Green Pumpkins, Pancakes and Paintball

Today the boys got to explore firetrucks, etc. while hubby shopped in Lowes. Afterwards they even got to make their own firetrucks and take them home.

I decided to let the Things paint their pumpkins this year, this is all the farther I got decorating mine while keeping T2 well supplied with green paint...which he used to completely cover his with, apparantly pumpkins are supposed to be green, not orange if you are 3!

here are all my pumpkins with their pumpkins.

We had our annual Mug n Muffin last Sat. and about 45 women cramed into one room to chat, listen to a short devo I gave and discuss Servant-Love.

After T3 and I got home from the mug n muffin (I didn't dare go without him lest they not let me in) hubby took off for Meat and Paintball with 25 guys and staff. I sent him with the camera and not surprisingly it came back with zero pics of the men's event on it...so here is one of T1 eating a huge piece of meatloaf instead (I have a great recipe if you are looking for one...yummy sauce on top!).

T1 is enjoying soccer - if by "enjoying" you mean: the times during every game that he cries or lays down on the grass while everyone plays around him, innitiates a huge dogpile or picks grass and throws it on his teamates instead of paying attention. I was appalled at first by this behavior until I saw loads of other 5 year olds crying, picking grass, laying on the field and following his lead in the dogpile.


Two weekends ago we asked 30 of our student leaders to give up 3 hours of their Sat. to learn how to better lead their Bible studies, and guess what? They came!


We fed them breakfast first of course!

Much to my dismay, err, delight, Piggy our pet toad is still alive and well. He is living up to his name by consuming copious amounts of crickets (I can't seem to walk by one without picking it up now!) and stinking up the tank (ick!). I'm considering filling his tank to the brim with pea rocks (BTW ask me sometime what T2 thinks "pea rocks" means) and seeing if he will dig down and hibernate for the winter so I don't have to try and clean it (okay, okay, beg Hubby to clean it even though it wasn't his spontaneous idea to let them keep the toad) in the winter.

T3 is almost 6 months old! Sigh, it goes so fast. He is rolling all over the place now and just started on cereal this week. He is never bored as long as his brothers are around.

A few other random stories and thoughts of late:
T1 is learning about the 5 senses at PreK and one day his teacher was telling them about hearing. She said, "Did you know that some people cannot hear at all? Does anyone know what a person who can't hear is called?" T1 immediately raised his hand and very seriously answered, "Grandmas and Grandpas!"

I decided recently that a happy marraige is 50% figuring out what ticks the other off, and 50% not doing those things! Now if I could just remember what I did that ticked hubby off when I decided that! Hmm...having that third one really fries your brain!

The other day T2 was putting in a cd (the Things are REALLY into books on cd and tape from the library)...for some reason I just don't seem to have as much time to read to them these days...anyways, he apparantly decided to figure out what the switch on the side of the player did and after turning up the volume full blast switched it from cd to radio. He came running into the room crying after scaring himself. :)

Healing Tears

I really am supposed to be writing about something entirely different right now, but I have to process a bit about Heather again and get it out first. Hopefully then my mind will be clear and I can be a bit productive.
I've been thinking about tears lately. I never knew or at least took note of it until Heather's death how many different kinds of tears there are. And then one day a week or so ago in a quick note to Heather's mom I wrote that the tears that I shed upon receiving Peter Rabbit in the mail weren't the same as the ones I shed upon receiving the news from her pastor that she had been killed. I sat in the same place to cry...on the floor in my bedroom with my back against the hope chest at the end of our bed. And I cried all over again over her loss. But this time the tears weren't the gut wrenching sobs that you are just sure your heart now has a physical crack in it from crying tears. These tears that trickled down as I read the notes enclosed and lovingly touched the stitches she had so carefully woven were healing tears. And as I just now finished penning a thank you note to her friends who thoughtfully finished Peter off and sent him on to me, the tears that fell were just plain sad-missing-my-friend tears. Sometimes the tears are angry, like when I'm mad-sad that this is it and we can't ever get her back. Sometimes the tears are remorseful, trickling down when I think that I nearly called her the morning of the day she died but decided with the time difference it might be too early to call her. And some are happy-sad tears when I laugh over a funny memory of her with Hubby or a friend who knew her well, but can't help but cry a little with smile. Right now the tears are make-my-sinuses-hurt tears b/c I'm trying to hold them in and get through this note. I'm hoping as time passes that the tears that come will more and more be of the healing sort, esp. for those who loved her the longest and the best.

Fishing, Soakers and Banana Boats

Thing 1s first day of Pre-K - he goes 5 mornings a week and LOVES it. Hopefully he didn't make any of these faces at his teacher!

Thankfully the first day of school for T1 coincided with T2s first day back to gymnastics. T2 really enjoys having something just for him and does great at following the coach and waiting in line - most of the time. His favorite thing to do is "hang from the bar and drop into the fluffy pit".

Enjoying some sweet corn on our patio - a perfect end of summer dinner.

We enjoyed some much needed RnR this weekend after a busy few weeks of fall kick off events. Just a breather though, the fun starts up again tomorrow! We took the boys fishing today and the weather was just perfect, if not the fishing. Mostly they just threw rocks in the water - could explain the poor fishing!

I finally finished a knitting project for T3 before he grew out of it - just barely! I decided to make him some "soakers" even though we are not in a million years doing cloth diapers (sorry my Green friends - I do recycle though!). Perhaps the desire to knit soakers came from reading all those Lauraine Snelling books about Norwegians frontiering on the Dakotas...they knitted a lot of soakers back then! (great reads btw).

One of our annual kick off events in a big bonfire. This year about 60 students showed up to indulge in banana boats, smores and help work all the Things into a sugary exhausted dither. A good time was had by all. We were blessed to have a Nav alumni couple loan us the use of their 160 acre property...which allowed for a pretty big bonfire!




T3 also got his first haircut this weekend. He isn't sure what he thinks about haircuts and definitely doesn't like to sit still!

We also had our first Nav Nite of the school year last week. About 130 students attended. We are following up spiritual interest surveys this week and getting Bible studies organized.