Mother's Day Out Performance

The kids had their MDO summer performance yesterday. Their theme this summer was Rome. Above is a little sample of one of their songs. Joshua was slightly out of it as we was a little drugged on Benadryl thanks to the state insect of Texas, the mosquito.

Here's a couple of snapshots into the daily conversational lives with our kids:

1. Yesterday on the way to work I was trying to explain the concept of a bank as I had both of the kids with me and was depositing some checks. The only thing I could think of was describing the bank as a large piggy bank. This was truly an amazing concept to the kids as they continued to bombard me with questions regarding its size. 'is it 10o feet?' 'is it 1000 feet?' 'I want to go in and see it?' As we continued talking about this I realized that now I have created this picture in my kids minds of a ginormous porcelain pig somewhere hiding inside the bank building filled with countless amounts of money.

2. The last couple of mornings Joshua has been challenging me to get his oatmeal 'just right like baby bear'. At first I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about and then I remembered that when we've read him the story of the three bears a few times and he was requesting that his oatmeal be 'just right' like baby bear's who's wasn't too hot or too cold. So far he tells me that I err on the side of too hot so I'm working diligently too land it on 'just right' for the little guy.

We had an action packed week as Whitney's sister Amanda and her husband John and kids Allison and John Dylan came to hang out with us. The video above is a shot from Mother's Day Out where the kids (as well as cousing Allison) had a chance to sing for some of our senior citizens.

We took the whole crew to Wimberley (this shot was in my parents guest house - a rare moment where all the kids were contained to a small area) and miraculously fit 4 adults and 4 young kids and luggage in one vehicle (we all agreed that it would have made for a great commercial for the Honda Odyssey).

John and I played 72 holes of disc golf packed into two days and experienced some really cool courses in the Ausin area. This shot was on the Circle C course in Austin and it actually went in the basket on this particular throw (although it wasn't enough to my brother-in-law from pounding me both days).

After a day in the scorching Texas sun we enjoyed a refreshing dip at Blue hole which is a really neat swimming hole on Cypress Creek.

On Saturday when we got back we held an event where our young families hosted another group of young families from a predominantly Kenyan church down in Houston. It was so awesome to see these two churches and their kids playing together, eating together, worshipping together and sharing the things that God is doing in our lives. It was a really powerful time for both churches. Below is a video of some of the worship time that our visiting church led for us.

Over the weekend we converted the swingset slide into a water slide as we dumped water down it and put a baby pool at the bottom that they landed in. It took me a while to find an appropriate video clip of this as Joshua's pants were continuing to be pulled down by water and gravity.

Pictures of Emily and Joshua

Last Monday Brian and I took Emily and Joshua to have their pictures made. Our sweet friend, Hailey Miller, has been wanting to take the kids pictures so we took her up on her offer. Hailey and her mom are amazing photographers and we had so much fun at the photo shoot. The pictures will be up on their website for about three more days. Here is the link if you would like to view them. Let me know your favorites, as I'm having a hard time picking which ones to print.

www.kareymiller.com/EmilyJosh

If you are looking for a photographer in The Woodlands, I highly recommend Karey Miller Photography!!

How do you beat the heat? Retreat indoors into the wonderful invention of AC, crank up the Hammer (MC that is) and let loose. Emily continues to add a few new moves to her dancing skills. The kids got to hang out at David and Lindsey's house last night which is always a big hit with them and we actually got to go out with some friends from church for dinner and Cirque Du Sole (however you spell that?) for a rare night out.

Last night I let the kids have a little fun on our webcam and secretly recorded their hilariously good time. Above is a little piece of their fun. Who wouldn't laugh at a cartoon arrow in your head or a freakishly wierd looking half robot face thing. Good times.

I figured this picture will be logged away and pulled back out again at his graduation party. Gotta have some good blackmail shots you know.

Lastly, our kids have really enjoyed our church's 'Rome' theme this summer as they've been learning all about Paul and his missionary journeys. Emily said that she wants to be a missionary one day and Joshua chimed in as well. Later though Josh told us that he wants to be a puppet when he grows up because Paul is a puppet. So we had to explain that Paul actually was a real person. Also, the same morning we had this conversation Joshua out of no where just looks at me and tells me 'Jesus created us and He died for our sins.' Gotta love the wild ride of kid conversations.

We celebrated the 4th of July weekend out in Wimberley. On Thursday we took the kids to 'Wonder world' in San Marcos which I've passed by my whole life but never actually gone in as it looks and sounds like a complete tourist trap. It was actually a lot of fun as the kids got to experience going down into their first cave. Emily is going through one of the 'finger holes' in the cave in the picture above.



On Friday we checked out the Wimberley 4th of July Parade. It was quite hot but the kids got lots and lots of candy...yeah. (we can't seem to quite rid our pantry of candy as just when you're about to go through the halloween candy then Christmas rolls around and then Valentines day rolls around and then Easter rolls around and then 4th of July parade comes...there's just a built in supply chain of candy funnelling into our pantry keeping it freshly stocked year round to tempt us constantly).



On Sunday we took the crew (Uncle Brad, Aunt Trina, Gigi, Granddad, Mommy, Daddy, Joshua, Emily and Gaddy) and went over to San Marcos to check out Spring Lake which feeds the San Marcos River. We got to go around in a glass bottom boat which was pretty exciting for the kids as they got to look down into the crystal clear spring water (which completely replaces itself every 8 hours) and see fish and turtles.

It was nice to come home and catch up with our neighbors last night. We quickly jumped back into life with them as we had a late fourth of July celebration with the kids doing sparklers in the street and then the grand finale was the kids watching the dads battle against each other with the little firework tanks. It was myself on one side of the street versus two of my neighbors. We each had about 27 tanks in our army and we fired shots back and forth at each other for several minutes. It was quite entertaining.