Old Stuff

As I was looking over the pictures I've taken this past month, I realized I forgot to post a few that I wanted you all to see. (Ok, so it's more than a few...)

First: Pancake Breakfast! Every year the local Arcadia Fire Department has a pancake breakfast fundraiser and this was our 3rd year going. The boys love climbing all over the trucks and old police cars. You know, kid heaven, especially for Warren who is SO into fire gucks right now.

Second: Baby Gym! Both boys were able to attend this session (8 weeks long) because Warren was old enough for a class! Our church does 4 sessions a year, next one starting in September. It's a real treat for them to be able to do this every Thursday, they just love it. And a bonus this year is that Daddy can come in to the gym to see them in between chapel and classes!

Third: Shepherd Boys. Enough said.

Man these guys are cute...

And just yesterday: Water Time! It was the last of the hot days yesterday, so we got outside to get drenched. The boys kept me nice and cool by wetting my feet every so often, which is very important if you're just about to pop with baby in 100 degree weather. Fun stuff!

Steve is always close by when we're outside, keeping a wary eye on the boys.

Ryan, Jake and I are on our way to the Dodger game tonight with Glen & Shilo. We're not taking the little guy, it's too hard trying to keep him in a seat. He gets to play with Grammy and Papa instead and go to bed on time!

We can't believe Baby Girl (yet unnamed, any suggestions?) will be here in 4 weeks! Or less, but probably more with my history of being past my due date. We are all eager to see what life with three 3 and under will be like. Hectic to be sure, but so sweet.

Our love to all!

Graduation!

Well folks, we made it to graduation after 4 years here at Master's! It was a fantastic ceremony, one that we're sure not to forget any time soon. My parents flew down for the weekend and joining us in the festivities were, of course, Ryan's parents, aunt Pam, and Brian & Christi and their girls. Before the ceremony on Sunday the 11th, we went to lunch after church and had a little bit of time to stroll around Universal City Walk, which all the little kiddos thought was pretty fun. The weather had not gotten hot yet, and was quite a beautiful day. After the ceremony we all came back to our house for pie and ice cream. All the kids were troopers, I was quite surprised at their excellent behavior throughout the entire day.

Now for pictures...

Walking down to the front

All the men who are not graduating are a part of the seminary choir. They sang several hymns, it was excellent! So this is what Ryan has been doing the 3 years prior to graduating!

Right after!

Warren looks good in a grad cap!

This is Ray Mehringer, director of admissions and placement at Master's. We have become quite close with he and his family during our time here.

We keep saying that it doesn't quite feel real yet, probably because Ryan starts summer school on Monday! We get to do this all over again next year when he receives his Master of Theology.

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Backing up a little in time...The night before graduation there was a banquet for graduates and their families. So we got to get all dressed up and have a very nice dinner at church. It was a beautiful evening and one of the many special things Master's does for it's graduates. We sat with our friends Glen and Shilo and a few of their family members.

This is Shilo and Missy Mehringer, Ray's wife.

We give all thanks to God for sustaining and providing for us these last few years, what a testimony to His faithfulness and goodness to our family!

The World of Boys

Well these guys never cease to entertain us. Last night they thought it was hilarious to fall backward off of the red chair onto their heads. Got a cute video of it too.

Park Day

I took the boys to the park today...pretty fun. Though with no shade they were quite the little pinky boys at the end.

Greetings

Hi all~

I am having a hard time believing that April is at its end. I was looking over the calendar for the month last night after dinner and was shocked at all the stuff we had going on. Busy busy. The next 2 months are setting up to be just as packed as well with dr.'s visits, graduation, and a birth! Speaking of graduates, here's ours (in 10 days):

This is Ryan's "official" graduation picture taken at school a couple of weeks ago. No wonder we have such cute kids!

Last Saturday I had the privilege of going to our pastor John MacArthur's home for the annual senior wives seminary luncheon. I carpooled with my dear pals Shilo and Alex and we had a great time. Shilo and I were able to sit with John's wife Patricia and very much enjoyed her company and hearing a little about her life as a pastor's wife. She was a great encouragement as to what is ahead for us. It was nice getting to know the other ladies at our table as well. John was only there for a few minutes in the beginning to pray for us, as he said he was instructed to greet and leave! (It was a ladies lunch after all!) It is almost unreal that graduation is upon us; these last 4 years have absolutely flown by. Anyway, here are a couple of pics from the lunch, taken with Shilo's camera.

In their kitchen (clearly), which was gorgeous. Look at us "blossoming" gals!

