We had some good times this weekend. The Zombie hunt was quite the hit as we hit the Mall for a little shopping excursion. Whitney's mission was to find some new clothes for work. My mission was to thoroughly distract and occupy the kids to free up Whitney to successfully complete her mission. So, we're strolling through the department store and I notice that the sonic kids meal toys my kids had just received had been turned into ray guns and were being fired at objects all over the store and the kids were shooting the 'zombies' aka manicans all over the store. So this evolved into a very elaborate game where they were shooting the white ones, green ones, silver ones, black ones, brown ones, the 'cupcake' head ones, the ring heads, the headless zombies, the kid zombies, etc. Then every time we would pass a picture of a person modeling some clothes one of the kids would ask the picture for a 'clue' on our zombie hunt and they would give us the next clue. Eventually it turned into the quest for the zombie with the golden head (which we are still yet to find). Other features were the mirrors all over the store were the ray gun refueling stations and various colors gave you extra super powers like flying, karate abilities (which Emily demonstrated on one of the clothing racks to Mom's dismay), blending or camouflaging, invisiblity and hot lava-proof shoes. The game did get so out of hand that Mommy scolded all of us (including Dad).
The Zombie Hunters!




A Typical Headless Zombie

















Today we caught a lizard and put it in the kids bug catcher. Emily attempted to feed it a snail but the lizard seemed uninterested. After we finally let it out Emily discovered one of life's little lessons: never try and catch a lizard by the tail. Well she attempted to grab the little guy by the tail and sure enough that tail popped right off. She then was so mesmorized by this that she made me create a display for the tail (a white plastic cup with a little sign 'lizard tail' that was taped on with masking tape). We then enjoyed some time on the back porch as Emily and Joshua each explained a typical day at their school while we looked at a campus map that Emily had made. We then made some popcorn and cinnamon popcorn and watched a movie together.

Some random pictures of the kids!

We had a great trip to Georgia a couple of weeks ago. Here's a few pics from our trip.




Whitney's cousin Danyelle and her husband Mike! It was a beautiful wedding and we were so excited to get to be there to celebrate with them!

Daddy and Joshua hanging out before the wedding.

Emily, cousin Allison and Joshua at the reception. Grammy buys Emily and Allison matching outfits so they are often seen together as twins.

Here is Joshua with his plastic girlfriend. They haven't seen each other in almost a year. The picture below was when they first met in August of 2009.

Here is Emily with her plastic boyfriend. Maybe we should make a yearly tradition of this. It could be a new way of seeing how much they have grown each year!

Emily Quote: 'something in my heart says I want to be a magician but my brain says I need to be a vet. I think I will do what my brain says.'

Coming soon!!

Brian's reports and pictures from his mission trip to Haiti!!

It's been an active summer and wanted to capture a few moments real quick. This past Sunday and Monday we had a chance to go and meet our new nephew, Cole Miles Dunn. He's pretty awesome and it was really special to see my Brother Brad and Sister-in-law Katrina as new proud parents. Here's a few pics of other activities we've been a part of lately:

Emily has been enjoying being a part of 'jump' at the church (a 2-day a week program for kids who's parents work at the church). Here she's pictured with her jump friends as they had a chance to help collect donations for the food pantry, weigh the items, look for expiration dates, store the items on the shelves and see people prayed for.

No Joshua, you cannot marry your sister!

This is a picture of 'their world'. 'Their world' consists of pulling the couch back from the wall and then draping the curtains over the couch to creat a secret world. They then decorated it with pillows and blankets and hung out in there for a while.

This is the drawing that my daughter made me instructing me on the precise way I needed to make a mickey mouse chocolate chip pancake. She takes her pancakes very seriously and wanted to make sure I didn't mess it up. She has also told me before when I've made hamburgers that I need to go get a job at a restaurant so I can learn how to make a burger.

Our neighbors Tommye and David just had their second baby, Brady, who was born recently. They were pumped that Mrs. Tommye let them hold the baby and Emily was especially enamored when baby Brady started holding her finger. She is totally a little Mommy.
Another activity we have enjoyed recently is going out to Moorshead Blueberry Farm. You basically show up and they give you these white buckets and you go pick blueberries like crazy. We have been out there two times now and have picked about 12 pounds worth (1.50/lb). Although the last time I was out there I almost cried as after about an hour of picking and my bucket being about 2/3 full I pressed in close to get a bunch of berries off of a branch and then next thing I knew my whole bucket tipped over and all my berries fell to the ground. I sat there trying not to cry for a bit and then in desperation I cried out to my son, "Joshua, will you please help Daddy pick up his blueberries!" Joshua looked at me with merciful eyes and simply said, "No Daddy I won't help you." Wow, thanks alot man...Oh well, it saved me some money I guess.

