Aileyisms

Last night, Ailey heard Sam in the bathroom with the hair clippers and she came in and told me she heard Daddy mowing his head. :)  Just now, she came up to me and said, "Did you get ice yet?"  I asked her what she was talking about and Zekey interpreted for me and said, "She means Frozen, the movie."  Haha!  That girl!

Basketball fun

Ugh!  I've been such a slacker about posting...as usual.  Well, its on my radar again, although there are no guarantees on consistency.  We are working on getting our house in sell-condition.  Everything else is taking a back burner for now.  I've got plenty to update on, just not enough time to get it done.  Eh...its the way it goes. :)

So, I'll let you in on our Saturday mornings of late.  Braden decided he wanted to play Upwards Basketball as his Christmas present, so he has been playing on Saturday mornings and also going to practice during the week.  This is the first team sport he has been involved with.  Its pretty neat to see him learn to work on a team and to improve his understanding of how to play the game.

After the first game and much expectation from Ailey about being a cheerleader (she wasn't old enough this time ;), I decided the other kids needed cheer shirts and accessories.  So, off to Hobby Lobby I went and brought home the necessities.  Here is what I came up with:

Ailey kept asking for pom-poms, so with the help of ideas resulting from a google search, some plastic table cloths, metallic "tissue" paper and some electrical tape, VIOLA!, pom-poms! :)  I made a pennant for Zekes because he needed something to wave, though he had a pretty good time shaking the girls' pom-poms, too. ;)  All the shirts got some glitter paint treatment because, let's be honest, boys need bling, too.

They had a really great time cheering for Braden at his game and rockin' their new gear.

Also, I am, apparently,  a rather vocal supporter of my son's team.  GO RED RAIDERS!

The Creativity is strong with this one..

Braden is constantly coming up with alternative uses for things.  This is the latest use for the monster truck with the long-since-disappeared battery:

He also likes to include all his siblings in trying out his ideas. ;)

More from Zekey...

Ailey and Zekey were sitting at the dining table having a discussion while Ailey was coloring a picture.  She was coloring something and saying how she was going to be as tall as her cousin Boaz.  Zekey, then corrected her perspective by letting her in on some of his wisdom.  He told her, "No, Ailey, you have to play basketball and then everyone will think you are bigger even though you really aren't."  He has pondered for some time now that playing basketball must be the key to making one tall since most of the players are very tall.  Makes sense to me!  That totally must be what happens. ;)

Poor LerLoo!

Ailey's growth spurts are somewhat painful for her at times.  She actually has growing pains in her legs.  They are the kind that wake her out of a dead sleep and require motrin to calm the pain down enough to get her back to sleep. :/  She has had them pretty consistently.  When she first had them at around a year and a bit, I honestly didn't know what was going on.  She would just lay there and hold her legs and cry.

Last night was another growing pain episode and at a little before 3 am in a very groggy state I managed to get up, bust out the ever trusty boo-boo pack and motrin and get us back to sleep, Ailey preferring the hallway and me preferring my bed. :)

Daddy and Ler Love

Happy Birthday, Lerloo!

Today our Ailey turned 4!  She's really 4...WOW!  Four whole years...some days she seems ageless and other days I think that surely she can't be as old as she is.

I've started a habit that might turn into tradition of every other year going all out and inviting kiddos and doing the huge birthday party thing.  We did that last year, but I didn't want to be all ho-hum about it on the off years either.  I want the kids to feel very special and focused-upon on their birthdays.  I make a special birthday breakfast for each of them (they get to choose what they want to have) and i put candles in it and they get to blow them out.  This year I'm adding in decorations.  I was thinking about how when we have parties, I usually go all out with the decorations because people are coming over and all that jazz.  There is always an element of impressing there when decorating, but mostly I want to make the atmosphere really fun to be in.  It dawned on me that I should do that for the kids whether we have people coming over or not, just because I think they are special and I want them to feel it the whole day on their birthday.

