Best Buddies

I adore this picture!! Their faces say it all!!! These two are the best of friends!!! If you've been a blog reader of mine for any length of time, you might remember when they DID NOT get along. Okay, so they were 2 and 3 at the time. Thank God they grew out of that and now enjoy every minute they have together!
There's Nate enjoying some fun at the lake.


And this year it's hard to get Christian to come out of the water.

They were easy to keep track of with their blue floaties and goggles.

It's such a treat for Christian to have special time with Nathan.

We are counting down the days until these 2 can be together again!

The blessings of friendship

Proverbs 17:17
"A friend loves at all times.."

These girls are such a treasure.

They have been Emma's friends since the first grade.

And they have continued to remain friends, despite the fact that Emma now lives 3 hours away.

They are a blessing in her life and in ours!

She only got to see each girl for a short little while, but she'll get to see them again next month.

Growing up

He's growing up.

Still a complete delight.

But he no longer goes to sleep easily.

In fact, he's regressed in his sleeping habits.

I now get the joy of being up with him about 3 times a night.

He's teething.

Drool and chewing on those chubby fists like crazy.

He's starting to take interest in toys.

He's spent a few minutes in his exersaucer.

He's not a fan of the pool.

He smiles easily at pretty much anyone.

He recognizes his room and calms down once he's in there.

He no longer loves riding in the car.

He tries to sit up on his own all the time.

He's almost rolled over.

He can spin himself around in a complete circle when he's laying on the floor.

He's got eczema. No fun.

He's still nursing like a champ, but will take a bottle.

He loves Christian and actually laughs out loud at him.

He's a little tense around McKenna (for good reason).

We are all completely smitten with him!

Oh stink!

This whole situation stinks literally and figuratively.

((sigh))

So here's the story:

Saturday night the kids and I headed over to my parent's house for the evening.
We swam, had dinner and I even got to go to the grocery store with just 1 kiddo :)

While we were there there was a huge thunderstorm.
Torrential rain, lightning, thunder, the works.

We got home sometime after 8pm and as Christian and I were walking in the door carrying groceries I saw that our back patio door was wide opened.

I freaked out and immediately thought someone broke in our house.
I remembered locking that door!! That door that was now opened!!!

I told Christian to get back in the car with McKenna and Will and lock the door.
I scared the poor boy to death.
Then I got Ryan on the phone and told him I thought someone broke in our house.
Lovely.
Now he was worked up too.

Long story short...
I looked in every closet, under every bed, behind every shower curtain.......
Just to make sure no one was in our house.
Not sure what my big plan would have been if someone was hiding under my bed. ha!
No one broke in.
The storm blew the door opened.
One of the kids must not have shut the door all the way and I didn't notice it when I went to lock it.
The door was still locked, just blown wide open.

So I went to bed feeling relieved.
Today..not so much.
You see, I didn't realize just how soaked the rug was.
Apparently it was really, really wet and now our carpet smells like a dead animal.
Yeah, that bad.
I even have Glade plug-ins saturating the air with their artificial fragrance and
I can't even stand to sit in the family room.

After doing a little googling, it looks like I'm going to have to pull up the carpet and rip out the padding underneath and replace it.
What a royal pain.
But a least there weren't any robbers in my house :)

I hope this is the kind of night he remembers....

a night when I kissed him and prayed for him and told him how incredibly proud of was of his new found swimming skills.
then 15 minutes later (when the little kids were fast asleep and I knew he would still be awake) I got him out of bed to sit on the porch with me and eat ice cream and watch the neighbors set off fireworks.
we talked about planets and stars.
and he told me about his big plans for tomorrow.
he's going to make a parade with McKenna.
he's going to put flags on their power wheels vehicles and they're going to have instruments and drive around our neighborhood.
not sure how they're going to play instruments and drive, but it sounds fun.
he's so sweet...kept going inside to check on Will and McKenna.
he's such a talker.
I love him!

Just like you....

Dear Abby,

Do you see this little girl? Do you see the giggle and the smile on her face when she's around you? She adores you. She looks up to you. She wants to be just like you. She wants to be tall like you. She wants to wear outfits like you. She doesn't want to sit in a booster seat anymore, because you don't use one. She wants to buckle herself, because that's what you do. The potty seat is history around here, because Abby doesn't have one. She picks out her outfits and declares "Abby would love this." She thinks of you every day, all the time.


And that's why I'm so thankful we got to celebrate your born-again birthday with you. I'm so glad that McKenna knows that you love Jesus and that you have Jesus in your heart. Because she wants to be just like you. You do a beautiful job of being patient with your little shadow whenever you visit. I know she just about drives you crazy sometimes, but you are her BEST FRIEND and I can't think of a person who I would rather have her look up to.

