Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Crusin' Through Ten Years!

Come February 21st James and I will be married for 10 years. I can hardly believe it. Even more I can't believe the great and the stupid things that we have done in 10 years. Great - buying a house so early on. Not great - trying to move to Seattle. Great - having 2 terrific boys. Not great - buying 2 houses in NY. Through it all God's grace has been on our lives. Though we have had our sets of challenges, as everyone does, our commitment to each other has only grown stronger. For that I are grateful!

In accepting this new chapter in our journey that has taken us half way across the country we had agreed to give up a couple of dreams. The biggest one was we had always planned on taking a cruise for our 10 year anniversary. We figured that we wouldn't have the money to pay for it and we certainly wouldn't have the babysitting to cover it. Well again thanks to God's grace a "job" of sorts has landed in my lap (watching a friends children while she teaches, giving me school holidays off) and we have been introduced to some fantastic babysitters. So with some of our new found extra income and while employing some of our new babysitters we will indeed be taking our first cruise for our 10 year anniversary.

We will be leaving on Valentines day and driving down to Galveston where we will cruise to Cozumel. So we are thrilled that God has afforded us the opportunity to meet this definite "want" that we've had. I'll be sure to take pictures and post them when we get back.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Laughter makes a great ab workout....

and after the stretch marks my boys gave me laughter is the least they could do.

Lately my kids (Jonathan in particular this time) have been tickling my funny bone. I know that everyone thinks there kids are so funny. Well I'm one of THOSE parents. Here are some examples lately... this will all mean more of coarse if you know my boys to begin with. This is a few of the things I have observed in the last 24 hours.

This first one isn't so much ha ha funny as it is a cleaver thing to try.

Ode to a spanking

So Jonathan had been having a rough day. He finally took it too far and was informed that he would be getting a spanking. Now he doesn't get them very often since he knows how to dance around the line with grace without crossing it. He is also a very sensitive boy and unlike his brother Ian who doesn't really care if he gets a spanking, Jonathan very much cares if he gets one. So in his attempts to get out of it he pleads with Daddy, "daddy I didn't deserve that! I didn't deserve to get this spanking" Then as a last ditch effort he brings in the big guns " I'll throw up if you spank me!" Now if you know Jonathan you know that he isn't saying this in a threatening manner he is saying with sincere concern that he is going to blow chunks or at lease that is what he wants you to think. At this point James and I can't help but laugh but the spanking proceeds as planned and thankfully no spew came forth.

Handy

Every time we get in the car now that the boys are both in booster seats Jonathan promptly buckles up and Ian screams while he gets frustrated (while not really trying) aimlessly hitting the buckle with the seatbelt. Sometimes he gets it when he finally settles down and occasionally Jonathan will help a brother out. Well tonight was just such a night. So in an effort to encourage his helpfulness we tell him that he is doing a great job helping his brother and we really appreciate it. To this he responds without pause in a prideful manner "Yeah, I come in handy" i

Cannibals and Ketchup.

Sometimes with kids you just pause and think... I can't believe this conversation is really happening. This combination of topics should really never ever happen. So tonight we were on the way home from getting the boys hair cut after an unsuccessful attempt to get them to try tilapia (which jonathan did an impressive gag on). We had just walked out of a grocery store where we refuted several attempts to get food with " sorry you didn't eat your dinner" ~side note... we are not a clean your plate family but we are a "you need to eat the 2 tablespoons of the new food we offered" end side note~ We get to the car and
Jonathan asks " can I have ketchup"
to which I respond "by itself?"
Jonathan - Yeah
Mommy - No you didn't eat your dinner and ... Yuck.
Ian - you can have people with your ketchup (he is always saying silly things that don't make sense so this was no surprise)
Jonathan - You can't eat people (to which jonathan always responds in all seriousness)
Ian - Yes you can
Jonathan - no you cant ( you can see where this is going)
Finally Jonathan - Mommy can you eat people?
Mommy (carefully). - No WE don't eat people
Jonathan - Well that is good cause if we ate people then we would all be eating each other... then all that would be left is one big fat guy.

So there you have it funny or not, this is what we laugh at.

Sarah

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Christmas

Christmas eve 8pm leave service at church to start our drive.
10pm van acts up and we pull over (waited several minutes , restart, ok)
12am still driving.
2am, driving some more,
4 am driving bleary eyed
6am sun starting to come up... helps driving
8am and still driving
10 am are we EVER going to get there
12 pm getting closer
1pm arrive at papa and grammy's house for Christmas day

(SO NOT WORTH DRIVING ALL NIGHT)
In hind sight the 3-4 days of recuperation that were required after the drive were not worth getting there on Christmas day. Next time we will either fly or take 2 days to drive.

We stayed for about 6 days then took 2 days to drive back. That was much much better. I will post pictures sometime soon.