Why I Wore Pants to Church Today

Today was "Wear Pants to Church Day." If you missed it, you can read about it here and here.

I wrote a kind of long post about this. Then I deleted it. It just isn't that important. And THAT is why I wore pants to church today. So many people are so worked up about this "issue." People--I'm talking seemingly good Christian people who claim to be disciples of Christ--are being so hateful because of what people are or are not wearing. It is ridiculous. We belong to the Church of Jesus Christ. We try to follow Christ by serving and loving our fellow man. There is no reason to treat someone poorly because of what they are wearing. It is supremely ironic to suggest that the way someone else looks, acts, thinks, or dresses will some how defile your spiritual church experience. If you feel that way, perhaps you are doing church wrong.

I wore pants to church today. No one treated me differently. I was really impressed by the people I interacted with today. I definitely noticed people's eyes would jump down to my legs and then back to my face when they talked to me--but I did not feel that anyone treated me different. Thank you for that.

There are so many reasons to be compassionate to each other. There are so many reasons to reach out and support each other. There are so many reasons to love, help, serve, befriend, comfort, mourn with, teach, embrace, and lift each other--that I just don't think we have time to talk about pants.

Things we want to learn about this school year

I love this picture. It reminds me of how fun it can be to inspire my kids and help them feel brave enough to try new things. For a while, at the beginning of the summer, I was having a real tough time getting 3 year old Edgar excited to play outside. One day, I showed him a bunch of inspiring pictures of kids playing outside (from http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/). Suddenly, he really wanted to climb a tree. We immediately went outside to play (at 7:30 am), but don't have any great climbing trees in our yard. Later in the summer, we were at the zoo and he discovered a little out of the way area with some great climbing trees. He played there for a long time, SO PROUD of himself for climbing a tree.

Here at the end of the summer, we have gotten a little too stuck in our little upstairs room watching tv. I'm ready to get them excited about living again. So, this morning the kids and I decided to make a list of things we want learn more about this school year. We want to find books about stuff at the library, go on adventures, and just generally do more than watch Pokemon.

So...here's the list. I occasionally suggested a general subject area, but mostly these are all Edgar and Sabrina's ideas:

We want to learn...

• Water--how it comes
• Art--how you can put pictures on wood (inspired by a framed painting of the ocean)
• Animals--ones we don't know
• Letters--real ones that come true (??)
• Letters--how to draw Ls
• How Jesus makes our bodies (he wanted me to immediately draw a picture of Jesus making our bodies...??)
• Dancing--different kinds of dances
• Pull Machine (Me: what is that? Edgar: I don't know. That's why I want to learn about it)
• Colors--how colors come
• How to read
• How cars do the brakes
• Computers--how they plug in
• Tigers and Lions--do their stripes change colors?
• Video games--how to make it be on.
• Paper--how to make it

Sibling Love

I am completely loving these siblings. My 3 year old and 16 month old are becoming such good friends. They play, they snuggle, they take care of each other. There is this entire entity of siblingness that is completely independent of me...and it is just wonderful.

As my little Sabrina is looking over my shoulder while I write this post, she is just giggling with delight at the pictures of her and her protector. And he is. A few weeks ago, another baby at a play group kept taking swipes at Sabrina. Any time he got close to her, he would smack her. His mom was busy so I had to keep intervening, and finally Edgar took off after the kid intending to beat him up for hurting his sister. He takes his job very seriously.

 Here are my little nupboards in the cupboards. They pretend that this is their gorilla cage. It's right under where I cook, so I pass them in gorilla food and toys while I am prepping dinner.

"Ni-Night! Ed-duh Ed-duh!" --Sabrina

Another fun new game they play is the "bad owl house."  They empty out our jeans from the wardrobe, climb up inside, and close and open the doors. I'm not really sure why they decided it is an owl house, but it reminds me of X The Owl/ Henrietta Pussycat house in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

Sabrina likes to sit in Edgar's lap. It is super cute, but doesn't work too good as she is not too little anymore. In the photo below, she plopped down in his lap with her favorite board book, and he sat and "read" it to her. Yes, it did actually brought tears to my eyes.

We have been quite sick for the past week, but we have tried to enjoy some of the beautiful warm sunny Oregon days.

It was actually HOT this weekend (okay, it was in the 80s. That IS hot for May in Oregon! Really!) We didn't have a pool yet, so we had to improvise. Under-the-bed storage turned ghetto pool. Hey, it worked. (=
   

Wheelbarrow rides with dad? Life is pretty wonderful.

Snow Day

Day 2 of Spring here in Oregon, and we are totally loving the snow (= When we awoke this morning, everything had gone extremely very white, and here it is nearly 3 pm and still snowing!

I took the kids out to build a snowman this morning, but they quickly got cold and tired. So, I put Sabrina down for a nap, snuggled Edgar up in front of a show, and headed out to finish those snowmen!

WARNING: you CAN NOT build a giant snowman with one person. Snow is too heavy to lift a giant snow belly onto a giant snow bottom. So, I punted, and made a giant snow CATERPILLAR! (It's kinda hard to see--but there are 2 or 3 smaller balls past the first 3, with wiggly sticks for legs)

We called Alex home for lunch on account of there not being enough snowmen in our yard. We ate quick and got back out into the cold, with this awesome result:

Oh! Pierre! You surprised us!

It's okay Pierre. Not EVERYONE is out to get you. You can calm down now.

 

Y-M-C....a?

