Happy Birthday, Jack.

Here are a few pictures of Jack over the years. I have a million, so these are very random and I just threw together what I came across.

Jack is:
Loving, sweet, kind, hilarious, happy, fun, handsome, precious, smart and witty and he already has a love for Jesus and an idea of what it is to live like Christ.

The other day, I was irritable (yes, again), and he came out of the playroom from cleaning up as I asked and said, "Mommy, how do you feel? I just said a prayer for you that God would help make your life easier." He is so precious to me.

Moving On

We had to say goodbye to two families in our court this summer; the Pittmans and the McCarthy's. They were both great families and we had gotten to know them well over the last three years. Here is a little ice-scream social we had at Mary and Peter's house several weeks ago (yes, I'm extremely late posting these pictures).

Josh, Thomas, Andrew and Jack

Jack with chocolate on his chin.

Ben and Laura

Eric and Ben. Wherever there is food, there is Ben.

Eric and Laura's little girl, Samantha. She is 10 days younger than Ben.

Mary and Laura

Jason and Becca McCarthy with baby Will.

The Pittman family.

We will miss you all on Cypress Knoll.

More Kentucky Trip

Jack is in his pajamas because we had just had bath and were getting ready to head back to Illinois at night. He had so much fun with his cousins. They are all so handsome.





It's always quite the challenge to get Ben to stay in the picture.

I like this one. Boys everywhere!

Sleeping Baby

I just love the look on his face of pure contentment and relaxation. There is nothing more comforting than having your babies asleep in their beds. Everybody's safe and everybody's quiet.

Kentucky Boys

We just returned from a quick trip to Kentucky over the 4th. Jack, Nicholas and Nate were going around saying they were brothers. Here is a great picture that Papa took on our last night there.

A Real Airplane!!!

Our neighbor, Peter, is an Airforce pilot. His wife, Mary, invited us to come and tour the airplane he was flying that day and watch Peter take-off. Unfortunately, the day of the flight, it started to storm and made the entire event a bit hairy. However, Mary and I were determined to go. It's better than being cooped up in the house on a stormy day.

We all piled into Mary's truck. Here are the boys; thrilled to be riding all together.

The big plane. I believe Peter said it's a 737 - like airforce one but smaller. I couldn't get the plane in one shot as I was taking this picture from a truck that had come to pick us up since there was lightning.

Jack sharing his umbrella with Tommy. You see how well he's doing it?

First class seats.

Ready for take-off.

Oh boy, we're in trouble. Fasten your seatbelts.

Checking it all out.

Peter says the plane flies around politicians and such.

Peter and Mary

The boys seem absolutley thrilled to be posing with me.

We had a blast despite the rain/thunder/lightning. Thanks Birchenoughs!

Boys are so sweet

Jack went out back to play while I worked on dinner. He came back inside a few minutes later and said he had two dandelions; one for him and one for me. He said, "lets go blow them and make a wish." So we went on the back steps and made our wishes and blew the dandelions. He asked me what I wished for and I told him that I couldn't tell him or it wouldn't come true. He seemed okay with that explanation and went back to playing and I went back inside to work on dinner. A few minutes later, he comes through the screen door again and says, "my wish came true, my wish came true!" I made sure I was really excited for him and asked, "oh, what was it?" He said, "I wished that I would find some flowers to pick for you and here they are." He handed me a bunch of weeds and I will cherish them. They are in water right now.

Bug Kit and Spaghetti

Memom sends Jack packages in the mail at least every week-and-a-half to two weeks. Jack looks forward to those packages. They contain coloring books, books, fruit snacks, suckers, cars, shirts, bags, stickers, etc. She knows what a four-year-old likes. Our most recent package had fruit snacks and a bug catching kit in it. He has enjoyed the kit and has been hunting his little heart out for bugs.

Jack and his bug kit.
Ben after a spaghetti dinner. He loves pasta and sauce, but I hate the clean up. After I wiped him off, he looked like he had gotten into a jar of self-tanning lotion. He was soooo orange.

Ben's obsession . . .

. . . is Cubby's food. If and when he hears the food being poured into the dog bowl, he books it in the kitchen as fast as he can. He must have a front row seat, he must try to help Cubby feed himself and he will often take a piece here and there for himself. Drives me insane.

He's actually being pretty good in this series of pictures because I'm sitting so close to the action.

All gone.

Just makin' sure it's really gone.

Video of him telling me about it.

Playing cubs

Sam always compares he and the boys wrestling around to a lion and it's cubs. When the boys are rolling around on the floor around him, he'll say, "they're playing cubs". I love these pictures. They love it when dad is home for the weekend.