sweet surprise

Saturday morning was another one of those days when I had really planned to go to the gym, but what do you know? The boys slept in a little later so I missed my class and so then the question was whether to go at all.

Well, a knock at the door, a hug, a few tears and this totally unnecessary yet extremely delicious gift answered my question for me.

Amanda's mom and Luke stopped by to say "thank you" - she knows that I have a sweet tooth (so sad that I'm so easily swayed away from the gym, huh?). I was just so moved by her kindness and our mutual joy for Amanda and her family with the birth of baby Elle. She has the biggest heart and a most loveable personality (matched by her equally loveable southern accent). We are so blessed by so many people that God places in our lives!

And so the question of what will happen........

to the display home is answered:

As the boys and I were eating breakfast this morning, I happened to see a truck stopped on the road and some onlookers. I thought they had a flat tire or something until I heard a crash and saw almost half of this house come down! Very exciting for my crew to watch. This is how we spent a majority of the morning.

city museum

(This is where Ethan and I spent a lot of time - at least I didn't have to worry about missing the gym with all the stairs I climbed today!)

Hung out with the teenagers and almost teenagers today at the City Museum. Brian had been planning to go for a while, but it was a last minute decision for the boys and I....on our way to the gym we decided that this would be more fun so turned around and quickly changed and got to church on time to meet up with the rest of the group. These kids are great and definitely one of the boys' favorite groups of people to hang out with! We had a lot of fun and it was good to get to know some of them better!

Beautiful Baby

Look at this gorgeous girl who graced us with her arrival this afternoon. She is absolutely beautiful, has her dad's mouth, her mom's eyes and 3 very proud brothers!

Welcome to the world little miss Elle!

treats

I definitely have a sweet tooth, and these two definitely inherited one also!!

Today Elliott took a 2 hour nap! Wow - what to do with myself? Aaahhh, but Ethan cannot be stopped.....never wanting to miss anything. He did "rest" for a while without complaining one bit and was so cooperative all afternoon. So it was nice to get to spend alone time...just me and little E. He was more than happy to show off his fruit roll-up for me at snack time. For some reason we've gotten on a pretty good schedule of eating lunch at 12 and snack at 3, and the boys are definitely on top of that. So 3:00 rolled around and he was asking for the snack box. It was fun to sit down with him and just be silly!


Then this evening the treat was homemade milkshakes...strawberry for Elliott and chocolate for Ethan. They were super excited to get the blender out, add their own ingredients, and of course push the buttons. I sneaked a few sips and have to say that they were very yummy!

A Praying Mom

This was on a bookmark that my mom's church gave out to all the women at a Mother's Day program. She gave it to me and it's now hanging on the corkboard in the office as a reminder to pray for my kids everyday. I do that anyway, but I really like how this has specific prayers for each day of the week and thought I'd share with the rest of you:

Sunday:
Pray that God will turn your child's heart towards Him today.

Monday:
Pray for God's protection over your child as they go about their day.

Tuesday:
Pray for the friends that your child spends time with today.

Wednesday:
Pray that your child will grow to love and serve God all the days of their life.

Thursday:
Pray that God will teach your child to trust Him today.

Friday:
Pray for the person that your child will some day marry.

Saturday:
Pray that God will show your child how to truly enjoy life!


I love that this is hanging on the corkboard, but I'm thinking of taking an idea from another friend and putting these on index cards for each day of the week, hooking them together, and adding other prayer concerns for each day and taking them with me in the car. She puts new concerns on each week and since they are always with her, she can pull them out while waiting in the carpool line or whatever. I'll post pics and progress if I end up doing this!

Mom, thanks for the bookmark - one of my favorite gifts!

playing with the camera

Typically don't let the boys get anywhere near my baby (aka the new dSLR), but we let each of them shoot a few pictures tonight before bed.

Captured Elliott's need for attention lately with these - always wanting to be the funny guy. Here he's imitating a scene from Night at the Museum 2, where "the thinker" statue is showing off to a girl and flexing his muscles saying "boom! boom!......Firepower!!" The boys say this at least 5 times a day lately.

It should be noted here that the boys sang at church this morning....you know, on the stage in big church in front of everyone at the busiest service? Yeah. So Elliott made sure to get a spot right by one of the microphones and thought it would be incredibly funny to tap on the microphone and say "blah, blah, blah" into the microphone and laugh instead of doing anything that resembled singing the song he was supposed to be singing. This little antic landed him a grounding since I was sitting directly in front of him telling him to stop and he did not even pretend to care. WHY?????? Several people asked about his welfare at church tonight.....hmmmmmm

Ethan took this shot. I did a little photoshopping but he did great considering no heads were cut off or anything! Amber told me about her friend braiding her bangs back so I tried that tonight when we went to Ovations. I was so excited when one of the high school girls commented on it - feeling hip again (thanks Amber and Christine!) I let BJ be in the picture too since he's still got a little hipness left in him :)