Halloween 2018

Happy Halloween from Nathan the soccer player, Mary Ingles from Little House on the Prairie and Andrew the Alligator!

Nathan's Nine!

Happy 9th Birthday to this big kid!

Nathan, we love you and are so proud of the young man you are becoming.  Here's nine things about you:

1. You're a hard worker.
2. You're honest.
3. You love to read!
4. You're always up for a challenge or competition.  You love to play around the world (basketball) or board games
5. Your love languages are words of affirmation and quality time (not so much physical affection!).
6. You like for others and yourself to be precise and correct.
7. You love to memorize facts.  For example, you're re-learning the Boston T stops just for fun!
8. You do a fantastic job keeping your room clean.
9. You love God and enjoy reading and memorizing His word. 

Andrew's First Day of Preschool 2018

In some ways, Andrew is my hardest child, but thankfully in other ways he is my easiest!! Specifically today I'm thankful that his first days of preschool have been the easiest out of all three kids! 

Although he's a bit bummed that he won't be able to see his preschool teachers from last year, being in a new preschool, with new friends and a new teacher doesn't seem to concern him one bit.  The only thing he wanted to make sure of was that it wasn't going to be a "long preschool".  I think he's a still bit wary of how long I'm going to leave him since the YMCA camp days were too long for his preference, but I assured him that I'd be there to pick him up after he eats lunch and plays for a few more minutes. 

He actually is very preoccupied with how long things are lasting these days.  For instance, every day he asks for a "short quiet time" or even more befuddling a " short dinner time" or a "short night time".  Yes, quite time lengths can vary from day to day depending on our schedule, but dinner takes however long it takes, and night time is pretty consistent from night to night.  Plus he's asleep so I'm not sure how he gauges if its been a "long" or "short" night.  Yet, we have the same conversation most nights when I put him to bed.

And since all three kids were cheerful this morning before school, I got the sibling picture that I had to abandon a few weeks ago.  Hooray for happy kids who are cheerful about going to school!  And hooray for this mama who will have a much needed break after another summer that involved a move.  Whew, those moves really make for lots of chaos in my life, and I'm praying that I don't have another one of those for a long, LONG time!!

First Day of School 2018

Whew, it was an eventful first day of school yesterday!  Nathan has been ready for the first day of 3rd grade since before school got out in the spring.  He's probably one of the only kids ever that was DISAPPOINTED about starting summer break!  At one point during the summer he asked me, "Mom, is there school that has classes during the summer that I can go to?"  I told him that some schools had something called "summer school" but it wasn't quite what he was hoping for - it was for kids who didn't do well the past year but didn't want to have to repeat a grade.  I guess its a great problem to have - a kid that loves school so much!  So he of course was thrilled for the first day of school!  His favorite part is that he's doing 4th grade math this year.  He was crushing the curriculum last year so his teacher finally started giving him the work from the next grade up and he was excelling with that work too.  So this year he'll head to the 4th grade classroom every day to do math with them.  He is ecstatic!  (Note the math problems he included as "decorations" on his board.  He wants to be a math teacher when he grows up like his Nana.)

Sarah, unfortunately, woke up with a bad case of the nerves and all her pictures (by herself and with the boys) are just too sad, and probably too embarrassing, to post.  I was trying to help her by having her do affirmations - saying "I AM going to have a GREAT first day of school."  She very reluctantly repeated it a few times after much coaxing from me, but she did NOT believe me.  Then we got to school drop off and she had a tearful breakdown in the gym.  I figured I just needed to cut my losses and get out of there!  A sweet friend asked her daughter to come comfort Sarah, and she texted me after a bit saying that Sarah was doing fine by the time they kids lined up and headed to class.  And guess what?!  Sarah DID have a GREAT first day of school!  Look at that sassy and cheerful smile she had once we got home. 

Hooray for a new year.  First and third grades, here we come!

Andrew-isms

Andrew asked me this morning, "Did God have a body before He was up in Heaven?  Did he have hands?"

I answered "God is a spirit and does not have a body like people do." (That's from the big kids' catechism they learn in school.  But then I felt the need to elaborate because I was pretty impressed with his question.)  "God the Father does not have a body,  God the Son who is Jesus did not have a body, but then came down to earth and now he does have a body.  God the Holy Spirit does not have a body because he spirit. So, actually yes, God the Son who is Jesus does have a body."

Andrew: "So does Jesus have a body in heaven?"

Me: "Yes, I guess he does."

Andrew: "But does he poop every day?"

Haha!

A Visit with Grandmother

July came and the kids and I FINALLY made it to Knoxville for a visit.  It was the beginning of a fabulous, long trip visiting extended family (cousins!!) and all the grandparents.  We kicked it off right with some time with Grandmother on Sunday afternoon when we got to Knoxville.  Here are the pictures...

Big Kid's Last Day of School 2018

Andrew's Last Day of Preschool

Easter 2018

March was a heck of a month for our family - Brian worked tons, averaging 80+ hours/week and on call 4 out of the 5 weekends. So we are so thankful for the first day of April, which means a week of vacation and a month with more weekends with Daddy! 

Since Brian was in bed snoozing this morning, I only had the kids pose for Easter pictures.  And they had a great time being silly (especially Andrew of course, who can barely be convinced to give me a real smile).  But what a bunch of cuties they were!

Today I am thankful for the resurrection of Jesus, for our church who has surrounded our family with love, and for the lesson this morning in which Ryan spoke the truth of God into my heart:

"For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.  From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.  Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.  Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.   Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.  We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Cor 5: 14-21

The resurrection is not just about our reward in heaven, it is about a call to live differently in our lives and in this messy, messed-up world.  Its about Christians being ambassadors for Christ by bringing the message of reconciliation to those in our community who desperately need to know His love.  

