Cassie and I were enjoying a sunny morning on mine and Matt's bed. I remember taking a picture of Felicity with this hat on so I wanted to try it with Cassie. Yup. Just like Lissy's picture, hers is cute, too. :)

She weighed in at 14 lbs. 12 oz. I think at the Dr. office the other day.

I was trying to finish something online one evening. Cassie cried herself to sleep beside me on the rug. (Grandparents: Don't worry. It wasn't a desperate cry, just a half-hearted, sleepy one.)

Micah doing one of his goofy looks. I think he was "crossing" his eyes. He makes me laugh all the time because of his attempts at copying what he perceives as grown-up facial expressions. (Umm, not that crossing your eyes is a grownup expression. Pardon my disconnected thoughts. I have lots of distractions while I am trying to type this.)

These are my new shoes that Camie is wearing. She was pretending to be a gorilla.

Matt and me sporting our new Vibrom Five Finger Toe-Shoes. He commented that they look like mice feet. :) We got them to use for water shoes on our Wisconsin trip at the indoor water parks. They can be worn as everyday shoes, running shoes, etc.

More pics and everyday news to share but kids are filthy and need baths. Night night.

Rose

Quotes

"I'm walking on my tip-tap-toes." (Micah)

I was reading about Samson to the kids after breakfast. I asked Lissy what his name was. She guessed, "Handsome?"

Camie was getting a little attitude last night as we were getting ready for church. As she was complaining or blaming, whichever it was at the time, I was scanning my mental list of admonitions to use. I decided on the "You are five years old and I am you mother. You will speak respectfully to me. Do you understand? . .blah, blah, blah." I put on my serious look and just about said, "I am five years old. . . !" Whew. Glad I caught myself in time. That would've been hard to maintain the serious look for. :) It still makes me laugh everytime I think of it.

Lissy has been working on telling the truth lately, so when I asked who helped make the train set mess, she said she did and added, "I told da twoof." I praised her and said I was glad there were no liars in the room. "Nope. Only twoofers. (truthers)."

Last night in church a lady gave Micah a little piece of gum. I told him not to swallow it. He seemed to be doing well till a few minutes later when I looked at him and noticed he wasn't chewing anymore. I whispered, "Did you swallow it?" He whispered back, "No. I just keeping it in my fwoat (throat)." :)

As we were leaving the sanctuary after services, Mr. Paul, a man with a shiny bald spot on his head, was talking to Micah. Micah asked, "What dat on you hay-ud ?"(head, said like a true southerner). Thankfully Mr. Paul likes kids. :)

Today Mam came over, after being gone for 6 days. Katie came too and told Camie, "You've gotten bigger since I saw you last!" Camie, pleased, and always ready to share compliments, looked at mom and exclaimed, "Mam, you've gotten bigger since I saw you last, too!"

Catch-Up on Pictures

Here's about two week's worth of photos. Enjoy!

The girls. Lissy was "reading" to Cassie. Not sure how much of it she heard, as Camie was playing the piano and singing at the time.

The look she gave after licking my leg.

Getting some outside time this evening.

Her new trick is blowing spit bubbles. Here she demonstrates her talent.

This was hard to get. Buddy, the dog kept distracting her as he walked past. Most of the time she kept her head turned away from me, but I think Buddy was standing right over her here.

"Daddy's home!" Camie was picking flowers across the driveway and when she heard Matt's truck coming, she got startled and started running.

These next ones remind me of the Sunbonnet Sue dolls .
(since you can't see the girls' faces)No, I don't recall brushing their hair today. Sometimes that gets past me.

Micah is all about motorcycles lately. He found this helmet at the thriftstore (less than $2!). On the way the zoo the other day he noticed a biker with a backpack. When we got home he claimed the girls' pink and white baby doll carrier. I let him try on Daddy's motorcycle boots today (they go to up to the tops of Micah's legs), so I just had to get out these blue snow boots I got for our Wisconsin trip. At one point he also had his badminton racket (his "baseball bat") and his capgun. Don't mess with this man!

Sleepy girls cuddling this morning.

Cassie 5 months old.

My niece Katie surprised us with these cute hats for our WI trip. Check out her blog to see the others she's made.

And how do you sit in a chair? (Lissy loves leotards. She often wears one all day.)


