Pray for Sharon

I know most of you are family and are the only ones who read this, but I thought I would send you an update on my friend Sharon. Sharon and Matt came to our Sunday School class years ago, so we have known them for quite some time. It is at this time in our lives that we tend to take for granted our health. What seemed like a very healthy man, was instead one on the last days of his life. What would he have done differently? I start to question my attitude towards so many things (husband, cleaning, kids, all the run of the mill daily grind things that seem so daunting sometimes). Then I go to their house and notice all the small things that you wouldn't think twice of in any other situation - 2 sonic drinks in the fridge, Matt's hat and ipod on the counter, leftover food from the last night out they had....a grocery list of the groceries they were planning to get tonight.....things that might annoy you if they were left out, but now are precious memories. I can't imagine what is going through her mind. Matt and Sharon were soul mates. Words don't do them justice, everytime you saw them, you could just tell they were in love, completely and truly in love. Holding hands all the time, Matt took great care of Sharon and vice versa. Matt died this morning at 9:15 from a pulmonary embolism (sp) which is a blood clot in his lungs if I understand correctly. Please pray for Sharon, I think she is very angry especially at God. Life for them had been hard, they had been trying for years to have kids, had a couple miscarriages, and were in the middle of fertility treatments (which were in the refridgerator). My heart breaks for Sharon, but one thing I pray that she holds on to is God's love which I am afraid that she is having a hard time doing right now. Please pray that she feels God's love and doesn't become bitter and hateful towards God. I know it would be very hard not to feel a little anger towards God. I do believe that God puts people in our lives for a season and hopefully they are here for a long season, but sometimes it gets cut short and that is the hard part. Keep her in your prayers. I know I am praying hard for her.

Playing in the rain

So it has rained all day today and Chloe and Keira being the outdoors girls that they are, were determined to be outside. So, it wasn't too cold (obviously being July and all), I let them go outside and play for a bit. They had a lot of fun getting all wet. Just thought I would share pictures of our day at home....

My picky eater

So, Keira is probably my most picky eater. She is 15months old and wants to use a fork to eat. If she sees something she wants to eat, she refuses to eat anything else until you give her the item she wants. Most of the time it is fruit, but in this case it was ice cream. She is in for a rude awakening when she has to eat all her dinner before she gets dessert.....I just took some pics of her eating a chocolate ice cream cone and thought they were too cute not to share.

I got my way, mom and dad are wrapped around my little finger.

Firstfruits

Well, here you have it, the first fruits of my garden. It looks like we are going to have a lot of squash and zucchini, but that might be it, they are overtaking the garden. The carrots are pretty small still, so I will give them more time until I pick any more, but all in all, the veggies taste great!

See - the carrots are small, even Ronald McDonald is bigger.....

Caleb & Chloe are eating the carrots, not the best taste, but they ate them, hopefully they will taste better if they get bigger...we will give them a little more time.
There you have it. I will send more pics if we get bigger carrots, and some peppers.....don't hold your breath though.

Garden Update

Okay, so remember months ago (February 16 to be exact) when I sent a blog saying that I was going to try my hand at gardening? Well, here is what it looks like now. I will admit, I didn't have high hopes for this years garden, but I am quite impressed with what we are going to get. I have learned a few things this year, so next year is sure to be even better. For example, as you can see, my zucchini and squash have pretty much taken over the garden.....so we need to get some of those wire circles so they will grow up instead of out and around. My broccoli got eaten by bugs, so I need to get some kind of bug treatment on the veggies earlier. The green peppers are coming along, next year I will plant actual plants instead of seeds, and the strawberries (of which I am completely surprised that any came up) will be put on mounds instead of just in the ground. We tried to put them in mounds, but apparently not good enough. Anyway, here are some pics of the veggies I have growing. On the right end of the garden there are carrots and they look great, for some reason, I didn't take a picture of them....

zucchini
squash
I think this is where we planted cucumbers, but I am pretty sure that these are not going to turn into cucumbers....any idea what it is? a weed maybe???? I haven't wanted to pull it, just in case....

I was quite surprised to find a strawberry growing on one of my two strawberry plants....I would love to have a whole mess of strawberries next season, here's hoping......okay, I know it is quite small, but I was pretty excited...we may have to split it five ways, but we will enjoy it.

of course, I am always open for suggestions on how to create/grow a better garden....I don't think I did too bad for a rookie though....

