Gumby lives!

Well tonight as we're waiting for uncle Jay Jay and Halie to come visit for a little bit we had to come up with an activity to occupy about 30 minutes so I thought a video would be a great idea (also since they were going bonkers jumping off and on the couches). So I asked them what they wanted to watch and with great enthusiasm Emily (and Josh agreed) yells out that she wants to watch Gumby. Yes the little claymation green oblong shaped boy with the really high-pitched voice. I'm thinking there is no way this is going to hold their attention but to my complete shock they absolutely love it and are cracking up on the couch together watching it.

Cruella Daville

Yesterday Emily once again suited up for Ballet and this time got introduced to tap dancing. Here is a little video of her dancing to 'Cruella Daville'. Whitney and I are definitely seeing her digging dancing and music more and more each day. She is sporting her new tap shoes that we bought for her at Payless. Although I have officially decided that 'Payless' is no longer worthy of that title as I had to pay like $24?!!??!?! for a little girls tap shoes. What is that all about? So make sure you join me and address them as 'Paymore' shoes from now on. Thanks.

We thought this little moment was sweet as she was cuddling with one of her many beloved stuffed animals. This time her little bunny got some love. Whitney reads books and then reads some stories from the Bible book and then I pray for the kids each night. Lately I have been praying kind of long and I don't think that Emily ever quite makes it through the prayer time. This was her state right after I finished praying.

Conversation with God

This morning I was driving to work and decided to turn off the radio and noise for my commute (which I realize am very spoiled as that commute is about 10 minutes or so). But in that short time I just started a conversation with God. It was just fresh to talk to God like you would someone sitting right next to you in the car. I think that lately I had gotten away from that and prayer had started to come a little bit formal and ritualistic. One of the things I was talking to my Father about was just desiring to be a good steward of the things He has given me. I started talking to Him about the specifics of surrender and how it involves surrendering more of my time, energy and money. I talked to Him about helping me to know what to spend these limited resources on today that would really matter for eternity. I felt this really strong desire to ask Him to help me prioritize and order my steps. One of the immediate applications has already hit me this morning. I've been thinking alot about James 1 as I'll be teaching on that chapter this week in our Sunday morning group. The very last verse of the chapter says this "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." I had ordered a short series of films from the International Justice Mission and so I watched one of them this morning about a boy named Kumar. Kumar is an orphan in India who had been forced into slave labor and beaten and tortured. He was an orphan in distress and being robbed of his childhood. But thanks to this organization has now been set free and has peace and has a future ahead of him. I just felt broken watching that and it made me want to better use the resources God has given me to help kids like that around the world. So if you're interested in learning more about this organization check out their webpage at http://www.ijm.org/

Sweet Dance Moves and Sibling Rivalry

This little shot was Joshua the night after he was diagnosed with Strep Throat and had received a shot a few hours previous to this. Apparently he was done with the whole resting thing and just had to get up and dance. If you listen closely at the beginning of the video he uses the phrase 'Watch this dance.' If I had a dollar for everytime he used this expression that night I could have just about paid for his college tuition (o.k. stretching it a bit there). It's crazy how the little ones can be sick and yet not let it slow them down.

Below are a couple of quick snapshots into the world of mini dramas between brother and sister:

Mario Cart - From time to time we enjoy playing the Wii at our house and as of late the only game we ever seem to play is Mario Cart. Emily especially has become quite fond of this game as she begs and pleads for Mommy and Daddy to play it for her. She has just about every board memorized and even knows the little shortcuts, etc. The drama enters in at the beginning of the game where you have to pick the character. Emily usually pipes up first and asks Mommy to pick 'King Boo' (her favorite, a cute little smiling ghost). Right at that moment Josh quickly counter attacks with his favorite character 'the princess' (don't ask my why?). And both of them plant their little feet firm in the ground and the battle begins. One of the greatest things lately is that my Mii (the little Wii character I created that looks like me) has been unlocked and so I can select the 'Daddy' character. They both think that is really cool and actually can agree on that one. Whew....

Bed Time Books - at bed time Emily and Joshua get to each pick out a book that want to read. So far so good. Where it gets interesting is when we decide who's book we read first. Oh boy. That's when the conflict begins. Lately big sis has been choosing 'peace' over battling her little 2 year old brother.

Tigger - Sometimes the kids get to drink out of their 'Tigger' (Joshua) and 'Cinderella' (Emily) straw cups with cool decorations on them. Over the weekend I caught them arguing over whether Tigger was 'beautiful' or 'handsome'. Wow.