Put 'em up, Pierre! Now keep 'em up! Good snowman.

 Fun day!

Milk Jug Blackboard

I had to share our recent brilliant idea (and by "we", I mean my 3 year old and I). Permament Marker + Milk Jug = instant breakfast, lunch, and dinner reminder of concepts your kids are currently working on.

For example, we have been talking about notes (thank you mom and tot music class!). So, our milk has a quarter note, a half note, a whole note (in the circle indent side of the milk), and a whole rest. Since we get out our milk probably 5 or 6 times a day--this has been super fun. I imagine when the notes get boring we will try numbers, letters, shapes...who knows.

Family of Four

A few months ago, when I was cleaning the bathroom--I was just struck by these four toothbrushes. It made me grin to see a Daddy toothbrush, a Mommy toothbrush, a Big Brother toothbrush, and a Baby Sister toothbrush. For some reason this little mundane piece of our life just really hit home to me that we are a real family. Not just a brand new little family--but a real live Husband, wife, and 2 kids family. And I LOVE my family.

So, here is an overdue update/catch-up on our family over this past winter.

Alex successfully got older.
The next day we left for Utah/Christmas.

The car trip in the snow with 2 kids went great. No problems.

We stayed at my folks for Christmas. It was fun to spend time with family...but would have been better without the stomach flu ripping violently through the whole family.

It was so fun to see the little ones interact. Edgar and Calvin were good pals by the end. And, Lexi and Sabrina were super cute. Even if they did try to pull each other's hair and poke each other's eyes out.

Then it was back home. HOME! We have really enjoyed our new house. Alex and I spent most of our winter evenings here:

...in our living room reading books by the fireplace or playing board games after the kids go to bed.

Heaven: evenings spent together after the kids go to bed about 8:00.

The week after we got back from Utah, Anna (my best friend since I was 9 years old) came to stay with baby boy for a week while she attended some workshops in Portland. It was so great to have so much uninterrupted best friend time! My sweet husband even used a day off of work to watch the kids so we could go spend a whole day together. He is totally awesome (=

At Multnomah Falls

That same week, Sabrina turned ONE YEAR OLD! I seriously can't believe how fast that goes!

And a few weeks ago, I successfully got older too.

And so our busy family of four just keeps busy. I love my job of being mommy to these kids. Time is moving too fast! I feel rotten about not documenting this time better...but then I never feel like I have the time to stop and organize pictures / blog / write in their journals...etc. etc.  I guess if I want to remember how much we are enjoying this busy time--I just have to do it!

So, here is a little update on each of the kiddos.

Edgar is "Two and a half" (he turns 3 in 1 1/2 months). His day is summed up well by the following picture:

He LOVES cars. He watches Cars movies. He reads books about cars. He plays with Cars (Disney and otherwise). He sleeps with his current favorite 1, 2, or a dozen cars under his pillow. They accompany him to the bathroom, downstairs to do laundry, up to the dinner table, to read scriptures, etc. The have names, personalities, and good guy or bad guy status. He plays pretend scenarios, acts out scenes from movies, and pretends they are people that he knows. He is always telling me what is going on with his cars. All day. His world is complete if he has his favorite cars with him.

Edgar is a funny guy who likes to tell jokes. Actually, he only knows 2 jokes, but we hear them alot. He is always saying the funniest things (which I regularly and shamelessly post to facebook).

He loves music. Alex and I just got our new records/cds in the mail for the band we are in. When we brought one to show to Alex's parents, Edgar proudly declared, "That's us! These are OUR very own records." He likes to play music with us. We are babysitting some drums for a few weeks while we rehearse for our record release show, and I have really enjoyed listening to Edgar play them. He has a great ear for good sounds (=

Edgar has decided what he wants to be when he grows up: A daddy. Here, he is visiting Daddy's office. He pretty much adores his daddy. I think it would be fantastic if he grew up to be just like daddy (=

Sabrina is our Monster Truck Princess. She loves anything pink, frilly, cuddly, or furry. She doesn't have a favorite stuffed animal--she adores them all equally. She loves babies, clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Also, she loves monster trucks and cars. How could she not? My favorite "picture" of her (I didn't have a camera) was when she was at church all dolled up in a super girly outfit...driving her monster truck complete with sound effects (rrrrrrrrrrr!) Love it!

Sabrina is a happy giggly girl. She loves to wrestle with her brother. She ofter instigates it by smacking him on the head, tackling him, tickling him--and then laughing her head off. (He totally loves it...most of the time). She is really enjoying books and trips to the library lately. She likes to take a book to the window cushions and sit and read.

Sabrina doesn't talk a lot yet..but communicates quite well. She says Ma-ma, Da-da, Ed-duh (edgar), Grah-pa (grandpa), Dah (dog), Beh (bear), Bau (ball), Heh-yo (hello), Ni-Ni (night night), uh-oh, ba-ba (banana), di-puh (diaper), crah-crah (cracker), crrrrrr (car), ticka-ticka-ticka (tickle), and <> Breeta-breeta-breeta-bree (for her name--what Edgar and I often call her: Brina-Bree)

She is also learning some signs. She loves watching Signing Time. Here are some of the signs she uses a lot: ball, baby, more, all done, eat, drink, candy, cookie, diaper, outside, dog, cat, bear, please, thank you, milk, and hat.

And, she shakes her head yes and no pretty emphatically. It's pretty darn cute.

I just love these kids. They make my life full, busy, crazy, hectic, and wonderful.