Well, chillruns is needin' me. Time for bed. (Lissy asked me for Nighty Bites--Nutty Buddies/ Nutty Bites---for a bedtime snack.) :)

I could hear one of the kids messing with the scale upstairs in the bathroom. I yelled up "Leave that alone." Lissy explained, "I was measuring my feet, Mamma."

Goodnight.

Prayer

Please pray for my friend Hannah's family. She, her husband, and the youngest three of their four kids were in a bad wreck yesterday. She thinks her tailbone is broken, and has various other bruises, seatbelt burns, and aches. Her 3 and 2 yr. old boys have fractured collar bones. Steve, her husband, hurt his knee. The 10- month old baby girl is the only one unhurt. Thank the Lord for rear- facing carseats. I wanted to cry this morning when she called to tell me about the wreck. Sometimes I naively think death doesn't scare me because I know I'm saved, but as she was telling me this, I realized I would've been very scared had I been there, and was feeling overwhelmed at the realization that some of my best friends could have been killed and taken from us in an instant. My heart is full of thankfulness for our Father's protection. Suddenly, nothing that I thought needed to be done today seems important. The two overflowing baskets of laundry needing to be folded, piles of yet-to-be washed clothes, gritty floor, more school work, grocery shopping, etc. seem almost like distractions. My husband, kids and friends seem much higher on the list today now. Thank you Jesus.

This and That

I found a wonderful new site for school ideas. (And I'm thinking of making some of these file folder games for our Wisconsin trip in Nov.). I'll try to add the link to my sidebar, but not sure it'll do it. Just in case I don't get it or forget to try (kids' naptime is nearly over) it's www.filefolderfun.com

Melissa and Mike (Matt's sister and husband) and their three little girls were here this past week. We had 7 kids 5 and under in the house and it went amazingly well. Seems like last year there were more squabbles, but with everyone being a little older there wasn't so much toy battling. Micah thought Uncle Mike was great, and Aunt Lamissa or Samissa too for that matter. Lissy called her Aunt Beelissa. One day she and I took Micah and the babies with us to Mobile to the thrift store while Mike kept the 4 older girls at home. Well, ages 5,3 1/2, 3, and 2 doesn't sound "older" does it? Bless you Mike. :) I've not taken Micah shopping without the girls much before so I didn't know how much fun he is to shop with. He helped me pick out shoes for myself. I was looking for high heels so I showed him some to give him an idea what I was looking for. From then on he would (loudly) announce "Deez are coot. (These are cute). I hope deez fit you. I tink dey don't." and on and on. He has pretty stylish taste. Then we found the biking helmets and sports gear. He wore a red bicycle helmet (which we ended up getting. How could I resist when he grins so big at his "mo-cylce" helmet?), those football things that go over their shoulders like giant shoulder pads, a badminton raquet, and a baseball glove. All at the same time. He'd grin and run to Aunt Melissa saying "Wook at me!" She really stole his heart when she gave him a box of Fiddle Faddle to snack on.



I've been reading in a book off and on for a while called Jerusalem, the Tragedy and the Triumph by Charles Gulston. It is a history of Jerusalem, starting way back with Abraham and Mt. Moriah, where Abraham went to offer Isaac. I am now up to the point in its history where Jesus died. It is contrasting the traditionally accepted site of Golgotha inside the city on which the shrine The Church of the Holy Sepulcher has been built to mark it as the crucifixion site, to a small hill outside the city wall in an area that is now Arab Jerusalem which is the only place in Jerusalem that is said to have borne and still bears the name "Skull Hill".

Excavations have revealed the tops of two Roman gates, and appear to confirm the belief that the present north wall follows the line of the ancient wall and is just where it was in Jesus' day. If this is so, then Golgotha could not have been where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher now stands, because it was "without the gate" that Christ suffered (Hebrews 13:12). I said all that to explain that "Skull Hill" on Mt. Moriah mentioned below, although not where man has for over a thousand years said Christ was crucified, fits the description very well.

I love how the Lord ties things together throughout history:

"It is also believed that 'Skull Hill' is a continuation of Mount Moriah, being its southern end. The abrupt face of the hill is the result of a moat cut be the Maccabees to keep their enemies at bay, and few realize that Golgatha was at one time connected with the northen portion of Mount Moriah on which the temple was built. Moriah was the scene of Abraham's preparation for the sacrifice of Isaac. Calvary was enacted there, in type. Later, at the same spot when 'an angel of the Lord stood by the thresing floor of Araunah the Jebusite,' Judgement on Jerusalem had been stayed. At Golgotha, judgement on the believer was canceled. On the threshing floor David built an altar; at Golgotha stood a cross, on which was offered the supreme sacrifice."

