Costumes and Pumpkins

Our neighbor down the street really blessed us last night and gave us some old costumes from her boys. She gave us a Batman cape, Robin outfit, a Scary Guy (Darth Vader) outfit, and a lion outfit ( the lion is actually an old pokemon outfit, but we don't have the mask, and we don't do pokemon so to us its a lion :) Kaden is so excited! We already have a Superman outfit so now we are all set to be superheros! I love unexpected blessings. Everytime Kaden gets dressed up Caleb wants a cape on to so we tie a cape on him and he runs around the house so excited. It's to cute. :) Kaden is a bit scared of his Scary Guy costume...he didn't want it to hand up in his closet last night, cause he was afraid it would come to life and get him in the night...so it had to stay in our room last night.

We don't celebrate Halloween as a family, but our church is having a fall festival so tonight Kaden is going dressed up as a Fireman and Caleb I think will be a farmer. The highschool group is in charge of the cotton candy, popcorn, and snowcones so that should keep us busy. Plus Matt and a bunch of the kids are signed up for the dunk tank! Should be a lot of fun!

We carved a pumpkin and explained to Kaden how carving a pumpkin is like when Jesus chooses us (like we pick out the pumpkin), Jesus cleans us out (takes out all the yucky stuff, like sin...or in the case of the pumpkin seeds and goop), Jesus gives us a new heart (a happy face on the pumpkin), and Jesus gives us His light so we can shine for Him ( the candle in the pumpkin). Anyways, we really enjoyed carving our Jesus pumpkin and the boys love lighting the candle on the inside. Well, everytime we do Caleb starts to sing Happy Birthday! Which is so precious! it sounds like a lot of "Haaaa Haaaa Birrrrr" but you know what he's saying. I got some cute pictures of him trying to blow out the candle after the song was over.

Anyways, hope everyone has a great night and Happy Fall! Jesus loves you!

Parenting Advice

I'm needing some sleeping advice from any parents out there. Caleb spent half the night last night screaming. He is 14 almost 15 months old and we should be well past the stage. He cried out and we brought him in to our room to comfort him and took him back to his room about 2:30...at 3:30 he was still screaming...mad screaming not hurt screaming. So we brought him back he wouldn't settle so we put him back in his bed and around 4 he finally fell asleep. Then at nap time today I laid him down no problem. Five minuets later he is screaming (screaming, yelling, angry, upset, etc.) he screams for like 10 mins and settels down. Thirty minuets later he startes up again. I let him scream it out for 45 min. just as I am about to go in there he settels and sleeps for 45 min and starts screaming again. And now here he is on my lap completely exhausted and upset every time is I start walking toward his room, so I'm thinking nap time is over for the day. Last week he would wake up early from his nap and cry out but not like this. I don't think he's teething. We were teething bad the last couple of weeks, but now he is fine during the day. I'm not sure what's going through his head. I hate letting him cry it out but I don't want to teach him that he can scream and get what he wants. He's safe, not in pain as far as I can tell, he's just angry or scared...Any Advice?!?
And in other nap news...I think Kaden is just about done with naps. (He is almsot 4). We still have quiet time in our rooms, and now we're going to bed earlier cause he is so tired by the time bed time comes. But I can tell he's not ready for his nap in the afternoons. Kinda sad...he's growing up...and sad for mommy too! :)

Noises from the bathroom

I was trying to get the supper dishes done and heard the boys being extra loud in the bathroom...well Kaden had a reason for being in the bathroom but Caleb did not and there was a lot of laughing coming from there. I went to check on them and found that Caleb had climbed, by himself, fully clothed into the bathtub and was playing with the bath toys. Of course by the time I ran to get the camera he was trying to get out of the bathtub but I still managed to get a few cute shots. The blurry one is a picture of Caleb falling out of the bathtub as he attempted to climb out by himself...no babies were injured. :) And of course when all was said and done, Kaden wanted a picture of himself fully clothed in the bathtub as well, so there is one of him too. They keep me on my toes!

Finger Paints

It was so beautiful outside this morning (we finally have some fall weather...like in the 60's and 70's) we decided to go out and fingerpaint. Caleb was not so into fingerpainting, but he enjoyed carrying the bottles around and when he got bored of that he played on the slide. I did try to get his footprint with paint but that made him really unhappy! Kaden on the other hand, had a blast and we now have some very cool artwork hanging in the house. After, fingerpaints we did bubbles. Caleb enjoyed the bubbles much more...but can't quiet figure out how to blow them...so generally ends up chewing on the bubble stick. A little soap never hurt anyone...I hope!

