Uh-oh!

All right, I have finally conquered blogging and figured out how to post video. I expect much praise for my efforts in the comments section! Libby started walking last Thursday and it's so cute that I just had to find out how to show everyone. When she falls she says "uh-oh!" and a brother or two come to her rescue. Watch for the ferocious wild animal in this snippet.

Danny started potty training yesterday so this blog entry is particularly daring as I am not giving him my undivided attention. Anyone who has potty trained a child before knows that is a recipe for disaster, but I like to live on the edge. He has only had one accident, well two now, and is being bribed with chocolate chips. We had a pre-training celebration at Walmart as we bought both boys some really fun new undies.

Aren't you jealous? He really isn't into the underwear thing just yet and prefers to simply go bottomless. Less laundry I guess but come church time, that's gonna be a problem.

Em and I had fun on Monday as we went with our friend Kirsten to buy her wedding dress and find bridesmaid dresses. These were the contenders and as we were having major problem with the neckline on the style Emily is modeling, we are going with the other. For the record, I love them Kirsten (these were just for style and size purposes, not her color). It's one of those dresses that makes you feel good and you are thus tempted to wear it around the house on bad days just to feel a little prettier, even if you look ridiculous.
Our friend Grandma Lu from church gave us this ginormous zucchini the other day when Erik and the boys went to pick up Mr. Zebedee. Grandma Lu was kind enough to keep him while we were away for our conference. We had family members farmed out everywhere! The boys had quite a visit as they gathered yard eggs, extra large vegetables and buried a bunny that had died. Erik even hopped on a horse for a quick ride but the boys weren't too sure about joining him. We really need to spend more time outside of suburbia!I had a strong desire for zucchini bread the second it came in the door so the boys and I had a bake-off yesterday. We have eaten zucchini bread for every meal since and it is fabulous! Thanks Grandma Lu!

A Zoo Birthday

We are still in shock but our little Libby turned one last week. The bottles are gone, her carseat is now forward-facing and we are saddened to see the baby phase of our lives come to a close. We went to the Resolved Conference, which is a conference aimed at college-aged adults, in Palm Springs over the weekend and came back to a little girl who stands by herself and is taking a couple of steps here and there. Her official party was in Colorado City, Texas last weekend, another blog, another day, but on her birthday we traveled with all of our friends to the Los Angeles Zoo. Six moms, two of whom are pregnant, 14 children, the oldest of which is 4, and countless sippy cups and strollers were a sight to behold. We had a wonderful time and got quite a bit of sun.
We picniced and played and sang Happy Birthday...
...it was enough to wear anyone out, even the burthday girl.Our dear friends the Ottavianos and the Branners cared for our kiddos over the weekend and Emily was brave enough to take over on Monday and Tuesday while we were away. She is probably the bravest person I know because not only did she take all three of them to Walmart by herself, she took on fingerpainting! Danny was the artist for the untitled piece on the left and Jacob calls his work "Big Waves and Swordfish."

It is so good to be home and to celebrate we are leaving again in a couple of hours to go to our youth group's retreat. Erik is teaching tonight and we thought, why not all go and making a camping adventure of it? The boys are trying their hardest to sleep right now knowing that we are going to the river when they get up (Too excited to sleep Mom!) I had better go pack as there will be no patience left when the gentlemen awake...

The Great Varmint Chase

Emily, Libby and I flew from LAX to DFW on Thursday, were picked up by Mom and then drove another 4 hours to Colorado City, Texas, home of my Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Donna. Colorado City is classic "small-town Texas" where things are just a little different. I really wanted to share a bit of rural life with you so to everyone who has never lived anywhere without a sidewalk or a Walmart within 50 miles.


On Thursday night upon arrival at 11 pm (Central Time) it was casually mentioned that a badger had taken up residence in their long gravel driveway. My cousin Jody had been trying to relocate the badger all week without much luck. I didn't think much about it until the next afternoon when one of the boys came running into the house, grabbed a gun and ran back out. Of course all of the little boys were skipping with excitement and went out to watch. We soon heard a shot and the boys came back in to tell us the good news, "Jody killed it!" Well that's just about as exciting as it gets in Colorado City so we grabbed to babies and headed out to see.Apparently badgers are pretty mean and could really hurt the kids so this was quite an accomplishment. Look at the claws on this thing.
Upon closer examination we learned that it was a mommy badger so naturally the boys needed to try and dig out the baby(ies).
They dug quite a hole with shovels and pick axes and climbed down in the hole to look down the tunnel. Before long it was too deep to continue and the kids lost interest and went off to swim. Jody decided that a dead animal should not be wasted so he bagged the carcass and put it in the freezer with the frozen meats so that he could take it to the taxidermy shop later. A couple hours later there were little boy screams yet again, the baby had appeared. There was another scramble for guns and after a few more minutes my cousin Monty had taken care of the baby badger (a badglet?). Jody packed that one up as well and it was reunited with its mother in the freezer. Well now the dilemma, could there be more babies? Just how far down did the badger's tunnel go? Well, anyone that knows little boys knows that these questions must be answered at all costs. So after work on Saturday Jody brought home some help.
Unfortunately the hole went down even further than the backhoe could assist with and the search had to be abandoned. Overall it was quite a weekend but all the shenanigans were actually refreshing. I think sometimes indulging in seemingly pointless endeavors is the best way to create lasting childhood memories, I wish Jacob and Daniel had been with us!