Another paragraph I liked said:

And it is John who tells us that "in the place where Jesus was crucified there was a garden" (John 19:41). There is something peculiarly significant about this piece of information. Man began his long sojourn on the earth in a garden, Christ spent many hours in a garden. This one on the Mount of Olives, and heaven itself could be a garden. This one could very well have been at the base of the Crucifixion hillock, for it "was near by" with the newly hewn sepulcher in the cliff face where it was customary to place tombs.

Gotta go get kids ready for church.

I'll post some pictures later.
Rose

Was, Is, Will Be

"And when He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him; for they know His voice." (John 10:4)

Something about this verse caught my attention last night. I read it over again several times; it seems like it's been awhile since a scripture struck me as having something to say especially to me. (Could that be because I've not reading them much lately? My Bible time seems to end up being when I read Bible stories to the kids after breakfast. There is plenty to learn even in those moments, but not much time for actual thinking and absorbing.)

As I read this I could visualize the Lord"putting me forth", like cartoon characters being gently but purposefully pushed out on a stage. They are leaning backwards, not sure what to do, but the force behind them is more than they can resist. So out they go, feeling overwhelmed and very small. But my life is not an animated entertainment. My Shepherd puts me where He wants me (when I'm not being a stubborn sheep and doing it my way), and goes before me. That's the part that got my attention. Wherever He puts me, He's already there. He's already got things in motion when I show up on the scene. And then it's my job to follow Him. If I'm maintaining my relationship with Him, I'll recognize His voice and will know where to go. It's a funny picture to me: Jesus ushering me into where He wants me, me finding He's already there and my fears were unnecessary, and then Him taking the lead again once He's got me in place. He's behind me, then with me, then in front of me. "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, which was, and which is to come." (Rev. 1:8)

An excerpt from my evening reading

Those of you not familiar with the Penrod stories by Booth Tarkinton are missing a wonderful glimpse into boyhood. Penrod is a twelve year old boy in the early 1900's, but he could easily be any boy in 2009. It's hilarious. I'm borrowing Mom's "Penrod: His Complete Story" and have found all kinds of gems in it. I've read all or nearly all these stories before and our family makes reference to them often; they are timeless. Here's some from the chapter "A Model Letter to a Friend" in which Penrod realizes the morning the assignment is due he has no such letter to turn in to class. He happens to notice his 19 year old sister's desk as he walks by her room. On it is a letter. He grabs it and closes it in one of his schoolbooks, never bothering to read it until his teacher calls on him in class to read "his" letter aloud. Agony. :)


On Monday Morning Penrod's faith in the coming of another Saturday was flaccid and lustreless. Those Japanese lovers who were promised a reunion after then thousand years in separate hells were brighter with hope than he was.On Monday Penrod was virtually an agnostic.
Nowhere upon hi shining morning face could have been read any eager anticipation of useful knowledge. Of course he had been told that school was for his own good; in fact, he had been told and told and told, but the words conveying this information, meaningless at first, assumed, with each repetition, more and more the character of dull and unsolicited insult.
He was wholly unable to imagine circumstances, present or future, under which any of the instruction and training he was now receiving could be of the slightest possible use or benefit to himself; and when he was informed that such circumstances would frequently arise in his later life, he but felt the slur upon his coming manhood and its power to prevent any such unpleasantness.
If it were possible to place a romantic young Broadway actor and athlete under hushing supervision for six hours a day, compelling him to bend his unremittent attention upon the city directory of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, he could scarce be expected to respond genially to frequent statement that the compulsion was all for his own good. On the contrary, it might be reasonable to conceive his response as taking the form of action, which is precisely the form that Penrod's smouldering impulse yearned to take.

And I love this part:

To Penrod, school was merely a state of confinement, envenomed by mathematics. . . .He must always be prepared to avoid incriminating replies to questions that he felt nobody had a real and natural right to ask him. And when his gorge rose and inwards revolted, the hours became a series of ignoble misadventures and petty disgraces strikingly lacking in privacy.

My friends with boys would probably really identify with these stories. You just gotta read 'em.


(There's a picture post after this one that I wrote earlier today.)