The Stairs - Lately Emily and Joshua have been 'racing up the stairs'. Last night Joshua was determined to beat his big sister and completely got smoked. So for the next several minutes he was all distraught and crying and upset trying to explain to us that he wanted to beat Emily. No amount of rationalizing was working with this little frustrated human so we just kind of left him alone for a while. Then Emily kind of clued into what was going on and she walks downstairs and takes her brother under her wing and tells him that they can race again and that this time she would let him beat her. I'm not really sure if we technically handled all that according to the parenting manual but it sure was a sweet little moment of mercy Emily had on her frustrated little brother.

Carseat Conversations - Joshua is quite the little talkative and inquistivie social butterfly and we've noticed will wear down even the most socially intense person. Emily eventually hits the wall with Joshua where she just can't take his myriad of random questions anymore and just kind of stops talking to him. Joshua then in the most pitiful tone of voice starts a never-ending lament which goes like this (sad depressing music starts here) 'Emily won't talke to me, Emily won't talk to me, Emily won't talk to me, etc.'

Kolaches and Popcicles

Today was the big day where Emily got to go to the Dentist and get her tooth 'freckle' a.k.a. 'cavity' filled. We dropped her off around 9:00 this morning and the boys went and hung out for a while in Tomball. Joshua and I went to Snowflake doughnuts right in the heart of town. It was a big moment for Mr Josh as his eyes and tummy became aware of a wonderful food delicacy known as the kolache. Joshua has been a very committed scone man up until this point and as he admits in the video is still partial to the scone but he has a pretty fond place in his heart for the kolache now. He thought it was so cool that this piece of bread I handed him had a hidden treasure inside, a 'hot dog'. He was so fascinated and bewildered that a piece of bread could have a hot dog inside of it. Anyway he gobbled his little treat down.

Emily took a few moments to give the play by play of her dental experience today. She is speaking with a serious case of the hickups, half of her mouth numb, and still experiencing the after effects of her little 'cocktail' given to her at the dentist's office. The quote of the day from her was right when I came to pick her and Whitney up she says, "Daddy, you know that the dentist gave me? a popsicle...and you know what's funny about that? (laugh) popsicles give you cavities." A very astute observation I must say...and she's only 4 years old.

Emily's little sticker she got explaining to others that her mouth, tongue and lips are asleep. All in all she really was a trooper today. She didn't cry, wimper or complain through the whole experience. She actually said she had fun.

Presidents Day Festivities

We had a chance to hang out yesterday as a family as Whitney and I were both off for President's day. I attempted to make biscuits and gravy and was 50% successful (got the biscuits part down but failed miserably on the gravy). I somehow managed to cook sausage and have like barely any grease in the pan which is the essential ingredient to get your gravy going. I have no idea how I did that. Anyway, it was nice weather again so we did our low-budget family activity that we always do (make pb and j's and go to a park). We went to a park in the Woodlands called Lakeshore park which was really cool. They had some picnic tables right on the water and we chowed down and for dessert girl scout cookies (gotta love this time of year). The kids are pictured above riding on a green dinosaur in the park. We then went Krogering and Joshua once again slept through the grocery store experience and Emily got to push her own little mini-grocery cart (she thought that was pretty cool).

When we got home we saw our neighbors out playing and one thing led to another and the party moved to our backyard and so we attempted to set a new record on how many kids we could fit in a really small sandbox (see other picture). I think at one point we actually packed 10 children in there.

Bible books, Soccer and Car washes

On Friday morning I was spending some time reading the Bible in our dining room/study and Joshua spotted me and he insisted on joining me as he often does. He is still our little morning person waking up well before sister normally. He is quite fascinated with the Creation story and the animals and one of his famous quotes is 'God made everything.' So at least he is developing a Creationist worldview.
Every once in awhile we catch this scene happening where sister and brother jump into Joshua's rocking chair and have some story time. Emily is always ready to teach her little brother and help him learn about the world around him.





Wrinkles rode into town with my parents over the weekend from her hill country vacation home. The kids had fun getting to catch up with their little canine friend. Stripes (our little adopted cat) about had a heartattack though.

Emily had her very first soccer game on Saturday morning and it was quite the experience. I think I freaked her out a bit when I threw her into the goalie position and then she realized that she was just standing down there and no one was kicking the ball to her. We had a slight meltdown and Mommy had to intercede and give our soccer player a little pep talk. Maybe her and Daddy can play some backyard soccer this week together.

My children's imaginations never cease to amaze me. On Saturday night Emily got an inspiration to 'wash' our cars in the driveway. She first got the hose, with Joshua helping, and she made the 'shhhh' noise and pretended to soak down both of the cars (with an occasional whack on the side of the car). She then enlisted her brother's help and transformed her skating knee pads into sponges and applied the soap all over the cars to get them nice and clean (as pictured to the left).