Just hanging out with family

Mario Kart was a big hit....look at the concentration on those faces...you think I could have gotten them to look at the camera to smile??? doubt it..... Josh and Rick were able to get out and go for a bike ride, they had to wait until it cooled down a bit, but they enjoyed the ride.

Sprinkler under the trampoline was a big hit.....

Julean enjoys the small plastic pool.

We went out to Dos Charros for some fine mexican food (okay, so it was tex mex, but it was as close to authentic as we could find)

Some random pictures of the kids.....

"hee hee, there are so many kids here, mom didn't even notice me getting into the pantry and getting this very large box of raisins....yummy!!!"
The kids had a blast playing with their cousins. Caleb and Isaiah played sooo well together, I don't think they fought once. Chloe and Adriana also played well together. Julean and Keira played some together, so we really didn't have it too bad. It was pretty chaotic going places, 7 kids 4 adults...we were definitely outnumbered, but we had so much fun. I wish that all the kids' cousins lived close because nothing beats family. Have you hugged someone in your family today?

Happy Fourth of July

Happy 4th of July!!! We ventured into downtown McKinney to see the parade, go to the popcorn shop (0ur favorite place), have a picnic, check out old cars, and taste lots of yummy ice cream........

Before the parade (I was sure we needed to get there early so that we could find a decent parking spot), we decided to attempt some pictures. As you can see, we got some pretty good ones of our families and the kids.....

The kids were pretty cooperative at this point in the day.....

Waiting for the parade to start.....we were about an hour early, it was super crowded, but the kids did great.

Watching the parade, waving at the people in the parade.
After the parade, we had a picnic lunch on the grass. Then we went to the popcorn shop and got some cornfetti popcorn to eat during the fireworks that we were going to see later that night. We then ventured over to the antique car show and were going to check out the ice cream crank off (which I think sounded like lots of fun, we love ice cream, so this is the perfect thing for us, right?). Well, by the time we walked to the car show, the kids were hot and ready to go, especially Keira. So, I headed back to the car to cool her off and wait for the rest of the gang to come. I was a little turned around and ended up walking WAY out of the way, carrying a crying, hot, very unhappy baby. I got plenty of stares and evil looks. Once I got to the car, the rest of the family was there somewhat worried about me because I wasn't already there....We stopped and got ice cream and cones and had our own ice cream in the comfort of our house. It certainly wasn't the best of mornings, but the kids did have fun in the parade. I think Isaiah and Adriana were a bit disappointed in the parade and let me tell you why. Growing up in a very small town in Deckerville, Michigan we had parades during August - our town's homecoming. EVERY business, church, organization, had a float and almost every float had a bunch of candy that they would throw out to the kids. We would leave the parade with a BUNCH of candy. Not so much in McKinney- I think each of our kids received maybe 2 pieces of candy. My kids didn't know the difference, but I am sure the others did. They had fun though.
While the kids napped, Kristi and I were able to go to the movies and see The Proposal, very cute and funny (the boys went the day before and watched Transformers). After nap, we went to Grandma Lunn's house to play on the water slide one more time. Here is a picture at Grandma's house that we had to take. Keira didn't really warm up to Rick and Kristi (not a shocker, she doesn't warm up to many people) so, her sitting on Kristi's lap was a big accomplishment for her.
We went to Craig Ranch and watched fireworks. Again, I was sure we needed to get there early so that we could get a spot. Most of the time, whenever we get somewhere right on time, we can never find a spot to park, so we got there an hour early and the kids entertained themselves by racing, playing duck duck goose, red light green light, etc. The big boys played bubble break on their phones. We had a great parking spot and were able to get out quickly after the fireworks were over.
We hope you had a great fourth of July with your family. It was so nice to have my brother here with his family.

Day three with the cousins

On Friday, we went to Jack Carter Pool in Plano. The kids had so much fun. There is a play area in the water the kids loved. They played on the water slides and loved it. The big deep pool opened at 12, so the kids went and practiced swimming. We had a picnic lunch, and were home with the kids resting by 2. It was lots of fun. Here are the pics....
Isaiah was hard to get a good picture of - he wouldn't stand still, he was too excited...

Matthias enjoyed the cool water and the shade.

After nap time, we took the kids to the park. They all rode their bikes and had a bunch of fun. The only bad thing that happened was that Caleb fell off the monkey bars and scratched his face up pretty good. It knocked the wind out of him and I am not sure he will be attempting the monkey bars anytime soon.