Shilo and I were waiting to say goodbye to Patricia and were browsing the MacArthur's books in their library/den. The one I'm holding is what all of us ladies received as a gift signed by John.

Moving right along...

One of Warren's favorite things to do at the moment is watch Jake go to the bathroom. I don't know why, maybe he's just anticipating when he can sit on the big toilet and flush it after he uses it. Jake sometimes gets annoyed (I don't blame him), but on Saturday we were all in the bathroom (sans daddy) and Warren decided he wanted to try on Jake's undies while Jake was doing his business on the potty. I got a really cute video of it.

When Jake was done he obviously wanted his underwear back, so I had to get Warren his own pair and he wore them all morning over his jammies! He's such a goofball.

As an aside, Warren's pajama shirt says "Crabby" which is so perfect for him in the morning!

Until next time!

A Barrel Full of Monkeys at Kaiser

I thought I'd share a little about my day yesterday after I've had a chance to reflect and laugh about it.

I had to go to the hospital to do the glucose test to test for gestational diabetes. This is no simple in and out-draw a little bit of blood-and you're gone test, but it's the one where they give you this orange soda-like beverage and make you drink it under the watchful eye of the lab tech to make sure you've guzzled every last sugary sip, wait one hour, and THEN come back and draw blood to see how the drink has affected you. So already this hospital visit had that going against it, not to mention it wasn't an actual appointment. I already feel like I live at Kaiser Baldwin Park part time, so one more visit really irked me. Anyway, I packed lots of Cheerios and fruit snacks and books for the boys in anticipation of the hour long hiatus and off we went.

I pulled into the parking garage that was quickly filling with cars and drove up to the 3rd floor and found a spot near the elevator (whew!). As I was getting the stroller out of the car I noticed a parking attendant walking my way. I had opened Jake's door to get him out and the attendant said to me, "Excuse me Ma'am, but I'm going to have to ask you to move your car over a little bit because we need to leave room for the other patients coming to the hospital." I just stared at her blankly hoping she was kidding. Before I proceed, let me explain something about the special parking garage at Kaiser: 90% of the parking spots are dedicated to compact cars, so it is usually difficult not to park in one, and this time was no exception. My tires on the left were just barely touching the white line on MY side of the spot! Another thing about the spots: they are the ones with 2 white lines between spots, not one. Observe below:

So not only was I not in the next parking spot over, I wasn't even in the middle part between the lines!

Back to the story...

This lady (who was only doing her job, I reminded myselft) asked me again to move, and before I got nasty with her (which is totally my first inclination), I remembered I had 4 very impressionable ears 18 inches from where I was standing. So with a bad attitude and grumbling in my heart, I shoved the stoller back into the car and moved over about 3 inches and was now very slightly touching the line on the other side! I got the stoller out again and noticed the lady looking my way and analyzing my parking job. I stared at her for a few seconds and proceeded to get the boys out and ready to go. I think the attendant started walking my way again, but changed her mind when she saw my pregnant self getting my 2 other kidlets out of the car and into the stroller!

Well, after all that, the elevator was broken! I was about ready to give up and go home at that point, but decided against it. I had already put off this test for weeks because of the ordeal I knew it would involve. I folded up the stoller, had Jake carry their little bag full of treats down the stairs, and I lugged my stuff and the stroller while holding Warren's hand down the 3 flights of stairs.

What an injustice right? Perhaps, but I know that it was more of a test that the Lord sent my way, one which I failed miserably at, but later was able to learn from. I've often heard friends at church say that there is no more sanctifying time in life than when you have small children, and while I agreed with them before, I am now fully convinced of it! How thankful I am that the boys were with me because if they weren't, I know I would have said something to that poor lady that I shouldn't. I was forced to exercise self-control at that point, which is exactly the lesson we are trying to reinforce and cement in Jake. How easy it would have been to fly off at the mouth and let anger get the best of me, which, incidentally, is another thing we're working with Jake on. A verse we go over and over with him is James 1:19 "But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God." How perfectly appropriate and timely for the Lord to show me that I have much to learn and work on in the midst of teaching my children the very same truths.

Yikes. Well, the 3 of us actually had a fun time in that hour. We watched the ducks swim in the pond, ate some Cheerios, and read a few books. Jake even got to watch the lab technician take blood from mommy-cool. I guess the day wasn't so bad after all.

More Cousin Pics

Here's a cute little collage of the 3 boys playing together. We can't wait until they all get to play again. Hopefully it will be before Christmas.

Mosaic Madness

Here's my guys. They sure do have fun together...mostly.

