Happy Birthday Anna!

Anna's "Birth"day

1st Birthday

2nd Birthday

3rd Birthday

Anna's 4th Birthday

and the best present of all...

a little brother!

Graced Again

Every Monday we receive an email quote of encouragement from Graced Again. Today's was a wonderful reminder of what a wonderful, merciful Savior we have.

"I was the enemy of God. I was stamping through God's universe, shaking my fist
in His face. And in the very moment when I was shaking my fist in God's face
and tramping through the Creator's universe, muddying all His streams, that's when Jesus died for me. And if this is when Jesus died for me, what hope it gives me now! Now, even when I fall, the blood of Jesus is enough. He didn't save me because I was strong; He saved me when I was weak. He didn't save me when I was a pretty thing; He saved me when I was a mess. On the basis of this reality, I can have comfort." Francis Schaeffer, The Finished Work of Christ

School Time

While having our "school" time today, Anna and I were working on sight words and reading simple sentences. After reading sentence 3 "The man is old" and looking at the picture she matter of factly asked, "Just like you and Daddy?" Do we really look this old to her???

By the way, I'm not a torturous mom making my child do schoolwork during the summer---Anna loves our school time and even asks to do it on the weekends. During the summer months we've been going through Michelle Hubbard's "Joyful Heart Character" curriculum. It's been excellent--John Caden's even been picking up on some of the songs. Here are some other lesson planning/free worksheet websites that I've utilized for keeping my "let's do school" 24/7 girl occupied during her preschool years:

• http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/index.html
• http://www.first-school.ws/
• http://www.dltk-kids.com/
• http://www.missionarlington.org/resources/curriculum/
• http://www.tlsbooks.com/
• http://www.abcteach.com/
• http://www.fiveinarow.com/

The Problem with Little Helpers in the Kithen is...

...they eat the ingredients while you have your back turned! Both John Caden and Anna love to help bake. In fact it seems I can never be in the kitchen alone. If they hear dishes and pots start to clatter and clang they come running and instantly I find myself sandwiched in the middle between the two of them on their stools at the kitchen island wanting to help. I've become quite accustomed to having to improvise on working with a few missing ingredients!

July 4th Fun

Gone are the days when we could just roll out of bed and show up for a race. Race days are quite an ordeal now---disassembling/reassembling the double jogging stroller, borrowing Poppa's truck the night before the race for the disassembled stroller to fit in, getting the kids up at 6:15am, packing emergency snack bags in case the "wiggles" set in when there's still 1 mile left to go, standing in lines at port-a-potties before the race starts, etc, etc. So much to plan for/think about and then there's the unthinkable--- who would have thought that running alongside railroad tracks could pose a problem??? Well we found out that it can be quite a concern for 3 year old little girls who are terrified of the loud noises that trains make. It didn't take long for Anna to make the association that running beside train tracks could mean that a train could come by anytime, so for the whole race she sat crouched low, holding her ears. :(

Thankfully, due to Tim's incredible race time (even better than his single jogging stroller race time at this same race a few years ago) she only had to endure this position for a total time of 25:20! By the way, a train never came by the whole time we were there anyway.

Here's a happier Anna face! We had lunch after the race at my sister's house with a delicious homemade 4th of July cake.

Our Aspiring Ballet Dancers

Watch out Anna Pavlova and Mikhail Baryshnikov! After performing on the "big stage" for her dance recital at the end of May, Anna has not stopped dancing around the house. She's been dancing so much that John Caden even knows"1st position" now! All joking aside, there's nothing sweeter to a mother's soul than to see her children unreservedly pouring their hearts out to Jesus in praise. Here's a precious reminder of perhaps what Psalm 9:1 ("I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart") should look like:

"Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk!"

"One day, Little Sal went with her mother to Blueberry Hill to pick blueberries. Little Sal brought along her small tin pail and her mother brought her large tin pail to put berries in...Little Sal picked three berries and dropped them in her little tin pail...kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk!" These are the opening lines of one of Anna's favorite books, Blueberries for Sal. And this was Anna's reaction today when she dropped our first ripened blueberries of the season that she picked into her little tin pail:

They truly made the "kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk" sound!!!

Here are some more blueberry picking pictures from our "Blueberry Hill" :)