Old friends, new looks

We went to visit my mom and dad yesterday, and to spend the day with some friends who I have known from childhood.

 Here are Lydia, Abigail and Knox.

 Here are Abigail, Philip, Erica and Simeon watching a movie.  Erica has 6 children.  2 pregnancies. 1 adoption.  Can you do that math?  She had quadruplets!  She is the most mild-mannered, truly lovely lady I think I know!

 Here's Uncle Steve eating dinner with a bunch of cats!  We used face paint that belonged to Gareth, 20 years ago!!

And if you imagine dollar signs on Lydia's teeth, you will know what we did today!  Braces 1.0.  She gets these partial braces for 6-8 mos., a year off, and then full braces.  By that time I'm sure I'll be paying for someone else's braces as well!

Knox is 2 months

Royal Mail

When I was 4 years old, I drew a picture for the Queen of England.  After all, I lived there and she had just become a grandmother for the first time.  She loved my letter and wrote me back to tell me so.  Okay, so her lady-in-waiting wrote me back and told me how much the Queen loved my letter.

Well, because my oldest son is taught largely by his grandmother, she suggested that he ought to do the same thing as a six year old, and write to the Queen.  After all, he lives in America and she's close to having great-grandchildren.  Makes sense, right?!  Anyway, she made him write a long letter to the Queen and here's the envelope.

Well, the Queen is still interested in receiving fan mail and at the end of May, guess what Philip received?!  Yes, a letter from the Queen.  And, if you can believe it, she said very similar things in his letter as she had said in mine 36 years ago.  Well, her lady-in-waiting said them, again.  And this time she sent some nice pamphlets which greatly impressed this little boy!

Saying Goodbye to a dear friend

May 23rd, we had to say goodbye to our dog of 12.5 years.  Silas had one eye removed last summer due to a disease which led to glaucoma, which resulted in much pain for Silas.  We knew that his other eye would at some point also go blind.  From December to May, I gave him eye drops 3x/day and they seem to work at keeping down the pressures in his eye.  However, at some point they stopped working and he went permanently blind.  He was obviously in discomfort and we knew that our only course of treatment was to get his other eye removed. We had already decided that we weren't going to do that.  He was deaf and it would've been a tremendous liability to himself, the children and anyone driving by, if a blind and deaf dog wandered to the road.  Nonetheless it was hard to say goodbye to a member of our family who was so integrated into our lives.  Interestingly, almost all the photos we have of him are taken by the children.  And often, he is just a background feature, just part of the fabric of the photos because he was part of the family.

And, life goes on!

Here's our little spots and stripes guy!

 Abigail turned 9 on the 9th--her golden birthday!  She had a special day off school which included a trip to the mall and different gifts which marked her golden day.

 She is a special little girl and we enjoy her unique ways of thinking and processing as well as her cheerful spirit.  She loves being a big sister and I'm thankful for the help she's able to give with the baby.

 And, in the meantime, Spring sprang!  Our dogwood looks so beautiful for a couple of weeks each year, until the Fall when it's bright red berries are treats for the birds.

We managed to get our garden in pre- and post-baby.  We are currently harvesting our lettuces and watching our potatoes grow by the day.  We have a lot of onions which have about another month to grow.  We've also got in some herbs and tomato plants as well as flowers.  Gardening is so much fun.

11 days in

I mean really, are there any cuter things on earth than baby feet?

 I was trying to do a creative little photo shoot with Knox while he was asleep.

Then he opened his eyes and propped his hand under his chin like, "Hey Mom, are you finished yet?"

Knox Morgan

Well, he's here ;0)  Praise God for a very smooth and straightforward 6 hour labor and delivery.  Amy, I wasn't able to get in a whole book to read, but I did listen to a sermon on the iPod during labor.  It was actually a really good time to listen--very few interruptions!
Knox weighed 8lb 3oz--our tiniest baby!! He's so small--and I'm really thankful for even that detail.  I always wondered what it was like to hold our babies when there were in the 7lb range, and I was a little sad that I would never know.  But, here we are--holding our (as of today) 7lb 14 oz. baby.  He's so beautifully tiny!
About an hour after he was born (and we were still in the very hmmm. "getting cleaned up" phase, shall we say) the children all arrived to meet their baby brother!  He was not yet bathed, and had on no clothing!  But, they were so excited to meet him.  They each took turns speaking so quietly and gently to him, and just loving him.  It was wonderful to see, and to just appreciate how blessed we really are.  I know they really love him.
We came home from the hospital on Tuesday afternoon.  My parents have been fantastic--my mom has been basically running the ship and I even caught a 3-hour nap this morning.  Nights have been a little rough as that's the time he's most awake.  But, I'm thankful that each day I feel a little stronger physically and less emotionally volatile!  So, here are some pictures of his earliest moments.



Here I am at 6 a.m.--ready to go!

 Here we are at 1:55 p.m.--glad it is all over!

 Proud papa!

 Well-intentioned little big brothers.

 Handling the baby like a pro!

 I think these two are going to look very similar.

 This image is slightly distorted, because it doesn't reflect his true handsomeness ;0)

And some people always manage to find a snack--even in a hospital room!

