Christmas: so beautiful, but thank goodness it’s over! I know. I know. I still need a Linus.

This morning I struggled with my precious but incredibly clingy two-year-old. The problems of life that I cannot get off my mind swirled around in my brain. I found comfort in these promises from God’s Word.

“Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.”   Psalm 16:1

“My flesh also will rest in hope. For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”   Psalm 16:9-11

“The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.”  Proverbs 16:33

What a week it was! I want you to know that on Monday I started a new medicine, for my heart, and while I’ve made it so far in life without having a daily medication, this one has done me so much good that I’m thankful for it.

Lots of things have changed. I used to get these adrenaline rushes that are horrible. It must have been my heart.

And just like that they’re gone. My heart medication helped me with my anxiety problem. It brought down my blood pressure as well as my heart rate.

While I was sitting at my doctor’s office, and she left the room, I checked my text messages.  It was from Alan.

They (Alan’s employer) want to move us back to the South, and not just the South, but so close to our parents!

Disbelief and relief and feeling looked after flooded over me!

I could see the finger prints of the Lord all over it. It reminded me of that Bible verse:

“How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”  Matthew 23:37

Only, thank goodness, I am ever so willing, though sometimes I have to remind myself to be.

Have you ever had a day where so many answers to your prayers happen at once? That was Monday.

The heart medicine can’t fix my sciatica, but it sure was a wonderful start in my quest to feel healthy again.

And look outside. It’s pouring. It’s pouring glorious, beautiful rain. I prayed for rain so diligently last year. Sometimes it would come that very day that I asked for it. Sometimes it waited until now, but my prayers were answered.

I know God will answer my prayer for a good diagnosis of my sciatica/hip/whatever problem too. Sometimes we just have to trust and hope. Once I know for sure what it is, I can know how to best treat it. That’s why it’s important to me. After six years of this (off and on), it’s just not funny anymore.

Today Joshua scored his first basketball goal of the season for his team. Then Daniel went shopping with me. Dan got new light-up Batman tennis shoes. I bought, at Daniel’s encouragement, a pair of ruby-red slipper ballet flats and a denim colored, more low-profile pair too. That sort of shopping makes me plumb giddy!

It’s a good day. Praise God for a good day. Things are looking up. I have hope.

“I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.”  Psalm 13:6

It bears repeating:

“My flesh also will rest in hope. For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:9-11

Come back tomorrow. I have photos of my very first blogger friend meet-up!! I hope you all have a fun MLK weekend! Never give up hope.

For the next part in this story on diagnosing my heart problem (ventricular tachycardia), click here.

The post “My flesh also will rest in hope.” Psalm 16:9 appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

This weekend I have ridden a horse, eaten delicious food cooked by other people, and listened to an inspiring speaker, Denise Cunningham. I have grown closer to God and closer to other ladies from my church.

Guess what! Our speaker this weekend has a blog too! I’ll give you a link at the bottom of this post. First, you have to read mine.  😉

This retreat was at Wolf Mountain, near Sacramento, California.

I want to share a few lessons I have received from my time on Wolf Mountain.

Alan and me…..not at Wolf Mountain. That’s Yosemite. Alan was at home being Super Dad this weekend.

#1 My very first ministry is actually my husband. When I married him, I promised many things. One day, the boys will all grow up and move away. They will promise their hearts to younger, prettier women. But Alan will still be there.

I can’t wait to get home and focus on being a better wife!!

#2. Do TELL others what God has done for you, and don’t try to take credit for that. Look what God has done in my life! God has guided and protected me through ALL of my years. He provided a way for me to go to college for FREE. He led me to Alan. God kept Alan safe through several tours in combat zones. God has given me these four adorable boys. HE has answered so many prayers and allowed us to live all over the country and see so many beautiful places and meet inspiring people.

I stand in awe of what God has done for us.

Now is the time of life for ME to give thanks and praise to God. What a life that I am living! I have everything. There is no good thing that I do not have.

Yes, I have a bad back. Yes, I have children to train and plenty of work to do. Yes, I have another cross-country move looming in my near future.

But I have a relationship with God in heaven who will carry me through all of these duties.

8Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. 9And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”

2 Corinthians 12:9

I’m not going to pretend like I have something to do with God’s blessings in my life. To God be the glory!

I cannot take credit. GOD gave me all of this.

We hiked to this cross at the top of the mountain this morning. It was an exhilarating start to the day!

Look for a post soon about the answered prayers we have seen just in the past week! God does not promise us a life without problems. He promises that we will never walk alone. He is always there.

#3. Don’t let the devil steal your joy. Never believe things will not change. Never believe that you aren’t good enough to belong to God. Never believe the lies! “I will just always be like____.” “I just can’t win.” “I’m not as good as they are.” And so on and so forth! Those are lies. Do not buy it.

#4. Be thankful!!

“Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endures forever.” Psalm 107:1

a few friends climbing the steep mountain

What did I like about retreat? Rest, fun, God’s word, and fellowship! Did I mention I also got to ride horses? Wow, can we go to retreat again next week???

I am so thankful for my life and the people in it. “To God be the glory. Great things he has done, so loved he the world that He gave us his son.”

view from the top

And here’s a great new blog for you to check out/read/follow. Someone asked me this weekend what it means to follow a blog. It just means to subscribe via email or social media. Blog subscriptions are free. Just type your email address in, and you’re done. That way you never miss a post. My “subscribe via email” option is in my sidebar.

Denise is a darling and inspiring speaker. She is a woman who knows the Lord well, and she has a kind and loving heart that comes through when she teaches. Plus, she’s downright adorable. Here’s her blog, where she writes about a wide variety of topics. I was most struck by her object lessons and her beautiful home decorating skills: www.refreshher.com

Have you ever gone on a retreat? What did you learn?

The post 4 Powerful Lessons From My Very First Women’s Retreat appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

My goal for February is to focus more on the positive things that I love about my children. There are SO many, and as parents, I firmly believe we should be praising them way more than we are correcting them. Why does that sometimes seem hard? It’s all in how we think, isn’t it?

I do not want my children to remember me as the mom that fussed at them all the time!

Kids thrive on positive feedback. I know that anything I praise, I will see a lot more of.

My friend Jenifer hosts a #MommyReality Link-up each week on her blog, JJenerallyInformed.com. This week’s theme was “what I love.” The more I thought about that, the more I thought about what I love about each individual child. Thanks for the inspiration, Jen!

love

John David:

I love the way he hugs. Great big bear hugs!

I love the way he sticks out his tongue and raises his arms for us to pick him up.

I love his intelligence. Today a kind nursery worker remarked, “John David is so clever. You know, I’m an educator, and I’ve worked with lots of different kinds of kids. John David really thinks about things. There were two boys that wanted to play with the same cars he did, so John David took the a ball and threw it for them. They ran off and chased it. He seized the opportunity to grab alllllll the cars for himself. I was like, ‘Wow’! Then he did other things too, that I cannot remember. That is a sharp, very aware little boy.”

Of course, we just love hearing things like this!  Hopefully, sharing will come soon…

Daniel:

Adorableness

-I love how much he loves to cook. He’s getting so good at it! This boy knows more about baking and cooking than most 18-year-olds, I promise you.

-I love his happy spirit.

-I love how he likes to help.

-I love how he adores his big brothers.

-I love how easily he makes new friends.

-He just started going to Cubbies on Wednesday night. It’s very easy to finish the Cubby verses, because you just say them back to the leader. His leader told me, “We enjoy Daniel. He’s really good at saying the verses back to us. He says ‘dinner’ instead of ‘sinner’, and we thought it was so funny!”

Caleb:

-I love how tough Caleb is.

-I love how innocent and immature Caleb is, for a 7-year-old that looks like a 10 year-old!

-I love how he is always building something: Lego creations, forts, comic strips, robots made from things he found in my kitchen. It can be messy, but it is wonderful.

-I love how Caleb always sticks up for whoever he feels is the underdog.

-I love his love for science.

-Caleb started Sparks last night, after never wanting to go. He came home so excited. “I made new friends!”

-I love the way he prays so faithfully.

-I love the way he will quickly jump up and accomplish any task that you give him to do.

Joshua:

There was never a more devoted brother.