Ailey is now at that age that she really gets the birthday thing and she was able to be pretty involved in the planning.  She is REALLY into Hello Kitty right now, so I asked if she would like a Hello Kitty birthday and the answer was a resounding YES!  I put time and effort into making the decorations so that I could reuse them again for Brea's birthday and for many to come in the future.  Ailey is pretty interesting.  She definitely has her own sense of style.  She likes pink and purple and shiny and all that, but she's rather specific with it all.  She like a little edginess to it.  So, I thought zebra and polkadots with black and pink would work just fine for her. :)

After it was all said and done, she really loved all of it, especially the marked attention from us!

Dear sweet Lerloo,

We love you so, so much.  You are a bright spot in our lives and your flame gets brighter with each passing day!  You are a joy, a challenge and a ton of fun all rolled into a small, energetic package.  God knew we needed you and we are so grateful to be molded into the parents that you need to grow and become everything you possibly will.  You are lovely, beautiful, smart, fun, talented, amazing, wonderful, incredible and fantastic!  We are so proud of you!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

A piece of our hearts

I didn't show the heart to the kids until this morning.  They all got to hold it and look at it and know that Moses' ashes are inside of it.  I got a picture of all of them with it.  Ailey didn't want to let go of it.  I think she's rather taken with the heart part of it.

Braden and Lerloo Pics

Pics before church

I don't know if taking pics of all 4 of them without one being blurry is a possibility anymore!  Especially involving the silly kid on the left. ;)

Valentine's Day Balloon Fun

I like to get the kids heart balloons from the Dollar Tree on Valentine's Day.  Isn't amazing how much fun kids have with balloons?!  Brea was especially funny with her balloon. :)

Mud Fun

Funny Ailey

Ailey was snuggling with me the other day and she said, "What if my mouth were on top of my nose.....then my nose would talk!"  Haha!

Betcha didn't know lawn chairs could be used this way...

Today's pictures brought to you by the letter F

Zekes and Lerlu are learning the letter F and they made a frog and also a fox....here is the artistic process in action:

this is super blurry and completely out of focus, but still conveys the idea...this is what Brea looks like on Blue's Clues a.k.a. crack for babies.

Ailey and scissors and somewhere in between

Ailey found a pair of haircutting scissors that I had totally forgotten about in one of the drawers in the bathroom and decided she needed to give herself a "little" trim.  I think the normal response to seeing your child give themself a mullet is to come close to tears.  I had to try hard not to bust out laughing.  She is just following even further in my footsteps.  I nabbed a pair of my granny's sewing scissors when I was right around Ailey's age and got under the kitchen table and went to town on my nearly waist-length long pretty locks.  My mom apparently didn't take it well. ;)

I took some pics first and then set about trying to fix it the best I could...

 Self-inflicted mullet :)

 pixie cut...I tried to leave her with bangs, but there was that large chunk missing and no amount of combing over worked....

 So, I went with bangs just a tad longer than her cut line.  Little stinker looks cute with her hair like that. hmph.

Others who were in attendance of this event...

Brea's First Haircut and some more pics

 Had to get those bangs under control :)

 Nostril flaring at its finest!

 Zekey's current lego masterpiece

 Up close and personal

 Caught ya!

A bigger picture....

Braden...another growth spurt

He holds a captive audience

Braden's Baptism and Waterpark Family Fun!

Last Sunday, Braden came out of his class after church and asked if he could get baptized the following Sunday.  We spoke with him to find out why he wanted to do this and what he thought it meant and clarify some things with him.  We all came out of it with the satisfaction that this was His timing for Braden to start his very own relationship-adventure with his Heavenly Father.  These are exciting times!

