Homegrown talent

Here are some videos we took of Mason singing last night ... he's not much for being on key but he sure works hard! :)

This Old Man ...



Itsy Bitsy Spider ... he gets caught in an "endless loop" of down came the rain ... not so bad this time:



Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ... morphs into Itsy Bitsy Spider and the Little Mermaid song ...



ABC's ... the short version

Oh Lexi!

I'm glad I'm not her mama, just her Nini. The girl is too much for me. The other day she was rolling around on the floor, whining for milk, and Christa said, "No, I'm not getting you any, you're being lazy. Lazy girls don't get milk." Lexi looked at her for a split second, then shot back, "Can they have water?"

Along the same lines ... she and Mason were fighting constantly the other morning, and Mason kept screaming every time she picked on him, and the screaming was making me nuts. So I grabbed Mason and told him to stop screaming, that I was going to spank him next time he screamed. At the same time, Christa grabbed Lexi and said, "I know you're messing with him to make him scream, so the next time he screams, I'm going to spank YOU. You got it?" Lexi said, "Yeah. So if I scream will you spank Mason??" You guessed it, we both had to leave the room to bust up laughing. She's too quick for me.

J was reading her a Dora book awhile back, and in the book Dora was reading a book about Diego. Diego got into trouble, so Dora jumped into the book to help him. Lexi said, "Daddy wait! How can Dora be reading the book and IN the book at the same time?" Christa asked him what his answer was - the best he could do was: "Holy crap Lexi, you're smart!"

Time Warp

Callie ... and Christa. Is it just me? Every time I look at Callie Anne I get transported back in time because she looks EXACTLY like Christa! I thought Lexi looked like Christa, but I never experienced the deja vu with her that I do with Callie.

In other news ... hmmm. I'm still trying to bounce back from being in the hospital, and now have a sinus infection to further complicate things. As a result I have not been able to work out in a month and I am feeling it on many levels!

We decorated the house for Christmas today - it looks and feels nice (even though I resisted, lazy bah-humbug that I am).

We spent Thanksgiving in San Diego with Brandon and had a fabulous time - wish I had some pictures to share but I hardly took any! It was just a relaxing visit - we stayed in an extended stay-type hotel and he stayed with us, and we mostly cooked there. We met lots of his friends, saw the new church building, and visited two ministries he's involved with, Invisible Children and The Purple Palace, an orphanage just across the border in Mexico. Both visits were very poignant for us, and we have come back with a renewed desire to be involved in the lives of hurting children.

On that note, some very happy news - MaryAnn Brown graduated from High School and finished the Job Corp program to be a Pharmacy Technician! We got to attend her graduation Thursday, and anyone who remembers the time she spent with us will know how much I mean it when I say we are so incredibly proud of her. There were many, many obstacles for her to overcome and many "easier" routes for her to choose, at least in the short term. She plans to go on to college to become a pharmacist.


I am grateful that we got to play a small part in her life, and I can't wait to see where she goes from here!

Party time!

Friday night Christa and I took Brenda out on the town for her 40th birthday. WHOOPPEE-DEE-DOOOOOOOO! This involved pedicures, eating a HUGE dinner (with free dessert)...


... several shopping stops, and an unexpected and unplanned trip to Burger King for sodas, which resulted in three yummy free shakes from this super-hot burger king late night worker guy thanks to Brenda's head gear and Christa's big mouth.



I'll leave the rest in the history books where it belongs, but man did we have a good time and laugh a lot. The best fun you can have sober, I'd say!!

Like a dog on a bone ....

This is the hardest puzzle I think I've ever done. All marbles. About 3/4 of the way through it I wanted to just put it all back in the box so bad ... but I made myself finish. Why? So I could put it all back in the box ... which is why I felt I needed to take a picture to memorialize it first.

So yes, I'm stubborn, ridiculously so.

New kitty - again

Our last kitty abandoned us - she took off out the door one day a few months ago and never came back. It's taken me awhile to relent and get another one, but I'm so glad we did!


Greg got the job of naming her, which he hadn't done before yesterday. I called the vet to get an appointment for her shots, and they asked her name, and of course I had to say "Hopefully I'll know when I bring her in on Monday."

I was over seeing the kiddos yesterday and told Lexi we got a new kitty. She immediately asked her name, and I said Papa hadn't decided you. First she said she thought we should name her Callie Anne, but then we decided together (ha) that it might get confusing. Suddenly she said, "I know! We can name her Billie Bob!" Cracked me up so much I had her call Papa and tell him, and guess what, the (girl) kitty's name is now Billie Bob. Hopefully the "ie" on the end of Billie will help? Should I put two b's on the end of Bob? Such a dilemma.