Abby, I pray that you will always have that mischievous spark in your eye. That you will always love to play. That you will always be my pink girl :) And that everyone around you will always be able to see the fruit of the spirit in your life! Nothing in life is more important that loving Jesus and showing His love to others, including little 3 year olds.

We can't wait for you to come back and visit again. You definitely add a lot of JOY to McKenna's life when you're here.

Love you,

Auntie Judy

10:26pm Friday night

I just survived what is annually known as the longest week of my life. The week before the fourth of July. For those of you who don't know, my hubs works for TNT Fireworks. Needless to say, this is a busy week for him. I think we might have seen him a total of five hours this week. Tough on everybody, especially since "fireworks season" actually starts in early May for us. So I wasn't heading into this week feeling all that strong. I started out this week with a horrendous sinus infection and a baby who still likes to hang out with me a few times a night.

I went with a different strategy this year and thought that maybe if we were really busy the week would go by quicker. So we tackled swim lessons, soccer camp and the end of the t-ball season all in one week. Next year I might try the stay-at-home-all-week strategy and see how I like that. Or maybe I'll try the give-the-kids-to-grandmom strategy. That sounds even better.

All in all, I think we ended the week strong.

• 
  
  McKenna now thinks soccer is the greatest sport on earth because girls get to wear big pink socks.


• 
  
  Christian learned some really good lessons about the fruit of the spirit after having multiple hours long time-outs in his room :) His room that is apparently super small with nothing to do in it even though it's covered with legos.


• 
  
  Will did sleep for a seven hour stretch one night. Please, please pray for a repeat of that!!


• 
  
  Christian can swim for real without holding his nose and without wearing goggles!!


• 
  
  Will smiles at me every single time I look at him. He can be sobbing and then look at me and give me the biggest grin. Oh my gracious he is the most precious thing.


• 
  
  And this is terribly sad but also so sweet. McKenna and I were talking today and I mentioned something about daddy and the next thing I knew she was sobbing. I mean like serious tears streaming down her face. She cried and cried because she missed her daddy. And when I asked her what she missed she said "he snuggles me." And it's true...she loves to snuggle her daddy. She's not so big on snuggling with me, which makes me so sad sometimes, but she's just a daddy's girl. Both of my boys are snugglers with me, so I guess that will have to do.

So go buy some TNT Fireworks!! Go HERE to print a coupon for $10 off a $50 purchase if you have a TNT tent near you!! Have a fun weekend celebrating with your family!!!

The Party

Time for the Indiana Jones party to begin!

While we were waiting for everyone to arrive the kiddos calmly colored an Indiana Jones picture!


Then they headed into the kitchen to eat dinner.

Christian was so excited! He had been counting down to this big event for weeks.






Natalie and McKenna are so cute. There is a huge age difference between them and yet they are such sweet friends! Natalie helped McKenna and watched out for her all night.

It was extra special to have Abby and Emma there to celebrate Christian's birthday with us.

The whole gang.

Everyone headed into the living room after dinner to hear the instructions for the treasure hunt.

We kicked things off with the "mummy wrap." There was a clue hidden inside one of the rolls of toilet paper and the kids had to wrap the mummy until they found the clue.
Christian got totally covered so.....

Emma became the second mummy!

Finally Wyatt found the clue and Christian busted out of his mummy wrap to head off to the archaeological dig.

Everyone had to find two gold coins and one clue!
Time to find some more gold coins and rescue the trapped paratroopers from the tree. Abby took this station pretty seriously.

Back to the house in search of the banquet hall.

When they found it they were pretty disturbed to find out that the banquet hall was serving up Eye ball soup (grapes in water), Money Brain Salad (cold spagetti noodles with vegetable oil on them) and Snake Guts (jello). Each friend had to find a gold coin in each bowl. It was slimmy and gross! Perfect for this six year old.

Monkey brains...yuck!
It was just a little messy!

Off to crocodile lake to find some more clues!

Then it was time to shoot those snakes in the snake pit (with their water guns)and search for the next clue.

They finally discovered a gold box in the airport hangar (the garage) and inside it contained the treasure....cupcakes for everyone!

Cupcakes!

McKenna enjoyed her cupcake and Abby thought it was pretty funny.

Then it was present time!

Christian is totally into Lego and Cars 2. We was so excited about each of his gifts!

Then we headed outside to play!

It was a beautiful night!

To my complete horror, Christian's buddy Josh even discovered this uninvited guest at the party. Yup. That's a skunk. And what you can see is that her tiny little babies are huddled behind her. She was hiding in the corner of one of our playhouses and Josh discovered her just as he was about to dive thru the window. We were discussing and researching our extermination options, but thankfully she took of on her own.

I think this might have been one of the best nights of Christian's life. He loved his party and his special time with friends.

It's going to be a great year with this six year old!

And did you notice what happened to him on the morning of the party??

He lost his other top front tooth. What a cutie!