Thankful for Compassion

Not long ago, I was a little distressed about something. My sweet two year old could sense my sadness.  She came over and put her little hand on my arm and said, "Don't worry, Mama, I'll hold you, I'll keep you, forever and ever."

I smiled at her, and said, "Thank you sweetheart, but mamma will take care of you! I'll keep you!"

She was shocked by this revelation, and exclaimed in her highest pitch voice, "Oh!" And then added,   "Thank you mama."

Anna - November 2012

I am truly thankful.

The Changes Fall Brings

Fall is always filled with beautiful, visible change:


We have enjoyed some beautiful nice, cool days. So,  Brad, being the big fan of ultimate frisbee that he is, organized a couple of games with some friends to play at a local park!

  

The frisbee players had some admirers on the side-lines cheering them on, and amazingly, the fans only took a couple of breaks to play a little bit on the playground. :-)

Meanwhile, back at home, we are amazed by how much our little Anna is growing up.  We have started the process of potty-training with her.  So far, it has not been much of a success but at least she is excited about "Potty Power" and is one step closer to being done with diapers! 

My rock star Anna singing with her "microphone".

Faith, my drummer, accompanying Anna's singing.

Auntie Jen and the girls went on a nature walk and found a whole array of beautiful fall leaves.  

First, they sorted them by color and then they used the flower press to dry them.  Today, the girls made Thanksgiving cards with Auntie Jen with their beautiful leaves.

Another big milestone is Anna moved to a toddler bed.  I wasn't comfortable with having a bunk bed in the girls' room (Miss Anna is a climber and that could easily spell "ER" for us)!  And seeing that, all three of the girls still very much want to be in the same room, the toddler bed was the perfect fit.

The first night, Anna got a little nervous about sleeping in her big girl bed, so we put her back in her crib for the night. But the very next night, Anna was ready to make the transition, and hasn't gone back since. My baby girl is now sleeping in a big girl's bed! Time is flying fast! :-)

A Relaxing Weekend

I was in such a hurry to get Faith's birthday that I skipped over some sweet photos from the weekend before! We had a super low-key weekend: we had care group on Friday night; a party on Saturday; and lunch with friends on Sunday! But other than that, we were free as birds, and we enjoyed a lot of play time together as a family.

The girls created a bed with a lot of pillows and blankets next to their closet door!

The home made "bed" with little legs and feet dangling off the end!

Saturday morning, we had swim lessons for Faith, and then we went to a birthday party for one of our friends.  On our way home from the party, we discovered that there was a garage sale going on in the neighborhood close to our house!    The little boy who sold the K'nex set to us said he wasn't certain all the pieces were there, so he was selling it for only $3. It seemed like a bargain to me and we bought it! 

The girls were so excited about creating our ferris wheel, that we got to work almost immediately when we got home! 

Our future engineer little girls, Faith and Jillian.

Piece by piece (which all ended up being there...Woohoo)...

and step by step...

and 3 hours later,

we created our own little masterpiece! 

Jillian was blown away by our creation!

Then a couple more hours were spent in front of our ferris wheel...

enjoying the music, play people, and fun! 

On Sunday, we had lunch with our very first friends from D.C.!  We (our family, Carol & Julia- the boys and Todd are not pictured) enjoyed a wonderful time at California Pizza Kitchen together.

Then we came home to play baby dolls.

Then, later on, Jillian and Faith helped me create some pretty math pumpkin punches for school time!

Anna had fun riding the horsey, Faith! 

It was a happy, relaxing weekend at home.

New Glasses

A couple of months ago, Faith had a basic health screening and we discovered that Faith had a pretty severe stigmatism in one of her eyes.  But what is amazing is that her vision is 20/20 when she is using both of her eyes.  Her "good eye" has been compensating for the weak eye, our opthamologist said it would have been incredibly easy for the screeners to miss the problem!  But PRAISE THE LORD that they did find it!  If we had not discovered it when we did, there could have been a good chance that Faith would have stopped using her weak eye altogether and gone blind entirely in that eye.

The first course of action was to get her glasses.  In another couple of months, we will have another appointment with the eye doctor to see if the glasses are helping Faith see out of her weak eye.  We are hopeful that it will help, otherwise, she will have a patch for a period of time to help strengthen the weak eye.

  Faith has a friend at church that wears glasses, so she was extremely receptive and excited about getting glasses, which was a big blessing!
It It was a super busy week with all the birthday celebrations. Faith was a tuckered out girl, on our way to pick up Faith's glasses, she fell asleep.
(Thank you Aunt Beth, Uncle Nate, Luke, and Ruth Ann for Faith's cute new shirt for her birthday.)

My beautiful girl excited (and a little tired too) about getting her new glasses!

The best of friends and sisters, Faith and Jillian

The glasses were still too big at this point...

so we sent it back to be re-sized and had fun looking in the mirror.

Hooray! Faith with her new glasses and our family ALL excited for her! :-) 

After we got the glasses, we went to our friends, the Glenn's house! First, we had some fun leaf fun. Mr. Andrew thought of the fun game of jumping off the ladder into the leaf pile.

Then we enjoyed a delicious dinner and afterwards, we had a parade of musicians! 

They were the cutest little music-makers, 

with the prettiest smiles,

\

and biggest singing voices too...

I have ever seen or heard! Thank you Glenn family for celebrating this big milestone in Faith's 5 year old life with our family! :-)

Faith's BirthDAY!

After Faith's birthday party,  and opening Faith's birthday presents from friends the next day, we had Faith's actual birthday! It was a fun-filled week.

On the morning of Faith's birthday, I made chocolate cupcakes with pink icing with sprinkles for her friends at Cubbies.

Then, that evening, we went to Chick-Fil-A for Faith's traditional ice-cream shake for her birthday (last year we went to Bruster's and the year before we went to the zoo).

Jillian was VERY excited it was Faith's birthday! She enjoyed a Oreo shake.

Anna was a happy celebrator too! :-)

Then we opened birthday presents! 

Faith was given some fun new Tag learning products from Mimi and PawPaw! 

I wrote a letter to Faith for her birthday on a fun rainbow card.

Daddy and Mommy gave Faith a new Tag that holds 10 books.

Our favorite Chick-Fil-A had a balloon maker there for family night and the nice lady made the girls balloon art! 

All the way to Cubbies the girls had fun playing with their balloons.

Then that night, all of Faith's Cubbie friends sang "Happy Birthday" to her.

It was a fun birthday celebrating our sweet, thoughtful 5- year old Faith!