Lots of Pictures!

Here is a post of pictures capturing all the fun we've had the last several months or so. Enjoy!

The ZOO! We went to the zoo this summer with Wesley's birth mom and half sister, Annie. We really loved the bird house and the birds really loved us. They were hopping all over the stroller and on us!

David hanging out in the stroller with Annie

The ARBORETUM - We went of a stroll and a hike through one of our favorite summer spots in Kansas - it's a beautiful place. It has a pond with lots of turtles, a huge, gorgeous perennial garden and  lots of hiking trails that skirt around hug trees and a creek. The park even has an outdoor miniature train set up that the boys love to watch. It has a life size caboose that Wes loves to climb.

The BEACH!! As part of a long journey to the deep south to visit my family, we spent several days at the beach in Florida with my sister and brother-in-love. 

David was petrified of the ocean at first but he soon warmed up to it. Here he's hanging out with Mamma, still getting more used to the water. 

David lounging with Aunt Elizabeth in his beloved sleep sack. 

David loved the sand and before he learned the true joy of playing in the water, he spent most of his time playing in the sand and walking the shore. 

Playing with Uncle Joey.

Hanging out with Papa.

Our first attempt at the beach resulted in a thundering downpour! 

GEORGIA! Another part of the trip down south was of course to stay with my parents in Georgia. It was a wonderfully relaxing vacation - once we actually made it there. We swam, did lots of swimming, the boys had lots of time outside and playing with Mamma's old Fisher Price toys.

David playing ball in my parent's backyard.

Watching a little tv with Grandma B. 

Wes is getting quite good of all types of sports. 

David found the patio furniture quite tasty!

Enjoying some yogurt on the deck. 

HALLOWEEN! This year, as usual for the last couple of years, we went to our church's neighborhood fall festival.

Wes has the same costume from last year. When it came time to buy one for him, he insisted on wearing the cow again. It still fit him so, why not? David, in keeping with the farm theme is a horse. 

Carving pumpkins. 

THANKSGIVING! We spent Thanksgiving with Eric's family in Arkansas.

Reading books with Grandma.

Wes monkeying around with Uncle Nathan and Aunt April

Hanging out with Grandpa in his big chair. 

Nabbing Grandpa's chair before he gets to it! 

Taking a lunch break at Firehouse subs in the middle of a LONG day of shopping. 

RANDOM & MISCELLANEOUS! 

Contagious smile

Enjoying another bowl of yogurt.

David loves to stack things, anything he can find! These are my spice jars. Yes, some of my spices are stored in old baby food jars. I had to find a solution for fitting them in the small drawer I keep them in. 

Don't you just want to squeeze those cheeks!

And these cheeks, too? 

Eric rode in a 35 mile bike ride with a couple of friends from work - the Tour de BBQ. So, Kansas City has over 100 BBQ joints from what we've heard. On this tour, which benefitted cancer research, the cyclist enjoyed BBQ from seven different establishments at stops along the way. What a tough ride! ;)

We refurbished our basement, trying to give it a facelift without finishing it completely. It is a nice little play place for the boys to exert lots of energy (Wes especially) during the bitter winters and rainy days, and even has a nice little area for grown ups and reading. 

Well, we found out that we are going to have a girl and after a week or two of trying to hold back, I gave in and bought some clothes. I've since bought another little shirt and a 3 piece outfit - all on sale. :) I had a hard enough time with the boys clothes. This is going to take much prayer and self-control! 

After each nap/quiet time every day, I never know what I'm going to find in Wesley's room. Most of the time though, he's come up with something creative with his cars, trains or blocks. Here he had his cars and trains in school. :)

This summer Eric and his dad built a play house/swing set for the boys. Wes has learned how to swing for himself and both boys love to climb up the ladder and go down the super fast slide. 

Wes loves to build different train track configurations. He's gotten quite good at doing them himself. 

David is often found with his nose in a book, right side up or not. 

Let's go outside!!!

After almost a year of hardly noticing the rocking horse, David finally wanted to ride it! 

Getting ready to venture out on the first 20 degree day. 

On one of our trips to Arkansas, Wes was surprised with a "new" bike! It is a little big but he LOVES it!

Happy boy in the tree house. 

Our Christmas Letter

So, our printer has been giving us fits lately! It ran out of ink and also kept having paper jams and unknown errors. We put in new ink but it printed very fuzzy! We couldn't figure out how to fix this or buy a new printer before we needed to send out our Christmas letters so we just decided to put the letter on my blog. Hope you don't mind. I guess this is more environmentally friendly. :) Enjoy!

Ps. It is my plan to post a bunch of pictures from the last several months and to start posting blogs more regularly after the new year.

Beautiful Blessings of 2013

God has blessed us so much this year. One of the biggest blessings this year has been the surprise news of another little one joining our family, biologically! And... it’s a girl! She’s due April 4, 2014.