Side note: It's so easy to make these picture mosaics, I love it! If anyone is wondering I use BigHugeLabs.com to make them.

Boy + Boy + Boy = 3 Times the Fun

Hi all~

Been a while, I know. I haven't been especially busy this time during my absence, but you know how it goes. My friend Kelsey hit the nail on the head when she said she tends to go in spurts when it comes to blogging. I'm the same way.

Anyway, last weekend my mom and sister came in town for a baby shower for moi given by my good friend Shilo. I will post pictures of that later as soon as I can get my hands on some. Jess brought her boy of course, and the cousins had a blast playing together all weekend. Johnny seemed a bit overwhelmed at first, not quite knowing what to do with 2 very rambunctious kiddos, but he was soon in on the action. All the boys were sad when Johnny had to go back home and Warren is still asking, "Johnny go?" (translation= Where did Johnny go?) I only took 3 pictures the whole weekend, so again, as soon as I can get some pictures from my mom (hint, hint, Mom), I'll post more.

Kelsey gets another mention in this post because she has inspired me to re-discover the art of making picture mosaics! It is fantastic to be able to chunk a bunch of pictures together and save you all the grief of scrolling down my blog! So, for your viewing enjoyment...

Actually, those little pictures are difficult to see...I will work on this. You get the idea though. It was a hot day and the boys were out on the porch eating chocolate covered ice cream chunks. As you can tell, John was pretty intrigued by the fellas.

Good Clean Fun

Bath times are always fun times, yesterday was no exception.

Hooray For Baseball Opening Day! And Baseball Nut Ice Cream Too!

Stairway to...

Lots of fun
Grandma and Grandpa's room
Kid-heaven

Whatever you want to call these stairs, the boys call them entertainment for a whole week of visiting! Observe:

What a busy last couple of weeks we've had! Ryan and I made lots of preparations for holy week for the boys that included an Easter play dough mountain, lots of pipe cleaner people, a temple, and a cross. We spent time each day, beginning with Palm Sunday, explaining and acting out a portion of the story leading up to the cross and ended Easter Sunday with Jesus alive outside of the tomb. Jake paid pretty good attention and remembered much of what we told him. It was pretty exciting for us to watch him absorb everything.

We left Friday for the trip to my parent's house and had a great time up there. The boys got to do all kinds of fun stuff, like ride the motorcycle, play in the 5th wheel trailer out back, and follow their grandma around like puppies. I've got lots of pictures, so I'll try to pare it down, but this will probably be a long post! Enjoy.

Goofy cousins

Jake came out on Easter morning to see Christ outside the tomb alive!

Perhaps the cutest picture of him. Ever. It actually took quite a lot of coaxing to get him to wear this tie just for pictures before church! He promptly took it off after I put my camera away. I stowed it in my purse and when Jake saw all the little boys in the children's choir wearing ties, he decided it was high time he wear one too.

Boys in ties

We went to my aunt & uncle's home on Easter and the boys thought the cat door was pretty fun.

Warren loved the Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots.

My dad's friend, Jason, came by in his shifter cart. The boys were hooked.

Catch Up Pictures

A couple of weeks ago the boys and I trekked up to my mom's because my dad and Ryan were at a pastor's conference all week down here at our church. Here are some pictures from the week before my dad left.

My dad bought a new dirt bike. You can see how little it is with him on it. Can you guess who he hopes may ride it in a couple of years?

My mom bought Jake and Warren some new light-up Lightning McQueen shoes and one morning Warren wanted them on from the time he woke up until he went to bed. This is him eating breakfast complete with baseball hat, footie jammies and sandals. Cool guy.

Can you tell it was spaghetti night?

For the Shepherd's Conference, the seminary guys open up the first session singing a couple of hymns and this year the conference was live streamed so we were able to watch it on the computer! When they zoomed in a little bit we could see Ryan standing up there in the choir loft singing! The boys got quite a kick out of that.

More to come later!

Hey Hey

Hello everyone. I have some moments to myself for a little while before I need to start dinner because Ryan has the boys outside, so I thought I would post some pictures. We're all doing well...the boys are growing, as am I, and Ryan is slimming down because he's been running! Other than that, there is nothing new to report. So I'll dive in with some pics.

What else is there to do on a rainy day except pull out a shelf from the bookshelf and make a slide?

Warren has learned the fine art of climbing out of his crib. Thankfully, he doesn't do it when he's supposed to be sleeping. He only does this when he's feeling goofy right before bed waiting for his goodnight kisses and water.

Ok, I'm out of time, I have many more pictures, but I'll save them for later!