Anniversary Dinner

This post is SOOOO late!  Late by about 2 months.  Oh well, better late than never :)

J and I celebrated our 12 Year Wedding Anniversary in May!  We figured it out and this year marks the point where we have been dating, engaged, or married for over 1/2 our life!  CRAZY!  And GOOD!  He's the best, and I'm so thankful that I get to hang out with my best friend (and the coolest person I know) every day!

Not the best picture...but it was taken by a 7 year old :)

We went to eat at our favorite little Italian restaurant.  SO. GOOD!  C and G came with...I can't remember exactly why, but I'm thinking I had trouble finding a sitter for that night?  In any case, we had lots of fun!  The kids were very well behaved and enjoyed eating somewhere a little more "fancy."

Then J treated us to a frozen yogurt dessert. 

A "Real" Tea Party!

A good friend of ours invited a few of her young neighbors and G and I to a "Real" Tea Party.

G was SO excited beforehand...making sure to select the perfect dress (for BOTH of us :)

As always, Mrs. D.'s table was tastefully set with beautiful china and beautifully decorated with food that tasted as good as it looked!

Afterward we learned how to make adorable paper boxes out of recycled greeting cards.  So FUN!

We had a wonderful time enjoying Mrs. D. and getting to know her neighbors!  I think G's favorite part was the unsupervised sugar bowl...I'm told that it was EMPTY when we left :)

Mrs. D was very kind to let G keep her beautiful tea cup. G is VERY protective of it!  I had it sitting out on the counter until I could get a picture of it (below).  During that time, G would regularly inform me that she really did think it should be put up somewhere "safer." :)

I don't suppose I blame her...it IS beautiful!

Now...if I can just get around to sitting down with G and writing that Thank You note :)

G's Trip To The Mountains

Papa and Grandma called last week to see about arranging a vacation week with C and G.

Part 1 of their plan was taking G (along with my nephew) to the mountains for an overnight trip and a train ride through the mountains.  Papa also wanted to make sure that each kiddo had their own digital camera to document their adventures.  Here are some of the many (nearly 1,000!) pictures that I pulled off of the various digital cameras taken on the trip...

Here are the travelers just before they left our house

Various forms of en-route entertainment :)

I've been reading in the Psalms lately.  The next picture brings Psalm 121 to mind...I lift my eyes to the hills, From where does  my help come?  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth...

Pulled off to do some sight-seeing (no wonder G likes going on vacation with Papa...she doesn't even have to put on shoes and WALK! :)

Breathtaking!

Monday AM Train Ride

More sight-seeing...

She had a great time! She's back home now...sleeping off a very serious case of Vacation Hangover :)

Now we are on to Part 2 of Papa and Grandma's Vacation Week...a visit to a Historic Coastal City with C and my nephew. This city may have survived enemy attack, occupation, and multiple major hurricanes but I'm not sure it is any match for those two wild men :)

C: Joyful In ALL Circumstances

I'm so far behind in updating the blog.  Boo!  I'm going to try to start going back and catching up, but for now I wanted to get these pictures and story uploaded before I forget it :)

Earlier this summer, we had the opportunity to join a nearby neighborhood pool for the summer.  C, G, and I were SOOO excited to have access to swimming so close to home!  So, for the last 4 weeks or so (minus one week off for a bad ear infection), we've enjoyed LOTS of swimming, jumping off of diving boards, and pool games.  

One major goal for C, was to learn to do a front flip off of the diving board (like some of the bigger kids he's seen).  To be perfectly honest, I wasn't too bothered by this because his attempts at flips turn out more like various versions of belly flops.  He wasn't in any danger of hitting his head on the diving board or anything like that.  What I DIDN'T count on was him trying to perfect his front flip at home...off of our guest bed.  Well...he did...and he landed on his right hand.  

J and I took a look and based on his ability to move his hand and wrist around and his reasonably decent disposition (after his initial crying, he settled down, and even started laughing about the whole thing) we determined that he probably just had a bad sprain.  I gave him some ibuprofen and an ice pack and he was good to go...or so I thought.

