Celebrating

We have been celebrating a ton the last few days! Today was my Memaw's 97th birthday and Jacob's Pawpaw's 91st birthday!

On Saturday we celebrated Memaw's birthday. Out of town family came in and our group of 25 (give or take a few) descended on a local steakhouse. We had such a great time visiting and of course, eating. Lily and Levi kept themselves occupied with the lemons and their cups of water.

This boy is a goof ball!

Sweet Asher.

After lunch we headed back to Memaw's for presents, cake & ice cream. It was past the kids nap time, but they did pretty well. 

Levi had the greatest time playing with all the toys.

Memaw fed Levi a bunch of her cake and ice cream. 

I think they both enjoyed it.

We took the kids home for naps and I made dinner for my sister. After the kids got up, we loaded back in the van and went back to Memaw's to give Myra her supper and visit with family. 

The cousins had the best time playing around the farm! They fed goats, rode bikes, threw acorns in the ditch, made goofy faces while swinging, and kicked a ball to each other. I sat outside and watched them  for most of the time. So many memories of my childhood flooded my mind and made me so thankful that my children can experience some of the same things I did. 

After Sunday dinner with Jacob's family, we went over and visited Pawpaw. He is at home now with Hospice and Home Health coming in and caring for him. He was in pretty good spirits. Lily was so sweet to sit by him. She told me today that she doesn't want to give Pawpaw hugs because he looks so scary (with the oxygen and breathing treatments). I felt so bad for her, I know she can't really understand what's going on.

Jacob played some of Pawpaw's favorite hymns - Great is Thy Faithfulness, Amazing Grace, Satisfied, It is Well With My Soul, and Be Still My Soul.

Levi telling Pawpaw bye-bye.

Today was full of more celebrating. It started off with breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Pawpaw has eaten at cb nearly everyday for years. His birthday wish was that he would be able to go there for breakfast after 7 weeks of being in the hospital/rehab. We were thrilled that he actually made it! Of course since he's been so often, all the waitresses know him, as well as lots of other customers. 

They seated us at a great big long table. It was crazy to say the least!

Lily and Aunt Eliz. 

Pawpaw, Asher and my mother-in-law.

Our wonderful babysitter came and watched Lily and Levi while I ran some errands. After naps Lily and Levi helped me make jambalya for supper. Lily insisted that we all wear our aprons. Ha.

After supper we went over to have cake with Pawpaw. He was pretty tired and sat in his chair sleeping most of the time we were there, but we had a great time with all the family that was there. Asher got to play with his cousin who is 3 weeks younger than him. So fun!

What a precious few days these have been celebrating our grandparents! God has blessed us so much! We are thankful for the sweet, sweet memories we've made!

19 months (and palate update)

Levi is just growing and changing so so much. Everyday is a new adventure with lots of learning and exploring for him. He is full of energy and definitely ALL boy!

He still loves to sing. His favorite songs right now are Twinkle, Twinkle, Standing on the Promises, and Trust and Obey. We have a kid's hymn cd in the van and he'll join in humming or singing along with it. I love that he loves music!

He is constantly moving - dancing, jumping, running (I seriously think the child can't walk! ha.) He plays really well by himself and he and Lily are playing together for longer periods of time now. 

He loves balloons, fans (wherever we are, he begs to turn the ceiling fans on), bananas, brushing his teeth, his blanket, looking at pictures, anything to do with water, playing outside, animals, popcorn, and kale chips.

His favorite books right now are The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Goodnight Moon, Go Dogs, Go!, Curious George, and Brown Bear, Brown Bear.

He knows four catechism answers - Who made you? God, Who was the first man? Adam, Who was the first woman? Eve, and Of what was Adam made? Of the dust of the ground.

He had an appointment at Children's Hospital last week. His growth and development are really good. The plan for now is to have 3-6 months of speech therapy and then the doctor will decide if he needs palate surgery or not. Levi is having trouble pronouncing some sounds like "s" and "ch". They come out like a nasally kind of snort. The doctor isn't sure if that is because of the abnormality in Levi's palate or because he's just not saying them right. The speech therapy should help to determine what is going on.

