Look who's crawling!

It finally happened. Caleb learned to crawl! Yeah for Caleb! Sad day for Kaden and mommy who has to watch Caleb much more closely now! :) Kaden never crawled so this is a whole

new experience for me to have someone so little into so much! I snapped these pictures of Caleb as he crawled from the living room into the dining room and under his chair. As you can tell from the pictures, he does the army crawl, but he does it very well. So he can get pretty much anywhere he wants now...which is usually wherever I am and if he has it his way on top of me or in my arms. You see he's also very much into wresteling...ok cuddeling some times but for the most part he just wants to maul all over you! Should be intersting when he gets a bit bigger!

Hope everyone is having a good weekend. Jesus loves you

Tornado Update

Hey Everybody,
Not much happening this week so I haven't had much to talk about. We're just taking one day at a time...playing, cleaning, playing, cooking, playing, etc. We did have a tornado warning here Monday night which was exciting since we don't have big storms down here often. We ended up getting some hail but that was about it. However, I'm sure some of you have heard about Eagle Pass getting hit last night by a tornado and seven people dying. Eagle Pass is about an hour away from us and is where we were on Saturday. Please pray for the families. It's so hard to imagin loss like that.
Oh, I guess I do have one amusing story from this week. Monday night Matt and I were laying in bed talking and it's like 11 so we're assuming that Kaden who has been in bed for like two hours is asleep. So it's pitch black in the room and all the sudden this little head comes up by the bed and we hear this voice saying, "IS THIS WATER?!" Freaked us out so bad we were screaming! I always keep a cup of water by my side of the bed and I guess Kaden got thirsty but before he took a drink he wanted to make sure it was water and not something else. He brought his pillow in too and decided he wanted to sleep with us. We don't mind him coming into the room but it was just so unexpected...time to start locking the door I think! :)

Weekend activites

It was a cloudy Saturday in Del Rio so we decided to head South to Eagle Pass (another border town like Del Rio...except more so if you can understand that...) just to get out of town. Plus they have a Fuddruckers and a mall that had like two stores we don't have! :) At the mall, we ran into a friend from Kaden's preschool named Kyle. So while they played in the play area, I decided to snap a few pictures. (Our mall doesn't have a play area, it has like 5 little rides you have to pay money to go on, anyways...) I took this one picture of the boys and a uniformed mall police man called me over and told me it was against mall rules to take pictures inside the mall! Who knew! So that was the end of picture taking fun!

Today (Sunday) Kaden's pre-school sang at the Methodist church. This was Kaden's first performance of any kind...and let me tell you...it was a performance. Most of the pictures turend out blurry so it's hard to tell, but not only did he NOT do the hand motions he was jumping up and down and sticking his tongue out and just generally being silly during the songs. He did sing some of the time, and when he did remember to do the hand motions, he was always one or two behind...it was perfect! Just like any three year old performing should be! :) Of course we got it on video and I can't wait to drag it out ten years from now and show him!

Other then that just a normal weekend...we mowed the grass, washed the cars, etc...Hope you all had a good weekend too. Jesus loves you.

A first for both

Yeah!!! The internet is finally letting me get on the blog page...so so so frustrating to have to try 15 times to get on here before it connects...ok enough ranting. Yesterday was a beautiful day in southern Texas, so we ate our lunch outside and then decided to play before nap time. Kaden discovered he could climb the olive tree in our back yard. A very exciting achievement for little boys! And Caleb discovered the slide...another very exciting adventure for little boys.

And since the internet also had a hard time connecting to let me leave comments, I'll make them this way. Beth~ I love the phase Emmalee is in...too cute not wanting to watch boy shows. Kaden doesn't want to do anything girly either...he went through a phase at school where only the boys were allowed by the bookshelf, which I took to mean that the boys had formed this little area that was all theirs and no girls were allowed to be there!

Julie~ The pictures of Brody in the mirror are great and the one of him eating a biter biscuit looks very similar to Caleb's messy face eating the same thing!

Amanda~ Jeremy is too cute standing in the puddle. And I loved that you had to tell him it was ok to get in. I would have to convince Kaden to get dirty too! But Caleb...I think he's going to be a different story.

