Favorite Friday.

My Favorite things today is the quiet of naptime.

Enough said.

Ava's Window Seat.

Rub-a-dub-dub. Preschool in the TUB!

So, who needs to pay for preschool when you can have your own fun reading class in the bathtub? Well...for now anyways! My mom bought Ava some bath alphabet letters and Ava LOVES them! She always wants me to help her spell words. She picks the word. Then i say each letter and she has to find it and stick it on the wall. Then we go over each letter and she has to tell me repeatedly what the word says. I'm not a drill sargent, really. She just love learning! Plus their minds at this age are like honey (not literally of course!) everything sticks to it! Belows are some silly pictures of Ava just being Ava. She was showing me her different expressions. One is a 'pig face' and another is a 'surprised face'! See how much we learn in the tub!

RUB A DUB DUB!

Below is a video of Ava spelling for us. She does a great job until she decides that the 'P' word is too much fun. What is the 'P' word? You'll just have to watch and see. I think its quite funny. What a character.

You're Invited to...

*Please click on picture to enlarge*

Dr. Seuss Lesson # 1

Collin and I decided since we do not have Community Life Group on Sundays anymore (now Mondays) we would declare it Family Night. I think it would be a great tradition...if we can keep it going!

This evening we watched Horton Hears a Who. I was a little skeptical. I have never really been a big Dr. Seuss fan. I always thought his writing was a little peculiar; however, Horton changed my mind! After watching Horton Hears a Who i decided to do a little research on Dr. Seuss & this movie. I was surprised to find that Dr. Seuss used to be a Presbyterian Minister. I was surprised to find my notions of Horton having a lot of Christian symbolism was not my own interpretation, but the real deal! Collin and I were amazed at how much the movie depicted Christ.

For those of you who have never seen this movie, here is a little recap: Horton is an elephant that discovers a tiny speck of dust talking to him on a flower. He guards this flower with his life because he knows there is a world inside of that spec that needs his help. Inside of the Spec of dust is a city of 'Whoville.' They didn't know someone bigger than them existed! Of course the mean Kangaroo tries to convince Horton that if you can't see, smell, hear, or touch something, it's not there. It's not true. Horton eventually gets bombarded by the rest of the Seuss clan and the attempt to lock him up and get rid of the flower. I won't tell you the end in case you like the suspense.

So my lesson #1 from Dr. Seuss is that no matter how small we feel (like a Who in a spec of dust) God is constantly fighting to save us! He wants our faith to be so strong, that even if we can't hear him (like the Seuss clan couldn't hear the Who's) we can still believe He is there!

A simple story. A simple lesson. But such GREAT REWARDS! I encourage you to see this movie if you haven't. Besides the symbolism, it's quite funny and entertaining too! I think my perception of Dr. Seuss has changed...

Where are the bubbles?

The answer to my last post: The bubbles were attacking in her ears! Ava had just taken a bath before she went to bed and was so convinced some bubbles had snuck in. Personally, i think it was just water slushing around in there. It sure did freak it her out though! Quite funny. Ah the imaginations of 3 year olds...

A HINT: it has something to do with ONE of her body parts... :)

Huh?

Ava's Quote of the day:

"Sometimes when i go to bed at night, the bubbles come!"

This is what Ava said AFTER i had put her to bed. she came running screaming to the kitchen. I did my magic mommy thing and then put her back to bed. She said the quote so matter-of-factly.

Does anyone want to guess what she's talking about?

It's a hard one, but i wanted to see if someone could figure it out! :)

Favorite Friday:Gymnastics Continued

Ava's favorite place to be is the bars...

This is where Ava was not supposed to be. Some days that comes natural for her...you know...being in the wrong place at the wrong time :)

Ava 's balancing is improving so much! She is doing the scale in this picture.

Favorite Friday: Gymnastics

One of my favorite things is gymnastics. I have always loved watching gymnastics on TV since i was a little girl, wishing my mom would have put me in some sort of dance, ballet or gymnastics class. Do you ever wonder what you could have done had the classes and money been available? It seems there are so many activities for our kids to be in these days; however, I'm only committing to one thing at a time. So far, it's been gymnastics. Ava loves it and so do I! i look forward to running around with Ava every Thursday. I love seeing her happy and doing something she loves! I will miss it in May when she moves up to an older class and i can only watch from the window :(

It's amazing to see the progress she has made over the past year. She started at 18 months and is now 3! I hope she sticks with it. I hope I stick with it! It's easy to look at the cost in coming years and be 'yikes!'

Below are some videos of Ava doing her 'gymnastics thing!'

*Ava decided climbing ALL the way to the top would be a good idea. I however didn't!

*our crazy friend Ann likes to thrown things. This time it was Ava :) Ava freaked out a little bit at the end because the foam blocks were taking over!

Princess Cinderella.

There are days where i will be downstairs for awhile while Ava is upstairs.

I always hear lots of walking around and banging when we're separated, so i am always curious to see what's going on. Today I decided i should check on her.

To my suprise i have my own little Cinderella! Is that bad? Or maybe she's more of a princess cinderella. afterall, i didn't MAKE her clean the kitchen sink! She seriously scrubbed our kitchen sink for like 40 minutes. Who knew cleaning is fun! Check out her video below...

I also saw evidence.

Evidence on Ava's cute little face.

Oreos.

She gets snack happy when i'm not around :)

New Props.

I have never been much into antique shopping until the past year.