Mama: "Levi, did you put the crayon in your mouth like mama told you not to?"

Precious Innocent Looking Child: "No!" 

Ha!

Midweek Randoms

Lily is so into talking on the phone right now. Whenever Jacob, Grammie, Yaya, or Aunt Myra calls, she begs to talk to them. She carries on conversations quite well, believe it or not. When I talk on the phone, I'm typically multi-tasking, so I hold the phone on my shoulder/under my chin...Lily hasn't quite figured out how to do it though. Ha!

Lily and Levi are always climb up on stools when I up Asher in the highchair. They love talking to him and playing with him.

All tucked in the highchair with a baby doll and a play lemon. 

Levi does not get what you're supposed to do with a tent. Ha!

A sweet girl from church came to play with Lily today! Lily had the greatest time with her. She played hard and took a nice long nap.

Silly Lily with her first up-do. :)

Asher was pretty fussy yesterday, but I think he's going through a growth spurt. I upped his milk and he was much better today.

In an effort to cut our grocery bill, we have been eating a lot of beans and rice. I've decided I'm not a very good bean cooker. The red beans turned out split, grainy and mushy. The black beans we not ready when it was supper time...even though they should have been by the recipe I went by. Oh well. Hopefully I'll perfect the cooking of beans over the next few weeks.

Levi's glasses were missing all day. We seriously searched the house from top to bottom. Jacob even searched through the kitchen trash, but we still couldn't find them. Finally, when Jacob was down on his hands and knees looking under the bookshelves for the fifteenth time, he glanced up and saw the edge of the glasses poking out from under the Bumbo. I can't tell you how happy we were to find them!

We went to visit my sister's family and Baby Cameron tonight. What a perfect little guy he is! I loved getting to hold him and chat with my sis while our hubby's talked and the kids played.

Happy Wednesday!

Weekend Happenings

We had a pretty fun and exciting weekend!

We hosted a get together at our house on Friday night, so we spent most of the day cleaning and cooking to get ready. The kids were so good to play well together so I could get stuff done. 

Everyone who came brought a snack to share, so we ate and then some people played outside (we had some outside games set up) and some people stayed inside and chatted. It was a lot of fun! 

Of course we had a few near spats but with Daddy's intervention, they were avoided.

I was thrilled to get a picture with my baby man! It seems like I'm always behind the camera.

We ended the evening with s'mores. So fun!

Saturday morning my sweet sister called me and said she thought she was in labor with my second nephew! Asher and I had the awesome privilege of attending her birth! She did so so well! After having a really rough hospital delivery with her first son, she decided to use my midwife this time around. Cameron Tyndale was born at 1:45pm. It was an amazing experience, although I must admit, I was pretty happy to be on the coaching end of things this time rather than the actual birthing! Ha.

Saturday is my usual grocery shopping day. Since I was at the birth clinic all day, I had to go to the store in the evening. Jacob and the kids decided to come with me. Of course it started pouring on us right as we pulled up to the store. The clouds looked so crazy! We were glad it was just a thunderstorm and not a tornado!

I hope y'all had a great weekend!

4 months.

My little Asher is 4 months old! He is such a joy in our home - I can hardly remember what it was like without him!

• He still drinks about 7oz of goat's milk formula every 3-3 1/2 hours.
• He sleeps from about 9:30pm - 6:30am (straight through) and takes 3-4 naps each day.
• He weighs 12lbs 2oz and wears 3 month size clothes.
• He likes to sit in the highchair and watch everything that's going on.

• He is teething - has actually cut one tooth. This has caused him to be fussy some lately.
• Constantly chewing on his hand, a toy, or mama's hair {ick!}
• He reaches out and plays with the toys on his play mat and grabs toys from us when we hand them to him.

• He has ginormous feet! LOL
• He is a happy little man most of the time.
• He loves to be outside!
• He laughs and smiles so much! I love it!

We are so thankful for Asher and how well he fits into our family!