The babies

Trever and my brother have been friends for almost 16 years.  They went from friends to brothers, it's great.  (They really love eachother... you can tell by the name Trever uses for Mike in his cell phone.  I can't even publish the name, but it's pure love.)  Suddenly they both have babies in their lives, who are also cousins.  How great is that?  I wonder if history will repeat itself... will Andrew be the pesky "little brother" even though he is actually the older one?

Grandkids are like a drug to my mom.  She is so excited to have two more babies to love on.  She has a very special bond with the older two, and new babies just means more fun!

Define Beautiful

I came across a new-to-me blog yesterday, The Bobby Pin.  Then I discovered her project Define Beautiful.  The posts I read were encouraging, interesting, and very beautiful.  I thought about what is beautiful to me, what makes me feel beautiful and instantly I was aware of how brave I felt these women were to write about beauty, especially their own beauty.  I think we have such a strange culture, we crave beauty, we admire beautiful people, but we aren't encouraged to believe in our own beauty.  If a woman walks into a room and owns her beauty she is considered in a negative light.  Can you imagine someone saying, "I am so beautiful today".  But wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? 

As with most things, having children, or caring deeply for youth gives a different perspective.  Wouldn't I love to hear my daughter say "Mom, I am so thankful I am strong, smart, kind, and beautiful."  She will have a difficult time believing those things about herself if I don't show her that I believe those things about myself.

So... how do I Define Beautiful?
I believe beauty comes from cofidence.  Confidence in myself, confidence in my abilities, confidence in my understanding that it's okay to not be perfect (a work in progress).  When I love myself for where I am in my journey I feel beautiful. 

When I am present with my children, really present, not just in the same room, I find that beauty surrounds me.  The simple act of being with a child, doing what they want to do, catching a glimps of their growth is beautiful.  And that beauty flows into me so easily.  It's a nicer place to be than ignoring them to clean the floor.  But balance is beautiful too, and a clean house is important to me.

When I see the amazing world we live in, without the fog of distraction, I am always in awe of it's beauty.  A gray and rainy day is as beautiful to me as a clear sunny morning.  To be honest it's the change that I find beautiful, to many days of either looses it's appeal to me.

I have always surrounded myself with beautiful people.  It's obvious for the world to see how beautiful they are, but most people don't get to see their real beauty.  It's true, my friends are even more beautiful on the inside.  They are amazing friends, our time is filled with laughter and with tears.  I think the beauty of these friends comes from the deep trust and authenicity of each friendship.  I have high standards for friendship, my early friendships set the bar very high.

My marraige is the most beautiful relationship I have.  Words are insufficient to describe how blessed I am.  God is good and I am thankful.

And not unimportant, but definitely at the end of my list is being pretty.  I think it's beautiful to feel pretty.  I have found that just taking the time to pick clothes that fit well, add a bit of makeup, and something sparkly does a lot for making me feel pretty... I think I should say "making me see that I am pretty".  And that is a beautiful thing that I hope my children will see in themselves and others.

I wonder how my daughter will Define Beauty, I hope she will find it in herself as well as her world.

                                                   Natalie 3 1/2 years... so beautiful.

Right now

It's the snap shots in my children's life that are important.  The little things that I will surely forget if I don't leave myself a reminder...

We made fun drawing boards for the kids.  They've had so much fun drawing with dry erase makers.  This picture is a big deal for Nathan.  Although it looks like the fish is Nathan, he is actually the fisherman.  That is one big fish he caught, I guess that is a sign that he really is a true fisherman at heart.  His Papo is going to be so excited for their future trips.

All the sudden, Natalie likes babies!!!  And she brings them everywhere with her.  The babies are Gorgianna, Avery (named after her new friend, my friend's daughter), and the elephant is Rose.  It's so cute to watch her hit this stage.  When she wakes up she sneaks out of her room so she doesn't wake them.  Love it!

**** Hmm, the baby stage only lasted a few days.  Now they are back to just laying in her room.

Getting pumpkins

Enjoying a fun ride with his little pumpkins.

Yummy

Getting a little crowded, but I think he's still having fun.

All of our little pumpkins, love these kiddos!

Nathan spent most of his time pushing the wheelbarrow through the mud.  He was a muddy happy mess by the end of the, a happy boy.

Pi Phi friends

 

We enjoyed such a special day with two of my dear Pi Phi friends and their families.  We almost never see each other, but that is going to change! Yay!!  We've decided to try to get together every 3 months, I can't wait.  I love each of them and their husbands so much (I was lucky enough to know their husbands in college also).

It was so much fun getting all the kids together.  I can't believe how relaxing the time was, all the kids played SO well together.  They even ate outside while we enjoyed some adult time inside.  Then we went on a nice walk in the woods, thank you October for giving us a beautiful fall day.

Natalie grew a quick affection for Avery.  She has good taste in friends ;)

The process of parenting

Today I went to Nathan's kindergarten evaluation. His teacher, Mrs. Robarge, took him in to evaluate where he is academically. Then she brought me in. We talked very briefly about his knowledge, then we talked a bit about what to expect this year. What I was hoping he would acheive this year.

What I hope for Nathan is very basic, but in my mind very important. I hope he will learn to be confident in his knowledge, confident in the learning process (trying new things even when it is difficult). And I hope his interpersonal social skills will develop. He is wonderful at independant play, and he plays really well with his sister. But sometimes I notice that he isn't in sinc with his peers. He does well with older children since he can follow their lead and they tend to be a bit nurturing.