2 days and counting

We are 2 days away from the arrival of baby Joyner.  Still no name.  We probably think about names more than we really should.  The children are really excited to welcome their baby brother.  I look pretty awful in the photo, but I really don't feel too badly overall.  The doctor said this week that the baby looked to be in the 9lb range, but nothing off the charts.  Well, that's good!
We have been enjoying 2 weeks off school.  The weather is not too spring-like, so that has been a bit of a challenge.  We have put in lettuce, spinach, potatoes and onions into our garden.  I'm hopeful that the really cold nights we're having won't kill everything off.

The kids have enjoyed playing together.  Here they are with "police motorcycle helmets." They added pipecleaners and cotton balls to their bike helmets and spent quite a while talking to each other :0)

Kevin told Philip that while his tooth was loose, it would probably be at least another day or so before it fell out.  Interpret:  it's loose, but not that loose.  Interpreted by our literalist:  I can pull it out tomorrow morning because Daddy said it would be one more day.  So, despite there having to have been some pain, Philip removed his own tooth (and said it didn't hurt).  In a few days, the second one followed.  He was VERY pleased to have joined the crew of those without teeth ;0)

A lovely tea to welcome Baby Joyner!  The ladies of our church hosted a lovely tea morning to provide an opportunity to pray together and sing as we prepare to welcome the new baby.  The food was delicious, the table was beautiful and the time of prayer was so encouraging.  I really enjoyed all of the time for fellowship and sharing together.  The body of Christ is a beautiful thing, in many different ways.
I just finished reading "Girl Talk:  Mother-Daughter Conversations on Biblical Womanhood" by Carolyn Mahaney.  That was a really encouraging and insightful book.  I enjoyed reading it as we prepare to have teenage daughters of our own.
I'm currently reading "Stars in God's Sky: The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary Christians" by Faith Cook.  It's a short book with different biographical sketches of Christians through the last 500 years or so.  I have become increasingly burdened about the persecuted church and am praying more faithfully for those who suffer greatly for their faith.  Persecution is in our modern-day world, but it has never been absent from our historical world either.  The verses from Rev. 6 are so sobering:  "When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 11 Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been."  

Days of miscellany

A good friend recently posted a graphic of how many questions she is asked in a day by her four young children.  I identified completely.  Sometimes the questions are mundane, other times varied:
--What's for dinner? (that's usually asked after an unsatisfactory breakfast)
--What is the purpose of the Postmaster General?  (after observing the imprint on every mailbox "approved by the Postmaster General")
--Could Adam and Eve read?  (asked by a 6-year old after a particularly hard day of learning to read) I'm still trying to figure out that answer to that question.
--What part of your body is your dangles?  (asked in the middle of grocery shopping one afternoon and resulting in a lot of "shhh-ing" by me.)  That one took some particularly good sleuthing to figure out.  The boys had been listening to a cassette tape (yes, we still have a player of those) at night with little rhymes to skip to.  As I put them to bed one night, son #1 says, "See, that's what they're saying...knees and dangles, knees and dangles...1, 2, 3."  Well, of course it really said:  knees and ANKLES, but the slightly malicious little voice on the tape recorded it as "knees andddddankles, knees andddddankles" so as to create much confusion and embarrassment for small children and mothers everywhere.

The other thing begun to take more note of is the variety of books I come in contact with during any given day.  Today I read from:  a book about the history of the Pony Express, a storybook about pirates, the Bible, a children's biography about President James Buchanan, a science book which explained the tilt of the earth and seasons (I then had to watch a lecture on Khan Academy on the subject because my 3rd grader understood it but I didn't quite get it from the book!), began to read "From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" (to see if it was appropriate for the girls to read--been a long time since i read it) and I didn't read (as I did yesterday) from a history of England under Queen Victoria's reign, and I didn't get to the regular read-aloud book about southern Indiana during the Civil War.  I will read before bed from my Josephine Tey library book "The Daughter of Time" and feel very foolish for not knowing more monarchical British history, and I will listen to 4 chapters of the Bible read aloud to me.  I feel like I usually cover a lot of turf during the day.  And I'm tired by the end of it!  But nonetheless, I'm thankful that I have the freedom, liberty, ability, and library access, to read, read, read.

January begins

We've been on vacation from school, and currently the kids are on vacation from home (spending a couple of days with my parents).  This has afforded me time to get the bathrooms to hospital-grade clean, scrub out stains from their bedroom carpets, dispose of small items of trash from their rooms and clean their desks in preparation for school to begin again on Monday.  The weather has been pretty miserable and their usual outside time has been truncated.  The other neighbor children have gone back to school and that has left them at a little bit of a loose end, so I'm thankful we return to routine on Monday.

We forgot to make a gingerbread house before Christmas, so by the time we remembered they were $2.00 at Aldi. They were most excited that not only were they able to make it, but they could eat it the next day.  Usually we keep it around as a decoration and have had to use a hammer to finally crack the inedible, fossilized remains!







Reading through the Bible.  This year I am re-committing to reading through the Bible in a year.  I have committed to this several times before and never done it consistently.  This time, I should be able to do it as a nice-voiced man reads me the daily selections on my iPod.  I mean, really, I should be able to do this!!