My Cubby

Kaden started AWANA this fall and is loving it (despite the face he is making in the picture). I am just amazed at how well he does memorizing verses. It's so neat to see him hiding God's word in his heart. He looks forward to Wednesday nights all week long...now mommy just has to learn how to sew all the patches on!

Sunday Morning

We snapped some pictures of the family this morning. We were all in "earth tones" so thought they might turn out cute. The pictures came out a little dark but other then that not bad. Ahhh..before long we'll have to start thinking about Christmas card pictures....hmmmm..one more thing to add to the to do list! :)

Thanks to everyone who prayed for the run yesterday. It went great. We finished in 3 hours and 36 minutes which we were happy with. And all glory to God, I feel great today which just amazes me. Only three weeks to the race! Yippee!

Other then that a preety normal weekend. Hope your is going well too! Jesus loves you

Tomorrow's run

A quick prayer request for anyone who gets up between 7 and 11 tomorrow...we're running 20 miles tomorrow. This is our longest run before the race which is about three weeks away. I'm excited and feel a lot of peace and am confident that God will see us through, all glory for this is His. But still the prayers would be appreciated.

Already I'm amazed at how God has provided and taken care of us.

And just for fun I thought I'd put up this picture of Kaden modeling the hat he made on the cruise at camp carnival...he wore it to Walmart! :) I just love his fashion sense.

The happenings

Just wanted to keep everyone updated on what's going on with us. First, today we were back in San Antonio to see a new doctor for the stomach stuff. God is so awesome and provided an awesome military dcotor who carried, took time, asked questions, gave thought, and offered great advice. I feel so blessed and just so grateful. I've decided not to go back to doctor number one for now...possibly ever. I have one more set of x-rays next Monday and a CT scan just to make sure nothing else is wrong, but then the next step is to start weaning off medication so I'm super excited but nervous about that. Please pray that as I come off the medicine the symptoms don't return. Thanks
Our other exciting news...we got our next assignment!!! Matt was selected to go and teach at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. This is Matt's dream assignment so we again are just praising the Lord for working this out. This means next fall we should be heading to Monterey, California (where I went to highschool, how cool is that!) so that Matt can recieve his masters from the Naval Post Graduate School. That should take a year to a year and a half and then we would move to Colorado. We're so excited...and I'm very grateful that I have like 10 months to process moving away from family...that's the hard part, but I know that God will provide there as well. On the plus side California will move us closer to Matt's family. So that is the big news from Texas. All things for God's glory!

We're home!

Here's the pictures of the cruise. I tried to divide them up into categories so it wouldn't be so overwelmeing. We had an awesome time. The boys did great and didn't fall off the boa(a major concern!) and the six days went by so slow. We really felt relaxed and enjoyed every moment. I highly recommend it to everyone!

Here'e some pictures of our sailing home. It took a couple days to get used to the motion and once we got home it took a while not to feel like we were still moving but it was so much fun.

Fun time...dinner time!

Here's some pictures of fun time on the ship. Everything was amazing from the servers to the room to the entertainment. Let's start with fun...Matt and Chris did karaoke almost every night ( I did it once...not pretty) and even did karaike idol and won a medal! (see picture of Chris in a cowboy hat). Kaden had fun at Camp Carnival an awesome kid's program they had for every

child over two. They got to play games, do crafts, play in the play room, etc. Caleb got to go to camp carnival only with a parent twice during the whole time, but we had fun just running around the ship with him. I had fun working out on the gym and watching the ocean at the same time...can't beat that! We never saw Jeremy he was running around the boat with some friends he made, and mom and dad just seemed to enjoy being with their family and celebrating thier 29th wedding anniversary!

We all enjoyed the food and the service was amazing. These are some of the pictures of the formal dinner and our servers. Who were so sweet and we enjoyed getting to know them a little better each night. We always sat at the same table...imagine eating at a five star restaurant every night! So much fun and Kaden and Caleb did great sitting through it all...even if we did have to walk Caleb around some nights. The food pictures are from the midnight buffet they put on. The ice sculpture and the food presentation was just beatuiful...way more effort then I put into dinner!

Every night in our room the steward would turn down the beds and clean the room again (they did it twice a day) and every night they would make a different animal out of the towels. The elephant was so cute we had to take a picture!

And of course we didn't have our camera most of the time...so we missed alot of great photo opps, but hopefully this gives you some idea of the good time we had.

Progresso

One of the highlights for Matt was getting to go to the Mayan ruins (the ones you read about in your history book)! Dad and Chris went with Matt and Jeremy was off on a kayaking trip. Mom and I had the boys for the day. We did some shopping in Progresso...but it looked a whole lot like Acuna (the Mexican town five min. from our house). I did buy a dress and the boys got wooden snakes but that was about it. Still a fun day for everyone.