Our boys bring us great delight. Wesley Joseph has such contagious laughter, a wild imagination and an inquisitive nature, is extra-extroverted, has boundless energy and an iron will. He loves to make all kinds of noise, talk, have people over, plan parties, create new train track configurations, and do anything that requires running, jumping, hiding, climbing, throwing, swinging and pedaling. Lately, we’ve had wonderful conversations about Jesus, the gospel, God, sin, and the Bible. What a blessing!

David Elliot’s personality has blossomed. He’s a laid-back, quiet, stubborn thinker - a little shy, but terribly cuddly and sweet. He loves his blankies and thumb, music, puzzles, books, trains, cars, animals, stacking blocks, hiding things, lining things up in perfect rows including his peas and noodles, and stuffing small things into other small things. He mostly does his own thing but also enjoys people and still smiles with a sparkle in his eyes. 

Last year, God gave Melanie a desire to gather women from church for fellowship together and mutual encouragement. This has resulted in a few small gatherings for prayer and book discussions (In the Land of Blue Burqas and Battling Unbelief) which she plans to continue. Lately she’s really been especially burdened for young moms and is praying for direction in that area. Along with this, God has rekindled in her a passion for children’s development and education and has been reading many books, blogs and articles on these topics. She also still enjoys doing crafty things and preparing whole, unprocessed food and recipes.

Eric has continued to work as a mechanical engineer at Black & Veatch, and achieved his first promotion!  Along with this 8-5 job he continued to serve as a pastor/elder at Cross Fellowship Church.  It has been greatly challenging and rewarding for him to serve in this role; both from the standpoint of developing an organization together with others that previously didn’t exist, and most greatly in knitting our lives together with our brothers and sisters at CFC.  In his free time (does that exist any more?) he worked on projects around the house, designed and built the boy’s playground (with a lot of help from his dad!), fixed a few things on his new truck (1997 F150 4x4 manual transmission...yea baby!), and squeezed in a few good books and movies.

We enrolled Wesley in a 3 year old class in a homeschool co-op that meets once a week and Melanie teaches part of this class. This co-op gives Wes more social interaction that he loves; Melanie gets a creative outlet for teaching.  Though it makes for an exhausting day, it has been a huge blessing to her because of the parenting wisdom she’s gleaned from all the more experienced moms she regularly gets to interact with there. 

This year has not brought much outward turmoil or struggle, other than being more busy than we can handle sometimes, but we’ve faced some definite inward challenges that have pushed us beyond ourselves. With the challenges that parenting brings and the responsibilities of work and church planting combined, we are often confronted with our own sin. Time and again we’ve been reminded of God’s beautiful grace that sent Jesus to take away the guilt and punishment of our sin and of His assurance that He loves us and doesn’t want us to stay like we are. We’ve also been reminded through other people’s suffering of how big God is, how unjust is the sin in our world that causes pain and suffering, how precious life and family and friends are, how much we waste on worthless things and bad attitudes, and how beautiful and strong is the body of Christ far and near. All these things that come to our lives are for a reason, pleasant or unpleasant, to draw us to the Lord, to push us to rely less on ourselves and make us more like Him. Through these truths God has taught us greater joy and satisfaction in Him alone, to be worshipful throughout the day, to seek out how He’s working knowing that each day is purposeful for Him and His glory. This is so, even in what seems the mundane things of life. All of these things are a great blessing indeed! 

2013 Highlights

Winter - Eric traveled to the middle of the Indian Ocean for work and also had lots of time for snorkeling, a 5k run, golfing and eating fresh fish while Melanie and her sister shoveled out loads of snow as two huge snow storms passed through Kansas in four days. We gave a facelift to our unfinished basement to give the boys a space to run around in during the long, frigid winter months. What a blessing!!!!!!

Spring - Eric passed his Professional Engineering exam!!! Hurray!  Melanie was delightfully involved with a few others in choosing a new children’s curriculum for our church. We both thoroughly enjoyed doing premarital counseling with another couple and learned a lot about ourselves and each other in the process! What Did You Expect is the best marriage book ever! 

Summer (VERY BUSY!)

• We were again involved in another huge neighborhood garage sale with our church. 
• Our church hosted a backyard Bible club for the first time. Great fun! 
• After several weeks of physical therapy to push him along and correct a very awkward gate, David learned to walk! 
• Melanie’s parents visited. We learned that to give Wes a regular size hot fudge Sunday is not a good idea. 
• On Mel’s big 4-0 birthday, we found out we are going to have another baby!

- Melanie visited a dear friend in Oklahoma

• We trekked across America to GA and Florida to visit family and friends and have a little vacation at the beach. Wesley enjoyed body surfing and David just mostly wanted to walk up and down the beach - once he learned to walk, he didn’t want to stop!  
• The boys enjoyed many days going for walks, riding tricycles and playing on their new swing set.
• Went family camping in the backyard for the first time!  Wes and Eric roasted marshmallows over the Coleman!