-I love the way Joshua handles his role in our family. There was never a more devoted older brother. “Mom! Can I get JD up?”

“Can I fix everyone’s breakfast?”

Can I kiss you all over your face, my child?????  (only if I’m quick and sneaky)

-I love the way he always includes everyone. He can have three neighborhood boys over, and Joshua will still come inside and say, “Daniel, aren’t you coming? We saved you a gun!”

-I love the way you can usually get the true story from Joshua. “What really happened…..Joshua? No one else talk!”

-I love the way he reads and reads and writes and writes. I passed on a few bad traits, so it’s really good to know I passed along a few useful ones too!

-I love how quiet he is in the car. 🙂 I like to be quiet in the car too. In our family of six, Joshua and I are the only ones that don’t need to talk in the car.

-I love the way he tries to keep the peace among his brothers.

-I love his leadership skills.

These sweet children make for one seriously happy mom and dad!

Blessed, and trying hard not to forget it!

It’s so easy to lose sight of blessings, in the midst of work, work, work, and clean up, clean up, clean up. We really are blessed. Let’s not forget it!

The post Focusing on the Positive of Each Child appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

BOOM!! bounce bounce bounce

The school day is done, and I was answering blog comments, and I heard this loud noise. Don’t worry. All is well. I ran to check it out. I scanned the front yard. No one there, but it sounded like someone had hit our house with a basketball!  Weird!

Just then, Joshua barged in the back door and proudly proclaimed, “I just kicked a soccer ball OVER the roof! I’ll go get it!”

Big boys. I am lovin’ it. Babies and toddlers are adorable, but big boys are WHERE IT’S AT!

BIG week for Joshua: #2! He scored 5 points for his team on Saturday!!

They wipe their own bottoms, they still do hilarious things, they can get their own snacks (but then you have to guard your kitchen), and best of all, they only require minimal supervision. No, actually, the best part is that they can even help with their little brothers!!

“Ew. public bathroom. Here, Joshua. Take Daniel to the bathroom with you, and make sure he washes his hands.  Thank you!!!”

They earn their keep for sure.

It’s a hazardous role.

but oh, so rewarding

One thing that is often mentioned in my comment section, especially yesterday, is that I am too hard on myself.

This is true. I am waaaay too hard on myself. I’m going to try to give myself a little more grace. Even my kids pick up on this.

Joshua looked at me the other day, as I was struggling to teach through the bronchitis, and said, “Mom! Go lay down!”

I adore them. Hang in there, Moms of only little bitties. Our work will pay off!

Are you afraid they will fall? 😉 They didn’t.

It’s ridiculous that we are so hard on ourselves, because if you step back and look at it, it’s all pretty cute and hilarious. I mean, the kids are cute and hilarious. Actually, our expectations are too!!! (She thinks she can home school 4 boys, update her blog daily, AND have a clean house, isn’t that cute and hilarious!??) Or maybe it’s just me….surely someone can relate…

We are raising four boys here. What did I think that would look like????  Ha!!!

Seriously, Mom. What did you expect?

As I was writing this, John David needed attention, so I stopped and sat with him on the porch. I love the little balcony I have in my bedroom, and so does J.D. I asked him if he’d like to read, and he did, so we went inside to the book corner. I pulled out several books.

He insisted on Old McDonald Had a Farm. It has good pictures. Plus, I sing that one.

I finished, and I tried to move onto Richard Scary. Nope.

JD scowled and handed me back Old McDonald. I sang it again. Daniel heard and came running. He wanted Oh, David next, so we read that.

JD scowled and handed me back Old McDonald. I sang it, half hoarse, thanks to the lingering bronchitis, for the third time.

That made Daniel think of his Old McDonald game, so he begged me to get it down for him until I finally did so.

JD scowled and handed me Old McDonald.  The only way I was finally able to get out of singing it for the sixth time was, “Hey, JD, do you want to go eat a snack!?”

Food works for everything. Food is our most powerful bargaining tool as parents, well, I mean, besides guilt (also effective bwaaahahahaha). I am not ashamed, besides, it was 3:00, and I was starving.

Three o-clock has to be snack time. Who in the world can go from 11:30 pm to 5:30pm without eating?