Lex is suddenly interested in learning how to write her letters, so she made had me tell her how to spell the kitty's name so I could bring it home and show it to her. Naturally the kitty was thrilled, so thrilled she climbed right up my leg and bit my arm just for fun. :)

Brief update ...

Today Lexi needed to wear the Spiderman costume ... understandable since she had been the "Little Mermaid" for something like six days in a row. You know where this is going... since she was Spiderman, guess who had to wear the dress today? (I'll give you a hint - it wasn't Callie :) Pick your battles, right?

We're watching Callie Anne tonight - I haven't seen her much lately because I've been sick and WOW has she ever changed! I promise I'll get some current pics up of her really soon.

Halloween fun ... and the aftermath

Here they are in all their Halloween splendor - Mason in a puffed up pre-muscled Spiderman suit, and Lexi as the good witch in the wizard of oz, aka the little mermaid because that's what she insisted she was. :) Mommy even gave her a little makeup to make her more beautiful.


And a close-up of the spiderman suit ... apparently after every house he yelled "thank you - WUDGE!" Which many of you know was Lexi-speak for "I love you" before she could speak very well, and it has stuck in our whole family. Doubt too many of the neighbors caught on but it was still very sweet.


And Callie Anne showing how interested she was in the whole shebang ...


AND, last but not least, Lexi trying a repeat of the makeup Mommy did the night before. Not bad, really!!

How many ankles do you have?

Sunday Lexi told me that she didn't have as many ankles as I do. Confused, I said, "What do you mean? You have two ankles, and I have two ankles." She said "No, you have lots of them." Still confused, I told her to show me. She pointed at multiple places on my legs, saying "There's one, and there's one, and there's one" ... Aha!! Lexi, those are called FRECKLES not ankles.

And if that's not enough, while we were driving later that same day she discovered that she has a freckle on her middle finger just above her fingernail. And she's happy to show it to you whenever you ask. Call me irreverent, but it's pretty darn funny to see a 3-year old giving you the finger!!

My favorite picture

I think this is my favorite picture of the 128 Shannon gave us to choose from ... but there are so many great ones you may be seeing them a few at a time for a long time to come!! :)

Christa and I taught Lexi how to play Uno today - the little stinker caught on right away and when it was her turn if we weren't watching she'd try to go through the deck to get a "skipper" because the skip cards are her favorite. She won the game too, fair and square. What will we do with that child??

The many faces of Mason ...

Can you say mood swings?? From tantrum ...


... to tickled back to happy ...


... to throwing a fit because Mommy gave him the wrong spoon ...


... to happy again (food is in his near future, always a pleasing event for him) ...


... to being a total goofball.


And last but not least, just what you always wanted to see ... Nini turned into a horsey!!

Would you call this flirting?

She's winking ... I think we might be safe from attracting boys for the forseeable future if she keeps it up. I showed her the picture and said, "Is that what you thought you looked like when you wink?" She said, "No, let me twy that again!" So she did.



Better? I think not. Mason pics coming as soon as I can corral him long enough to take some - he's definitely feeling better.

Callie Anne - seven weeks old!

Callie is growing but still seems so small to me! Maybe because the last baby I have to compare her to is Mason, who may have started out almost as big as she is now. Speaking of Mason, the poor guy has been sick all week with hand, foot and mouth disease (no it's not the same as hoof and mouth or whatever the cows or pigs get) - apparently it's a common virus this time of year. The blisters on his hands and feet are better but his mouth is a terrible mess - went back to the doctor today to find that he now has a secondary bacterial infection in his mouth and throat. He has not been eating or sleeping much, and is very unhappy and uncomfortable. So Kari, the promised feature on Mason will have to wait until he feels better.

Here, however, are some recent pictures of Miss Callie Anne - love that smile! She's starting to coo occasionally too - I had forgotten how much work it is for them to muster up an intentional sound at this age. So sweet.

Pure Lexi

A series of snapshots from the bathtub the other night - she was on her game, for sure!!

Love, sweet love

Today is our anniversary - 19 years!! What holds a marriage together? What makes it stronger with each passing year?

From my vantage point, I can say that for us all these things have been hugely important:

* Believing that we made a covenant before God on the day we got married, and knowing that divorce is not an option!