From the Mouths of Babes

We have officially reached the stage of parenthood where you are always on guard in public and living in fear of what your 3 year-old might say to other people. Every little old lady has a story about the time her son or daughter told the person in front of them at the grocery store that he or she is fat or smells bad. I don't know, this stage really snuck up on me. We were walking through the Craftsman section at Sears the other day and a group of men were assembling a large thingamajig and one of them happened to be black. As soon as I heard the words "Look at that man!" escape Jacob's mouth I began pleading with God for the comment to end there. But alas, it did not. Luckily all he said was "He has no hair!" and everyone laughed and the man was very gracious with us as we looked for the nearest exit but he has said worse before. He yelled "That man is brown!" once when we were out but I don't think the man heard.

He has said some really sweet things lately. We have been talking about Moses over breakfast for the past month or so and I wasn't really sure how much was sticking in his mind. This morning he brought his Little People Noah's Ark into the bath and the ark happened to also contain the Little People Christmas Nativity set. All three kids were happily splashing and playing amidst pairs of giraffes, lions, parrots and zebras along with the magi, Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus, who happens to be in a manger, like so.He looked down and said "Mom, it's Baby Moses floating to the princess!" It is such a blessing to me to hear him talking about God's Word and to know he's thinking about such things. He loves to read books and pretend he is one the of characters right now. One of his favorites is by Sheila Walsh called "Will, God's Mighty Warrior." The main character Will has a baby sister Lola and a best friend Josh so you can imagine the talks I've gotten recently. "Mom! I'm not Jacob and they aren't Danny or Libby. She's baby Lola and he's Josh. I'm Will." That's a normal day lately but today he was really caught up on Moses and started carrying around bundles of blankets saying that he had Baby Moses and he was sleeping so we needed to be quiet. So Dan picked up a bundle and, not to be outdone, was carrying around Baby Jesus. What do you say to that?

Anyway, we took a big step and bought Jake his first real bicycle with training wheels. He had no intention of leaving the store without a helmet so we decided we really do care about his head enough to shell out $14 for a helmet. I felt so bad for little Dan having to watch Jake get this shiny, new bike for no reason knowing that he would rarely get to use it until it was old and dirty and Jake got another big shiny, new bike so we bought him a new "big boy" car seat. A little lackluster huh? Hey, he was excited and he wanted the one that is exactly the same as Jake's too. Jake has shared the bike a bit but it's really hard to ride it when you can't reach the pedals.

Both of my children have this strange interest in safety because Dan also feels the helmet to be imperative to the mission of sitting on a bike and going no where but oh well. Libby just cruises around and watches the fun. Pretty much the sweetest baby ever! Jake was content to just water our little "garden" today. You might want your sunglasses before looking at the picture of him though...I posted back in October about going to the pumpkin patch. We came home with two little pumpkins that were subsequently tossed around the front yard until they broke. I threw one, whose name was Mr. Pumpkin courtesy of Jacob, in the flower bed out of laziness and now we have our own little pumpkin patch coming up.

We also planted a bunch of seeds and pretended like we are gardeners for an afternoon and the only thing that has grown from that effort is this mystery vegetable. We planted so many different kinds of seeds, you gotta diversify because surely you can't be terrible at growing everything, that we don't remember what this is. Any ideas as to the identity of our mystery vegetable?

Emily (Emmy), Libby and I fly out Thursday for DFW and then we'll be whisked away to Colorado City for the weekend. We are so ready to be home for a while but I have to admit, I'm always a little (a lot) apprehensive about taking children on planes. It leaves you thinking things like "How much Benadryl can you give a 1 year-old without doing any permanent damage?"

Well, it's getting late, I'm tired. Sorry for the lack of writing but it's been busy and it's getting busier. I despise having to choose between acceptable levels of filth in the house or time with the children but that is where we have been lately. Emily cleaned out our entire refrigerator today because it was a little, well, very filthy. God is so good to have sent her to us...

Yosemite's Pretty Neat

We got such a laugh at Yosemite because every time we rolled down the window as we were driving through the park we heard some guy say "It's pretty, huh?" We modern Americans are poetic people as opposed to John Muir's famous lines "There is a great deal of beauty on this planet, but in Yosemite, God gives us a glimpse of Heaven itself" and "No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite."Here is a beautiful picture Dad took from Glacier Point.

