new shades

turn around

This past week I turned Micah's carseat around, so now we're all facing forwards. Here's a glimpse of that day, putting Micah in solo, picking up Mark from preschool and then collecting Matthew from the bus stop later on in the day!  Micah has really enjoyed being in the center and forwards now. Anyhow, the backseat is maxed out, wouldn't you say?

is it summer or spring?

Yesterday was the first day of spring, but I tell you what it is hot enough here to be summer time already! We've been enjoying some outside fun lately. Micah has been enjoying the stroller a lot and he also likes when we take his walker outside. I have put shoes on him a couple times now so he can walk around outside with the big boys. Matthew really likes riding circles around Micah but that's okay. We love playing in and out of the playhouse/"icecream stand" and of course our favorite is still chalking!

paint

(Okay, first, isn't he the cutest stinkin thing?!)

Ta Da! Look, I made it 7 days before his birthday, it's official, Micah lives here! His name made it on the door. We took a vote as to where Micah's name should be: on the bottom of the boy's door, in the middle between the big boy's names or on his own door (which is the office/nursery/guestbedroom door) and the vote was on their shared door. So some day I guess he's movin in there with them. We'll see how long he stays put in his own crib for now though.

In other painting news, Matthew had been asking and asking for a sunshine in their ocean scene. "Mark's side has a boat," he'd tell me. Which is funny, because I painted the boat for him when he slept in the toddler bed, but his new "big boy" side was without anything above water. So, I finally obliged and painted a sunshine. The sun without the rays has been there about two weeks now. We'd been discussing what to do about the rays... I had been wanting to paint the fruit of the spirit up for some time and in the end, at Jamie's suggestion to put them as the rays, Matthew got his sun and I got the fruit of the spirit up on the wall. They aren't in the order biblically from left to right, also Jamie's suggestion, I tried to put the longest one in the middle and the shorter ones on the edges to look like you'd think the sun looking... the boys LOVE their new sunshine!

Given the painting party I was having by myself, I also took the liberty to paint over some of the more tackier ocean life that had been previously painted. There was a sad octopus and a really sad shark that got painted over. Mark announced "Hey! The shark dis-ta-peer-did" Yup, it did, but I replaced both with a way cooler octopus and more fish. Mark's side also got more fish added. Now Jamie says all this room is missing are seagulls. I'm going to say "too bad" to that one though, I doubt I'll be painting seagulls in there. I told him I'd consider clouds but he didn't seem interested in that part. Anyhow, here's Matthew's side of the room. I didn't think to take a picture of the boat side.

who's doing what

Matthew made these beautiful cardinals in the snow at school. Being from St. Louis, you can imagine my joy in seeing them on the fridge! I am partial of course, but I think he did such a neat job. It is really a fun picture.



Mark is starting to spell. He spelled Dog, Cat, Mark all by himself! Then he kept going until we ran out of vowels basically! He stays busy with puzzles by himself, magnets by himself, flash cards... he's such a good little self-player.


Micah worked so hard emptying the tuperwares. I looked over and he was just head down on the floor, having worked so hard to empty that cabinet! Silly little bear!

Moments to live for

Mark and I have been having this "I love you to the moon" "I love you to the stars" "I love you to the clouds" "I love you to the rainbows" thing going on lately and whoever says "I love you to outer space" is the winner. (Meaning Mark normally wins) ... Matthew and I had a similar thing when he was about this age that we've continued "I love you one" "I love you two" "I love you three" back and forth and then the first one to ten was the winner (Meaning Matthew normally won)... Anyhow, this was the moment this morning...

Mark: I love you to the rainbows.
Me: I love you to the moon.
Mark: I love you to the outer space.
Me: Ah! that was fast! I love you to outer space too.
Matthew (not to be out done): Mommy, I love you to each and every star and never stopping all the time to each star Mommy, all of them. And there IS a lot of stars.
Me: (MELT) I love you too Matthew.
Mark: (Not to be out done either put his hands around my face pulling my eyes back to see him) IIIIIIIII love you one.
Me: (chuckling) I love you two.
Mark: I love you three.
Me: I love you four, five, six, seven, eightnineten!
Mark: Heyyyyyy.
Me: I love both my boys so much.
Matthew: Well I still love you to each of the stars.

mmmmm. Life is so worth living for moments like these...

one of those...

