overheard at our house today (baptism)

only you fellow brook hillers will be able to fully appreciate this...

izzy (reading her testimony from inside the storage ottoman/baptism pool):  my name is izzy lewis, and i'm almost four years old.  i came to know christ not long ago.  when i met him he said, "izzy, what are you doing here?"  and i said, "jesus, i need your help finding the gruffalo." 



abby:  well it's now my privilege to baptize you - my sister in christ - in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. 



buried with christ...



and raised to walk in newness of life!!!!!

wordless wednesday (why i have a hard time getting a workout done)

EEEK! it's one of our favorite christmas traditions...

wordless wednesday

silent night

and the answer is no.  it's not that uncommon to find izzy asleep with a "baby in her belly".  :-)

wordless wednesday (a watched pot...)

wordless wednesday (leaf piles)

hope fulfilled

i know you're probably surprised to hear from me.  after all, as my mom pointed out recently, it has been close to two months since i've written.  i've accepted that because of the nature of my business, this little blog will probably have some major peaks and valleys, but as the fall rush is gradually slowing i'm ready to once again overwhelm your eyeballs with photos of my darlings. 

but first...

josh and i decided this year to do something "christmas-y" with the kids each day between now and christmas.  we've got a handful of things already on the calendar - baking cookies, watching "rudolph", attending christmas concerts - but the first order of business was getting our tree up as soon as we got back home from our thanksgiving travels.  so yesterday we pulled the truckload of boxes out of the closet and set to work.  we assembled the tree, hung the lights, and started on the slew of ornaments.  the little ones excitedly grabbed handfuls of them out of the "kid box" while i gingerly unwrapped the ornaments out of the "super-special-please-don't-break-these" box.  i gently picked up one of my very favorites and turned it over to read the back for the 1000th time - for your child known only by god.  then like i have every year since 2005, i wept for the child we lost that year. 



like she has with every little one that has ever been a part of our family, my mom cross-stitched a special gift particularly for that baby and i hang the ornament in a prominent place on the tree each christmas.  but this year, as my mind moved from the loss of our second child all those years ago to judah's death last year, i couldn't help but wipe the tears and smile with joy as i remembered a post i wrote last christmas.  the sixth stocking is a story of grief and hope - grief over the tremendous loss our family had just experienced but hope that in the next year the lord would bless us with a child.  this is the third year that we've hung six stockings on our mantle but it's the first year that our house has been home to six people.  and now, just inches from that first ornament made by my mom is another that she recently gave us...




praising god for his faithfulness!

weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

psalm 30:5

overheard at our house today (the gospel edition)

abby (while praying):  god, please be with all the people who don't know you in china and ethiopia.  and in wisconsin.


later while looking at this picture on my phone...

jack:  mommy, is that jesus on the cross?
me:  no, baby, that's abby in panama city.

wordless wednesday (the mailbox)

"can i vacuum, please?"

it's without a doubt izzy's favorite way to serve, and between her and her tongue, they can vacuum a mean floor.





"i did it!!!"

the red plate and two of my men

the year josh and i got married we moved to nashville, TN for a time of leaving and cleaving.  for those of you who know the whole story, you know that unfortunately, nashville wasn't that great to us.  but one of the huge gifts that did come during that time was the ability to spend a lot of time with my cousin and her husband who lived just a hop, skip, and a jump down the road.  tracy and todd had this particular tradition that they had done within their own family for a while, and when we got married they passed it on to us.

the red plate.

what's the red plate, you ask?  well, it's not much more than a. red. plate.  it's more about the who and why of the red plate that makes this tradition so wonderful.  anyone who's experiencing something special - a birthday, the first missing tooth, first day of school, anything - gets to eat their meals that day off of the red plate.  and today was jack's turn - because our big boy turned FIVE YEARS OLD today!!






if you can't tell, jack's stuffing his face with a blueberry muffin (filled with five candles, of course!) before we jetted out the door this morning for our second big event of the day.  another precious man in my life was celebrating a big milestone as well because as of friday evening this week, my dad will officially be a retiree!  his secretary had put together a celebration with several members of his police department and josh, me, my mom, my sister, and our combined seven little people were invited to attend. 



no, the lunch wasn't at the mcdonald's play place, but judging by that crew, it probably should have been.  :-)

**tracy, in case you're wondering, that IS the original red plate that you gave us as a wedding gift eleven years ago.  anytime we've moved it's gotten packed with the 'very important and breakable' box so it doesn't get damaged.  and since i didn't feel comfortable carting it into the restaurant for daddy's big manly retirement party, i'll be serving him some goodies on it this weekend.**

the night owl strikes again

we arrived in marietta on saturday afternoon only to realize that we'd left half our baby gear at home.  we didn't forget to put it in the car...we just flat forgot we'd need it.  you'd think we've never traveled with a baby before.  but one of the joys of mine and josh's younger siblings now birthing babies as well is that they tote around much of the same gear we do.  and not only is their gear nicer (let me tell you, a lot's changed in the last three years!) but their younger brains work better than ours so they actually remember to pack what they'll need.

one of the didn't-make-the-trip items was the baby monitor.  since all four of our little peeps were sleeping in one room while josh and i were down the hall in another room, we thought we should make a wal-mart run to get a backup monitor in case micah protested his first night away from home.  but before we could make it out the door, josh's sister, rebekah, offered us her ultra-swanky video monitor.

ummm, hello!  

i'll admit that this thought has crossed my mind before:  a video monitor?  really?!?  what do you do?  just sit and watch your baby sleep all night?

YES, and it's fantastic!  well, i guess there wasn't much sleeping going on while i was eyeing my littlest two, but i got a sweet glimpse into their world together.  and what a cute, funny, precious world it is!  (my apologies to all the video-monitor-owners out there that i used to secretly giggle at.  you may now return the favor because not only did i watch my babies over the monitor for 30 minutes, i took pictures as well!)

the night owl crept up to micah's crib and whisper-yelled to see if he was awake...



when he responded with an immediate jump to his feet, playtime soon began.



i'm usually a pretty big stickler for bedtime, but for some reason it didn't seem all that important on this night.  :-)

where the wild things are

it's not just a book...it's a place. and i can say with complete certainty now that it's in pine mountain, ga. on our visit to marietta over labor day, josh's family took us on our first "wild animal safari", and we all came home disgustingly filthy...but full of smiles.





if you ask izzy what her favorite part of the day was, she'll tell you with an excited flair that it was the gruffalos. ironically, she'll also ID that as the part she didn't care for so much. but who can blame her? i was thrilled/terrified as well when the massive monsters moved from outside our van window to head-completely-in-breathing-and-slobbering-in-our-faces...






this is when izzy and i almost made a run for it...




sometimes, though, massive heads or expansive horns got in the way of the animals being able to put their whole heads through the window. no worries, though...that's why god made two-foot-long tongues. EEEEK!



and if you're wondering about micah, he wasn't such a fan of the whole mess at first. for all you fellow adoptive parents out there, i know what you're thinking, and in my defense, i had no idea the gruffalos would actually try to get inside the car with us. there was no turning back once we had entered the gates...



but he eventually calmed down in my arms and was content to work the finger-of-much-soothing while he cuddled with grandpam.



you know, now that i think about it, i think the squeals of delight might have been as "exciting" for him as anything else. see for yourself - and enjoy jack's bull's-eye at the :32 mark (or should i say bull's-nose)...