four years later...

august 28, 2004...

august 28, 2008...

God is so good!
and here's a cute picture of the cousins from the cookout last night.

don't ya just wanna eat 'em up?! (the mosquitos did!)

today

today is our 4th wedding anniversary. :) it's been fun to think back throughout the day today about what i was doing this time 4 years ago... waking up to my WEDDING DAY, taking care of last minute preparations, fixing my hair & putting on my wedding dress, smiling at brian and saying our wedding vows, eating delicious wedding cake, driving to amelia island, etc. etc.


and 4 years ago tomorrow, i laid in bed looking out the window at the beautiful atlantic ocean, eating breakfast in bed with my new husband as we watched the 2004 republican national convention. :) i had to giggle. we were married. i didn't care what we watched. :)

and i just pointed out to brian that here we are, 4 years later, watching the democratic national convention. oh the romance. :) just kidding. (and brian wants me to make sure you all know that we are NOT voting for the democratic candidate that is speaking right now. i can't think of one positive thing about that man except that his daughters are cute. but i'm sure he'd say they're the victim of something...anyway, this is supposed to be about our anniversary, not the lack of ethics of you-know-who!)

we will actually be celebrating our anniversary tomorrow night because we spent this evening at a party for our friend jill who is getting married saturday. brian grew up with jill, and her sweet family is part of our church family. jill helped make our wedding day such a memorable one with her extraordinary musical gifts of singing and playing violin. how special it will be to share in her wedding day on our anniversary weekend! (though we won't really be adding anything special to her day except congratulating her and partaking in wedding cake... brian says he could play the harmonica! ha!)

to be married to a loving christian man is a true joy and a blessing. i must admit that there are many days that i take this great gift for granted. i pray that over the years as brian and i grow together in God's grace and mercy, those days will become fewer and farther between. i pray that i will humbly realize on a daily basis the awesome gift that God has given me in my husband of four wonderful years.

happy anniversary, honey!

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!