Jonathan the four-year-old

Here, finally, are Jonathan's four year pictures. He is getting to be quite the big guy. I was just noticing the other day how long his legs seem. He is becoming more adult proportional and less toddler like. 

He is silly and fun-loving. When he gets in his head that something would be fun to do, he has to do it. For instance, in Disneyland he got it in his head that he needed to walk through every turnstile without using his hands to push the turnstile. Now the turnstiles come right up to his neck, so that meant that he would walk pushing the turnstile with his neck until it went around. And if someone pushed it for him (out of the kindness of their hearts, to make it easier for him)… oh man… he was not happy!

He still loves trains and cars and trucks and things that go. He watches to see how everything works. And he can tell you afterwards exactly how many wheels something had, or what color the track was, or if it had gears etc. The other day he told me all about bicycle chains and gears. Sometimes I think he understands how things work better than I do.

He is still great friends with Leesi. They play together so well, and love each other so much. It warms my heart to see it. He is amused by Nora and thinks she's cute and funny. But he doesn't like her interfering with what he is doing.  

He is starting to really get into coloring and writing. He holds his pencil with all different sorts of grips, so that makes it a little challenging for him to have the control he needs. But he still will ask me how to write words and then write all the letters down on his paper (not always in order… but they're all there.)

He talks to anyone and everyone and always has a long story to tell. Often with a preamble leading up to the actual information. "I have something to tell you. Do you know what it is? It is…."

He loves his stuffed doggie, Marshmallow or "Marshy." And often in the morning he will pull all his "comftable stuff" out of his bed: Marshy and several other stuffed animals, his quilt, pillow, and blankies; and then take it all to the couch for snuggle time and reading books. 

Jonathan, you are getting so big. I love seeing you grow and learn each day. Thanks for being such a fun boy.   

Happy Fall!

Halloween Time!

Just some Halloween pictures for the grandparents. This year the big kids both chose out and helped to make their Halloween costumes. Leesi made her own little butterfly antennae, and Jonathan and I worked long and hard on his train (Leesi helped too).  Nora was Tigger, but she just rode around in the stroller. She wasn't feeling well and had been quite needy and cranky all day. Poor baby, she not only had a fever, but also a nasty burn on her lip from the hot glue gun. And yes, I feel terrible about it. 

Jonathan had tons of fun helping paint his train. Leesi and I helped him with the blue, but then he did all the stripes and windows himself. I think it turned out pretty good.

The train was mostly orange and blue, Jonathan's favorite colors. It was number 33… not Thomas! Don't be confused by the Thomas hat. After all, Thomas doesn't have orange stripes!

Cute trick or treaters...

Playing in the Rain

A catch-up post

Well... if I don't start posting a little more often all my posts will end up being catch-up posts. And that's no fun. So, here's hoping that this is the beginning of my renewed blogging. Ha!

But a little catch up is needed since in the last two months a lot has happened. Greg accepted a position at Northwest Christian University in Eugene, Oregon in early August. We moved down to Eugene September 1st. Since our move we've celebrated two birthdays (Nora's and Jonathan's). We've officially entered the realm of school age kids with Elisa going to Kindergarten. And we celebrated my mother-in-law's 60th birthday with a trip to Disneyland. It has been a busy month!

Here are the pictures to prove it:

Nora's Birthday

Beautiful one-year-old

Elisa's 1st day of Kindergarten

Disneyland!

Jonathan's 4th Birthday

There's the very abbreviated version of what's been happening. Stay tuned for more!

Jonathan and Mommy in the Story of the Three Little Fish.

Jonathan and Elisa both have animal hooded towels. Jonathan's is a fish and Leesi's is an owl. A few nights ago I was trying to get Jonathan out of the bath and into his fish towel. I started talking in kind of a low voice to try and get his attention. "Little Fishy, come here. Come here little fishy" I said. My low voice reminded Leesi of the voice I do when we read Three Little Pigs. She said, "Hey Mommy, you be the big bad shark and say 'Little fishy, little fishy, let me come in.'" So I repeated what she said. Then she said, "Now Jonathan say, 'Not by the hair on my finny fin fin.'"

That girl cracks me up.

How God gave me something better than a house

Just over three years ago our family made a big move. We moved from Arkansas back to the Northwest. Greg had been working at JBU, a great school that we loved, but we wanted to be closer to our families. So we decided to move, even though Greg did not have a job lined up here.

