a few reasons why I love my husband

Terry is seriously the best dad. He's so selfless with our kids I just don't get it. I'm with them every single day (there's no fall school vacation from your kids when you homeschool) and I am totally selfish with my time. I don't want to sit down and play with them. Not even a little! But he's all about that. And that is precisely why I was attracted to Terry in the first place. Well, besides being totally sweet to his sister and ahem, previous girlfriends - the punks. And he was a very strong Christian. And cute. And tall. And funny. But I digress.

He's so good with kids! I have a very clear memory of hanging around outside Nikki's house before bible study while Terry played with her son Dylan, who is now in our youth group (crazy!). I was just inwardly swooning over how good he was with Dylan. I was really looking forward to having his kids when we got married. Of course, since they are his kids, they are crazy like he is. So it's a good thing he's around to help me.

Example number one of selflessness: He reads to them. He reads them pretty long stories too. When there was just Noah to read to, I could handle that okay. But even just adding Evie to the mix overwhelmed me with reading. Samuel and Ezra had no chance. Terry's helpful like that.

Example number two: Jump hugs. I don't know how Terry and the kids came up with this, but it's a tradition in our house now. If Terry has enough time before going to work, the kids will all beg for jump hugs, run up the stairs and fling themselves into his arms. It's a good trust exercise :) He's never dropped one yet!

How fun does that look?

Evie's always all dramatic about it. Has to be so girly. 

And Noah is getting too big to be allowed. Terry keeps saying he might have to quit catching Noah.  

Ezzie needed another jump. But he's easy so that it's okay. 

Reason number three: Thoughtfulness. And selflessness again. Before he went on his big trip to Mexico, he gave up his limited free time over several evenings and quiet times putting together these foam books for all of us. Yes, I got one too. He doesn't do this stuff all the time, but when he does, he goes big. When he did this kind of stuff when we were dating and engaged, I was totally overwhelmed. I had no experience with that kind of sweetness and I just did not know how to handle it or accept it. I had a lot of guilt. Debilitating guilt. But I'm better now. Now I can just enjoy it! I love my husband!

new dresser

Terry and I have had these passed down dressers since we got married. Before we got married actually. They belonged to Terry's uncle who generously gave them to us a few months before we moved into the trailer on the ranch. We had nothing so it was super helpful! At the time they were a blonde color, like from the 80s or perhaps early 90s. Either way, we didn't care for it and so Terry painted/stained them himself. To add some texture to them, while they were still wet he pressed a Walmart plastic bag into the stain. Believe it or not, they were much improved, and I liked them at the time. But they were getting older. They needed repainting or some serious TLC. 

However, in the fall Terry made us a new platform storage bed that held four drawers. And the two on the end are massive. So my idea was to retire our old dressers and replace them with one slightly larger, prettier one and use the new space under the bed. 

But that didn't happen for a while. I told Terry's dad I was interested in a new dresser if he ever ran across one in the Classifieds or at an auction. I searched Craigslist in the fall, looked at a couple and then forgot about it. We just grew accustomed to having both dressers cramped on one wall in our bedroom with just barely enough room to enter the room. 

But two days before Terry's mission trip, Jerry found just the thing. He discovered this lovely oak dresser at an auction, so we got it for a steal of a deal. And I seriously love it!

While I was cleaning it up, I found the bottom two drawers were made of cedar! All that patience or forgetfulness paid off. Oh, and I was able to sell our old dressers so we came out ahead!

Ezra's 2nd birthday, Mexico team photo

Sunday May 31st marked two years since Ezra joined our family. As is tradition, we got him out of bed with the birthday song. He was totally confused.

He's so big anymore. I still feel like he's my baby but gosh darn it, he's really not. And he hasn't skipped the whole toddlerhood punkiness like I was hoping last year. I now find it hard to believe, that he was, as I stated last year, "pretty relaxed." Isn't that why we made him to Yoda on the back of my van? Yeah, he's so not relaxed. He's a punk. He does a lot of screaming. He sounds pretty much exactly like a Velociraptor screaming (from Jurassic Park) or the Black Riders from The Lord of the Rings. It's a toss up. But at least he is cute.

Notice the arms grabbing him...?

Noah likes to kiss Ezra as much as I do.

After eating breakfast (donuts - Ez likes them now, unlike last year) and getting ready, we headed off to church. Terry's Mexico / L.A. team was finally all assembled in one place so they could take a team photo. 

Unfortunately we picked a blindingly bright area. The people sitting on the ground simply could not keep their eyes open anymore! David was crying out in pain. Natasha's blinking, Mia is covering her entire face, Prae's laughing and Terry's giving it a good try. Ha!