Well, it isn’t good for your metabolism either. 🙂

Apparently, JD was hungry because he consumed a ton of Greek yogurt, which he, of course, insisted on feeding himself. I’ve just recently let him do that, and he is really good at spoons now!

Cheeeeese!

As I sat there, just watching Daniel and JD eat yogurt, I couldn’t help but notice the yarn strewn across the floor. Caleb had been “building” something. The school books weren’t put away yet. The sink is still full of dishes. I unloaded the bottom rack of the dishwasher, but I didn’t make it to the top rack before someone needed something. Two baskets of clean laundry to be put away stared at me from the stair landing.

Most of all, I noticed their adorable faces, the way the yogurt falls from their spoons to the floor sometimes, and most importantly, the way they smile at me. They love and appreciate me with their whole little hearts!

It all made me think of this blog, and yesterday, and how uptight I probably sounded. Ha! Clutter! Mess! Yogurt faces….

What a beeeeeeeautiful mess. Glorious. It all means one thing. It means that I get to spend all this time with my four favorite little boys, and at the end of the day, my favorite man comes through the door.

Wow. I am so blessed. WHY am I being so hard on myself? How ABSURD! People often use the term ‘hot mess,’ and I think that more applies to a young, attractive person that doesn’t have their act together yet.

What we have here is abundantly more exciting than that. A house full of growing children. 

Now that’s what I call success. 🙂 That is what a beautiful mess actually looks like, and I LOVE it.

Perhaps I need to chill a little bit and embrace these gifts.

The post What did I expect this beautiful mess to look like??? appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

If you’re hoping for another funny story about flying with all our boys, you are sort of in luck. 😉 This photo is us waiting at baggage claim at 11:30 pm, filing claims for lost luggage–on New Year’s Eve. Happy New Year to us! Hang with me, this is a long one…

Upon our arrival to the South, we realized we were missing a bag. We reported it, and 10 days later, that bag was still missing. That’s unusual. Airlines are usually pretty good at getting your suitcases to you. If you live close enough, they’ll even drive it to your house.

Let me tell you, after spending 5+hours on an airplane with your children, the very last thing you want to do is spend an extra hour and a half more in the air port upon arriving. At least in Atlanta we had family there helping us. As we waited there for our suitcases to get on the belt, I spotted an employee standing with a BIG empty cart. Not like the little ones that hold two suitcases. This was like the kind you get at hotels.  I said, “Oh, man, that is what we need.”

“You want it?” he asked.

“How do you get one of those??”

“Oh, I just put your bags on here for you and take them to your car, and you can just tip me.”

What!!  How had we not known about this??!! Happiest moment! Oh, it is the little things!!!

“Oh my goodness. Yes!! We have 15 bags!!!”

Fast forward to the return trip. It was a LATE night trip.

By the time we landed in San Francisco on NYE, we had to wake our children up, and do the major production that we do to complete the miracle of flight: deplane. I can’t even begin to explain why this is hard, so let’s just move on.

We got out. It took us all 30 minutes to use the bathrooms. We got almost to baggage claim, when all our talk about the coughing, influenza kid that we were sitting in front of on the plane, made us sure that we should stop and wash the boys’ hands again.  Was that really what happened, Alan? I don’t remember. It was 11pm. We were barely functioning. I definitely remember that we made someone rewash their hands. I just am not completely sure why, but there went another good 10 minutes for some reason.

We walked across the airport the wrong direction, to realize our luggage was a mile in the opposite direction. Gates were going down, employees were leaving, and we hadn’t even picked up our suitcases yet: 7 of them, plus 2 car seats.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that, yet again, another duffel bag did not make it. At least this time it was the baby’s suitcase, rather than the ELECTRONICS suitcase that went missing the first time. Sorry ya’ll, but I will be flying with expensive electronic equipment again never.

We have now ordered a new video baby monitor. We figured we’d never see that suitcase again, and it could also help me watch Caleb at night for seizures. (That’s another story for tomorrow’s blog…)

It took 20 minutes to get the claim written for the second bag and another half hour to write the claim for the still missing 1st bag, which had apparently never actually been reported. Thank you, Atlanta.

