packing for one is way too easy!

well, i am busy packing today, but this is no ordinary trip for our family. instead of spending half the day rounding up toys for the trip and mathematically figuring out just how many diapers i will need without bringing too many, i am packing for one. me! tomorrow i fly out by myself to visit kristi and family... and i finally get to get my hands on sweet baby shepherd! i can't wait! it will be four days of loving on her kids and helping her around the house. we have plans to stock her freezer with casseroles, take family pictures, make cute chore charts for the kids, and i'm sure she has other projects up her sleeve that she just hasn't told me about yet. :)

seriously, it is weird packing for just myself. my brain keeps switching back to default mommy mode. i hope i don't end up walking out the door with a sippy cup! :) during my mental packing, i just realized yesterday that i have no need for a backpack on the plane! i can just take a book and my purse! i'm sure i'll feel like i've forgotten something.

brian and our family are so sweet to hold down the fort while i'm gone. this is something that i probably will be less likely to do down the road once baby #3 is here, so i jumped at the chance to make this trip happen. (and anyone who really knows me knows that i loved gearing into travel agent mode!) this will really be a treasure of a trip for me. i struggled with whether to bring my kids or not because our kids do love each other so much.... if ethan was still free to fly, i might have considered it. but i'm cheap. and really, i want to be able to help my post-partum friend in ways that i could not if my own children were at my side. it turns out that it is a very busy weekend for her husband, eric, so kristi and i have both already smiled at the Providential Planning of this weekend. i had hoped to come so much sooner after shepherd's birth, but for one reason or another, this was the best weekend for me to be there. i cannot wait to see what God has in store for our four days together!

i'd better end this post and finish packing. thank you for your prayers for my safe travels and for brian's weekend with the kids. can't wait to tell you all about it!

let everything that has breath...

ethan is now old enough to go to sunday school, and he LOVES it. every week, he comes out with a slew of papers and a grand ole' bible story to share with us... whether it's a big fish that spit jonah out on the sidewalk or david who put one stone in his ceiling to kill goliath (did you catch that one??), he is full of excitement about the history of God's people. he also has a memory verse, which has been the same one for the last several weeks:

psalm 150:6- let everything that has breath, praise the Lord. praise the Lord.

he memorized it quickly, and we've been using it at every applicational angle possible... one evening, he asked what the crickets (or frogs?) were saying as their songs filled our trees... they are chirping praise to the Lord! we are also using this verse to remind him that you cannot praise the Lord and complain/fuss/whine at the same time. (james 3:9-12) ethan was surprised by the new angle on my very frequently used "do everything without complaining or arguing" (phil 2:14)! this is a good reminder for mommy as well. :)

anyway, here's a little video of ethan saying his memory verse, plus some other demographic information. :) i was actually trying to get him to tell some bible stories, but that was a huge flop!! haha! he liked bouncing on caroline's bed too much!

watch till the end to get ethan's predicition on the gender of baby #3 (which we find out on september 10 at 7 am!!)... he has always insisted it is a boy, so i was quite surprised by his answer. he never ceases to make his momma laugh!


have a great week!

june rewind #4: caroline and her big girl bed!

evidences of caroline's baby days are quickly evaporating. she is determined to go potty. she wants a big kid cup just like ethan. and she's in a big girl bed now. (sigh.) there has always been a day bed in her little room as well as her crib, and at the end of june, i got antsy to make more room in there for awhile. in the months to come, caroline will move into ethan's room, and her room will be baby #3's nursery. so i thought it would be nice to take down the crib for a few months and let her enjoy her room full of dishes and baby dolls before transitioning to ethan's room. ethan's move to a big boy bed at 19 months was a pretty painless process, so i didn't hesitate to move caroline at the same age....though i had a feeling that it would take a little more work to teach caroline about staying in her bed, etc.! wellll, i was right! this little sista always has a little something up her sleeve... for the first few nights, we'd think she was asleep only to hear her out of her bed, "cooking" or playing in her garden in the dark. we made it very very clear to her that she was not to get out of her bed, and she eventually got the picture. at least for the next few weeks! then caroline thought she'd test us again for a few nights... and we again made it very very clear that we were not kidding. :) overall, she has done great with the transition. she usually ends up at the other end of the bed or sometimes stuck through the rails of the daybed... it's always an adventure with caroline!

here is caroline after her last nap in her crib. ethan absolutely loves getting caroline up with me in the mornings and after her nap. you can see them so excited to see each other.


