It was a fun night together. Being outside. Enjoying our sweet little family. Thankful for nights like these. And we were SO excited to wake up to a Saturday. Just a regular Saturday. No soccer games in the morning - yippee! :)

Wednesday...in the Kitchen!

Guess who likes blueberry muffins? Yep, Caleb does! He's finally getting a hold of the "table food" thing. Slowly. But he's getting there! :) (And look, he's even signing All done! :) )

Most of Wednesday I spent in the kitchen getting ready for our dessert social for that night. On Tuesday night, I had David make the first batch of homemade strawberry ice cream. Wednesday morning, the baking began. I made 2 homemade buttermilk pound cakes, 2 batches of cheesecake bars, and 2 batches of brownies. In the afternoon during naptime, I had to wash, cap, and slice ALL those baskets of strawberries that we had picked the day before.

It was totally worth it though. Everyone LOVED it - I brought some vanilla ice cream as well and some whipped cream. The whole idea was that people could build their dessert however they wanted - and top it off with fresh picked strawberries! It was great just to be able to fellowship and to let them know how much David and I appreciate them! They are such a support for us - they totally caught hold of David's vision on this concert and were with him 100% of the way. The music pastor gets alot of complaints along the way. Lots of people that don't like what he's doing, what he's singing, what songs he's picking, what instruments are playing, etc. He hears along of complaints (everyone does I suppose). But it means so much to us both that the choir REALLY sees and understands his heart. REALLY gets his passion for leading people in worship. So we got to love on them a little bit - and we enjoyed it!

MORE strawberries!

We drug our friend Tyler back out to the strawberry fields with us on Tuesday!! My friend Beth had mentioned to me several weeks ago that they had NEVER been strawberry picking!! She's got 4 boys and her youngest is Tyler who is 4 years old. I told her that the next time we were going, she was going to come with me!

She and Tyler joined us on Tuesday and we had a great time! I will say that my kids weren't nearly as helpful with a playmate there, but we got our 6 baskets filled up! I was picking for a reason - David & I had decided to throw a dessert social on Wednesday night to thank the choir/orchestra for all the work they put in on the worship concert. My church used to do a strawberry social every year in May, so I stole the idea and ran with it! :)

Jesus Saves!

There really aren't words to describe what happened on Sunday night. The concert was amazing. Not because it was vocally perfect (it wasn't). Or instrumentally perfect (it wasn't). Or because there were thousands upon thousands of people there (there were hundreds, but not thousands :) ). It was amazing because God showed up in a very real way. People REALLY worshipped. This was not a concert to do a performance. This was about having a night of worship. That we as a church body could participate in TOGETHER. That would get our focus on WHO it should be focused on! Crying out to God to do it - to bring families back together, for the lonely to feel loved, for father's hearts to turn towards their children. Declaring that Jesus is the Lord. Singing a song called "Praise the King" - a sweet, heartfelt song praising God for the seemingly "small" things in the life - for hills where children laugh and play, for rocking chairs, for people on their knees. I could go on and on. These songs were powerful. They moved people. They moved me. Out of our "autopilot" mode that we can get in sometimes. And into a posture of worship.

David had the choir memorize their music. Primarily so that it would free us up to worship whole-heartedly. Without books in our hands or words to focus on reading - we could truly focus on our heart's song to the Lord. And I'm telling you - there was such freedom in that. There were some people that were truly set free. I've been set free from things in my life - and I don't say that lightly - but once you've been set free from something, you can't sing lyrics like "Satan's lies bowing to the truth" without getting all worked up!

It was one of those nights. One of those moments for our church that we will remember for a long time. One of those visions that David has had for years that he really got to carry out and see LIVED out in these people. I'm excited about where this is going to take us.

One FULL Saturday

I can't believe it's been almost two weeks since I've blogged! Well, I can because I've LIVED the last two weeks and know all that transpired, but still! David went to bed early tonight from his "Lost" hangover (that finale last night was about 8 hours long from what I hear), so I'm trying to catch up a little bit. Here goes!


Okay, so last Saturday was one of those days that makes your head spin. SEVERAL things on the calendar. All FUN things. Things we were ALL looking forward to, but just a lot of moving parts. Lots of room for error. Lots of making arrangements for. Lots of checking and rechecking the list.

7:00 AM - Everybody's up! I think I ran and did my shred first, but the kids were up by 7 am. Finished nursing Caleb and put him down to play while I got breakfast finished for the rest of the crew.

These are Caleb's favorite toys these days. He chases these balls around the house all day long. Most of the time has the bat in his hand too. It's pretty cute!

(Don't pay any attention to the chocolate milk spilled all down the front of Callie's shirt. Where is her mother?)

Callie found our Titans' pom poms and declared that she needed them to be a cheerleader at the boys' games that morning. We told her to say "Go Upward", except it was coming out as "Go F-Word". Hilarious. (Side note of explanation: we went through a phase for a while where, thanks to her brothers, Callie would start chanting "f-word! f-word!" for a reaction. No we do not swear in our family. The boys had overheard someone say "fart" and referred to it later as "the f-word" because we don't say that in our family. Well, Callie picked up on it and starting say "f-word" to a get a reaction out of me. And she did - I was so embarrassed! I don't even want to know what people were thinking!)

9:00 am - Jacob's last soccer game! He LOVED playing this season - really went after it and had so much fun every practice, every game. I was really proud of him - proud of how he continued to grow and make strides. It was HOT out there most of the time - even though practice was at 6 pm, it was still HOT. Games were always HOT - but he went 100% all the time and smiled bigger than everyone!

