Instructor Jude

A couple of weeks ago Jude tested for his Ninja Blue belt! Way to go Jude!

At age 4 with a ninja blue he is ready to begin working for his pops. For example the other day he helped Shiloh, age 2, put on a uniform and then proceeded to teach him. Lol! I sure hope his instructors don't yell at him the way he yelled at his student ;)

Receiving his ninja blue belt from Pops and Aunt Charity. 

Asher decided he would skip a couple belts and start as a ninja green at age 1. 

An Early Father's Day!

My parents travel a lot. And this summer is no exception. I knew they would be gone on Father's Day so we celebrated early. They came over for dinner and we grilled steaks and veggies. We ate watermelon and blackberries Christy bought off the side of the road in Hempstead - yum!

I always find it hard to get my dad a gift. How to be meaningful and not repeat the same gift over and over again. And then it came to me as I was sitting next to Christy as she folded laundry she said, "if you haven't already got a gift for your dad you could always get him bamboo underware, he only wears these two pair of underware and now I have to wash them everyday." You see my dad is obssesed with all things bamboo right now 

Yes that is when the idea came to me. I wasn't going to just buy my dad bamboo underware I was going to make him some. So I went out to their back yard and cut some of the bamboo that hangs into their yard. Took it and a pair of his old underware home. A little bit of hot glue an ta-da bamboo underware. I wrote up a cute little paragraph borrowing from Bubba in Forest Gump, the bit about shrimp. And a successful for gift if I do say so my self. (Ok I did buy him some real bamboo underware fr Amazon that he will get whenever he comes back to Houston). 

Funny enough Jude disappeared for a bit after I made the bamboo underware and when he reappeared he was holding a pair of underware he had glued bamboo on, "Mommy I made Shiloh some bamboo underware like Pops'."

Happy Father's Day Dad!

"I was trying to back him up"

Kids. Playing. Laughing. Disagreeing. Then crying. 

Chad: "What happened Jude, why is your brother crying? Did you hit him?"

Jude: "No."

Chad: "Did you push him."

Jude: "No."

Chad: "Then what happened?"

Jude: "I was trying to back him up."

Chad: "So you pushed him."

The Garden

My little veggie garden is growing! It is so exciting to check everyday and to see how my little plants have grown. The boys are thrilled when I allow them to come over the fence and inspect the growing veggies.

In addition to providing us with lots of veggies (we hope) our little garden is providing us with an apt picture of the Kingdom of God - a lesson we are always learning.

One thing that keeps hitting home is that in this business of garden growing and kingdom growing is that I do not have all the answers. I have made mistakes and sometimes I don't think I've done anything wrong but things are not turning out as I imagined - perhaps what I've imagined is incorrect or maybe something is interfering but whatever the cause it's ok. I am growing, as a gardener and a follower of Jesus. As long as I'm growing and moving forward thats good. I don't want to stay in the same place. Jesus didn't die so that I could stay the same - he died so that I could follow after him.

Anyway back to the garden. Unfortunately in one bed nothing grew. The seeds which had turned into little seedlings never grew any bigger. I couldn't understand why. And it made me sad. I tried and tried. I fertilized. Was there not enough water? Too much water? Not enough sun? Were the seeds bad? Was the soil bad? I don't know. I only know that after investing much time I finally pulled up the seedlings. Turned over the dirt, added some more fertilizer and planted new seed. Sometime the kingdom is like this. There is no change so it's time to invest elsewhere. Sad but true. In the picture below you can see my new seedlings (it's okra :), I hope they fare better than the last:

Behold my tomato plants! There are two. And they are big. Bigger than I expected. But they are producing!

My tomatoes have have not been without difficulties though. I have had caterpillars eating away at my leaves. The little enemies come to destroy my plants (I know this sounds harsh, and I know caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies but we are not friends right now). They ate up 4 or 5 of my tomatoes before I realized I had invaders. I was swift though in my counter attack and picked all of them off and then sprayed my plants with a mixture of lavender and peppermint essential oils in water and so far no pests have returned. See what they did:

Happily I have picked two tomatoes like this and have great hopes for more:

And my cucumber plants are beautiful:

Creation Scavenger Hunt (almost)

It is summer!!!!!

The rains of April and May are finally over!!!

Summer is probably my favorite time of the year (...ok I have lots of favorites...): there is sun and lots of it, there is water, lots of water activities. We play with water guns, water hoses, water sprinklers, baby pools, water balloons, water parks (like jelly stone perhaps?), splash pads and of course the pool!!! We like water around here. We like summer. 

Perhaps one drawback to summer is the lack of church holidays to celebrate. But we do not need to fear because really we don't need a holiday to help us focus on God - sure holidays help us fall into a rhythm to prepare for the holiday but perhaps it is possible to fall into a rythm without a holiday. In fact Deuteronomy 6, teaches us to teach our children dilengetly the commands of the Lord, when we rise, sit in our house, walk by the way and when we lie down. 

So we intend to make a point of getting into a rythm during the summer. Thankfully there are resources out there! My friend sent me a link to book the village church in Dallas created all about discipling your kids in the summer. It is free a full of great ideas! (http://thevillagechurch.net/mediafiles/uploaded/2/0e4217309_1431093168_2015-summer-family-activity-book.pdf) So yay - here is to a summer of discipling!

We decided to do a creation scavenger hunt at the zoo. Only it turned out more of a creation tour than a hunt but it was great. We listened to Genesis 1-2 on the way to the zoo and talked about all the neat things God created. We thanked God for all his creatures as we visited them. Best quote of the day was from Shiloh as we were talking about how strong and creative God is: "God's stronger and bigger than my arm." Yes he is. Also great about the zoo is the splash pad - God created water too!!!!

Mimi's Park

On Sunday we celebrated Cousin Haylyn's 5th birthday at All-Star with Queen Elsa and Princess Anna (which was obviously a big hit - though freeze tag did not quite work because the children would not run from the Ice Queen and instead ran to her....most frozen children in one game ever...).

As we were getting ready to leave Jude came up to me and and told me Mimi said to ask if we could come over. I naively thought she invited us and said I suppose and which point I heard Haylyn ask her mom if she could go to Mimi's because Jude was and Mimi said it was alright...I then checked with Mimi and found that Jude and Haylyn had invited themselves over and told her that the parents said yes...little stinkers at just 5 and almost 5...

So we went to Mimi's house and the kids played and then we went to Mimi's park and had a blast playing some more.

The what and how he like to eat...

All my boys eat dirt. I'm not sure why they like this but for some reason they do. So we will just embrace the saying, "God made dirt, dirt don't hurt." Please don't point out any logical fallacies here. 

Asher with a big spoonful of dirt. And as you can see he has already tasted it...

But it's not all dirt for Asher he also enjoys dog food...and bananas but he likes to eat his conventional food, unconventionally - with weapons. It comes from being raised by a family full of martial artists, I suppose. 

Memorial Day Swimming...

The pool was open Memorial Day weekend and will open every weekend until Cy-Fair lets it's kids out for summer then it will be open every day! Yay! We love swimming!