arts and crafts

it took eight hours to get there, but we finally made it to cashiers a little after 10:00 on friday night.  our previously pooped carload of little people turned the corner quickly and went a little crazy once we arrived at the cabin.  fueled by the excitement of seeing grandpam and papaw as well as the discovery of the fact that the kitchen is upstairs in the cabin, they started bouncing off the wood-paneled walls in no time.

the first task at hand was deciding where to put everyone to sleep.  the cabin has a bedroom and a half (that's what we call the 6'x8' nook that has a little bed in it) as well as a couple of couches in the living room.  somehow, i didn't get a single picture of the arrangement we came up with so my written description will have to suffice.  grandpam and papaw slept in the main bedroom with both of the dogs and the cat.

wait, i didn't mention that there were pets there, too?  oh yes, we had four grown-ups, six children, two black labish dogs, and one cat in the bedroom-and-a-half cabin over the weekend of the fourth.  WOW!

where was i?  ah yes, grandpam and papaw slept in the main bedroom with both of the dogs and the cat, and we put our late sleepers (in comparison with the eastern time zone crew) in the little bedroom like this:  i slept on the bed, izzy slept on a blow-up crib-sized mattress in the two feet of available space to my left, abby slept in her sleeping bag in the two feet of available space to my right, and jack did the same at the foot of the bed.

and somehow it worked out beautifully!   (this was izzy celebrating her first "tee-tee in the potty" experience at the cabin.)

if you're doing the math, you know that this left josh and three little people to sleep in the living room upstairs.  one couch and a row of sleeping bags fit the bill perfectly, and we were one, big, happy family in a packed house!

no sooner had we gotten up the next morning than grandpam announced that the first activity of the weekend was going to be arts and crafts.  ok, that might not strike you as odd, but pam isn't much of a glitter-and-glue kind of gal so we were all anxiously waiting to see what she had in mind.  come to find out, she had spent a couple of hours in michael's the week before (she said michael's was like walking into a foreign country for her!) gathering all the needed supplies to make "camp cashiers" t-shirts for all the kids.  she stayed up late getting them all started and then she let the kids put the finishing touches on their individual t-shirts.

with "camp cashiers" shirts in place, the weekend could officially begin.  ;-)

july fourth - take one

josh's family invited us to join them at their cabin in cashiers, north carolina this past weekend for the fourth, and with the weight of what we're dealing with here in birmingham, an escape to the mountains sounded like music to our ears. 

the first trip we ever made to the cabin was over july 4th weekend of 1999 (man, we're old).  please enjoy these snippets from one of the 37 scrapbooks i made between 1996 and 2007 (before the beautiful blogger revolution).

take a close look at this next one.  i want you to know that i cut out every one of those little starbursts by hand and painstakingly glued them in place on the page-- do you get how thankful i am for the new age of digital scrapbooking?!? 

our next visit to those gorgeous mountains wasn't until late in 2005.  that trip also served as a bit of an escape as we were mourning the loss of our second baby -- but joyfully celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary as well!!!

here's what i remember about the trip through four states to get to cashiers:  in 1999 when it was just josh and me, our drive was full of deep conversations about the future, laughter, and quiet moments of contemplation.  in 2005 when it was just josh, me, and little abigail, our drive was full of deep conversations about the future, laughter, and quiet moments for fear of waking the baby.

then there's the 2010 trip. 

not only did josh and i add two more children to the mix but we also took cousin natalie from birmingham and cousin ansleigh from savannah with us on our trek.  and our drive was full of anything but deep conversations or quiet moments of any sort.  but we definitely had laughter...

(that's the big girls doing their best "praise team" impersonations while singing our god is an awesome god at the top of their lungs.)  unfortunately, after about five or six hours in the car, the troops started to fade, and this is what we all looked like:

josh started to get a little grumpy...

but he felt a lot better after a little nap.

(put the phone down.  there's no need to call DHR...he was driving with his left eye open.)

we did get pretty bored, though, so i was forced to bust out the camera for entertainment.  things started out mild...

