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.

Well a few days ago Whitney had to go into work early and I was trying to be Mr. Mom and bring the kids in later that morning. Everything was going reasonably well until I had to go take a quick pit stop in the bathroom. I had been in there for a few seconds and I hear a crash of breaking glass or something coming from the kitchen where I had left my son eating his oatmeal. Sure enough he apparently had decided to attempt to balance his bowl (one of Whitney's 'poppy's on blue' nice bowls from our wedding, oops) on the edge of the table and uh oh got a little too close and it came crashing onto the tile floor and exploded into lots of pieces. It was even more exciting cleaning it up as his unfinished oatmeal fragments where clinging on to all the shards of porcelain throughout the kitchen. I of course was a little bit flustered as I was already running late but there was no need to discipline as my son instantly fell to the floor cowering in a sea of tears completely freaked out that he had broken a bowl so I had to calm him down and assure him I was not going to unleash the wrath of dad upon him or anything. So the video above is day two when Joshua had his new 'porky pig' bowl that I believe was mine when I was a little kid (it's plastic by the way). But the new bowl so far has worked great as porky pig is on the bottom inside of the bowl so Joshua has to eat all of his oatmeal if he wants to see all of porky pig. So he devoured his oatmeal in childish delight and as he got closer and closer to the end he would see a pig ear or a snouth or a pinkish pig leg until finally all the oatmeal was gone and he was left with porky pig smiling back at him from the bottom of the bowl.
The kids had to go in for their 3 year old and 5 year old check up at the doctor where they both had the fun time of receiving the dreaded shots. Emily had to have 3 shots and Joshua had one. Poor Joshua is cursed with the shaky vein syndrome where the nurses had to poke around for what seemed like an eternity while the little guy just laid their in ghostly white horror as this needle continued to probe around inside of his arm. Below are a couple of pictures from Emily's hearing and vision tests.

Lastly here are a couple of Emilyisms that we've recently enjoyed:

Emilyism 1: Yesterday (Sunday) Emily took random objects from our house and created her own museum in our living room. Each item was carefully displayed on some type of surface (folded up quilt, storage box, blanket, etc) and arranged in a very well thought out manner. Emily, the curator of the museum, gave us a tour where she walked us through and explained each and every exhibit with passionate enthusiasm. Some of the exhibit items included Daddy's shoe, a pair of sunglasses, a slinkie and many other items that she discovered throughout our house. She explained a little bit about the former use of each item and how it ended up in her museum. I asked her what the name of her museum was and without skipping a beat she replied, "the museum of everything children love."

Emilyism 2: As we were driving to Walmart last night for our Sunday night grocery run Emily started telling us about space travel and that there are certain very important rules one must follow to be safe. So here are Emily's top 5 rules for space travel:

Rule 1: Stay away from Venus because Venus is hot and will melt your space suit and then melt you

Rule 2: Watch out for rock storms on Mars

Rule 3: Watch out for meteors in space when you're on your rocket ship

Rule 4: Watch out for sand storms on the moon

Rule 5: Watch out for aliens because aliens are real