Eastbound!

Well we are once again living the road warrior dream. We are on the road to Georgia to visit with Whitney's family. We found a hotel with two double beds but the kids all wanted to sleep with Mommy leaving Daddy feeling lonely and rejected and with lots of spacious room. Finally I convinced Joshua to come over to Daddy's bed by telling him that we were the 'boys bed' and the other was the 'girls bed'. This kind of logic is starting work with him as lately when we'll be out and about he'll make statements like 'Daddy, we're both boys and Mommy and Emily are both girls.' So he is hitting the awareness of his maculinity stage apparently.

It's been a week of some chapters coming to a close and other things beginning. Emily's first year of ballet wrapped up on Wednesday. It was 'bring a friend' day and she chose to bring Natalie Justiss from church to come dance with her. She is posing in this picture with little Natalie and big Natalie (her instructor).

On Tuesday the kids began taking swim lessons with Monica Binkley from church. Emily wasn't quite sure about it the first day but made dramatic improvements the second day. She is our strong-willed...I know how I want to do things...child so the idea of trusting another person with your life in a body of water was a little unnerving and stretching for her. We had a get together with our small group at Monica's house and the kids got to practice their new water skills. At one point we let Joshua try on Emily's new special swim goggles. Apparently when the goggles were place on his head he, in his mind, could magically and instantly have the swimming abilities of some kind of superhero as he just drops straight into the water and quickly realizes that he's still Josh and starts flailing his arms and trying to swim and ends up drinking a healthy portion of pool water in the process.

Emily had her last day of pre-school at Children's Faith Academy and stopped to get a quick picture with her teacher Miss Kasey. She had a great experience and really learned a lot this year. She had quite a great time on her last day as they had a water party with a giant inflatable water slide, climbing wall and water guns.

Lastly, today is Joshua's 3rd Birthday so happy Birthday Joshua. He got to go to his favorite restaurant, Chik-fil-A yesterday with Gigi. He is sporting his new haircut!

Well it's official my daughter is an uncontrollable dancing machine. It just seems to flow through her veins. On Saturday afternoon I had worship rehearsal and Whitney and the kids were up at the church as well. We were rehearsing one of the songs and I noticed that there was a little 3 1/2 foot interpretive dancer fully immersed in mucial expression all over the stage. As I looked closer I noticed that it was my daughter. So for the next couple of songs she is twirling and raising her hands and dancing her heart out to Barlowe Girl's song 'Surrender'. The kicker was when Rodney Holter (who happened to be operating the camera) starting following her movements and she realized that she was on the big Imag screens. So she thought it was awesome that she was now on TV and she would dance and look at herself on the big screens.

We had a little more excitement near the end of our worship rehearsal on Saturday. The children's ministry is currently building Rome out of Foam for this summer's theme and so we had a large mountain of foam that Kevin Mahaffey and Taylor were trying to cram into the storage room on Saturday. Kevin accidentally bumped into the fire alarm and pushed the lever down thus setting off the alarm which we were unable to turn off. So with great quickness and responsiveness our local fire dept showed up to assess the situation. We finally got the crazy thing turned off and on top of that Emily and Joshua earned their own plastic fire fighter hats for bravery in the face of potential danger. Here they are posing with one of the fire fighters outside of the church.

Well, two years ago we moved into our current house and picked our lot primarily because of a beautiful oak tree in the backyard. So naturally the two trees we had died shortly after we moved in so we have been stuck with two ginormous dead trees ever since (that miraculously didn't come crashing down during hurricane Ike). On Wednesday a team of 4 guys showed up early in the morning and with spiked shoes, chain saws, nerves of steel, and ropes took down both trees. It was honestly a little hard to watch as the climber guy (maybe they draw straws for that job I don't know) would go all the way to the absolute top of the tree and begin chopping it down piece by piece.
Emily is wrapping up her ballet practices for the year. On Wednesday they had a chance to dance to 'Hi Ho' from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (which just happened to be Joshua's favorite song from the recital last weekend).


Gaye and Brian (Whitney's aunt and uncle) stopped by for a quick visit on a little Texas tour vacation. We grabbed some lunch together over at Johnny Rockets in Market Street. It was great to get to see them.

Well the big weekend has come and went. Emily had her first official ballet recital on Saturday night. This clip is from their full dress rehearsal of their version of 'Spoon full of sugar.' This has been quite the learning experience for me as I was raised among all boys and my mom. The world of dance and recitals has until this point been a complete mystery to me. Having been through my initiation into this world I was pleasantly surprised that the hour and a half production was quite entertaining. All the different groups and solo acts danced to different songs from the movies from The Little Murmaid to the Seven Dwarves to Space Jam to Spiderman it covered the full spectrum. Emily did really well. She has this very genuine expression on her face when she performs and she really gives it her all. She was all decked out in tights, lip gloss, hair professionally done with curls, and the full poofy blue dress. This was one of those cool parenting moments where you look out on your little girl and you just feel so proud and so blessed that God has given her to you. Here's a few pictures right before she went on stage on Saturday night and then a couple of shots during her performance:

Little brother even got all spiffed up for the big night and did surprising well considering he's not quite three years old yet. We had one funny dilemna. Whitney and I were sitting up front and my Dad and Joshua were a few rows behind us. Literally right before Emily's 1.5 minute performance is about to happen we look up at my dad pinching his nose and pointing to Joshua's hinder parts which of course is the universal sign in a crowd that there is a poopie diaper in the building. Whitney and I just looked at each other and thought "you have got to be kidding me." We also knew "Oh well they're just going to have to endure the smell cuz there's no way we are going to miss the performance." So they endured and it actually turned out to be a false alarm a.k.a 'gas'.