The next day, though, during his swim lessons, it became apparent that something wasn't right.  He was not using his right arm normally.  His swim instructor, a mother of 4, told me she'd seen that same behavior before...when her son had broken his arm. So, we made an appointment.  His pediatrician ordered and x-ray at the hospital, and about 5:00 that day (yesterday) we got word that he indeed had a fracture.  We were sent to the orthopedic urgent care, where we spent right at 2 hours waiting.  The doctor confirmed that he had fractured/broken both bones in his lower arm (near his wrist).  Shortly after that, he got a cast and we were headed home.

That was a hard day.  It was loooooong...we spent much of our time waiting for doctors and x-rays. He was in pain.  And at the end he was told that he wouldn't be allowed to swim (something that he REALLY loves) for 3-4 weeks. His response:  "That's ok...that still leaves 2 weeks before I go back to school!"

Once we got home, I told him how proud I was of him and that I was sorry that we didn't get it taken care of the night before.  His response:  "That's ok, Mommy.  You didn't know."

These pictures were taken in the waiting time at the urgent care...

Here's one with his newest accessory...

I'm so thankful for his sweet, joyful spirit!  

Romans 12:12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

1 Thessalonians 5:16 Be joyful always. 

For My Dad on Father's Day...

My Daddy taught me…
to be loyal.
to be honest.
to persevere.
to eat my “trees.”
to take initiative.
to let kids tag along.
to think outside the box.
to use a hammer and a saw.
to honor my father and mother.
to be diligent and hard working.
to be dependable and trustworthy.
to be willing to sacrifice for another.
to change a tire and the oil in my car.
to look for ways to serve the ones I love.
to love people when they aren’t at their best.
to appreciate the value of building character.
to have confidence to tackle a good DIY project.
to look for ways to improve how things are done.
to appreciate the value of a dollar and a hard day’s work.
to understand that a Daddy’s job is to protect and provide.
And to ALWAYS …
keep a cool head and let my hair grow long.
The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair.  Proverbs 20:29

Around The House

I decided to go ahead and remove the popcorn from the kitchen ceiling this week.  Tearing apart the kitchen is never easy, but it helps some that C is out of school and the weather is nice enough for us to eat our meals on the screened in porch.

Here's what we started with...

This makes the 8th room/area that we've tackled, but it is our first experience dealing with significant water damage (thanks to a flooded toilet a few months back) here...

and here..

The popcorn scraped off easily enough...

But those damaged joints are looking PRETTY rough...

GULP!  It is very possible that I have bitten off more than I can chew with this one.  I was pretty overwhelmed by how awful it looked.  But then I remembered that the bottom floor of our house is officially POPCORN FREE (well...except the closets...which I couldn't care less about :) AND no matter what I do I'm pretty sure it can't look any worse than it did when I started.  As it turns out "can't go anywhere but up" is a pretty freeing place to be :)

Here's our temporary eating area - so that we can at least eat our meals in a dry-wall dust-free area...

Complete with a make-shift coffee preparation area...a requirement for making any project that tears apart your kitchen tolerable!

This screened in porch eating thing is working out so well that I joked with J that between his grill (on the deck) and our new eating area, we might not need a presentable kitchen for some time.  He didn't agree and wasn't amused :)

G: Our Crafty One

The other day, I noticed that G had on this pretty little bracelet that I'd never seen before.

She told me she made it!

She explained how she took the self-adhesive jewels she had left over from the Decorate-able Jewelry Box she received for her birthday and stuck them to a thin strip of paper that was long enough to go around her wrist.  She secured the ends of the strip of paper with a princess sticker she had stashed away in her room.

The crazy thing is that bracelet stayed on her wrist (and in one piece) for a whole day.  I was impressed :)

Note:  The weird thing on the back of her hand is a bug tattoo that she picked out from the "treasure box" at the dentist's office...EWWW!