In my head I envisioned us living in a cute house, in a good neighborhood, in Portland... a house with a fenced yard where the kids would play, 3 bedrooms, and hopefully a big living room for entertaining. When moving day came, Greg didn't really have any job prospects, and I felt a little worried. Nevertheless, I could still imagine our house and yard. I knew it might be down the road a little, but I was sure that we were at least on the road to buying a house. For the first five years of our marriage we rented a house, and then at JBU we lived in the men's residence hall. We had never owned a house and I was ready.

Well, after a summer of ups and downs in the job hunt, Greg was offered a job at Warner Pacific College as (once again) a Residence Director. Which meant that (once again) we would be living in an apartment in the men's residence hall. And this time the apartment was even smaller... with no dishwasher... no washer and dryer... no bathtub. We moved in with mixed emotions. On the one hand we had faced the reality that we might be living with Greg's mom while he worked as a server at a restaurant (not to belittle being a server... just not Greg's chosen career path). So we were very relieved to have a job that he cared about and a place to live. But on the other hand, there was no house (not only no house, but no prospect of a house anytime soon). We were stuck in the dorm until his job changed again. And part of me was bitter.

I tried to put a good face on it. I mean, like I said, we were very relieved to have a place to call home at all. It was so nice to unpack boxes and have our own space.

But the space was small... I mean, really small. The living room was 10x10, there was no dining room... just a space on the wall between the bathroom door and the front door where we put a drop leaf table that we unfolded for each meal. I think the whole house was about 800 square feet... but that doesn't do justice to how small it really was. The living room, kitchen, bathroom, and one bedroom were in 400 of those square feet. Then down a spiral staircase (which took up part of our square footage) was the other half of the apartment... one giant room with a walk-in closet. We used it as our bedroom/catch-all room/storage. At first the walk-in closet was where baby Jonathan slept. Then, when he was sleeping regularly through the night we moved him up to share a room with Elisa.

The "dining room" and kitchen

The dining area from a different angle - shows the front door (right) and bathroom door (left)

The living room

The kids' room

Our bathtub

And there was one other thing: Greg had taken a pay cut and I had stopped working. We already hadn't made a ton of money in Arkansas... but now we made substantially less. And we had just used up our savings moving across the country.

So, on the one hand, I was so relieved and thankful for Greg's job. And on the other hand, I was bitter. I felt like God owed me more than this. It sounds terrible to say it that way, but that's where I was at. I had given God so much. I had done all the right things. Wasn't it His duty to bless me? And shouldn't He bless me in the ways that I wanted? 

One of the things I kept saying during that time was, "The American Dream is not my dream. The American Dream is not my dream." Of course, the American Dream WAS my dream... which is why I needed to say it so much. To remind myself that it shouldn't be my dream. Funny thing about dreams though, it's hard to let go of a dream without something better to grab onto in it's place. 

It was easy to be outwardly thankful for the apartment when people were commiserating with me about how small it was. But whenever someone said something about how it was nice, or not so bad, or how I should be thankful, I bristled inside. And sometimes that bitterness would leak out in my words. Then afterwards I'd think, "Oh, I hope so-and-so didn't think that I'm not a grateful person or that I'm bitter." You see, I didn't quite realize the truth yet. I thought that my problem was what I had said. One day God showed me that the problem wasn't what I said, but my heart. Those words were coming from a bitter heart. And that's what needed to change. 

I realized that if I had to describe me in one word, that word would be "want." That's what I thought about more than anything else: what I wanted. "I just want to be able to decorate this house better." "I want to have a yard with a fence." "I want to be able to have room to have people over." "I want Greg to get a different job so we can move off-campus." And on and on....  All things that I thought would make me happy.

I wasn't happy that my word was "want," but acknowledging the truth of my heart was the first step toward change. I thought, "If there's a word to describe me I want it to be 'peace', or 'joy', or 'contentment'."

The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
 He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
 He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake....

  Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. (Psalm 23)

The view out our apartment window

I started taking time to stare out our big window and slow down for a minute during nap time. Instead of getting on Facebook or Pinterest, I'd do my Bible study or read other good books.

During this time I started reading the book, "One Thousand Gifts". In it Ann Voskamp challenged me to do a simple exercise: start writing down things I'm thankful for every day. Think of the gifts God gives me, and take the time to write them down. Slowly as I started doing this, my thoughts started to shift.

