Memorial Day Memories

We decided to head south for the holiday weekend. The kids had tons of fun with their cousins!

Luke and Noah having fun with bubbles

Daddy had the great idea of putting bubble bath in the pool!
The babies striking the same pose

Pardon Me...I'm Sentimental

Noah finished his first year of school (Pre-K) last week. I just got around to looking at the pictures and videos from the program. I'm a little sentimental. My little guy is growing up so fast! Here's a picture of his first day of school...which seems like a lifetime ago...



and here's a picture of his last day of school. You know how every so often you have those moments when you look at your child and think..."when did you get that big?" That's what I felt when I looked at this picture.

Here's a little snippet from the PK portion of the Kindergarten graduation.

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Summer (Weather) Is Here!

And we're ready to swim!!!

Who minds 90 degrees when you're basking in the kiddie pool?

Our Kids Have Moved Out

What's the difference between these two pictures?


About $485!!!

This was our garage sale deal of the weekend (deal of the summer)! We were driving through a neighborhood garage sale and happened upon this house with a sign on it - $15. It took us a couple trips to get it home, but the kids' smiles were worth it! The Step2 website sells these playhouses for $500!!! Woohoo!

Our Babies Are Growing

Noah says "That's the biggest furball I've ever seen!"

How to Fight for Joy in Motherhood

This is an amazing article on "Joyful Christian Motherhood" that I found on Bethlehem's website. These questions caught my eye as I was looking through the resources page:

Do these things cause our joy?

• Does our good or bad "performance" as mothers make or break our joy?
• Do we believe if only we could be more organized, better housekeepers, or had more help from husbands or grandmothers...then we would be joyful?
• Do we think if our kids were better behaved, more cheerful, more helpful - perhaps more like someone else's kids...then we would be joyful?
• Do we think if our house was more beautiful or bigger or had more storage or was in a better neighborhood...then we would be joyful?
• How about more willpower and self-discipline...would we then be joyful?
• Does our joy depend on our feeling good and secure in regard to money, health, job, future outlook?
• Does our joy depend on having life proceed according to our plan? Or having others approve of us?
• Will the small and large stressors of life (inevitable) prevent our joy?

True joy comes from God, our relationship with Him, and knowing the will of God and doing it...through His strength and His enabling.

Ahhh...this was balm for my weary soul. And this was only the beginning of a powerful look at motherhood. I pray that God will touch you with these thoughts as He has touched me!

BTW, you can also find part of the article here if you have trouble linking to the above.

Happy Mother's Day!

We love you Moms!

Our resident bird is a new mommy!

Woman vs. Nature

It's on.

I spent most of the morning battling a weed which has overtaken my front garden. I got this weed from a neighbor when we first moved into our house about three years ago. Here's the story - I was on a walk with another neighbor, who introduced me to the "weed neighbor" and told me he was a landscaper. He was gardening at the time, and offered me some mums which he was dividing. So I gratefully accepted since I was looking to fill in some bare spots in the garden.

That summer I noticed how quickly these "mums" were growing! How exciting! But where were the flowers???

The next summer (last summer), I realized I had a devil on my hands when the "mums" started taking over the garden. I couldn't do much about it since I had just had Chloe and gardening was not high on the priority list.

This year I've waged war. And I'm not quitting until I win. I pulled up more roots than I care to remember. I think I might go plant those roots in the neighbor's garden during the middle of the night.

The only one who enjoyed my war with the weeds was Noah, who found many worms while I was digging to go in his newly-constructed worm house. You can see the stairs leading down into the house.

She's Always Wanted Wings

Saturday was our women's luncheon at church. The theme was "Bloom Where You're Planted". For the past several weeks, my friend has been photographing the girls in our church with different kinds of flowers, and the pictures were used to decorate the room. And then...she gave us the pictures!

Update on the Birds

This is a picture of our nest earlier this morning.

After deep soul-searching and lengthy research (not really, but we did have a DNR expert weigh in on the subject), we removed the cowbird's egg from the nest. We briefly thought about trying to keep it warm to see if it would hatch, but then thoughts of trying to feed a baby bird came to mind, and we quickly discarded that idea.
Here's the offending egg. Poor little thing! I feel a little guilty.