And here is the proud Papa with his girls standing in front of Bridalveil Falls. Emily is behind me telling me this is not Bridalveil Falls but a different one that starts with a "c" but Wikipedia says there isn't one that starts with a "c" and Wikipedia is never wrong. We did alot of driving and stopping to sightsee then hopping back in the car to head to the next destination, which is the ideal way to travel all day with a 3 year-old, 2 year-old and an 11 month-old as you all know. They are doing road construction in the park so we had to stop on the road for about 30 minutes at one point. Thankfully we were stopped under beautiful, shady trees by rushing river and our cars were the first two in line. We quickly made friends with the road worker so we could get out and play and get enough advance warning to know when to get back in the car. Anyhow, Jake and Dan were running in the street, we are very responsible parents. There was a hole along the road from some of the construction and Erik had told the boys to be wary of it. He walked off and I was confident my perfect children would never disobey in a situation such as this and turned away. Naturally about 0.2 seconds later the entire Yosemite Valley heard Dan's earpiercing shrieks...from the bottom of the hole. It didn't compute at first, I thought the boys were just beating each other up or something but when I looked where I had seen Daniel standing momentarily before, he was gone. I'm sure everyone in the cars behind us were impressed with our parenting. I've got Libby on my hip and Dan's in a hole screaming and Jake finally had a breakthrough moment and discovered that he does love his brother, well as least when he's in a hole, and he started screaming. What a sight. And being worried and compassionate parents we had Emily take a picture of the hole. And we only considered taking a picture of him in it, you know for posterity, for a moment or two...
After the excitement we traversed the rest of the park to a grove of giant sequoias and I think this is as close as Emily and I will ever get to being called "tree huggers."
One particularly large tree had fallen over and was hollowed out so my boys naturally had to crawl through it as far as they could manage. This was one of those moments as a mom that your instinct is "Dont go in there! There are bugs, and who knows what else. What if you get stuck? What if this big, dead tree finally decides to collapse and you are inside? Etc. Etc." But I've learned in my extensive three and a half years of parenting experience with boys that sometimes they just need to take risks.
Once they couldn't wriggle any deeper in to the tree they climbed out through a hole in the top. This was by far the worst for me as I suddenly see my children being pushed out the top of a huge tree and walking around, ready to fall to their death or another broken leg at any moment. Compounded by the dread of the one mile hike back out of the grove with a mortaly wounded child. Something strange happens to your brain during pregnancy and ridiculous things become extremely dangerous.

To help with perspective, here is Miss Libby beside the tree in which her father and brothers are exploring.

And one last shot of our little crew and a really big tree.

Note To Self...

...Don't take kids on your shoe shopping trip. While you are trying on new shoes they will take your old shoes, put them in a box and put them back on the shelf. Then you have to search every box to find your shoes.

The Texans Are Coming!

It is so quiet around here now that the Texans have come and gone. We had such a good time, with Emmy's baptism as the highlight. I tried to upload the video but the maximum size you can upload is 100 MB and the video is 169 MB. Four hours of upload wasted...anywho...Here is the crew, sans Erik, who was doing something pastoral and didn't have time for photos.

Aside from the baptism, we started the week off with a theatre performance in the backyard of Mark and Yvette Branner. Here we are getting ready for a night of culture. We decided to try some acting exercises. In this picture, Emily told us to look "forlorn." I don't think we really understand the meaning of that word.And you can't come to California without doing a little shopping. Shopping for Jake and Dan really equates to playing in the mall foodcourt. Libby was treated to a smoothie by Ma and the royal treatment of being held 24/7 by Aunt Lorie.I think these two were a little confused as to what this article of clothing is for...

Another must for any California trip is the beach. We packed up and drove down to Santa Monica to build sandcastles, wade in the water and play on the pier.

Really cold water... Here is Erik with his boys on the ferris wheel on the pier, which recently sold on eBay for $130,400.Donna and Ronnie were all romance on the beach as they celebrated 35 years of marriage. Congrats!Mom and Sam were a little less dramatic as they celebrated one year of marriage.Donna even managed to meet a celebrity!
Overall, we made some wonderful memories and we miss Nana, Aunt Lorie, Mimi, Grandpa Sam, Ma and Pa a great deal. We really miss our nightly sing-a-longs with a wonderful mix of instruments. We have the piano,
cowbell,guitar,
and the bongos. Everything you need for a good Southern Gospel festival right?Libby was especially sorry to see everyone leave as she was rather enjoying being held around the clock, sometimes while having a nice pedicure...
and she really enjoys Donna's (Ma's) cooking.
We love you guys, come back ANYTIME!