now, everytime that ethan gets her up, he says the exact same thing with the sweetest big brother intonation: "good girl staying in your bed, caroline grace!" i need to get that on video soon.


and here's our big girl in her big girl bed! notice the pillows crammed into the gap between the bed and the wall. :) hopefully she won't fall through anymore!


caroline says good night! and stay in your bed, everyone!

june rewind #3: my birthday surprise!

the kids and i drove home from atlanta on my birthday. it was a good trip home, especially thanks to tammy, who kept a very tired birthday girl company on the phone for the last 3 hours of the drive! :) that was a wonderful gift, tammy!! i had to laugh when i talked to brian, who was going to lunch at my very favorite restaurant with jonathan on my birthday when the kids and i had just eaten 89 cent burgers from the drive-through. but he made up for it that evening. :) he'd arranged for my mom, his parents, and jeff, kristie, and karina to come over for cake after just the 4 of us went to dinner. i was exhausted, but it was a fun little birthday party. kristie made a cute polka-dotted birthday sign for me, and my mom made my favorite cake: strawberry with buttercream icing. mmmm. i actually froze 1/2 of it in slices and enjoyed it again weeks later. :) thanks mom!!

and brian surprised me with a great great birthday gift! i am horrible to buy gifts for. i never can think of anything i want except like, finished kitchen cabinets, a new front porch, that kind of thing. :) so when brian said he ordered me something, i was honestly a bit nervous and curious. what could he have possibly ordered me? well then the very thin package came, and i saw the return address of blurb.com, and i couldn't believe it! we've talked about making my blog into a book for awhile, but we just haven't taken the time to do it. well, thanks to my marathon sunday afternoon naps, my sweet husband was able to sneakily design my first tenlittletoes book! he wisely chose to just print the first year of my blog, which was sept-dec of 2005. he was actually pretty brave to take on this project, knowing that the control freak in me likes to do these kinds of things myself. but he did a great job! he knows that i hate book jackets, so he designed the cover to have the pictures printed on the actual book (i think that's called image wrap). brian designed the cover to look like my blog design: clean and white. i thought that was a great touch. here's the cover:


inside, each post from 2005 has its own page (or pages!). the links are listed as footnotes. i haven't experimented with designing a book yet, but according to brian, you have a lot of freedom to put pictures where you want and to even add pictures that aren't in your blog. on that note, you can design whatever kind of book you want-- it doesn't have to be related to a blog at all! anyway, here are a couple of samples of the inside pages...

this post was long enough to stretch to two pages.

and here is my first post on tenlittletoes!

this book is definitely a treasure, and now i can't wait to get 2006 & 2007 printed! though those books will be MUCH bigger since i blogged for the entirety of those years. i love the idea of blogs... of online journaling. there's no messy handwriting, no mistakes that need white-out, and i just think better when i'm typing. i love being able to share the blessings and trials of my life with those of you that actual read this blog. that being said, though, there is something very special about holding a journal or other piece of written work in your hand. it is history. it is something physical to be passed down to generations to come. and it looks really great on my bookshelf. :)

june rewind #2: a visit to atlanta!

kim, christy, christie (holding noah), ashley, me
our only group shot the whole weekend! :(
we were too busy chasing kids & feeding babies to take pictures!!
the kids and i gave brian a great father's day gift... a day of peace and quiet! we headed out on father's day morning to atlanta for the annual reunion of my dear college friends. (i know brian missed us, but i bet he did enjoy a quiet sunday!) brian was concerned about me traveling with the kids by myself since i wasn't feeling so great, but i told him that i didn't feel bad enough NOT to go... so i loaded up the front seat with food, my ipod with tunes, and the kids with snacks, and off we went! God truly blessed our drive to atlanta. it didn't seem as long as i thought it would, and the kids were wonderful. the best part about the drive to atlanta was that i figured out how to feel better... before this trip, i was probably eating something every couple of hours, and i felt horrible! but you know there is only so much you can do in the car besides eat, sooooo, i ate! and ate! and ate! constantly! and guess what?! i felt GREAT! so i decided that this baby needed food every 30-45 minutes. while i was in atlanta, i checked the clock when i ate and made a mental note of when i needed to eat again. it was almost like feeding a newborn! ha! but i felt 100% better. praise the Lord! so that was worth the drive to atlanta right there.... but on to the real reason for my trip!

seeing my friends!

kim was so sweet to host us at her beautiful home this year. my kids loved being with her kids, paxton (almost 4) and lorelei (2), and her husband josh was such a servant while we were there. he grilled out deLICious kabobs, entertained the kids, unloaded our cars, etc. thank you, josh and kim, for your wonderful hospitality!