Ok. I think You should know that I probably exaggerate time frames because by 11:20 or so we had finally made it outside, and there were no shuttle buses at all. I called the hotel. We were in the wrong place……back to hiking around with our 15 suitcases.

No really. 7 large. 2 car seats. 8 carry-ons, a double stroller, and a baby.

We spotted what looked like our shuttle and dashed to it in relief.

“No, I don’t go to that hotel. Actually I go to blahablahblah….” the driver informed us. Nooooooo!

So we kept hiking and looking hiking and looking…there!  We see it! It’s coming!!  And it zoooooomed right past us. It’s almost midnight. That was the last run of the night, and Dude didn’t even stop.

We had made it through an entire day of traveling. We had converted to central time, so for us it was actually almost 2am. 2.a.m.

The baby didn’t cry. Daniel didn’t melt down. The boys were fine.

I was not. This is the point where I got reeeeeeal whiny. Noooooooooo!

Alan got on the phone with the hotel, and we got the driver back. Alan managed to get me on the shuttle without me chewing out the driver, and that was an accomplishment in itself.

At check in, they informed us that our Silver Club Level (like frequent flyer miles for hotels…Thank you, Cross Country Road trip), entitles us to FREE breakfast on the 14th floor. Yes!

The boys and I headed to the hotel room, and Alan headed to our minivan. There was a moment where I was afraid that I actually rang in 2015 in my hotel room with the bellhop, while Alan was still downstairs getting the ‘pack and play’ out of our van. Then I realized the hotel room clock was just fast, so I am so happy to report that at 12 am Pacific time, I kissed all four of my children and my husband. (And just to be clear, I did not kiss the bellhop.) 🙂

This will be a wonderful year. 🙂 I have HIGH hopes.

Let me tell you what happened today:

-JD woke me up at 1am. We have tried everything. Literally everything, so let’s not discuss this any further.

-Daniel woke me up at 5am and said, “My stomach hurts. I need some milk.”

“Daniel, if your stomach hurts, you don’t need milk. You can have water, and maybe you need to pee.”

“No me go pee. Me need water.”

“Okay. Here you can have mine.” Daniel climbed into our bed, and I rolled over to Alan and said, “I think Daniel is about to throw up.” People who guzzle water and say their stomach hurts always throw up.

Somehow Daniel managed to wait until 8am to begin the barfing.

We had some rough moments today, and I might have sort of lost it at one point, but I never did apologize to the children. We’ll come back to that later.

Early on, the phone rang. “Are you missing a suitcase?”

I felt like that man on the milk commercial, you know the Aaron Burr expert. His mouth was full of cookies, and the radio contest calls with an Aaron Burr question, but he can’t answer because he has no milk!!?? Remember???  So funny.

Anyway. I had JD holding one leg and screaming, and Daniel crying to watch “Paws Patrols” on the other leg. This was before Daniel barfed big time and I quarantined him in his room. I could barely make out the words on the other end of the phone, but I got the gist.

Don’t worry. I managed to speak.

“YES!!  YES!!!  We do! We did!”
“Can you describe the contents of the bag?”

“Oh ho yeah buddy. Hundreds of dollars worth of video equipment and a baby blanket!!!!”

dingdingding

The suitcase was found in Atlanta, 16 days after our flight. Isn’t that something?

“This is great!!! Thank you!!!”

I called Alan around 3pm. After a day of cleaning up puke and teaching school, I needed this to be an early day. Thankfully, Alan is in a much less stressful place right now than last semester, so he was able to be home early today.

I dashed off to the beach. First, I did such a poor job of parallel parking that I finally gave up and paid the $1.50 to park. Boo. My walk was nice, but kind of ho hum. Have I become spoiled??? I prayed about my problems, especially about the way I panic, or “freak out” too easily.

God told me I need to learn to depend on him more. Rather than panic, take a deep breath and pray about the problem.

Now, just in case anyone is new here: I don’t mean the audible voice of God, just that God speaks to my heart, my spirit if you will. Christianity is not a religion. It’s a relationship. It’s about having a relationship with God.

I got back to my van. I took my jacket off. I was hot. I cleaned out the pockets back into my purse. That’s when I realized that my identification was missing!!! What! I wanted to cry.

