"Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves. When our dreams come true because we dreamed too little. When we arrive safely because we have sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord."
-Sir Francis Drake

Potty Training

We are on day three of no diapers! C is doing great! We have even ventured out to friends' houses, the Butterfly show, the grocery store and several parks. He has even been diaper-free for naps. The only diapers he's worn are at night and in the pool. Pretty impressive for a boy who hasn't even reached 2 1/2 yet! Keep it up, Big Boy!!

Baby S

My sis-in-law had a birthday yesterday, so we watched her 2 month old while she and her hubby got to enjoy dinner out! It went pretty well. Of course, A lost her paci, so there was a good deal of screaming until I found an extra. Other than that, we did great. 

I love this first pic. I know it looks like a silly toddler smile, but it is PURE JOY that you see. He was shaking from excitement at getting to hold his baby cousin. It was ADORABLE! He loves babies, and it is so sweet to see him be gently and loving towards baby S.

Big cousin got a turn. About one second later, S started crying. Good thing we got the shot when we did. 

The boys wanted to show their aunt and uncle how cute they look in their pjs, but the date wasn't over before bedtime arrived. So we took this picture to show them. I think it is pretty adorable. It was cute to see A put his arm around C without prompting... and it didn't end in tackling him to the ground! If that's not considered success, I don't know what is!

The birthday girl and her hubby. Beautiful!

Preschool

This is from A's preschool Easter party. The kids are lined up waiting to be released for the Easter egg hunt! I love how they are all trying to scope out the eggs... so serious!

Class pic... minus 2.

At the end of the year, they had a Spring Program. It was cute to hear the kids sing and then they gave out "graduation" certificates. I love this shot. This says "preschool picture" so well. Notice: the boy picking his nose, A showing off his belly, all kids randomly staring in different directions. Gotta love it!

Trying to get a final class pic. This is the best I got. The rest of my attempts had kids with certificates in front of their faces. 

A few Spring activities...

The boys learned how to set the timer on the camera and then run into the picture. That kept us entertained for WAY too long. This was the cutest pic they got.... not bad!

Our neighbors were probably wondering what kind of crazy people live next door. It was a beautiful morning, so I shooed the boys outside before the rain could start. They were in their pjs. They decided to be firefighters. So, check out the awesome outfits... pjs, boots, winter jacket/vest, gardening gloves, hats (one firefighter hat and one cowboy hat) and the garden hose stretched across the lawn through the gate to put out the "fire" next door. 

A local bookstore had Froggy come to visit for storytime. He's one of the boys' favorite storybook characters. They were totally freaked out, though, and wouldn't get any closer than this. I tried to get them closer to give high-fives or hugs, and they froze. C even fell off the little stage backward to avoid getting too close. But they talked about it for days afterwards, so apparently it wasn't too traumatizing.

Dying Easter eggs!

My friends with girls get to watch their daughters dress up in beautiful princess gowns. But being them mother of boys, we see construction men around our house more days than not. Here's "Mr. Jim" our maintenance man. That tool bet weighs more than he does! Notice the irish flute in the tool belt. Not sure what that will help fix!!

Here are a few pics from my cousin's wedding in Milwaukee. I didn't get any of the actual ceremony since I was playing piano. Here's one of my three favorite boys, watching Sports Center together!

The hotel had a water park inside! So fun! The boys had a blast, and it was a great way to burn some energy before the ceremony.

I can't remember where we were driving, but this is how A fell asleep in the car. The crossed leg had me laughing so hard.

And... Monkey see, monkey do! Trying to cross his leg like his brother!

Yep... We are still here.

