pictures

Messy is the New Beautiful Photoblog

This is beauty to me: my sweet ten-year-old in his new arm cast.

I’m not saying that I’m happy my son broke his arm, but you have to admire his all-in-spirit.

It reminds me of that quote from Finding Nemo:

Dori tells Marlin, the helicopter dad, “Well, you don’t want nothing to EVER happen to him, because then nothing would EVER happen to him.”

Simple joys. Beauty inspires happiness.

Never underestimate the power of beauty.

Togetherness

Kitchen Picnic (and hands colored with markers)

Dan’s new buddy kept shooting him with Nerf bullets, so I helped him load up his own Nerf gun and sent him back out there.

Our free-spirited JD REALLY hates wearing shoes.

Granddaddy and Nana mailed the boys new Legos. It was the biggest deal ever.

This Spiderman mask has been hanging on this picture for at least a week now. I was walking past it and just found it amusing. Looks like the work of Caleb.

Joshua hiding in my messy school closet and playing video games. If you had three brothers, you’d hide too.

Every morning. Beautiful mess.

Just cuteness.

Dressing them alike was easy. Getting a great photo, not so fast.

Alan and a few other dads took their kids on a hike.

Step 1 in planning my new schedule: listing all the things I want to do everyday. It’s completely unrealistic, but this is my 1st draft. I’d like to schedule in more prayer and walk time. Don’t worry. The boys do more school work than is listed here. This is only the parts that I have to do WITH them. This is my part alone.

“I want Nana to see my new book bag. Can you see it?”

Most exciting beach day ever! Gutsy whale to come that close to shore!

humpback whale—Look how close!!!

He just kept swimming back and forth and back and forth.

He started yelling, “Beach!! Beach!!!” as we neared the ocean. Cloud 9!

We couldn’t find little plastic shovels and buckets in the house, so we brought a pot and a real shovel. Done. The kids were quite happy.

Ok. We did find the one little blue plastic shovel.

Beauty!

“Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.”   —Mother Teresa

aprilmomoffour

April is an upbeat, Christian, blog-obsessed, military wife, and home schooling mom of four little boys. She writes about education, travel, and humorous adventures in parenting. Follow along if you’d like a little bit of encouragement and a whole lot of crazy.

View Comments

  • Hi,

    Great pictures of your boys! They are adorable.

    Good luck with the new school year. You seem to be very organized, which I am sure helps.

    Nancy

    • I'm not really as organized as I sound. I just have big dreams, which I never live up to...

  • "Well, you don’t want nothing to EVER happen to him, because then nothing would EVER happen to him.” Man, that's a good one! So many great photos! Love the picture of JD on the beach (other than the orange and blue suit - shame on you). He looks like a real "California surfer dude." Whale sighting?! You can't beat that! I love seeing the to-do list. I hope you document all these steps on your blog as you do them. It's helpful to see, and it's very interesting! I don't know how in the world you can manage all of that. I have enough trouble with two and not homeschooling! Also, that spiderman mask really cracks me up :)

    • Oh yeah, you are so right about managing all that. It's an unrealistic list. I need to replace several items with "sit and stare into space" b/c every couple of hours, that's what I actually do....

  • April, I love how the estimated time for putting JD down for a nap got longer and "water plants" got the boot! There is reality at its finest!

    • hehehe Thanks! I had to allow for when JD begs to be rocked or has a poopy diaper....And I decided to delegate the plants to the big boys. :)

  • Messy, beautiful, perfect! It really is better to have something happen rather than nothing and it looks like you really do always have something going on :)

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