this year we got to meet two new babies!!!! christy brought sadie, her 8 month old sweetheart, and ashley introduced us to noah, who was just about 3 months old. oh how fun it was to pass those babies around!!! though i feel like i didn't get to hold them all that much b/c i was dealing with my own children. paxton insisted on calling noah "baby moses" for the first day, which got me laughing every time! caroline absolutely loved those babies, which is good news for the months to come. :)

ashley & noah, christy & sadie
look at that grin!
caroline is going to be one excited big sister in january!
evidence that i DID get to hold a baby!
we started off our weekend with a morning at kim's neighborhood pool. the girls were all so sweet to play with the kids, especially "aunt christie" who is like the pied piper. being a kindergarten teacher (and not yet having children of her own), she is eternally patient and knows just how to engage any child! here's a few pictures of the kids at the pool. it was rare to get all 4 kids in the same vicinity for a picture, but we managed to do it a time or two over the weekend. :)

ethan needs to teach caroline how to POSE for a picture!!
ok, this is better!
they actually did very well waiting to get in the pool!
sweet girls
baby noah is melting my heart...
i think i took 20 pictures of him sleeping by the pool!
that night, we headed out to stone mountain for the laser light show. we ate way too much food at a great home cookin' place and then climbed aboard a train for a ride around the mountain. a full tummy and a rockin' train are not exactly a good first-trimester combination, but i made it. :) ethan LOVED the train ride!!! i got so many pictures of him with a painfully huge grin on his face!! after the train ride, we found our spot for the laser show, and the kids had fun dancing to the loud country music (sorry, honey) on the big hill. the boys waved their laser swords with reckless abandon, and the girls danced without a care in the world in between the swooshing swords. kim and i held our breath the whole time, and i still can't believe that nobody got hit in the head. that was almost as impressive as the laser show. :) the kids loved the show, and the babies did GREAT being up so late at night. we rolled back into kim & josh's very late that night.

riding the train 'round the mountain!
paxton & ethan playing on the train
josh & lorelei
kim & noah
waiting for the laser show to start
our daring knights with shining laser swords
a view of our pre-show show...
you can see caroline dancing within inches of her life :)
a beautiful shot of the laser show
no, i didn't take it
the next morning, we visited the georgia aquarium. this is a HUGE facility with some beautiful animals. i would like to go back when it is less crowded and when i do not need a stroller! as soon as we entered the aquarium, we were greeted by "deepo" who looks amazingly similar to his star-struck friend nemo! during our trek through the exhibits, ethan had one request: "i want to see the sharks!" i kept telling him that we were getting to the sharks, and it turned out to be our last stop. so the poor kid was worn out by the time we actually got to the shark tank... so next time, (ya know, when i don't bring the stroller?), we'll start with the sharks. caroline was at a hard age for this kind of thing because i felt like she was too young to just walk around with me (w/ brian there, it would have been different), but she wanted to get out of the stroller every 3 minutes to see something. i couldn't blame her! there was a lot to see!! but the kids did great, and it really was a fun morning. thanks to aunt christie for helping out with the kids, and thanks to ashley and christy for bringing the babies along! it was not really a baby-type outing, but they were great sports and smiled through it all. :) i think they did have a little fun! (disclaimer: aquarium lighting & glass is obviously not optimal for taking pictures, but i think these turned out pretty well considering the lighting, etc.)

ethan & paxton with nemo, uh, i mean deepo
the kids could've watched fish all day
this is my favorite picture from our trip...
i love how ethan is standing watching the manatees!
a shot of the big tank with all the sharks
try getting 4 kids looking at fish to turn around for a picture!!!

that night, we went out to bahama breeze for dinner, and then one more evening of chatting before we headed home the next morning! we didn't stay up as late as we usually do on these reunions because the kids wore us out. :) but it was another wonderful year of catching up and fellowship. and lots of dessert! out of the usual bunch that makes it to the reunions, lynsay was not able to come this year because she was moving... and as we said last year without christie there, it was not the same without her. it's hard for us all to coordinate our schedules to make it a time when everybody that wants to be there can be there, but maybe next year, it will work out. these girls are so special to me, and i know i will do whatever i can to be there next year. it's too easy to get busy and lose touch these days. but thank you, Lord, for email and blogs and cell phones! today's technology does make it somewhat easier to stay connected, but our yearly get-togethers are still a necessity in my book! thank you, girls, for another wonderful reunion, and i am already looking forward to next year!