Friday, December 25, 2009

Um, Facebook ate my blog...?

I know. I know.

I could give a whole lot of excuses for not blogging.

The school year starting.
Sickness(es).
Spending LOTS of extra time at the gym getting all good and healthy.
The Holiday Season.
Errrr...too much time on Facebook.
Blah. Blah. Blah.

Or, I could just blog.

Okay, let's see now, where did we leave off? Oh, yeah, Halloween. Oops...wow! :)

Well, a few days after Halloween, Charlie's Oma and Opa FINALLY returned from their month & a half long road trip across the States. Boy, were they missed! And, boy, was Charlie excited when they came rolling up!
You can tell Charlie's thrilled to bits when his little shoulders go up like this:
Eating a banana and scrambled eggs (fresh from our hens!) for breakfast. This was a victorious morning for us. You may know that Charlie is picky. Actually, Charlie takes "pickiness" to a whole new level. To such an extreme that he's starting "food therapy" in February. Yes, our 4 year old has somewhat of an "eating disorder". Okay well, that would be kind of funny, but...
Anyways, this was the morning Charlie finally decided he would try eggs again (after not eating them for over a year) and he LIKED them! Yes!
We LOVE waking up to seeing this outside our bedroom window...

and this outside our living room window.

Oh, and I loved coming home to find Shawn and Charlie playing Monopoly. Charlie played for over an hour and loved it! The kid cracks me up.

The other day, I put the nativity scene out. As soon as Charlie saw it, he ran and grabbed his Playmobil nativity set and integrated it in.

There's something kind of cool about this, something deep. It's 11:00 pm on Christmas...and I can't put it into words right now. But can you see what I mean? Something about the "timelessness" of God and how He holds life and meaning to all ages and through all ages. And all the different styles and different interpretations, they really all add up to the same thing in the end.
I dunno, something like that. :)


A few weeks back, it was early in the morning and Shawn and I were in bed, and we heard Charlie get up and rummage around in his dresser for a while. I didn't think much of it, being still half-asleep. Well, a few minutes later, he comes running into our bedroom, cracking up, looking like this:
What a nut!
Doing some art...but FIRST, and most importantly, gotta organize all the markers by color!
One of Charlie's very most favorite birthday presents - the US Map puzzle. LOVES it. I frame it in for him by doing the edges, and he can put all the states in all by himself! I think this kid knows more states than I do now!
Well, it's late Christmas night. Both my boys are sleeping (poor Shawn's crashed on the couch - he is SICKER THAN A DOG). It was a nice Christmas (I'll post pics soon) even though we were all varying degrees of sick. It was so fun to watch Charlie open presents and get so excited and spend time playing with his sweet cousins.

Okay, before I go, I want to post one last picture. I pondered doing a post on just this wedding alone, but thought better of it - for the privacy of the family. This family has been through the unimaginable, absolute devastation. When I first heard the news about 2 yrs ago, something inside my own heart literally broke. I was in shock and cried, prayed and questioned God for weeks, and even months later, for my friend and her four children. Some reading this know the details of what I'm talking about, but most may not. All I can really say is that it would be like waking up to your worst nightmare. Ever. Ever. EVER.

But now...it has come to this. This beautiful picture of love, security, safety, happiness, healing. My heart was bursting at the seams with joy during this ceremony. I re-cried all those tears, but this time they were tears of happiness and relief! It is, to me, evidence that we should never lose hope, that there CAN be life again after utter tragedy. Out of oceans of tears and sorrow, springs life and love again. And I couldn't help but share it with you. How utterly magical is this?


Monday, November 2, 2009

For Eric & Leah

Okay guys, well, here's the only shot I got of the short-shorts-sporting grandpa...you can see a tiny bit of leg if you look right above the purple-triangle-looking thingy on the bottom right side of the picture. But lemme tell ya, the bare leg went up waaaaaay dangerously higher than that! Ah, so disappointing. I'll have to aim better next year...

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Charlie's 4th Birthday Celebration...and Halloween.

Charlie was a rhino for Halloween!
I forgot to grab him a trick-or-treat bag, so he "decorated" one of his birthday present bags with stickers. The kid is easy to please. "Ding-dong!""Knock knock!"
"Trick-or-treat!"Brian, April and Loralye (aka "White Tiger") came along with us. Sorry, Brian, somehow I managed to not get a picture of you! I guess I was too distracted by your daughter's extreme cuteness!My most favorite part of the night was the very first house we went to. This 70 + yr old guy answers the door in the shortest little shorts you've ever seen - and the funniest part was they weren't supposed to be a "costume", I'm sure of it. He was totally serious! My mouth was just hanging open, and April seriously laughed outloud! Made my whole night. Ha ha! Sleepy Rhino - after about 8 houses, Charlie said something along the lines of, "I'm already asleep, mommy." So we headed back home. :)
Charlie had his much anticipated "4th Birthday Celebration Bash" on the 30th. I meant for it to be a small gathering, since Charlie tends to shy away from lots of crowds and excessive noisey-ness. But, we ended up with a pretty good sized crowd and Charlie did great with it! He was SO excited and happy all night long. He loved it! The best part was about half-way through, when I said, "Charlie, are you having a good birthday?" And he said, very seriously yet also very dreamily, "Mom, it's EXACTLY how I wanted it to be." Melt my heart! I love that kid. :)