In case any of you were worried, we are still alive and doing well. It's been forever since I've posted. That makes me sad because I feel like 1000 funny or important things have happened since my last post, and they have been lost forever. But, life moves fast. That's how it goes. And sometimes updating the blog doesn't make it to the top of the list. Here's what we've been up to:

-Milwaukee: My cousin got married at the beginning of May, and I made my debut as a wedding pianist. It went well... even better than I had hoped. It may also have been my last wedding piano playing as it ended up being more work than I had realized it would be. BUT I am very glad I did it and feel a huge sense of accomplishment now that it's over. We trekked the whole family up...by plane. The boys did well. The highlights for them were easily 1- the chocolate fountain at the rehearsal dinner, 2 - the waterpark in the hotel and 3 - the reception... pretty much everything about it.

-A's last week of school. He had a program, which was very cute. His class sang a few songs, and his air guitar skills were shown off again. It's adorable when he's four that he plays the air guitar with fervor everytime he hears music, but I sure hope he outgrows that by the time he's in Jr. High. Then he had a picnic the following day, and C and I got to be there the entire time. There were other kids C's age, but he was the only one that was convinced he was part of the class. He sat in circle time, stood in line when we went to the gym, sang the songs (and played his air guitar, too) along with the class, and even did the craft. It was adorable. I think he'll be amazingly disappointed next year when A leaves for school and he doesn't get to go.

-Garage Sale: We held another garage sale this year to raise money for our adoptions. Despite a smaller crowd than last year, we still made more than our goal. The boys spent the night before and the day of the sale with Gramma so we had two less sets of "helping hands". They had a blast seeing Gramma's horse, eating french toast and watching movies. AND they slept through the night for her. I'll have to find out her secret! Tomorrow I take a car load of stuff to Once Upon a Child to sell, then turn in the keys to the garage we rented and be officially done with the garage sale. Phew. It really is worth it with the amount of money it brings in, but it is a LOT of work to organize.

-Kelley's Island: We are getting ready to head to KI in Lake Erie with P's family for the weekend. The boys are SO excited, as are P and I. It is always fun to see family that we don't get to see too often and relax on a very laid back island.

-P got a promotion at work! He's only been there 6 weeks and has only really been doing his route for 4. This is huge as this new route will provide a better income and will hopefully allow us to start the adoption process at the end of the summer. The hard part right now is he is currently working 3 jobs. They still have him doing his old route AND his new route, plus he's still maintaining his clients from his previous job. Needless to say, he's a little stressed. As I type, he's still working, which he's been doing pretty much straight since 6:30 this morning. Luckily this is just a transition and shouldn't be like this for more than a week or two. He is really looking forward to our upcoming trip, and he is surely earning a relaxing weekend!

So there's the update. Hard to believe all of this has happened in just three weeks. Makes me exhausted just reading about it. Though I love May, I am looking forward to the beginning of June as that will be a lot less hectic of a month for us. Now I'm off to bed. Praying the boys will sleep through the night so their tired momma and daddy can get some much needed sleep.

Easter

We've been doing some preparation for Easter around here. Some traditional things. The kids loved dying Easter eggs, though they were really confused when we cracked one open afterward and there wasn't any candy inside. :) We've done some Easter crafts, too, which have been fun. And we've read the Easter story from their Bible.

But this year we tried something different as well. I really wanted to be intentional about making Easter a big deal. I know realistically it will never be as big as Christmas is, even though for our faith it is THE biggest day of the year. There just aren't any Easter Carols to sing and hanging crosses around the house to decorate is a little...morbid? So this year, we did something similar to an advent calendar but for Easter. Starting on Palm Sunday, every morning I hide one Easter egg for each of the boys. Inside, there is a treat and a word that I've written on paper. Then we talk about that word, read a Bible verse about it and then do an activity with it. For example, yesterday's word was GIVE. We read the verse that says, "God loves a cheerful giver." Then the kids picked out one toy each to give to their new baby cousin. Low key, but fun and putting into action the things we are trying to teach.

So far, it's been a hit. This morning, A shared our verse about praying with the man from Duke Energy that came to read our meter. And I love listening to them downstairs playing together right now. They are pretending that they are looking in the grave and Jesus isn't there because he's alive! So sweet. I'm hoping this can be come a yearly tradition for us to help with the countdown to Easter and to help make this holiday more meaningful to our family.