Well the kids suited up for their big valentines day festivities today. Joshua sported his red snoopy shirt and Emily had to sport her favorite color, pink.

Emily made a card for each of her classmates and hand wrote each name. They got to eat cupcakes, exchange valentines cards and presents and then make a craft together.


On a side note Joshua has been mystified by the baby monitor the last couple of days. I was in the bathroom getting ready and I noticed that he heard Mommy's voice coming through the curious little white mechanism. He stared at it and then started talking back to Mommy yet Mommy wouldn't say anything back so he continued in frustration to yell at the monitor for quite a while and finally gave up.


In other news, my life took an interesting turn today. We signed Emily up for YMCA soccer awhile back and she has her first game on Saturday. In calling the YMCA today to find out about practice I discovered that the coach had stepped down and basically one thing led to another and I wound up being the coach about three hours before the first practice. So I quickly discovered that it wasn't any soccer knowledge that would be key to this new coaching position it was the daunting task of getting little 4 and 5 year olds to somehow do what I wanted them to do. The practice was definitely a humbling experience filled with random potty breaks, a child who apparently wasn't even on my team practicing with us, a child who I kept mispronouncing his name, and the constant ADD of all these little ones. Wow, I'm sure this is going to be quite the learning experience.

The mega nap

We finally got around to doing our Krogering tonight. Josh fell asleep in the car around 4:30 today and kept on sleeping like a champ. He is pictured here in his Kroger Shopping cart bed with 'Buddy' (his new fluffy friend) as his pillow and his blue blanket as his mattress. His mobile bed cruised through the produce, dairy, and canned good aisles while he dreamed about his wild 2 year old sized adventures. We then got him out of the cart back into his car seat and he continued to sleep. We then put him on the couch while we ate a quick dinner and he continued to sleep. Eventually to our amazement we put him in his bed which now according to our calculations should put him waking up ready to rock and roll around 4:30 AM. Whitney has already lovingly volunteered me (since of course I'm the morning person) to have some early morning father/son bonding time if he indeed wakes up in the wee hours of the morning. We shall see I guess.

Whirlwind Weekend

Wow, we survived. It was quite a full weekend for our family. We had the softball banquet on Friday night which was an inspiring evening. It was amazing to see one man, Mark McDaniel, step forward, with God's leading in obedience, to start a softball 'ministry'. We have had softball teams before but really never caught the 'ministry' part of it. We filled up the youth building with families who've been touched by this ministry. We listened to stories of guys finding real friendships, stepping into leadership roles, feeling part of God's family, reaching out to their lost friends, wives meeting other wives, man hugs, a hurricane Ike family who was helped out by the softball ministry, a prison ministry that has been helped out with and on and on. It was awesome to see when we step out and put it in God's hands how God truly does far beyond what we could ever have asked or imagined. Saturday we went to Pump it up and hung out at Cade Pratt's Bday party. Then I had worship rehearsal and then we got to go and hang out at Ruthie McKinney's engagement party. It kind of made us feel old because Whitney worked with Ruthie when she was in 5th grade and now she's engaged. But it was a wonderful evening with two godly families, the McKinney's and Rogers. Sunday blasted in with church, and Lance Skinner's wedding shower, and children's choir and then cubbies. Whew. And now for a few snapshots from our recent life:

I caught this scene of brotherly/sisterly love happening as they were playing the computer. Emily is in to Jumpstart and pbskids.org. Her little brother enjoys watching her and cheering her on.

Valuable Parenting Lesson #835:
Never leave a red sharpie sitting on your dining room table with a 2 year old male child lurking nearby. The following sequence of events will follow: The child will spot the curious looking marker and immediately go over and attempt to pull off the cap. Next he will look around his surroundings with boyish delight as he now sees the world around him as his canvas awaiting his unique artistic expression. He will begin with the table itself (notice picture above) and then he will move onto his face and then will top it off with a small portrait on his left hand as seen in the other picture above.

Teeth bathing and kite flying

Emily and Joshua got to make trip number 2 to the dentist today. Emily is seen here with her special shades so that she can stylishly shield her eyes from the bright dentist light. She did a great job and told her fearful not quite so sure little brother that she would go first and show him how it's done. Afterward she got to pick out a yellow egg that transformed into a dinosaur.

Josh reached deep down inside and with Mommy's comforting hand hold laid down for his little examination. He didn't get to have his teeth 'take a bath' (as the dentist called it with Emily). He'll have to wait till he's three for his first teeth bath. But he did really good and earned himself a really cool new bouncy ball.