We always try to videotape one game from each season, so David was taping while I snapped a few pictures and kept tabs on Caleb and Callie....

(David confessed to me later that he forgot to switch tapes in the camcorder, so the games got recorded on "Caleb's 1st Year tape." Sigh.

He decided to wear his new sunglasses for the game. Not sure if it was because he needed shielding for the sun, or because he liked the comments he got. Probably the latter. :)

Go Jacob! See how he's the only white jersey around the ball? Way to go!

Doing a little fist pump to celebrate a teammate's goal! :) (David told him to run after the ball and he said he had to defend this side of the field! :) )

I think that's Josiah underneath Callie. Boy can she be a bit suffocating at times!

9:55 am - Game completed (victory!) and heading towards the celebratory tunnel and snacks!

Listening to Coach Brian as he handed out the sportsmanship stars...

10:05 am - Over at the next field to watch (yea right....more on that later) Josiah's last game. David helped coach his team, so he was no longer helping me and instead was out on the field. This is where things started to unravel for me.

Of course this is Caleb's naptime. Of course he doesn't just lay back in the stroller and take a nap. Of course this is when Callie declares she HAS to go potty - at the port-o-potty. Of course Jacob is hot and sweaty and tired and does not want to sit and nicely cheer his brother on. Of course Callie can't keep her hands to herself. Of course the sun REALLY is beating down on us and I can't seem to keep us (mainly Caleb) shaded.

I wanted to cry. I felt so badly that Josiah got jipped. I missed taping a GOOD bit of his game because I was either in the port-o-potty with Callie or trying to get a crying baby to settle and go to sleep. Of course Josiah doesn't really know any of this, but I wanted to just throw everything down and cry. Moving on.

Can you see Josiah's face - beaming - at David? And yes, there's Jacob Callie right at David's side. (and with as annoyed as I was, I was happy to have them there!)

Josiah really did great this season. It had been a few years since he had played soccer, and he had really improved. He was very aggressive in the games and really went all out for it. It is so fun to see him growing in confidence and really coming out of his shell and into his own!

11:10 am - Macy's first birthday party! Macy's mom, Emily, is David's assistant at work, and Macy and Caleb are just a few months apart. We were excited to get to celebrate with them.

(Of course, since Caleb did NOT sleep at the games, he slept for the 15 minute drive to the party. Which meant that when we arrived and I fed him at the party, he was awake and ready to go! Sigh. It's now WAY past his naptime....but he was all smiles! I was more worked up about it than he was!)

Caleb and Macy are always like this at the nursery - not too farm from each other, playing with the same things - they are so cute!

Caleb LOVED this little ball pit they had set up! He was in heaven!

And THEN he noticed their dog!! He LOVED him - was totally transfixed and not freaked out in the least!

Here's the moment - the birthday cake!!!

She wasn't really quite sure what to make of it. It is always so funny watching these first birthdays. Unlike my sweet nephew Joseph, most babies seem so wierded out by the whole thing and hardly eat any cake! It's so funny to me!

1:15 pm - Leave Macy's party, run home REALLY quick to grab a change of shoes for the boys. (If their mom only had it together, she would have remembered this in the morning...)

1:45 pm - Head to karate studio to drop off Josiah and Jacob at another birthday party. To say they were excited would be an understatement. They have been asking about karate for YEARS. They got to go to a birthday party for a buddy from church who takes karate and they were thrilled. The crazy thing is that this family takes karate from the guy that we met CAMPING last month!! (I did mention him right? Across from our campsite was another family from our city...and he's a Christian and owns his own karate studio!) David was really bummed not to be able to stay and watch, but we had a dress rehearsal to get to....

2:30 pm - After Caleb and Callie slept for the 25 minutes we were in the car driving to church, we arrived to get ready for our dress rehearsal for the Worship Concert. I nursed Caleb and prayed he would stay asleep afterwards. He didn't of course. He was ready to play. Sigh. I told the girls who were doing childcare for the choir that he was so messed up from the day that I didn't even know what to tell them. Didn't know if he should eat, play, sleep or what. Poor kid didn't know which way was up! But they held him and loved on him and said he was just fine.

3:00 pm - Dress rehearsal starts. Finally. My heart gets a break from all the madness. Gets to really bathe in the music and drink in the worship. Just me and God (and the other 50 musicians, but they were having their own private worship concert too). Just what I needed. Aaahhh. I know I've said how much I love this music, but I do!

4:30 pm - Josiah and Jacob are dropped off at the church by another dad whose kids were at the party too. Thank heavens for friends! They sat down while we finished rehearsing. Jacob looked like he had just woken up (I'd be willing to bet that he fell asleep in the car after the party...)....

5:15 pm - Dress rehearsal finished. We are excited for the concert tomorrow night. God has done some amazing things just in OUR lives as musicians as we've taken part in this. We KNOW He's going to use this to really move in people's hearts. These songs are straight Scripture - THAT'S why they are so powerful - The Bible says that His Word does NOT return void. When you are singing lyrics about orphans fulfilling their calling and Satan's lies bowing to the truth, you can't HELP but get stirred up!!!!

6:00 pm - David's got his stuff squared away and we are ready to head home. Man. We are ALL tired. Hungry. Exhausted. Sweaty and dirty (some of us). LONG day!! And Sundays aren't cake walks for us - plus we have a concert tomorrow night! :)

7:30 pm - Everyone fed and in bed. Whew. I am DONE!