...but then i got curious as to what a woman would look like if she hung out of the window of a van moving at 70 miles per hour down the interstate.  wonder no more, my friends.

that's all i've got in me tonight.  but stay tuned for the next installment of our july fourth weekend where we actually arrive in the mountains. 

wordless wednesday

wordless wednesday (jack's makeshift guitar capo)

music to my ears

i was going to post these photos tomorrow as "wordless wednesday" but as i was preparing to load them, i kept reminiscing about so many other stories and memories that i decided to go ahead with a full-blown (very wordy) post. 

but rather than make this the post of a hundred hyperlinks, i'm going to pull from some of my old favorites and re-post them here.  no, you're probably not that interested in all these jack-isms, but we're in love with them. 

so here goes nothing...

i realized this afternoon that the two lewis guys had gone missing, so i crept upstairs to find this:

can't figure out what's going on?  josh has googled "drum sets" and he and jack are pouring through picture after picture in the search results -- all the while exchanging man talk about kick drums, snares, and high hats. 

jack. was. in. awe.

jack's love of all things musical didn't just start today.  in fact, when he was born, i was laying on the bed racking my brain trying to figure out what the strumming sound was that i kept hearing.  i finally asked my OB what in this world that noise was...

turns out jack left my womb with a guitar in hand.

now he hasn't always had a pink guitar.  for a while, in fact, he didn't have a guitar at all -- but he made do.

(from april 2009 -- this was obviously before i gave up capital letters)
We're a big musical family around here. It's not that any of us is that incredibly gifted with any amazing musical talent (although Josh would give his broken leg to be able to tear it up on the drums), but we all love music. At any given moment, walk into our house or take a ride with us in the car and you're almost guaranteed to hear a tune. And if you're the really lucky guy sitting beside us at a red light, you might even find one of us playing a pretend instrument or two!

Apparently the air-guitar is a little too abstract for Jack, so he likes to bring it down to a more concrete level. He'll take any old household item, hold it like a guitar, and strum away to the beat. And trust me, he's got quite the imagination!

I thought this was a kid-sized mop (yep, I start 'em early around here), but to Jack, it's an electric guitar:

 
You know those little eye covers for your stovetop? They're no match for Jack's musical skills!


I haven't decided if this one is extra sweet or slightly blasphemous (at least it was a Christian song he was rocking out to)! Yes, that's Josh's Bible...


And finally, talk about making lemonade when you're dealt a big handful of lemons (very expensive, painful, and exhausting lemons)...


jack had a lot of time to fall even more in love with music through our involvement with the music ministry at church.  here's an excerpt from a post i did in july 2009.  it's actually more about izzy than anything, but it's still a piece of jack's musical history.  ;-)

I think I've mentioned our rotating church schedule of Josh runs sound/I take care of the little ones and then I play keys/Josh takes a turn with the kids. Well every once in a while, the schedule gets a bit jumbled, and we end up both responsible for our separate duties on the same day. That was the case a couple of Sundays ago. But it doesn't just affect Sunday mornings...it also determines the plan on the prior Tuesday, because that's when the worship band has practice.

On this particular Tuesday, we loaded everybody up in the car and headed to the church so that Josh could twirl the buttons and knobs on the soundboard (I'm sure there's a much more technical way to explain what he does, but that's definitely not my department) and I could practice with the band for the following Sunday morning service. For the first hour-and-a-half, the kids were fantastic! They entertained themselves by running around the empty sanctuary and playing their various and sundry air-instruments. But by the time it hit their usual nighty-night time, they were showing signs of fading. Quickly.


The funniest part of that picture (thanks to my camera phone) is that Jack is playing around with the cords (ok, that part's not so funny), and Abby's just about passed out because she's so ready to hit the hay. And they're laying on a couple of chairs that Josh turned over and laid on the stairs to try to keep Isabel off the stage.

Izzy, on the other hand, wasn't quite so content to wait patiently for practice to wrap up. She kept trying to get to me to be cuddled (hence the chair arrangement), but I obviously couldn't hold her when I was playing the keyboard...and Josh couldn't do much with her because he was busy working on the worship schedule for the service. Soooo...I put my thinking cap on and came up with this:

 
I dashed out to the car, grabbed the Ergo baby carrier, tossed her in, and played away. It worked beautifully!! I was able to run the whole set, and she was able to get the snuggles she so desperately needed in her sleepy state. Here was the view from my vantage point:

my being in the band at church afforded jack many more opportunities than just watching us play.  he got to be IN the band during practice some, too.  but first he had to have his own guitar.

