pretty evie

So I've been thinking.

I have been doing a ton of posts on Samuel. He is the baby and he's quite irresistible. But we have 2 other kids. It's true too that I have been doing a fair few posts about Noah, the eldest. But what about the middle child, the rose between two thorns, the pretty Evie?

She is the one we call Little Squish. Though she hasn't been very squishy since she started walking. She is 3.5 now. And she weighed in at 37 pounds this morning on the Wii Fit.

I thought she looked like a grown up girl in this photo so I made it black and white.

Another pretty girl picture.

She and daddy had been playing drums with sticks and even though he went back to work, she kept playing with her drum sticks. It's good for the imagination.

Not quite sure about that camera...

Distracted by...sticks.

"Keep away from me!"

I like her. She always makes me laugh. She's so original, just the way she says things. It's hard to explain. When she blows daddy a good night kiss she used to always say (about the kiss), "It's dancin on yur heeeeaaaaad." Just the way she said it was hilarious. She says lots of things silly like that.

Also, she does a lot of squawking. I used to think she sounded like the suicide bombing Angry Birds. But there is a better comparison. It's the sound Toad makes on Super Mario Brothers Wii when he comes back to life. It's a squawk. She sounds just like it.

Today as I was putting Samuel to bed Evie followed me in there on her knees, wanting to give him a hug and kiss (like always). However, I didn't want to squat all the way down to her on the floor so I told her to stand up. She said, "Tigers don't stand up."

I always tell her, "Evie guess what?" "What?" "I love you." B/c I do. She's my favorite girl.

nice fall days for family photos

We've had some really gorgeous weather this October. Especially today, Halloween. It'll make for good trick or treating - Evie is a lady bug (again) and Noah is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Leonardo) - hero's in a half shell, turtle power. It (the weather, that is) also made for some nice pictures this afternoon. I took a mother load and got some really pretty ones of the kids, which will be forthcoming after this post...

This one is from a few days ago. Terry had just come home from work and went out back to play with the kids. I looked out there while finishing dinner and it made me happy. Terry and Noah were playing frisbee and Evie and Samuel were swinging.

This is today while they were chillin just before daddy went back to work. They do so love their daddy even though Noah has been claiming lately that he loves mommy "the most" and daddy "just a little bit" (as he holds two fingers an inch apart).

After daddy left I rounded them up and tried to get a good photo of all 3 of them. I didn't succeed. But I did get some amusing ones.

Here they're all in their own world.

Here Noah is trying to force the issue and squirmy Samuel is not into that.

Samuel is still mad about having been made to sit still.

Samuel reminds me of King Kong here. And Noah and Evie are all cute.

Everyone is on the move.

clean inside

As I've mentioned before, Terry's dad brought the kids pumpkins for halloween. We decided to carve them up today. Noah didn't want to touch the insides of the pumpkin and so he tried a rubber glove. It was too big on his hand to do any good though.

He was way freaked out by the guts.

Terry shared with the kids how carving a pumpkin is a lot like salvation.

Just like the inside of a pumpkin is icky and gross, so the inside of every human is sinful. And even worse than that, we are born sinful. So even if we could somehow be "good enough" to get to God, to heaven, we'd still be out of luck b/c we are born sinful - sinners. I never had to teach my kids to be naughty. It comes naturally. We are sinners and we sin.

So Jesus comes as a real man. By living a perfect life and dying as an innocent man for all of human kind, God made him who knew no sin (Jesus) to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God, in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus took all of the punishment that we deserved. But only if we choose to believe that Jesus did all of this and trust Him to save us through what He did, can we be saved from being separated from God. And if we do believe God and rely on Jesus for our salvation, Jesus cleans us out just like Terry cleaned out the pumpkin.

Jesus makes us clean. He makes us saints, holy and righteous in Christ, and we are no longer sinners.

And then we get an unhappy face? Well, no. That's just what Noah wanted his pumpkin to look like.

Jesus cleans us up, makes us new and puts His light inside of us.

His light shines brighter in the dark.

Evie wanted her pumpkin to have ears.

pumpkins

Terry's dad is a generous man. Case in point. Last week he drove 6 hours just to bring us some home grown pumpkins.

I'm sure he wanted to visit us and his grand kids as well, but I still thought it was pretty nice of him. They had grown a bunch of pumpkins and promised the biggest and best to Noah and Evie, thinking that my parents would be able to bring them down on their fall trip. But their fall trip never happened. So Jerry up and decided to drive down.

They are picking out the biggest for themselves.

He's a strong boy.

How appropriate is his shirt?