Fall - Eric joined a men’s bible study through work.  Melanie and the boys started teaching/attending the homeschool co-op. Wesley learned to ride a bike (with training wheels). Melanie discovered and devoured the parenting book Don’t Make Me Count to Three that has been a huge help in biblically training our boys to love, be kind, share, obey and be respectful. We are so thankful to have found this very practical jewel!

Prayer Points - 

• Big picture direction for the short and long term future
• Better time management skills and a oneness in prioritization
• A safe and easier pregnancy, i.e, no bed rest!

Wesley's Three!!!

Wesley enjoying the snow!

Finally, I'm writing about our dear Wesley! I've been meaning for months to write but the time just gets away! Wes is at such a fun age! He's really talking well and he loves to talk! He comes out with the funniest things! One of the funniest lately was "pankytoes" - this is how he says pantyhose. I laughed so hard when he said this! It was so cute. He asks about everything and he never forgets what you tell him. He doesn't miss anything! 

Lately Wes is really into several fun things. He loves to pretend that he's a cat, pretending to lick and meow and curl up like a cat. He's also into owls. He is fascinated by them but I think he is kind of afraid of them too. We've read lots of books about owls. His favorites are Owls by Gail Gibbons and Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. During the day Wes often says we need to be quiet because the owls are sleeping. He can even recognize several different kinds of owls in pictures like the Great Horned Owl and the Snowy Owl. He really likes the owls with the heart-shaped faces like the Barn Owl. (By the way, he calls all heart-shaped things "happy tarts." This comes from us trying to teach him to have a happy heart and us praying together to Jesus for each of us to have a happy heart when we are having a hard day.

His birth mom recently had a baby girl named Annie. We've been able to visit her a couple of times and now he loves babies and calls most of them we meet "baby Annie." He has a set of nesting dolls that I pulled down for him from one of my trips to Belarus years ago. It has seven nesting dolls and he loves to put all the pieces together. It also has a tiny baby in the very middle that he loves and gets quite upset when it is misplaced, which, given its size, has been quite often. Miraculously we've been able to find it every time, even after several days!

Wes with Baby Annie

Wes also likes to serve us pretend food, especially cookies and ice cream. He makes cookies out of his blocks and the other day he asked me if I'd like a lick of ice cream from the top of the bedpost! Quite an imagination! Often in the afternoons after nap time we have "tea time" and drink from a real cup and saucer and have fun little snacks. While we are snacking we read, sing songs or say tongue twisters. He loves this! Drinking the tea helps him practice with being more careful with drinking and eating. It is NOT a means to make him less manly!!! 

Another thing Wes has started to do a lot lately is sing. He just suddenly started singing different recognizable songs with the some right words and some made up words. He sings Jesus Loves Me, Hickory Dickory Dock, the ABC song, the theme song to the Cat in The Hat cartoon and others. He also likes to do finger plays. 

Some other things he likes to do are build towers with blocks and boxes, play with all of his trains and cars, play with play do, play games, kick balls, throw balls, run and run and run, ride his tricycle, wrestle with papa, help mamma cook and play with friends. He also loves to play with stickers. He once covered his papa with at least 50 stickers. 

He's learning new responsibilities. He puts his dishes in the dish washer and puts his clothes in the dirty clothes. He also starting to dress himself and is beginning to have an opinion about what he wants to wear. Potty training is going at a snails pace! We've been working on it for 6 months!!!! 

Wes really loves books. Some of his favorites right now are Owl Moon, The Little Engine That Could,  and Caps For Sale. These have been read over and over and over and over again and he can quote them. He loves to walk around with things on his head like the peddler in Caps For Sale. 

So that is all for now. Below are lots of pictures. Because he's been potty training so much, it was difficult to find many pictures of him fully dressed! He usually just wear his undies and a shirt when we are in the house. 

Wes's Birthday cake. This was my first attempt at making such a cake and I had a blast! I wouldn't want to do it everyday though!

Wes enjoying his cake. 

Wes learning how to bowl.

Monkeying around with his Uncle Nathan

Sporting some major nap hair

Wes playing with his Oklahoma friend Lilia

Wes and David playing with the trains. Well, really Wes is playing and trying to keep David from playing. David does have a tendency to destroy Wes's hard work. Those track pieces and trains are just so darn tasty to David. He can't help himself!!! Wes doesn't like that though and makes it quite clear!

Hanging out with Papa and David. 

Uncle Nathan and Aunt April gave Wes a trapeze swing for his birthday. He loves it! This is in our new improved basement play space for really cold, snowy days like this weekend!

One of Wes's favorite birthday gifts, a flat bed truck with an excavator on back. 

Wes riding our friend's 4-wheeler. Yes, it is pink but it belongs to two girls! He had a blast riding this!

Wes with Uncle Joey on top of Stone Mountain in Georgia.

One of Wesley's creations with his cars. He loves to line them up, move them around, have them talk to each other, etc. He was very proud of this!