(from december 2009)
 
to say that he likes his little guitar would be like saying i kind of dig photography. he has played it almost* constantly today. all. day. long.

*the few breaks he took were to play the DRUM he got last night from my parents.

 
but his head almost exploded with excitement when josh got his guitar out, too. nothing beats hanging out with daddy on the couch and playing some tunes on the guitars...

 
izzy's head almost exploded with excitement, too, when she pulled these out of her stocking. she loves them. really.
once jack had the goods, he was rearing to go.  

we all know how much jack loves to play guitar and how jazzed he was to get a "real" guitar for christmas, right? well, we thought it would be fun to let jack take his guitar to church this morning and play it while i was practicing with the band. first of all, he played it the whole way there...

...then when we got there, not only did they let him play it, they told him he could come up on stage to practice with us! he squealed like a girl and ran up to stand by his bestest buddy, mr. steve.

he took really careful notes on how all the guys played...

...and by the end of practice, he knew how to hold the pick in his mouth and how to put the guitar in a stand when he wasn't playing it. he even kicked his leg out so he could prop his guitar up while he was jamming (actually, he's been doing that for a while...i've just never gotten a good picture of it).


our friend steve plays way more than just the bass guitar, and he was happy to show jack the ropes on the drum set (he really wanted to school him in the trombone, but there wasn't one handy).

of course, i'd love for him to take up another instrument as well...

(from september 2009)
Did you know that Jack's even learning how to play the piano?

 
If he ever makes it big, we'll just have to sit him down to discuss the importance of pants. 

and now for one of my all-time favorites.  this is going to look very different one day, but i think i'll always remember jack and his guitar this way.

our week in pictures

1. this round of "our week..." actually starts a couple of weeks ago at VBS.  our friends, the cobbs, invited abby to join the cobblets for a week of fun and learning.  i couldn't resist carrying my camera along for the water day blowout at the end of the week where all the kids got to play.  apparently we've deprived our kids since not a one of them had a clue what a slip-'n-slide was.  abby had it down in no time...

but izzy was perfectly convinced that it was a runway of some sort.

she got a little one-on-one instruction on proper slip-'n-sliding...

but they left out one very critical rule -- slide and MOVE!

jack took one look at spills like this...

and decided not to get so much as one of his toes wet.  (i have no idea who that kid is, but that was way too funny not to post.)

2.  we met up with some friends for storytime at the library. 

ok, i'll go ahead and state the obvious.  mr. mac totally looks like hannibal lecter...

but he's really a delightful little man who holds the attention of a roomful of preschoolers -- plus he plays a mean banjo for the kids' dancing time.

3.  we made funny faces for breakfast one morning...

4.  and josh tickled jack silly.

5.  josh taught izzy how to fly...

...in more ways than one.

6.  but my very favorite part of the week came a few days ago.  my friend, anna, wrote last week and asked if she could drive up to bham for the day.  we were having a really tough time around here, and she was just the face i needed to see (not to mention that i was dying to hold these sweet munchkins again).  i wish there was a way to describe to you how much anna and her family mean to us.  the four grown-ups have all known one another since we started at samford 14 years ago, anna and i stood beside each other as we each married our precious husbands, and it has been an honor to not only learn from paul and anna's dedication to giving but to be on the receiving end of the blessings they love to bestow on others.

they are truly, truly amazing people (and i promise you anna is reading this right now either 1. rolling her eyes or 2. typing out an email to me to remind me that everything we have is from the lord and that it's a blessing to bless others). 

to give you an example of what i'm talking about, anna packed up her two-year-old and her six-week-old twins and drove to bham to visit with us and to encourage us.  but more than that, when she walked in the door (on her third trip in, i believe), she drug behind her a huge cooler full of six or seven meals for our freezer.  homemade meals at that.

who is this woman?!?  ;-)

oh, and did i mention that she packed up her two-year-old and her six-week-old twins to come up here?  yeah, i know i did.  but it bears repeating.

here are the fruits of my monkey-like behavior behind the camera...

anne perry was in no way amused (one guess which twin that is).  but addie and izzy found me a little funnier.

it's been a challenging couple of weeks around here, but they've been two weeks full of laughter, fun, and blessings nonetheless.  and to our sweet, sweet, family who has been so wonderful to us -- thank you.  we love you dearly and appreciate you so much.