Everyone kinda hung out for a while afterward. This was a difficult day for me. You know how sometimes the expectation of something exciting happening in the future is almost better than the event itself? Like Christmas. You took forward to Christmas all month long and then all of the sudden, it's just over. And winter goes being terrible and long for months and months with nothing fun to break it up. I've found that the expectation of Christmas is almost better than the event. Well, I had a similar experience with this trip, except backwards. Since I couldn't go along and had to be alone with four wacky/crazy/irritating kids without Terry for two solid weeks, I was dreading the trip instead of looking forward to it. And this feeling of dread was the strongest the day before they left. The day they actually left wasn't as bad as the day before when I had been looking "forward" to it. I don't know if that makes sense. The event wasn't as bad as the expectation. So it was backwards of Christmas.

Everyone getting their ducks in a row with their fearless leader. 

I can't even remember what we did that afternoon. Rested I think. Laundry. Oh, and moved dressers around. But at about 4pm both families came over to celebrate Ezra and my brother (since they share a birthday). I love holding little chunky Theo. Ezzie wasn't too happy about that. He wormed his way into my lap. And how cute is little Sarah?!

Noah took some family photos while Terry and I got the cake ready. Nathan turned 30 that day! Sad, we are getting old.

My mom. 

Terry's folks. 

My dad and Jesse. 

We didn't have a 3 to make 30 for Nathan so we went for the next closest number; a 4! HA! And of course the 2 was for Ezra. 

He successfully blew out the candles. I was surprised. 

Waiting for their cake or rhubarb dessert. 

We've been trying to get him to feed himself. He was more than willing with something as yummy as cake. He's come a long way since last year when he wouldn't eat any of the cake and freaked out because his hands got dirty. 

Nom nom nom.

Noah took this accidental photo of an escaping piece of Nathan's cake. So funny! 

Present time. This was a little car from Shari and Jesse to go with the track he would be getting. 

He doesn't need much so I told my mom to just get Mary Poppins. The kids loved it when we rented it during the May blizzard. 

Terry's folks got him this sand scooper. What an original idea! 

And there's the track. I wanted a smaller one but since it was on sale for really cheap and Terry loved it, we got it. We knew Ezra would love it and he certainly does. 

The boys couldn't keep their hands off it while Terry and Noah assembled it. 

Everyone loved it. For several days afterwards, Ezra would go downstairs quietly, first thing in the morning and roll cars down his track.  

Samuel likes Ezra's sand scooper. 

And so does Ezra :) Happy birthday Ezzie! 

Ez and the pinata

A couple days before Terry's mission trip, two of our friends and leaders (and fellow mission trippers), David and Steven, had a little birthday BBQ. One of their mothers brought out a surprise pinata (filled with toiletries and some candy) and they were gracious enough to let our kids, who were the only little ones there, to have a go at the thing. Noah whacked the head off right away so they had to string it up from a different place and let Evie, Samuel and Ezra try. There were lots of photos but this one was just so cute.

Watiki with Ez

For Christmas last year, Terry's folks again got us a family swim pass to Watiki. We've been so busy though that we haven't been able to go. Finally, before Terry's trip, when the summer hours began, we spent a Friday morning there. We even took Ezra. It was his first visit since he was six months old. It's always just been so much simpler and enjoyable to let him nap at my folks, who live very nearby.

Here is his first time seeing the water. Very contemplative...

"What?! Why do you keep looking at me? What am I supposed to do?"

He loves bath time so we thought perhaps he'd run right in. Not so much. He was very careful. No funny business for him. 

We found during this trip that Samuel had relaxed somewhat. He's always been pretty afraid of the whole place. Well, there was an isolated incident of fun last fall when he went down the kids slides and had a blast, but usually, he does a lot of whining.

I tried to stay awake while Terry went with the kids down the slides. But look, Ezra sat in the water! 

Note the Samuel independence. This was unheard of previously. Also, I hope you recognize the Zoolander look. Evie had it as a baby and I was proud to see Samuel bringing it out again. 

Silly girl. Oh wait, it gets sillier. 

"Ho hum. How bored I am in this gigantic room." 

"Uh oh. He saw me. Better flirt." 

Starting to get a little bored. And hungry. 

Yep, there's the silliness right there. She gets it from her daddy. 

growing Ezra

A couple weeks ago Ezra came to me in the kitchen, while the others were still downstairs, and wanted to go play outside. He loves playing out there. I had just set up a chair to get onto the trampoline and he climbed right up there. 

He'd never been able to get up there all by himself before, or jump by himself. He really enjoyed it. He's so big!

While he has come a ways from only eating pureed foods, he's still pretty picky. Annoyingly so. It's so irritating and frustrating. He wants me to feed him and not do it himself. And he doesn't want to eat much. It feels like he will never get this eating thing figured out. I know that's not true, but it sure doesn't take away the difficulty in the moment. 

So that same day I decided to try to get him to feed himself. We had some delicious chicken and rice...

He actually did it! He ate quite a bit by himself. It was a small victory. We're still working on small steps every day, but this one felt particularly good.