Mother's day was a really nice day as we had lunch at our house with Gigi and Granddad and Jay and Haliey. On Saturday night Whitney got desperate as Emily was having a tough time going to sleep and she threw out the 'if you go to sleep we'll set up the swimming pools tomorrow' card. Instantly Emily felt amazingly tired and went right to bed. You're thinking the next morning is a new day and she won't even think about that little promise right? WRONG. All through church she was going around telling everyone that she was going to get to go swimming today and that she had three pools (referring to the three inflatable baby pools we have in our garage). We compromised and Daddy inflated two pools for the little water bugs.
Lastly, we made it to bed time (after watching Bolt and eating popcorn on the couch...which I've discovered we could have been watching CSpan and the kids wouldn't have cared as long as popcorn was involved). This little video is Emily saying some of the books of the Old Testament. Also last night she retold in great detail what they learned at church. We've been so amazed and thankful for our children's ministry as our daughter every week gives us vivid detail about the stories she is learning. It's so cool to see her not rely on the 'Sunday School Answer' but really learning God's Word. She also has apparently quite the heart for missions as she helped me pass out baby bottles for helping out one of the Pregnancy Assitance Centers in Houston. She wasn't letting anyone get past without running up to them and putting a baby bottle in their hand and telling them to fill it up with money and bring it back to the church. We were about to leave and she apparently heard a vacuum cleaner running. She makes us wait as she grabs another baby bottle and finds the person who was cleaning up one of the children's rooms and gives them the speech. Wow she's a little trooper!

Joshua was supercharged today with all kinds of words and expressions flowing from his mouth. Alot of times I'll throw a quick prayer up for the family and our day when we're driving to preschool or church and lately Joshua (a mosquito magnet) has been interrupting me and asking me to pray for his mosquito bites. Today he was learning and exploring the art of expressing thanks to God (earlier today he even thanked God for his mosquito bites which means he's obviously way more spiritually mature than me as I would have a hard time doing that).

Last Sunday night wrapped up Awanas for the year. Emily completed her second year of Cubbies and next year will be moving on to Sparks. It's been neat to see her learn Scripture and the basic elements of the gospel. I asked her what the A and the C stood for on her Cubbie vest and she replied confidently "All have sinned" and "Christ died for us." I want to take a moment and applaud my amazing wife as well as she poured her heart and soul into these kids all year long on Sunday nights (when she was already exhausted from Sunday morning). I know that God has used her to plant seeds in these little kids' hearts. We also had a baptism earlier that day and Emily commented on Sunday night that she now wants to be baptized. I asked her if she understood why we get baptized and she replied "cuz all our sins are washed away." Later in the evening though she did admit that it would be pretty fun to swim in the baptismal pool too. So we'll continue to keep this dialogue going with her.

Today was a highly anticipated moment for my daughter. Whitney and I had to be at a 80th birthday party for Miss Rose at our church at 9:00 which meant we had to find someone to take Emily to pre-school. So Lindsey Wittenmyer stepped up to the task. We had to put Emily's carseat in Lindsey's car. As I picked my daughter up and placed her into the red Honda it was as if she had entered into this wonderful world full of unspeakable delights. She looked around and beamed as she was overwhelmed with the fact that she was getting to ride with Lindsey. Here she is sitting in Lindsey's car.

Well...so I (Brian) am still here and not in China thanks to our lovely pig friends (aka swine) and their little flu they have decided to share with us. So I was a little disappointed and down so I grabbed the family and declared last night family night at the movies (which we've never done before - probably because I'm too cheap...you know like $5 drinks and $7 popcorn..yikes!). So we jumped in the car and off we went to the new Silverado theatre. And man we went all out. We went and saw Monsters vs Aliens in 3D (see the lovely glasses our kids are sporting) in the IMAX theatre. It was pretty intense but the brave little movie warriors hung in there for the full length of the film. We chowed down on popcorn and pizza (our kids two favorite 'p' words). Josh was sitting next to me and every once in a while the giant really loud monsters (that appeared to be coming right out of the movie screen thanks to our cool glasses) evoked some little jerks and reflex responses out of him. A couple of times he was being so still in his big old movie chair that we weren't sure if he was awake so I had to slightly lift up the glasses and make sure his eyes were open.

Today we decided to try and tackle our back yard and flower beds (which my finger nails are sore from pulling so many weeds...what is that all about). The kids were all about this activity as it equated to sandbox time, sliding, play house graffitti (when they color all over their play house with sidewalk chalk), and last but not least the grand finale was getting to put their little kid water sprayer on the end of the hose and go to town on each other. Emily is seen here in prime position as she blasts her little brother with a direct hit the the upper torso and face.

I finally had to bring the water bugs wild frenzy of squirting water everywhere to a close so I told them to march over to the fence and to not move. So here they are i this picture right after I squirted them one more time to try and get all the grass and dirt off their little bodies before immediately wrapping them up in towels and carring them up to the bathtub.