Kaden's new Birthday

On Friday night, Kaden and I and Caleb were sitting at the dinner table rushing to get supper done before all the kids showed up for Biblestudy. Caleb was being particurally fussy and Matt was late getting home from work. Out of the blue, Kaden asks, "Mom, what is sin." I took a deep breath and said a silent prayer...and time slowed down. I tried my best to explain what sin is, disobeying God, and how all of us commit sin and that is why we need Jesus to be our Savior. He took the punishment that we deserved for our sin. Because no sin can get into Heaven, we can't go to Heaven because we sin. But Jesus died so that if we believe in Him and believe that He died as punishment for our sin we can get into Heaven. Kaden told me that he did believe that, and I told him that we need to pray and tell Jesus that we believe and ask Him to come live in our hearts. Kaden said that he wanted to pray. So I prayed and Kaden repeated after me, with his eyes shut tight, he poured his little heart out to the Lord. He told Jesus that He believed he had died and risen again, and that he was sorry for the sins he had done, and he wanted Jesus to come live in His heart. When he opened his eyes, Kaden was so excited and happy. I told him he had just become a Christian and he just kept saying, "I'm a Christian now!" and "Jesus is in my heart". He became a bit perplexed when I told him that when we died we would go to Heaven, because he said, "But Jesus died for me". So I explained as best I could that just our bodies die and we will get new bodies in Heaven that never get sick and hurt, but who we are...our hearts...would never die.
Wow, it's hard to explain theology to a three year old, but I know that as far as he is able to understand he grasps what Jesus did for him, and that he believes it with all his heart. Jesus himself said that we need to have faith as a child, and that the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these (children). So praise God, Kaden has accepted Christ as his Savior. Now my prayer is that he will grow in that faith and that one day he will truly and deeply understand all that it means and what Christ did for him.
We celebrated that night by sining Happy Birthday with the youthgroup and having cupcakes which I had just "happened" to make that day. God is so good.

Beach Boys

These are my favorite picures so I'm putting them up first for those of you who don't want to scroll down through a weeks worth of vacation pictures! This way you can see the best at a glance! :) I love love love the one of Matt and both boys by the ocean. It's my new favorite picture of all time! It has God's awesome creation of the ocean and God's awesome creation of my men...what more could I want!

I put the pictures, as best I could, in order of our vacation, so just scroll through the next couple of blogs and that should just about catch you up on our last week. We had an awesome time in California. It's just so beautiful and so...different from where we are now! :) I did get to Starbucks almost every day! and to Target twice...I didn't buy anything but is was so nice just to walk around! :)

Enjoy!

Time with friends

One of the blessings of this vacation is all the time we got to spend with friends. Though the time is always way to short, we treasure every minute. Here are a few picture of our dear friends the Davis' whom we met in North Dakota, and Matt's highschool buddy Jedrix and his wife Lisa.

Easter come early, and family

We celbrated Easter on Palm Sunday (which really threw me when the real Easter rolled around...I couldn't figure out why all the stores were still selling Easter candy and I had to remind myself I was a week ahead) so that we could share it with Matt's family.

And as Pastor Joe pointed out...every day is a day to celebrate the Lord's resurection! Praise God for the hope we have of our life with Him now and in the future!

Kaden loved loved loved spending time with his cousins and we so enjoyed every moment we got to spend with our family. Caleb is sitting with his Great-grandma Dorise having a story read to him. It was such a blessing to finally have all the great-grandparents meet Caleb.

Time with Oma

Here are a few pictures of our time withe Oma. Unfortunatly, the days we had to spend with her the boys were sick, but still we got to go to the zoo, the beach, shopping, out to eat, and Kaden got to have his first sleep over at Oma's house. We also visited Matt's grandparents and while out eating with them Matt got a great shot of Caleb's face after eating a strawberry! ( and yes Caleb is sitting without a shirt on in the restraunt. I forgot a bib so this was the next best option!) (for all the mom's out there. They have these new fruit sucker things. It's this mesh net you stick fruit in and the baby can suck the juice out without fear of choking. Caleb loves it...as you can tell from his expression!)

Random Disney pictures

Here are just some shots of the family at Disneyland. We bought Kaden the Mickey Mouse ears and this was the one time that he wore them! That was Kaden's hat, Caleb got the sun hat, and I got a baseball cap...and Matt opted out of a hat! :) These were taken while we were hanging out waiting for the parade which was defnitily another highlight of the day.

Disney Characters

Here are the pictures we snapped of Kaden getting to meet all his favorite characters. That was by far the best part of the day...just watching his face as he got to hug everyone...although he did ask me why none of them were talking. :) In all the pictures where Caleb isn't sleeping, he was screaming and clawing at our clothes in terror...not a big fan of large dressed up animals. :) He may be the only kid in history terrified of Mickey Mouse!

Kaden really, really wanted to meet Cinderella. We saw her in the parade and then Matt stood in line for an hour at the meet the Princesses place (where I finally realized we had the only boy in line!). Well, Cinderella wasn't there but we got to meet Belle, Sleeping Beauty, and Mulan. Sleeping Beauty was awesome she took like five minuets just to chit chat with Kaden and really make him feel special. That made the hour wait worth it. And I have to brag on Matt cause he said the sweetest thing ever...even the princesses thought so! When asked if he wanted to jump in the picture with Belle for a family picture he said, "No thank you. I already have a princess!" :)

Disney Land...need I say more

Here are some pictures of our last day with Papa Van and Grandma Shawn and also pictures of the family in front of the castle (which I always thought was Cinderella's but apparently that one is in Florida and the one at Disneyland is Sleeping Beauty's...FYI) This was the end of a very long but very fun day. I highly recommend it if you can go...just don't go on spring break like we did...we stood in line for an hour to ride Dumbo...not the greatest hour of my life but worth it for Kaden.