The biggest thoughts I had went unshared. Does she know how important he is to me? (of course she does... but not really). Does she know that when I look at him my heart swells with joy, pride, and an ache? I am so thankful to be a part of Nathan's life, to watch him grow, learn and enjoy. I am thankful that God has given me a chance to be a part of his life. When I watch him, really stop what I am doing and watch him, my heart aches. He is a piece of me, and I know my time with him is brief. Does his teacher know how caring he is? That he reaches for my hand when I lay with him, so that we are holding hands as he drifts off to sleep? His tenderness is so dear to me.

As we left her classroom he turned and hugged her legs so tightly, then he reached for her hand to give her arm a kiss. I saw this action many times last year with his Preschool teachers. I'm so thankful to see it again. I know someday that innocent tenderness will be replaced with something different. For now I will cherish this stage, and hope that Mrs. Robarge will see how very special Nathan is.

I could never have known how wonderful it would be to have the honor of being a parent. I'm grateful for my time with my kids now, I'm excited to help them grown and set them free into the world, and I'm so hopeful they will choose to stay in my life when they are adults.

Our new patio

Okay, to address the obvious (that will hopefully become less obvious in the future). I've totally failed at blogging. The truth, and this is lazy on my part, is that when we got our new computer I lost my beloved photo program (I'm not even sure what I had before). So suddenly compressing pictures got more difficult, and uploading the full resolution picture just takes SO long. So, we've found a new program and I'm hoping it encourages me to update our blog more often. Here's hoping!

This weekend Trever's Dad brought his beloved Harley Davidson back to us!! (I'll post on that later). And since he was here, we thought it was a great time to tackle a big project.

The "before". Trever starting to clear out the space for the new patio. (And yes Dad, we do love using your tractor!!)

Andrew is more intersted in the grass than the project at hand. The border is finally installed... and by finally I mean FINALLY. My husband is *amazing*, and I am SO thankful for his dedication to perfection and hard work. However, he wore his dad and me out. We were nervous to do any work with him absent. And the work that we did??? Yeah, we had to remove it and do it again. If you know my Father-in-law you would be even more impressed by these statements. The man is definitely a perfectionist up to the highest standards!

Natalie helping to pound in the last brick. Did you know that when you cut a square brick into two triangles you can use BOTH of them for the finished product??? :) You had to be there.

Nathan loves the job of sweeping the sand. He had eagerly awaited this stage during the two days it took to build the patio.

Ahhh... the finished product. And what better way to enjoy all the hard work than a fireside sing along.

A huge thanks to both our Dad's for their contributions. We are so blessed to have your support, your skills and your tools.

House projects

We're obviously rested from the house build... it shows in our new found energy for house projects. We moved in a year ago, I'm not sure if that makes it a quick recovery or not. :) I'm just glad we can think of painting a space or finishing an area (mud room, pantry, office...) without getting a headache. It feels nice to be back to "us", where projects are a bit exciting not so much a drain on our energy which is how we felt a year ago. And that might be putting it nicely.

Our new dining table, found on craigslist for $40. (I'll just say it now, I fail in remembering to get true "before" shots).

The almost "after" shot. I love it at this stage! Then we put some poly on it... and it changed the color a bit. I'm a little bummed, but not enough to do anything about it. You don't really see the bottom that much anyway, and the poly will make it much more durable to the kids. I'm so glad to have a table that seats 8 comfortably!!

The office redo. When we made our list of projects that we'd like to accomplish this summer/fall the office was at the top of my list. I knew it would make a big impact on our daily life. Being in a room with too much clutter was not helping my mental energy. We got a bid on having it built out... yikes, almost $3000 and that didn't include painting/staining. Although the finished project would have been amazing, I just couldn't bring myself to put that much of our project money into my office. So we got creative. We used our current filing cabinet and my dad's old office components and created a new office. I love it! It's not perfect, we made some compromises, and we still need to come up with a plan for the wall area. But I still love it! (even though it hasn't managed to stay clean yet, we'll get there).

After... the total cost? $100 and some hours painting/staining.

Trever has given me some freedom to paint (he's an amazing painter so I'm generally nervous to tackle projects without him). It's working so nicely for us, I paint, he does the finish/install work. It's nice to find this balance. And an added bonus to these projects? We're using paint that we already had on hand, which means less gallons of paint that I need to beg Trever to get out of the garage.

June fun...

A night out with friends!  Woo Hoo.

Andrew stayed home with the other kids, but Mikey enjoyed the evening with the adults.

The Capital City Senators annual auction is full of fun.  Lots of dancing and lots of fun.

The boys at the end of the year picnic.  Nathan, Logan and Luke.  Can't believe my boy is going on to Kindergarten!

Pooping dominos. Really???  Gotta love how much fun poop can be when your little. :)

Celebrating with "what kind of cake do you want?".  It's more about the colors than the taste at this point.

A visit from Nana and Papa.

Our beautiful tree

This was my favorite tree when we cleared the land to build our house. Thus, it stayed. Many people encouraged us to cut it down. Their reasons seemed to revolve around the maintenance that it would cause. We're not afraid of work, and we loved this old beauty, so we resisted.

It did distract from the view of our house when you drove up. And as we planned to landscape our front yard we realized it would be better to remove it now than in a few years (an arborist said we had 5 years or so before she would need to be removed).

I need to go take a picture from the back of the house so I can compare the difference.

I was SO sad on the day we were actually cutting her down ... very truly emotionally sad. It just felt a bit wrong to cut down such an old and beautiful tree (and maybe I'm still a bit postpartum)

If it can be said, the fall was both awesome and graceful.

Definitely opens up the front of the house. And once the tree was down we were able to see that about 40% was rotting. I felt a whole lot better knowing that.