For a long while now, I've had the perspective that I didn't want my kids to follow some set pattern of some point in time there is this momentous occasion that you make a decision to have Jesus come into your heart and then you follow that with "Believer's Baptism" and then off we go, la-ti-da-ti-dah.  That version of doing things reminds me very much of how much importance our society places on the ceremony and all that is involved in the fiasco of getting married and the honey moon time afterwards, but very little importance or effort is placed on the importance of beginning with a fantastic foundation before the ceremony takes place or the longevity of the process of marriage after all the euphoria of the beginning has dissipated into the reality of what covenant relationship really entails.

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe the decision is important and the baptism is too.  It is necessary to recognize in yourself your complete and utter lack of ability to get rid of sin and live in a true and absolute freedom in the way it was created and meant to be.  When we can acknowledge that we NEED the Savior, the only One who has the power and authority to transform us into new creations, the only One who is able to stand in our place, so that we are judged as pure and holy and righteous before our Sovereign and Holy Creator and God so that we can be reestablished/restored into our rightful places as heirs of our Amazing Daddy God!  That's enormous!...Then, to follow with being baptized to declare in an external/tangible way of the triunal (this will be an actual word someday;) transformation (mind, body and spirit) that has begun inside us is essential!   But its only the beginning.  Its the starting point of the greatest adventure anyone can ever enter into.  The sheer magnitude of how much interest in and enjoyment of us, the HOLY (set apart) and MOST HIGH GOD, the Creator of all that we see and are still unable to see, the One who's very words holds the universe and all therein together at the deeper than molecular level, how much pure, untainted, un-perverted, freely-given, all-encompassing LOVE He has for us.....the magnitude of it all is overwhelming and continually so!  Do you know that He delights in us?  Delights! - adores, approves, is satisfied with, praises, is pleased, honors, appreciates, has glee in, is gratified....the list is extensive!  You know, I believe we can make Him giggle or belly laugh!  I love the picture that paints. :)

I find it very interesting that we make this huge deal out of the birth of Christ for Christmas and then His death at Easter and while those two things are key and paramount, again...they were only the beginning and compared to what those keys unlocked...WOW!  The door that the birth of our Savior unlocked was His ministry here on earth and His death on the cross and resurrection in order to open, through a reciprocal relationship with Holy Spirit, an ever extending inheritance of freedom from the curse of the fall, restoration into a restriction free relationship with our Abba Father and the complete ability to live and walk in the authority and annointing to bring the fullness of His Kingdom and all that entails as it is in heaven into our environment and atmosphere and sustain it right here and right now.

Do we have eyes to see or ears to hear or hearts to listen?  I want THAT for my kids, for Sam and I, for our family and for our Christ family.  I don't want a someday-when-I-die-things-will-align-the-way-they-are-supposed-to Christian philosophy.  That somehow only by us dying will things finally be the way God meant them to be.  That would mean that Christ's death wasn't sufficient to restore and renew.  He continually said that we should repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  He was telling us that we need to get the sin out, so that we have nothing blocking us/holding us back from using the full, complete, absolute power and authority that has already been gifted to us by our Father to use in our lives here on earth today!  That was before He was crucified...the key of the crucification unlocked the oppression of the death of living under the law and through the blood of Jesus opened up a whole new way of living in constant connection with Holy Spirit Who interprets for us, guides us, comforts us...this list is extensive, too. :)  Its just a whole kaleidoscope of amazingness!

Just sayin. ;)

I do have pics of Braden getting baptized at the water park.  I love that our church does it this way, too.  Another fun highlight was that Memaw and Pepaw came to be with us for this special time, too.  :)  Here we go:

 Braden waiting for his turn

 Miss Pam and Michelle, two wonderful ladies with hearts for kid's ministry doing the "dunking" ;) honors

 The adventure has begun!

 Beautiful Memaw!

 Zeker Weekers

 Ler was having a great time!  She even went down the big slides with Sam and I. :)

 Brea had fun, too...she would continually lose her balance and go under and we would set her upright again and she would continue on her merry way.  No fear.

 Pepaw found a baby to hold. :)

 Sweet Liam had his first water park adventure

That's a proud mama!