what I live with

Just a small taste of what I live with ;)

it's very entertaining

food beggar

Connor likes food. He eats a lot of it, asks for it constantly or just down right steals it. If I want to ever eat my own meal/snack it has to be while he has his own food or while he's asleep. It's kind of ridiculous. We have a basket of snacks in the kitchen (crackers, bars, fruit snacks, etc) and if he wants something he'll get the basket down grab whatever and immediately come to you with this cute beggar face. I gotta say it's hard to say no but sometimes I can be strong :)

He and Micah's personal favorite is stealing my tea every morning.

They're lucky I love them :)

mr. eric

Last summer we went to a few of our libraries special programs. One of our favorite was a former teacher named Mr. Eric who is now an author and performer. We had the best time at his show, bought his book and one of his CDs and it quickly became one of the boys favorite! Mr. Eric was coming back again this year and today we got to see him :) Micah was looking forward to today soooooo much and it didn't disappoint. I took Micah, Connor and Silas (who is hanging out for the day) to meet up with Sarah and Natalie for the show. We got great spots on the floor and all 3 boys loved it! They clapped, jumped, danced and listened really well. Mr. Eric's first book was Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes and he has a new book coming out next month called Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes. We can't wait! I absolutely just love the positive spin he puts in his stories/songs and encourages you to keep going because it's "alllllll gooooood" If you've never heard of Mr. Eric please check him out!! I'm sure you'll love him as much as we do :)

zoo night

We became members of Zoo Atlanta this year. Which means for a pretty good deal we can visit the zoo any time we want. My name is the only official name on the membership so it even allows me to bring an adult guest and 2 additional kid guests along with my own 2 in case I go during the week which is pretty much what we'll do. We only have to visit the zoo twice to get our money back on the investment!

Saturday night they had a members only zoo visit. From 5:30-8:30 only members were allowed in to see the animal exhibits, ride the rides, and do extra activities. So we headed out with the moons (who are also members). While it was fun, it was PACKED and since we didn't really do any of the extra activities just going on a random weekday will be a lot more fun and make more sense. We saw a good bit but didn't get to ride the carousel, ride the train, see the snakes or do the petting zoo. We made it to the children's zoo pretty much 5 minutes after it closed and Micah was pitifully sad about it!

I'm hoping to go with the boys one morning this next week again and we'll be heading the the children's part first!

catching a ride

connor and silas with the lion

micah staring at the map and making his daddy oh so proud!

waiting for dinner

my bubbles ;)

thankful hearts

Zach and I (seperately) read something on a friends blog and both really liked it! He happened to ask me if I'd read it and when I said YES! we got to have a good talk about our own parenting goals. This is from our friend Mary...

When your chickens are small, your concerns are not as deep.

Did they eat well?

Do they have on enough sunscreen?

Are they watching too much Disney Channel?

You know. It's a little bit simpler. They don't talk back (that much) and you are a stickler with 'first time obedience'.As they grow and mature, they begin to develop their own thoughts and feelings and you cheer them on as you watch them lay the foundation to independence. It's supposed to be a good thing. Only problem is that before long, a little thing called entitlement sets in like an ugly rash.That has happened around here in the last few months but it's probably been building for quite some time. (Unlike my childhood where any extra thing could brighten my week and make me grateful. For example, a trip to the pool, a rare outing to eat at McDonald's, an even more rare trip to Six Flags or a sleepover with my cousins.) I never expected any of these things and I guess that's the biggest difference.In our attempt to provide an abundant, full childhood for our girls, I'm afraid we have spoiled them and that certainly was NOT the goal. They expect to have sleepovers with their peeps on a regular basis (even when they haven't been invited). They expect to eat out at their whim. They expect to be able to decide what toppings we order on our pizza. I want to do nice things for them because I love them, not because they're going to flip out when we can't for some reason or even worse, we can and they fully expect that we will, without any gratitude.

While some of this we haven't had to deal with yet due to Micah and Connor's young age I did think through to see if we were on the same trend. The one thing I desire to make sure we do our best as parents to accomplish is teaching our children thankfulness (in ALL things). Expectations are great and the ones I have for my kids are high, but they are based on a deep love for them and a desire for them to be great citizens in the Kingdom of God which will enable them to be great citizens on Earth. My parenting quite often does not sow the seeds needed to reap that! We are forming our thoughts, actions, prayers to show them how to enjoy and be thankful for all we have and/or don't have and to be happy in HIM alone. It's a tall order so I'm glad I don't have to do it on my own but through He who created us all!

In everything give thanks for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus

1 Thessalonians 5:18

mimi and papas

While Zach and I were gone the boys stayed at my parents house. I drove down Monday and stayed for a few days as well. Everyone was still in school so I didn't get to see my siblings a ton but I did get to hang out with my brother's girlfriend, visit my older brother in his class, eat lunch with my older sister and have lots of hangout time with my mom, dad and nieces. I even got lunch out with two of my best since childhood friends. Here's a couple of pictures from our week.

nyc: day 3

Our last day turned into a good part/bad part day. I'll lead with the good :)

One thing I wanted to do while we were there was find some antique/flea markets. There are a couple there every weekend so first thing we did was track them down. The first one was called "The Garage" because it was located in two levels of an old parking garage. There were tons of booths! AWESOME!! I was surprised at the amount of vintage jewelry and clothing. Here in the south we like our home decor but apparently Yankees look for another breed of stuff! We walked around and saw lots of cool things but a lot was over priced, another northern thing apparently! We ended up leaving with two billiard balls, a (fake) gold bracelet with a cool patina, and a stack of old college stickers (circa 70s-80s). Next we found a street flea market where Zach bought an old New York license plate and I got a piece of white milk glass. I left very happy :)

The one I bought in NYC is the taller pedestal in the back. Just in case you want to know the front creamer came from Savannah and the bowl was a surprise from Steph on her trip to Lousiana.

(btw I LOVE milk glass and white dishes of ANY kind. It's always what I look for first at antique/flea/thrift places)

Next, we walked to (somewhere) and found the flatiron building which none of you might know by the name but everyone will know by the picture. We couldn't decide what to do next so we sat for awhile and thought. We had 3 hours left, it was super windy and the sky was getting a bit dark so my vote was going to the MET. I love museums, especially when they have works that I've actually heard of, and I didn't want to get rained on. Zach had talked before we came about wanting to go to Brooklyn to get a picture of the bridge and eat at some pizza place. In the end I

knew he'd be more upset about missing out on a photo op than I would be the museum so we decided on plan b. However, this was the beginning of bad part day.

When I say bad I don't mean something horrible happened, I just mean things didn't quite work out like we'd planned. First of all my feet were swollen from our trek the day before and I made a poor shoe choice sunday so my feet were killing me and I had two monster blisters and we couldn't find an open pharmacy. We had to take a couple trains to get to Brooklyn, got off and then couldn't find the way to get across the highway to the bridge. Once we got there the majority of it was covered in scaffolding so Zach didn't get the exact pics he wanted. The pizza place had a line about 30 ppl long and I'm pretty sure if we had waited in it we would have missed our flight! We made it back to Manhattan with two ridiculously expensive subway bandaids and starving because we STILL hadn't eaten lunch. We found a deli ate yummy sandwiches in a random park near Queensboro bridge and rode a cab back to the hotel to get our bags and head to the airport. WHEW! It didn't by any means 'ruin' our trip, it just gave us a funny story to mix in with all the great ones :)

I really enjoyed our trip, really enjoyed being with just Zach for longer than the time between the boys bed time and ours, and really enjoyed being forced out of my comfort zone to see other people in theirs. Fun times!