We topped off the afternoon with yet another visit to Burroughs park after going and getting Emily her first pair of soccer shoes and pink shin guards for soccer which starts next week. Again God blessed us with just a beautiful day. We even bought a couple of two dollar kites at Academy 'for the kids' which in reality Whitney and I had a whole lot more fun with. We kind of got in a little competition to see who could fly their kite the longest and as normal my wife kicked my bootie. She's got mad kite flying skills.

The kids also discovered something called a 'see saw' today. They had quite a lot of fun on it and as you can see from the video below Josh got a little more excitement as he was a little lighter and flew up in the air a litte higher than his big sister.

Ballerinas and Dragons

Emily had her second day at ballet today. This video is one of the songs they're working on for their performance in May. She got to try on her costume with the other girls and so they were excited to be in full dress for this song. I must say she is really into this ballet thing and was focusing very hard on getting all of her moves just right.





Also, during free time she was practicing moves, twirling, jumping up and down, etc.
Then there wsa Joshua. He was definitely trying to figure out what to do with his little self during his hour in the ballet studio with all these girls in blue ballet dresses. So naturally he gravitated towards the large wall length mirror at the back of the studio. He was mesmorized by this for quite awhile. And then something happened in his two year old male brain. He decided that it would be a great idea to lick the mirror. And he didn't just lick it, he started at one end of the mirror and licked all the way down it for like a good 25 feet or so. So I want to apologize formally now for whoever has the not so pleasant task of getting to clean the mirror later today. On another note it hit Whitney and then me (cuz I'm a little slower than she is) that our poor son is constantly surrounded by girls and so naturally he plays with them since that's who's around. The final straw though for us is when Emily and her friends would play dress up with disney princess dresses and then Josh would naively join in with them. So we took immediate action and purchased for him his own knight suit from target. I was quite proud as yesterday he wanted to put it on and he told me he was fighting the dragons around our house. Here is a picture of the knight in shining armor below.

Getting set straight by a 4 year old

So I had the privilege of being able to join Whitney on the ride home from pre-school with Emily and sleeping Joshua this afternoon. As we were entering our neighborhood I started opening up to Whitney about spiritual questions and deep philophical issues that plagued me forgetting that our little 4 year old philosopher is in the back carefully taking all of this in. So as I'm right in the middle of my philosophical dilemna when Emily pipes in "are you guys talking about a Bible story?" And I tried to sort of vaguely summarize what I was attempting to talk about. She then informed us that she knew alot about God and we told her to tell us about Him. So the first thing she told us was that 'Jesus loves us.' Then she told us something related to the 10 commandments and then eventually got around to letting me know that Mommy knows alot more about God than Daddy. Then the conversation turned into a game where Emily gives Daddy 3 clues and Daddy attempts to guess the song that she's talking about. Yeah you just got to love the wild ride of being a parent of young kids!

Aquarium Birthday Party Extravaganza!

I've noticed that life happens in various phases. When you're a newly wed couple you are in the 'wedding' phase with your friends where at least once a month you are going to someone's wedding. My brother and sister-in-law are very much in that phase at the moment. We as a young family are in the 'Birthday Party' phase where at least monthly sometimes weekly we are attending birthday parties. But everyone is unique from petting zoos to Charles Edward Cheese to Inflatables to swimming pools. This one was alot of fun as well as we went down to the aquarium restaurant in downtown Houston for Dalton White's birthday. Here's a few images:

Emily enjoying her carrousel ride

Josh savoring his cake!



This was on a little train that went around the outside grounds of the restaurant which makes a little stop inside a giant aquarium with sharks beside you and above you. The kids were quite mesmorized and probably slightly freaked out as well. One amazing thing that happened was concerning Joshua. To this point despite how amazingly fun all of his birthday parties have been he has always reflected back to me that his favorite part of the event was the cake. But when I asked him to share with me this time he replied 'the rides.' So it must have been fun because he is one serious cake lover. One other cool little story happened on our way home. We were making our way out of Houston and had just exited the freeway and were stopped at a light when a man was on the side of the road washing people's windows. So he washed ours and we gave him some money. It was a cool teachable moment to pause with our kids and help them understand that there is a whole world of people out there who don't have homes and live in poverty and that Jesus wants us to help them. So you never know what sticks with your kids but the next day as we were driving to church and we were praying in the car Emily pipes up and tells me that we need to pray for that man that we helped out. So it is cool to catch little glimpses of the selfless and giving life that Jesus calls us to coming out of your kids.