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.

Well, we made it back from our Disney adventure yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. Disney is such an overwhelming experience for all the senses that 6 days in the different parks (3 - Magic Kingdom, 1 - Animal Kingdom, 1 - Epcot, and 1 - Hollywood studios) feels like a month. We took almost 1000 pictures I think but I thought I would list out a few highlights and memories from our experience:

Emily's night as a princess - On Tuesday Emily and her cousin Allison got to go to Bippity Boppity Boutique and have an extreme makeover (hair, makeup, extensions, cinderella dress, etc) in Downtown Disney. They then went and had some appetizers at Rainforest Cafe. Then they took a boat ride across the lake and boarded a bus for the magic kingdom. Upon arrival the dads got to come and see their little princesses. The girls were sure that when the dads got there we would 'pass out because of they were so beautiful' so I played along acting very woozy and faintish when we first saw them. Then the girls enjoyed an amazing dinner in the castle and to their surprise got to meet four of the disney princesses (Snow White, Aurora, Cinderella and Aerial). During their main course (fancy chicken nuggets) they could see the fireworks show through the stained glass windows in the castle. It was truly a magical night for the girls.

Joshua, the doggy paddling pirate - For Joshua one of the highlights occurred at the pool in the house where we stayed. He learned how to doggy paddle with floaties or 'doggy paddles' as he called them. on Sunday night Whitney and I had to rush Emily to the ER as she slipped and fell and busted her chin on the concrete and Joshua stayed at the house and was taught how to swim with floaties on. Then on Tuesday afternoon we Joshua and I had some great Father/Son time in the pool for about an hour and a half where we just played together and I gave him 'challenges' to overcome in the pool and with every successful challenge he was so excited and giddy. He swam across the pool, he jumped off the side into my arms, he got to play whack-a-dad with a pool noodle as I popped up and down in the water. It was some great time with my son as I learned how to just play again and have fun. It was a good reminder to me to not get so immersed in bills, cleaning and to-do-lists that I don't take time to really enjoy the best gifts that God has given me, the relationships in my life.

On Friday Joshua had his own extreme makeover as they transformed him into a pirate. He was a little in shock during the whole process and didn't know quite what to think but I think he thought it was pretty cool. He also thought it was cool to have a 'moostache' (as he calls it) like Daddy. Right after his transformation was complete we rode 'Pirates of the Carribean' and they told him whenever he got scared to simply yell 'ARRRRR' and he would feel better. So sure enough several times through the ride I heard him yell 'ARRRR' at the scary animatronic pirates and creatures and he seemed to gain courage more and more.

Joshua completed another spring semester of MDO and all the parents showed up in mass force to witness our kids singing some of their songs they learned over the semester. Here's a shot of one of their songs from the performance.

One of our childcare staff, Angela, has made quite an impression on our son. So much so that Joshua has decided to work on his impersonation of her. Angela, with roots in Lubbock Texas, has apparently mesmorized our son with the way she says 'Light' or 'Laught'. Here is Joshua doing his 'Angela' impression.





Emily had her ballet pictures taken last week and she had the royal treatment getting to get a haircut, hairwash, blow dry and a little bit of lipstick (which she thought was pretty cool).




























It was crazy hair day at Joshua's school last week. He definitely went all out for the occassion or maybe Mommy went all out would be more accurate.