Now we have fall decorations. I never do stuff like that!

Of course we still have to carve one or two... Oh, and notice how Noah is admiring his skunk while he's supposed to be looking at the camera. See previous post here...

This one is the roundest and smallest. I put it on my table.

Skunk

Noah has a beanie baby skunk that he loves. His Gramma K gave it to him. Just a few days ago, he told me that he was in love with his skunk (who, by the way, doesn't stink even though his technical name is Stinky). Evie has her pink bear and Noah has his skunk. They sleep together, go play outside together, read together, eat together. You get the idea. He loves his skunk.

Two days ago Noah was telling me some weird story having to do with his skunk. I had just worked out and was tired and busy with dinner so I didn't really pay attention to what he was saying. The only thing that registered was "Skunk...toilet." Noah day dreams, a lot. This sounded like the kind of thing he would dream up so I dismissed it without a second thought.

However, after Terry got home and came back in from playing in the back yard with the kids, he shared with me this same "dream" in more detail...

They had been jumping on the trampoline with Skunk as the primary play thing. They were bouncing Skunk and Noah was bopping them on the head with it. Terry realized that Skunk was damp. He asked Noah, "Is Skunk wet?"

Noah, "Yes."

Terry, "Why is Skunk wet?"

Noah, "Because he fell in the toilet."

Terry, "Noah, was there pee pee in the toilet?"

Noah, "Yes. But it's okay. I washed him. With water."

Terry took that skunk and threw him out of the trampoline. When they came in he threw Skunk on the door mat and told me the story.

I guess I should listen to my son a little better.

And this should have been my expression when Noah tried to tell me what happened.

And this was Samuel's reaction ;)

my only kitty

I like this wall. I got that big frame on clearance at Pamida. The black frames are old. The clock is new. But the best part is my cat.

My dad got this from the Philippines when he was in the Navy. It's the only cat I'll ever have while Snap is alive. Sniff sniff :'(

the past tense oak

Our house has/had a lot of trees on it's lot - it had seven. And that was one too many apparently. Our neighbor was none too fond of the oak tree that was on the boundary line between our two front lawns. The oak dropped acorns on her lawn every year and caused (?) the grass not to grow on her side of the tree (but didn't affect our side).

I scoured every photo I've ever taken of our house but could only find this one where you can see the trunk. The first two trees in the photo are maples. The third is the past tense oak. The fourth is our neighbor's tree.

I say "was," you see, b/c Terry gave in to our neighbor and had the oak cut down. She did pay half so that was nice. Here is the line of pines from the front, but you'll notice that there is no oak anymore, just a patch of sad dirt mourning the death of the friend it once nourished.

Here is the front without the oak.

Sad little dirt pile. I have been quite depressed about the it, though I wasn't particularly fond of the oak. It was just there. However, it just feels wrong to cut trees down, especially oak trees that have been there for almost 40 years. Hopefully our neighbor is happy now.

school project 4

Lately Noah's favorite music is Go Fish. He was introduced to them at VBS this last summer and since the music was pretty fun, I downloaded it from iTunes. Sometimes I regret that decision. He still loves it, but I do not. It's good and all but I've heard it entirely too much. It just drives me absolutely crazy. I have to make up all sorts of silly lyrics to keep myself from getting all hot and bothered, as Thomas the train would say.

So, instead of singing "we kick it old school," sometimes Terry and I sing, "we kick an old mule." Or, more appropriately for this post, we sing "we kick it home school." And that's the only reason I'm telling this story. B/c we kick it home school and these are some of our books.

The one on top, The Hundred Dresses, is quite good. It's about bullying - something Noah has never really experienced, thankfully. I've been thinking of how to incorporate it into my small group of high school girls. It'd be good for them.

And here is this week's science experiment Terry did with the kids while I was at work again. He's such a good daddy. Oh, I think he did this one for Evie but Noah did his own too and it was just as good (I'd take another picture of that but I'm almost done with this post and I want to do be done now).

school project 3

Science projects have started to fall on Thursdays while I am at work and daddy is home. Terry has been a champ, doing everything, even the experiments! But it's kinda funny. B/c really, Noah does nothing but watch. All we're doing, it seems, it making new toys for the kid!

Last week's project was a "tornado." Daddy even got the food coloring out.

train master

Noah used to whine and beg for us to make train tracks for him. Then he'd mess them up and get all mad. I'm thankful that he can do it all on his own now. He's better at it than I ever was.

He used to freak out when Evie wanted to play too. But now she's old enough not to just demolish the whole thing and they can play well together.