The night before his birthday, I attempted a 2-layer cake. Charlie doesn't even like cake, but insisted we have it because "all the other kids like it". Well, other than the bottom layer breaking completely in half...it turned out okay. Of course, I had a lot of help! And once it was covered in frosting, you couldn't even tell the bottom half was in 2 pieces!
I have to admit, although my OCD is mostly cured...if you compare the previous pictures to the following one, you can see how I had to take the 2 m&m's off of the letters of his name. I just couldn't stand it! It really bugged me, for some stupid reason. Sorry, Charlie.
Anyways, here's the finished product! Too cute. And yes, I did his name, although it might look like it was done by a 4 year old. Yeah, so I'm not too handy with the icing tube...
The "spread", and pumpkins designed by Charlie! He drew the mouth for the big one. And the little one was inspired by his "prozac pumpkin".
Ellie and Jasmine in baby heaven - holding Paisley and Ava.The pinata line-up!
Eli taking his first swing.Little Cody taking a shot!
Ellie
Blake
Jackson
Charlie - here comes the candy!
CANDY!
Opening presents.
Cake time!
Singing the song - he was a little embarrassed, thus the quirky look on his face. But, I could tell he was pretty happy about it, too! :)
Blowing out the candles!
Happy Birthday, Charlie. You are loved beyond anything you could ever imagine!

Art only a mother could love...

Here's Charlie's entry to the New Seasons Halloween Coloring Contest: What do you think, is it a winner? :)

Kinda makes me think maybe he's got some issues with aggression?

Egg Factory

Our chickens are in full egg-making swing! Today, we got 3. We're pretty sure that 3 chickens are now laying. So, 3 down, 8 to go! We are having so much fun. Every day we have a little egg hunt. This morning, there was a HUGE commotion, and sure enough we found 3 eggs (up until today, it's just been 2 a day), so we're pretty sure another chicken laid her first. Sorry neighbors...

Scrambled eggs, anyone?

"Flighty Whitey" is still putting out an egg a day - that's her white one on the right. The other hens are laying brown ones - on the left.


Monday, October 26, 2009

Blake's 4th Birthday - and our FIRST EGG!

Blake is 4! We had fun celebrating on Saturday with all the Millers and Fletchers.

Opening presents.


Blowing out candles.

Waiting for a piece of cake.
Too bad it was "coffee" ice cream cake, as if all the sugar weren't enough stimulation for all the toddlers! Ha ha, oops - nice pick, Uncle Mike M.! :)


Playing with all the "little guys" with Aunt Maryann.


Sword fighting with Uncle Mike F.
(Charlie didn't want any part of this, but the other 4 cousins had a BLAST!)


Shirtless Warrior, Birthday Boy Blake!
Jasmine keeping those eyes protected, and of course fighting in pretty in pink style.Proud mom and dad watch their 4 year old enjoy his birthday!
Since Blake and Charlie are only 6 days apart, Charlie's 4th birthday is this Friday, the 30th. I can't believe the boys are 4 already! There will be plenty of pictures to come after Charlie's celebration, I'm sure...! :)

In other news, on Saturday morning, we FINALLY got our first EGG!!!
Flighty Whitey was acting really crazy all morning, jumping into baskets and buckets and "bawking" up a storm. So, we knew it was coming! She finally chose this old purple rubbermaid bucket that was filled with hay (completely ignorning our cute little nest area that Shawn built for them to lay their eggs in alongside the coop). After she "did the deed" she was a little traumatized. She burrowed down inside the bucket and wouldn't come out. It was funny, but also a little sad. I mean, really, she was probably thinking, "What just HAPPENED to me?!?!?!"

The fun part was that my sister and all of her kiddos happened to be visiting when it happened. So, Shawn came and got us and we all went running back there to check it out.

Shawn's reaching in for it.



Charlie was so proud of the egg! He took it in the house and kept hiding it in different spots. Then it occured to me, he was thinking we needed to hide it like an Easter egg. So silly!

Flighty Whitey strutting her stuff after the laying.
The egg is still in our fridge. It's really small. I am having issues with eating it. It almost seems like we should let her work all the kinks out before eating the eggs, get a few out, get the wheels turning, you know? Rusty plumbing? Is that strange?