One rainy day as I was parking our car in the lot after a trip to the grocery store, I found myself cursing in my head. Cursing the rain, the puddles, the slow one-year-old and three-year-old who would be sure to find the puddles and dawdle, the car that took the closest spot, the muddy hillside I'd have to climb, the heavy grocery bags... etc. Then I remembered thankfulness, and just as quickly I started counting gifts. The fact that my kids would have a chance to be outside: a gift. The groceries: a gift. A let-up in the rain: a gift. The biggest gift that I realized right then though, was that God was changing me. Slowly but surely I was becoming a different person. A person of joy instead of bitter cursing. With a smile on my face and my arms full of groceries I urged my one and three-year-old up that muddy hillside. And I felt happy. Or maybe, I was joyful.

I'm still in process. I still fall into thinking that happiness is about fulfilling my list of wants. And I still want to own a house... someday... maybe. But I no longer obsessively get online to look at home listings in our area. I no longer drive down the streets looking for for-sale signs. Not that those things are intrinsically bad, they were just bad for my soul at that time. And they were a sign of my soul at that time. I wanted to buy a house so badly because the American dream was my dream. I had forgotten that what I truly wanted and needed was God himself.

A year ago, right in time for Nora to be born, we moved into a house. Not our own house... a campus house. God continues to provide for us and bless us, not always in exactly the way I have pictured. But always in exactly the way I need.

And it is kind of cute, isn't it?

Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:16-17)

Now, three years later, I see how that little apartment was a good and perfect gift. It helped me realize my sense of entitlement. It showed me the depths of my wanting... depths that would never be filled... and helped me realize that what I truly wanted could not be bought with money.

"True joy, as it turns out, comes only to those who have devoted their lives to something greater than personal happiness." (From The Life You've Always Wanted by John Ortberg)

It's been awhile

The other day my mom said, "I can tell that those three kids are keeping you busy. You rarely blog anymore."

Yes, it's true. Three kids are keeping me busy. But now that Nora is out of the newborn stage, I do find that I have a little more breathing room. And I do want to keep blogging.... so here we go again.

So, to start with, let's do a brief catch-up.

Nora is now 9 months old. We call her fuzz-head because her hair is growing in all nice and fuzzy. She just started crawling and cruising along furniture. At first when she figured out how to crawl, she would crawl around laughing the whole time. Like, "This is the best! Do you see this? I can crawl!" She has a sweet disposition, but when she's unhappy and fussy sometimes she'll trill while she cries. I caught it on video the other day.


Elisa is 5 and just finished preschool. She'll start kindergarten in the fall. She is always busy with new ideas and schemes. Most of all she loves doing art projects.

Jonathan is 3 and loves playing with cars and trucks. He is a little engineer, always trying to figure out how things work.

Greg is off of work for June and July. We went to the beach last week. This week we're all involved with Kid's Day Camp at our church. And next week we are going up to visit my family. Also, Greg and I (and Nora) will go to a Bed and Breakfast for a couple nights for our 12th Anniversary. So, we have a busy June. July should be a little more low key.

A Craft for Spring

Lately one of our favorite crafts is these homemade suncatchers. This craft is great for different ages and can be easily adapted for different seasons/themes. We've made jack'o'lanterns, snowmen, butterflies, and crosses this way. First I tape down a piece of contact paper sticky side up, I put the hollow shape on it and then let the kids go to town sticking on pieces of cut-up tissue paper. (For an added step I let the kids choose out and cut, or rip up their own tissue paper). 

There are different techniques: Jonathan likes to grab great big handfuls of tissue paper and mash it onto his; Leesi likes to carefully place her papers one by one. 

After they are done we lay another piece of contact paper on top and then cut around the edges.

The finished product. 

So much fun to "flutter" them around...

 and they look so pretty in the windows with the sun shining through.

Here's a picture of our jack'o'lanterns. I let the kids tell me what kind of shape they wanted for each of the facial features and cut them out for them, then let them place the facial features on the contact paper before doing the tissue paper. Jonathan's are on the left, Leesi's are on the right. 

Jonathan on names...

"We saw a guy with blue hair in the grocery store. Daddy said his name was Buzz Are."


"The funny guy in Thomas said To-MAH-toes. ToMAHto is the nickname for Tomato."