Happy Monday!

It was a quiet weekend here, as Oma visited and we had lovely weather. Daddy and Luke were able to mow the lawn together, such hard working men. I made tomato soup from scratch, thanks to Becky's amazing, home-grown tomatoes. Yum! And we had good friends for a visit Sunday evening.
At this moment, the boys are hanging out together looking at books in the playroom. Luke's favorite CD, Action Bible Songs, is playing. It's quite peaceful, so I am taking the opportunity to quickly post. I have some pictures from the past week that are adorable. Enjoy!

It's an octopus! I'm sure you had already figured that out. One of Luke's favorite games right now is going to the end of our hallway, where it is quite dark, and pretending to be the wise octopus from The Rainbow Fish. It's a book.

Paul is looking SO grown up to me. One of his favorite activities includes asking to see birds by signing "bird" and saying, "Buh." It's difficult to explain that I can't make them appear, but he's learning.

Chocolate faced Luke. He and Oma made chocolate chip cookies together on Thursday while I was out and about running errands.

Paul is master of funny faces. This is his fish face, possibly my favorite.

I have no upper lip.

Family Adventure

This afternoon when the boys woke up from naps we decided to head to the park for a family adventure. And we got one. While driving to our very favorite, but not within walking distance, park, we noticed a few dark clouds to the west. Okay, a massive storm front. But we gauged the direction of the wind along with the angle of the declination of the sun and figured it would blow right over our destination. When we arrived the place was packed, but about fifteen minutes later most folks vacated pretty quickly. Wimps. Okay, so it was more than a light sprinkle. It was in fact a deluge of epic proportions. We took refuge in the covered portions of the play structure. Luke thought it was awesome. So did his dad. :-) I took a few pictures of our adventure, including the "after" pictures in the car. We had hoped to wait it out, but it wasn't ending quickly enough to suit Paul. We ran for the car and were dripping by the time we got everyone buckled in. When we arrived home, I took Luke out puddle jumping because we were already soaked and it was a good opportunity to teach him how to do it right. I hold firmly to the "Stand and Jump" school. If any of you are of the "Kick it Around" school, I'd rather not know.

Such big raindrops that it looks like snow.

Back in the car...who is this loon?

Loved every minute!

Also loved every minute.

Thinks his family is insane. Is probably correct.

PS - Our verse this week was Psalm 33:11 "But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever." It's a good one!

Cuteness

The boys enjoy pretending to be animals right now. The giraffe mask, leftover from teaching 9th grade, is a big hit these days. (Regards to Bryan Tingkang, wherever he may be). They also like to hang Daddy's socks from their mouths and be elephants. Pictures...




Elephants in the cage. These shots are from this past Friday as we awaited Daddy's arrival from Chicago. I, too, became an elephant for awhile. Helped pass the time. No pictures available.

Catching Up

We did indeed fall off the blog-o-sphere for almost two weeks, but we are back. Paul's pneumonia is 100% better. That's a huge blessing. Luke and I started BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) this past week. It was awesome. As a discussion leader, I met the ladies I will have in my group for this year. It was so much fun to put faces to names and meet them all. We are studying The Life of Moses this year, and I just can't wait to see what we all learn! Luke is in the three year old class and loves it. I'll keep you updated as the stories start to roll in. If you want to memorize our verses with us, I will try to post them each week. This week's is Psalm 119:133a "Direct my footsteps according to your word." Nice and short!

I will try to post this past week's pictures over the course of this week. I have two sets that are definitely worth sharing. Today I will post Paul's First Balloon Experience. While Erik was gone in Chicago all week, my mom was here until Thursday morning. Tuesday night I was unwilling to cook, so we went to Red Robin as a family. The reason I adore this restaurant has nothing to do with the food, the service, or anything like that. It's loud. You can take kids and they can sing through or scream through the entire meal and nobody notices or cares. Luke sang. Paul was so enthralled with the environs that he just stared. Well, they have free balloons at Red Robin. Here are the pictures from the livingroom once we got home.

Where's Paul?

There he is!!!

Can I eat it? (Always Paul's first question)

I've got it!

So much fun.

Still Here

Just a few photos to prove we are still alive. Paul is still having four breathing treatments a day, each of which requires either a wrestling match or a lot of creative entertainment. We are rather tired. To make matters crazier, we participated in a garage sale today. It was actually really fun to hang out with friends and watch other people buy our junk. Paul stayed home with Oma. He will be visiting the doctor again this week. They want to listen to his lungs to make sure he is getting better. We would appreciate specific prayer, that Paul's lungs are healing and the antibiotics are being effective. Thanks!

He doesn't look sick, does he? He definitely looks silly though, but that's different.

He loves to say "Cheese!" for the camera.

Luke spelled this "word" all by himself tonight. He was very proud of himself.