....things you never knew you'd say (or hear)....

Last night while bathing people, I was also on the phone with my Nic...

and she had the privilege of hearing me say "No, I will not play Uno Moo with you right now with all these people naked and wet!"

Mark was out of the tub, dried and jammied already and standing in the bathroom door holding his Christmas treasure asking me to join him. Matthew was still in the tub and Micah was in the middle of sponge bath out of the tub... we both cracked up at what I'd said... I thought I'd let the world have a laugh at it too.

The things that you say as a parent... it's endless !

Thankfulness

... I'd fully planned on sharing the rest of our trip to Missouri on here and hopefully I'll get a chance to do so still, but uploading pictures is a timely thing to do. Maybe I can do it one night when Jamie is gone.

I do want to share a conversation from this evening... we needed to calm down a little more than normal (Papa and Grandma had been over (yay!) and the boys were a little wound at bed time.) So we sang some of our verses and then our goodnight song but then I asked them back and forth to tell me some things they were thankful for before we did our prayers. I will say the answers are comical and sweet.

Me: Matthew, can you tell me something you're thankful for?

Matthew: Firewood.

Me: Firewood??

Matthew: Yes. Firewood. You know. so we can make a cozy fire.

(He'd seen Aunt Kris and Uncle Brian's fire blazing in the fireplace during Skype earlier. I wonder if he'd have come up with that answer otherwise. Interesting.)

Me: Okay. Mark, what are you thankful for tonight?

Mark: Cats. I like cats. And pigs.

Me: Well that's nice. I like cats too.

Mark: and pigs.

Me: Okay.

Me: Matthew can you tell me something else you're thankful for?

Matthew: Dogs. The kind you aren't allergic to.

Me: That's nice, thank you. Mark?

Mark: Micah. He's my baby brother.

Me: And you're thankful for your brother. That's so sweet.

Mark: Yes. I am.

Me: Matthew do you want to tell me one more thing you're thankful for?

Matthew: Sure. ummmmmmmmmmm snow.

Me: Snow?

Matthew: Yup. I'm thankful for snow. And rain.

Me: Well, I do like snow, but I'm not sure I'm thankful for it. I am thankful for the rain though.

Matthew: Yup. I'm thankful for snow and rain and Micah.

Mark chimes in: And I'm thankful for you Mom.

Me: Thank you Mark, I'm thankful for you too.

Matthew: And I'm thankful for you too.

Me: and I'm thankful for you too.

... Just a little reminder to myself to ask the boys about being thankful and thankfulness more often. We can talk about it besides just at Thanksgiving. We need to be thanking God every day for the blessings He continues to give us.

if a picture is worth a 1000 words...

then what are these two saying?

I hope you cracked a smile... I can't help but to!

Cool Cars Race Track

Oh it was like Christmas morning... Grandpa and Grammy had given the boys a present while they were in town (more on that later) and man alive, you'd have thought it was Christmas morning. As much as Matthew loves his trains and track... he hasn't built a single track since these cars were unwrapped and set up. What was funny is that I'm not sure who had more fun with them last week... Mark and Matthew or Uncle Brian! Uncle Brian happens to be the BEST engineer you see. Matthew has said more than five times now that he NEEDS Uncle Brian to help me. I am not doing a great job of track building. Today it took a while to get the split in the track going the way it needed to go to make the loop work... bah! It's beyond me. But they love it. We sat in the play room today for a lengthy time, Mark being a tunnel for the cars to pass under and Matthew and I working the tracks out. We have discovered that the little cars can push balls on the tracks. So now it's funny to see what else they can push and what makes them crash... any how, here are some of the first pictures of these new cool cars.

Oh yah, and I did I mention that they are even
super fun to play with at night... in the dark....

Fall Fun

The weather has been just gorgeous lately so we've been enjoying more time outside before we're forced to stay indoors due to the cold that is creeping closer day by day. We normally just chalk. My boys could spend days out there chalking up the driveway, but today Matthew decided he wanted to rake the leaves. I, of course, find nothing wrong with this plan... I stroller-ed Micah and gave Matthew the rake. He got a decent size pile, then the raking was called off, and the jumping began! I so love lovely fall days.

Mark, not to be outdone, needed his turn.

stopping to watch an airplane...