I have come to find that there are lots of photography props waiting for me at Antique Malls. I especially love Layman's Antique Mall downtown (beside Mocha's). They are even more fun because you can buy them for cheap and then redo them! This past week i found a cute little bench & ladder. The ladder is going to be painted red. Can you just imagine a little boy in overalls standing by this ladder? I can! I also love the little bench. They originally wanted $20 for it, but i got them down to $10 because i bought the ladder. Another great thing about antique stores-you can usually barter with them :) So, if you're looking at these props and think 'My child would look so good beside one of those' give me a call! I love shooting children's photos. Especially with new props!

Favorite Friday: Dim

Meet Eder, aka Dim.

Dim is our 5 year old sponsored child from Brazil.

It has been so neat to see Ava's response to this ministry.

She loves picking out toys to send, coloring pictures for him, and most importantly praying for Dim. It has also been so exciting to receive letters from Dim's mother showing her appreciation for the sponorship of her son.

Dim lives in a home made of Adobe/clay walls and cement floors and his family makes an income of $20 per month. How blessed we are with what we have!

We sponsor Dim through the Children's Christian Fund. I'm sure you have seen their commercials on TV. Sponsoring a child has definatly blessed our family. Dim is definatly one of our favorite little guys!

Cora's Playground.

Please click on the Cora's Playground button to your right to see how you can contribute to this precious little girl's memory.

Zoo Videos.

*notice in this second video that Ava said some chickens were going to eat her. We were in the Jungle building and two little birds (not chickens) ran through her legs and she FREAKED out! It was SO funny! She went bolistic and clung to me so tight. It was quite funny.

Zoo.

So, I needed to write a happy post after so many sad ones. What can be happier than the zoo!

We went to the zoo this past Saturday. It was a GORGEOUS DAY! 70 degrees. Perfect! The Zoo in February? That seems wierd, but it wasn't so weird to hundreds of other zoo goers! We went with Sarah & Luke. This was Luke's first 'zoo outing' and he did so good! He even sat in a (ours)

jogging stroller for the first time. What a big boy!

What a Poser.

my favorite picture of Luke from the day

Milking Cows. We couldn't find Ava for a moment and guess where she was! Under the cow squirting water!

this is how most of the stroller rides went. Luke in the back. Ava up front. Ava was a bit jealous that Luke was using her stroller, so we didn't fight it :)

Yeehaw!

this goat seriously just sat there and let Ava hug on him.

cute.

Can we say Onery?

Ava was obsessed with these big bamboo sticks. why is she eating one in this picture you ask?

I have no idea!

What a monkey. This is what gymnastics is doing to her! I was tempted to stick her in the moneky cage ;)

Flowers for Cora.

Go here to purchase a beautiful hand made flower from Joy's Hope to remember Cora. All proceeds will go to Cora's Playground that will be built at GCC in honor of her precious life. I ordered one and saw that her first handful of them had been sold out! Amazing! I can't wait to receive it! What a great way to show how much she is loved!

A celebration of Cora's life will be held at 1:00 PM on Tuesday, February 10, at Grace Community Church, 1600 S. Anderson Rd. Newton, Kansas.
Burial will follow at the Pleasant View Cemetery in rural Elbing.
In lieu of sending flowers, a memorial has been established to construct the Cora Playground, an extension of the children's ministries department at Grace Community Church.

Please read...

I read this and smiled (with tears of course). Thanks Amanda B. for posting this person's blog entry.

http://www.joyshope.com/2009/02/no-words.html

Child of God.

Cora is in Heaven today with her loving Father.

What a perfect image of how much Jesus loves His children.

Cora is His.

A friend's blog wrote "We prayed for the cancer to be gone. And now it is. She is now perfect. Being held by our GREAT AND WONDERFUL GOD." I just loved that quote. God did not answer our prayers for Cora like we wanted Him too, but He did answer our prayer to take away Cora's pain.

God is a good God. I keep telling myself that over and over even though it is sometimes so painful to say.

Please pray for Joel and Jessica as they greive.

Pray they will feel God's love surrounding them.

We love you Joel and Jess.

Girly.

Meet Ava's friend from the library.

She and her mom came last week for a photo shoot.

We had a blast and she was such a natural poser!

Girly poses are so fun!

These are my favorite pictures...

Favorite Thing Friday : People Edition

So, today i chose people instead of 'things.'

Two of my favorite little people (besides Ava).

It has been so fun to see these two cuties grow!

I started watching Ollie when he was almost 5 months old.

He was such a GOOD baby for me. In the picture below i think he was around 8 or 9 months-not for sure though. It's definatly one of my favorite ones.

Now Ollie is almost 2! Man does time fly! We have missed having him here while Kendall is on Maternity leave from teaching, but he visits once in a while to keep us up to speed! Definatly not the quiet, content little baby anymore!

Ollie's little sister, Lily will join us in March a couple days a week too. I'm excited for the new addition and another girl in the house! We will miss them both after school is over though :(

And then there's this little guy-or Little Lukers as we like to call him at our house! Look how tiny he is in the first picture. i think he was right at a month.

I started watching Luke when he was 3 months. It was fun to have a tiny baby in the house again. He, however, did not stay tiny for long!

Look how much he's changed in the past few months!

He is such a happy baby with so many contagious smiles!

I feel so blessed that both of their parents trust me to take care of their little ones! It has been so fun to watch both of them grow!

Ollie and Luke are definatly two of my favorite 'things!'

Precious baby.

Many of you know this sweet little girl.

So Precious.

I felt so privilaged to take her pictures.

Thanks to this little angel's mommy.

I miss this...