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.

Ballerina Emily

On Wednesday our daughter transformed into a ballerina. Whitney took her to a studio not too far from our house and Emily was all decked out in her new pink leotard, ballet shoes, and little pink skirt to match. Without hesitation she jumped right in with all the other girls and danced and did choreography to songs like 'say a little pray for me' and of course they did a Hannah Montana song as well. The highlight for Whitney was at the end of the practice. The teacher stood up and told all the girls that they did so well that each of them was going to get a piece of candy. But not just any old piece of candy. They were going to get Smarties (which if all of you go back to your childhood can remember how amazingly exciting this type of candy is because it is called a piece of candy when in reality there are like 10 little candies inside!). Anyway as soon as the teacher holds up the candy bag she blurts out 'Can I please have one for my little brother too!' And then the teacher ended up giving each girl two Smarties. But I must say that as parents that made us pretty proud to see Big Sister thinking about little brother like that. But Emily absolutely loved the whole experience and can't wait to go back. I think she would love to go everyday if she could.

The 80's Live

Well, we had quite the time on Saturday night as we left all our pride on the shelf and reached back into a lovely decade known as the 80's. Whitney definitely went all out and even stayed up one night making a 'friendship pin.' We had about 10 couples or so show up for our little shindig. We had a Madonna, Miami Vice, Denim Jackets with the fray action, hairspray, leg warmers, painter hats, etc. We even had a Casey Casum impersonation during our 'Name that 80's tune' contest. There were some nice karaoke performances and Vanilla Ice (I know early 90's but close enough) was enjoyed a couple of times.

The kids had a big time too as we recruited some world class babysitters known as Uncle Jay Jay and special friend Haley Miller. They built some forts, performed some puppet shows (I heard uncle Jay had him rolling with one of the pig puppets), Emily got her finger nails and toenails painted (not by Jay Jay), and of course read some books together (I heard Joshua didn't quite make it through all the books as he sacked out in their arms). I also heard that Jay and Haley played a little Mario Cart after the kids went to bed and that Jay got wooped at least once.

On Friday we did a family adventure to Tomball, TX. Tomball is a small town that is about 10 minutes from us but for somehow I think I overbuilt it up with the kids and they kept saying 'Tomball!' over and over till I finally started feeling kind of bad because there was no way that this tiny Texas town was going to live up to the hype that we had created for it. But, nonetheless it was a nice trip just to get out of the house and enjoy the best time of year here in Houston, the winter. We walked around some little shops, grabbed a snack and some drinks at the Main Street Coffee house (which is a really cool place that actually hosts about three different church services during the week), and then we topped off the outing with a trip to Burroughs park pictured above to the left. They had a huge time playing on these large concrete animal structures.