* Laughter - no one makes me laugh as much as Greg does - we have such a blast together. We've often wondered why we prefer to spend all our free time together, and I think this is a big part of it!

* An amazing strong man of God, who takes his faith seriously, who leads me carefully and well, and who I know would die for me.

* Spending time together before the Lord, reading and studying his word and praying together.

* Being willing to be wrong, or to let it go even if you still think you're right!! Don't major on the minors.

* Be honest, but be kind. Speak the truth in love.

* Sometimes it's better just to shut up. :)

* Be affectionate! Physical touch is so important.

I'm sure there's so many other things that you could think of, and I probably could if I tried, but I'm going to shut this computer and go spend some time with the love of my life!

As good as it gets ...

Rearranged

Here's a couple of pictures of our living and dining area, with new paint and lots of rearranging! It's kind of hard to tell but the paint is sort of a green/brown - a nice warm color. The clocks on the mantle are a new fun addition - mostly from e-bay for 99 cents. We're still looking for a couple of endtables but haven't found anything we love for the price we want to pay yet. Also something to go between the stairs and the sideboard in the kitchen. So if you see anything perfect, let us know!!

Can you hear me now?

Friday Greg had an unexpectedly short work day, so after treating me to lunch he decided to work on the sprinkler system, including replacing a couple of sprinkler heads in the backyard. I was puttering around in the basement when I heard a very deliberate pounding on the door. I opened it to find Greg standing in the garage, hands covered in mud. "I just cut the phone line. I need you to call the phone company and get someone out here to fix it," he said calmly.

Now, you need some history on Greg's propensity to cut phone lines. "Call before you dig?" What? Huh? Are you talking? This is at least the third house in which he has cut the phone line, and it's NEVER just ours that he takes out, it's usually at least one of the neighbors also.

In one of his best performances to date, this time he took out the whole neighborhood. How? Because when he went to dig out the old sprinkler head, the phone line had the audacity to be right in his way! Of course our internet (and probably that of many of our neighbors) is through the phone lines, and at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon it was looking like much of Brookfield Park would be incommunicado for the weekend.

So I used my cell phone to call the phone company, and the happy representative told me a repairman would be out "sometime" the next day (Saturday). No four-hour window, no phone call before they come, just "sometime tomorrow." Gulp. I went outside to let Greg know he better start knocking on the doors of our neighbors to explain what happened.

Being the amazingly gifted man that he is, he was able to splice the line back together and thus avoid the humiliation of informing the neighbors. All was well again within about an hour of the event and hopefully most of them were none the wiser.

And now, for the rest of story ...

We got home from shopping yesterday (Saturday) and in the mailbox was a nifty orange form stating that AT&T had been out and the problem was fixed. Cool. Greg checked it out and it was definitely fixed in a more permanent way than he had left it. Last night, our phone rang, and it came up an 800 number, which I refuse to answer so I handed him the phone. He answered and got this recording, "This is the AT&T repair center calling to let you know that your repair is completed. If you need more assistance or feel the repair is not completed, please press two ..... blah blah blah ..... AT&T would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your business!"

WELL YOU'RE WELCOME!! Anytime we can help just let us know!

Lexi's new hobby

I let Lexi mess around with my camera today for quite awhile, and was quite surprised at the good job she was doing by the end - here's a few representative samples, in time order ... you can sort of 'see' her figuring out how to get what she wanted by the end. Oh the weird one second from the end is definitely her tongue, and she did it on purpose - turned the camera around and stuck her tongue out at it. :)










AND, last but not least, Tink the wonder dog, who definitely smells like Fritos. Ick. I mean, I love you Tinkles.

Sweet funny boy

Mason in all his glory - loving on his baby sister (please disregard the drool, etc., and I'm pretty sure he ripped that red bow off her head a few seconds after I took this picture) ...


Cheesin' for the camera, wearing his jammy shirt and Papa's shoes ...


And being the consummate gentleman, pushing Kylee (and later Lexi and then Lainey) all over the yard in the car.

Going to the movies?

When I was little, whenever my dad would catch me scratching my behind or digging out a wedgie (not that I ever did that), he always asked if I was going to the movies. Why? Because I was picking my seat! Ha ha ha ha! That is what our family fondly calls a "Dad-ism." (He has dozens more, by the way.)

I bought Lexi this adorable yellow skirt - sort of sweat pants material, a little tight over her cute as can be little booty ... except that there's no shorts underneath. I totally know better.