On Thursday we celebrated Emily's 6th birthday and Joshua's 4th birthday at our church's youth building. It was a full 2 hours of birthday fun. They had friends from our neighborhood, church and school. Emily also wanted us to have people bring non-perishable items for our church's food pantry and many people did! Thankfully the weather was great and everyone seemed to have a good time. Here are a few pictures and a video of the day:

Thought I would take a moment to catch up a bit since May blew by at a furious pace. Emily is officially a graduate of kindergarten now as we took a moment to snap a picture of her class after her last chapel with her teacher Mrs. Brazzell.

Here's a shot of Emily peering through the window on her big graduation day.

There's the big graduate all decked out in her cap and gown!

Part of the ceremony consisted of the graduates acting out a book about a caterpillar who was eating all kinds of different foods and eventually made a cocoon and transformed into a butterfly. It was a picture of the huge change from the kids at the beginning of the year to now. Emily was very excited because she got to be the butterfly that she carefully hid in the brown bag until her cue.

One of the really special parts of the ceremony was how they recognized each child. As each child walked up the teacher commented on a certain godly character trait that they had observed in them over the last year. Mrs Brazzell chose faithfulness for Emily and she was also given a medal that had her character trait on it and a scripture verse. It was a cool moment to see what someone else who had gotten to know our daughter quite well saw in her as a strength.

We have decided to nominate Joshua for an oscar in the 'dramatic 4 year old best actor' category as he has perfected the art of one moment being totally normal and content to displaying an incredible dramatic face like this the next. I have decided that not only is there the 'terrible two' but there is also the 'fearsome four'. You would think that in this shot the world is coming to an end but literally seconds after this we are totally back to normal....amazing!

Back to happy Josh!







On May 22nd Joshua celebrated his 4th birthday (he had a little part on our Married Life retreat in Wimberley) and then had a little party at his school where he was sporting his mickey mouse birthday ears.




We had a nice visit with Poppaw and Grammy for a couple of weeks. Grammy was kept quite busy doing lots of reading to Emily and Joshua, Joshua's Pre-school and Emily's school. Poppaw was kept busy with several different projects around the house. Emily is sporting her new bike in this picture (an early bday present from Poppaw and Grammy). Brother got a little bike as well.

Another big event that we celebrated was my brother's (Uncle Jay Jay) graduation from medical school. We all went down and spent the night at the Hilton next to the George R. Brown. It was special as both of my grandfather's were there as well as Judy, my parents, Uncle Randy and Kim, and Debby (Gaddy), and Uncle Matt. That evening my grandfather (Grandpa) got to come and stay at our house for the first time which was a really special visit with him (Gaddy and my mom also accompanied him too) as he is almost 90.

Lasly, Emily finished her second year of ballet. This year she did two dances ('All I want for Christmas' and a song from 'The Princess and the Frog'). She had some proud supporters who overwhelmed her with flowers after the show. Here's a few pictures from the event. I've also thrown in a video of some of her dance as well as one of the songs she participated in at the Christian Academy Musical near the end of school.

Today, we took Joshua in for his 4 year old check up. He was very brave as he made it through the vision test, hearing test, blood pressure (it just gives your arm a hug as big sister puts it), blood work (yikes), and yes two different shots in the leg. I believe big sister was more freaked out than her brother was.

Josh is pictured here identifying shapes from long range for the vision test.

I love getting to take Emily to school. You just never know where the conversation will go. We have just about covered every topic imaginable. Today is the day she normally gets to check out a book from the library. So I was asking her which book she was going to check out and then I asked her what book has been her favorite that she has checked out this past year. I quickly interjected, 'I bet it was the dog book that came with the cd of all the dog songs, huh?' She quickly replied, 'No, my favorite book was the Jesus book.' I said "really, what was your favorite part?'. She said, 'all of it.' This kind of spring boarded our conversation into a spiritual one pretty quickly. I asked her if she wanted to be an online missionary with me this summer with global media outreach where we could together share Jesus with people all over the world. She seemed excited about that and then asked me if there were more people in the world who knew Jesus or more people who didn't know Jesus. I told her there were more people in the world who didn't know Jesus and that Jesus Himself said that the it was a wide road full of lots of people who didn't know and walk with God and it was a narrow road full of few people who did know God. Next she said, 'so if people don't know God they go to Hayden?' And I said, 'you mean Hades?' We talked about how Hades was a place where you spent forever apart from God in darkness, loneliness and pain and that God sent His Son Jesus to come die on the cross for us so we would be 'saved' from that place and be able to spend forever with Him. As we approached the school she concluded with asking me if she could watch the movie where Jesus dies on the cross. I figured out that she was talking about the 'Passion of the Christ' and I told her it was a very difficult movie to see that is bloody and shows exactly what happened to Jesus. She said that she could handle it as long as it didn't have any loud noises. Gotta love those drives to school, never know what might happen. This doesn't happen every morning but I've found if you spend the time with your kids even a 20 minute drive with them every day, the chances of this conversation happening increase greatly.