Our Favorite Cousin

My kids have ONE first cousin (which is balanced out by a multitude of second cousins, but still), who came down from Chicago during Christmas, but I was SO SICK I couldn't make the drive to Knoxville to see him, my brother and my SIL.  Have I blogged about how sick I was on Christmas?  It was some kind of virus (not the flu) that knocked me completely out!  I skipped church and slept most of the day on Christmas Eve, then on Christmas morning I crawled down the stairs for presents, then dragged myself back to bed and stayed there for most of Christmas day.  The day after Christmas I was going to drive us to Knoxville, but again I was in and out of bed for the whole day - no way was I in any condition to drive!  So we very regretfully missed our chance for a cousin visit.  But when Uncle James told me that they were coming for another visit in February?!  You know we made sure we were in Knoxville too!

My kids were SO EXCITED to see Konnor, and once he got over the surprise of how noisy three more kids can be, he was pretty excited about them as well.  

These guys are a little over a year apart, and I think they're going to be best buddies!

They bonded over their love for cheese...

... and their love for Pawpaw.

I tried to snap candid shots early in the day with pretty good success I think, but before dinner we snuck in some group shots as well.  Both little guys did much better then last year, especially when I had my best two helpers (Nathan and Sarah) working hard to earn great smiles from Konnor.

Here it was just me trying to elicit smiles, and as you can see Konnor wasn't as impressed. 

Thanks so much James and Kat for making the long drive. We love getting together with you!

A Toothy Milestone

Can you guess what that milestone is?

Yep! Sarah lost her first tooth!! 

It has been wiggling for about a month, but apparently today it was hurting her at lunch so a friend, C. encouraged her to ask the teacher to pull it out.  Sarah told me she was pretty nervous and was walking super slowly up to the teacher to make her request.  Mrs D, the assistant kindergarten teacher, was a bit squeamish for the job (this is her first year helping in the K5 class), but Nathan's second grade teacher was available as an expert tooth puller and popped the tooth right out.  How excited this girl was to show me her gap-toothed-grin at pickup today!! And how excited I was to celebrate this exciting milestone with her!!

Home Sweet Homes 2017

2017 was the year of the move that we never planned to make, but the move made in faith as God opened doors for us.  The transitions have been hard for everyone in the family (and extended family), but I am confident that it was the right decision for our family long term.  However I still have a twinge of nostalgia and sadness as I look at these pre-move house pictures.

We moved to Charlotte back in June 2017 and it took us until December to get a family photo in front of the house. Then it took another month for it to make it to the blog. Since we are renting and hope to to buy a house this year, I'm predicting right now that this will be our one and only photo in front of this house. :)

And since Granddad and Nana happened to be here when I finally gathered my equipment and the troops, we thought we'd better take the opportunity to get a grandparent's picture as well. 

 Here are previous house pictures: 2016 (check out the changes to the Knoxville exterior!!), 2015 here and here, 2014, and 2013). 

Andrew's 3rd Birthday!

Andrew has been SO SO looking forward to his birthday.  The refrain in our house is "Nathan's birthday in October, Sarah's birthday in November, Mommy's birthday in December, and Andrew's birthday in January!"  So Andrew knew that his birthday came after mine, but we hadn't even finished celebrating on December 1st before he was asking when his birthday was going to be!  We had to break the news that he'd have to wait until after Christmas, but then we could finally get to a real count-down for him.  Since he refers to any time that's not today as "last weekend" or "next weekend", his birthday was "next weekend" for quite a while until we got to numbers he could actually grasp (2 days and tomorrow). 

The grandparents helped to extend the celebration by flanking Andrew's actual birthday day with visits - Pawpaw and Gran came on Thursday to stay for two nights (leaving right after the birthday cake was eaten Saturday evening), and Granddad and Nana came Saturday morning and stayed until Monday morning.

Andrew knows his birthday is "in January" and has been practicing getting his fingers to make a "three", so he was all ready for the big day when it came.

I have tons more pictures, but I thought that first I'd just get the classic cake pictures posted.  I love how excited Nathan and Sarah were for Andrew!!  Both of him were really eager to give him the presents they had made/selected for him.  I thought this kiss was super sweet as we got ready to sing to Andrew!

My favorite part of the whole celebration is watching the birthday child's face glow with excitement and happiness as they are surrounded by the family singing "Happy Birthday" to them!  The smiles on Andrew's face just made my week!

Andrew was clapping for himself by the end of the song.  Too cute!

Andrew had actually opened most of his presents earlier so he could enjoy the new toys on his birthday.  But this is Andrew's intense face as he was trying to tear open the card from Aunt Karen.

I thought this was funny... it wasn't too long ago when Nathan would put on a grumpy face whenever I would pull the camera out, now he likes to photo-bomb me!

Sweet brothers!

It was such a great day, especially thanks to the grandparents who all made the drive from Knoxville to be with us!  Andrew (with help from me) picked spaghetti and meatballs for his dinner, with sides of broccoli salad, pineapple and bread.  As we had been talking about what cake he wanted for a while he said been saying for a while he wanted chocolate/chocolate but the weekend before his birthday he said chocolate/chocolate AND strawberry/strawberry!  So I asked if I could put strawberries in his chocolate/chocolate cake and he agreed, so I made a lightly-sweetened strawberry "jam" to put between the two layers which turned out yummy!  It was another memorable birthday, and we are looking forward to seeing how Andrew continues to grow and change as a three year old!