I retraced my steps back to the beach. I had walked a looooong way. I was so furious with myself for having put that ID card in my pocket and then not knowing it had fallen out. I looked and looked. I panicked a little. I prayed and prayed and looked and looked, but there was no sign of it.

I was very shaken. I drove home disappointed in myself, and disappointed in God. Why hadn’t he answered my prayer? Then I remembered about how I’d panicked and lost it with the children when they were all four hammering me at once this morning with their needs. I had never gone back and apologized, and I do believe that sin hinders our prayers. The Bible has a lot to say about reconciling with those that you have offended.

I prayed that my ID would fall into the right hands. Maybe I would still get it back.

I knew God was saying, “I got you back your suitcases. Why can’t you calm down and trust me with your ID?”

I went home, told Alan my problem, and walked straight over to the boys. I told all three that had seen my melt down from the morning, “I am so sorry. All four of you needed me at once, and it was just too much for me to handle, and I lost it. I am so sorry. You know that is not how I want to be. Please forgive me. Next time I start to raise my voice, I want you to touch my arm and tell me, ‘Mom, you’re starting to yell.'”

They all nodded and jumped to other topics. I walked straight to the kitchen to clear things off for pizza. I kept praying that the ID would fall into the right hands. The doorbell rang. We figured it was the pizza.

Nope.

It was the police. “Someone found your ID on the beach. Here you go.”

Excited doesn’t begin to describe it.  Thank you, God. We have a God we can depend on, and thank you to the kind stranger who handed my ID into the police. SUPER thank you! And thank you to the police man, who drove that card straight to my house. He arrived less than 10 minutes after I did.

So now you see why I am feeling unusually optimistic about this year, even if I do spend tomorrow cleaning up puke…hope I don’t end up hating myself for eating all those Christmas clearance cookies….

The post A God We Can Depend On appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Sometimes I feel so blue

I don’t know what to do

Go to my room and pray

Sometimes I forget to listen

God always has something to say

I open my Bible and read

I promise He tells me to make coffee

Yes! Why didn’t I think of this–yummy!

Exactly what I need!

I go downstairs and see them

All sitting so sweetly in their chairs

Their faces so sweet and chubby

Their hearts so clean  and innocent

Their hands so rough and dirty

I love them so much, how could I ever be blue?

I make my coffee and smile in sweet reverie

Then of course they bombard me with their merriment

And a thousand requests for snacks and for tea

I love it. I do. My heart floods with glee

My God, with four little boys has blessed me!

🙂 Yes, of course, I wrote it myself, why do you think it has no pattern?  haaaa!

The post When I’m Feeling Blue: A Poem on Motherhood appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Off and on for the entire month of June, our family has been in the process of tackling this cross-country move. There has been stress, travel, excitement, anxiety, and a whole lot of “we’ll see when we get there.”

Oh, and by the way, ‘this process’ won’t even be somewhat-finished until the first week of August, when we finally move into our new house, and our household goods arrive. In the meantime, we spend a lot of time crashing at our parents’ houses and sleeping in hotels. Alan is actually living in a hotel right now, and while his classes haven’t started yet, there is already a lot of preparatory work to do. Hang in there, Honey!!

There’s one question that kept coming up, as we packed up our things, drove across the country, and went house hunting.

“But where are your children??”

We felt so funny without them that we would feel the need to tell people who didn’t care at all, “It’s not normally just us. We do have kids–four boys, but they are in Alabama with our parents while we work this transition.”

This past Sunday we visited a church in our new area, and as we walked in, just the two of us (so weird!) to ask where to go, we knew they were looking us over to decide which Sunday School class to send us to. The nice ‘welcome committee’ lady decided the “class with several young military couples” would be best. As Alan and I headed up the stairs to this class that the powers that be had specially selected for us, we both were thinking, “oh no, they don’t know the real us!!  What if they think we are younger than we are? What if this is more of a college/career/newlywed type group when we are the embodiment of the ’30s/parenting class?  They think we are young and free.”

We feel very much the opposite of young and free. Parenthood just does that to you. Don’t you think? Or is that just us? Either way, we feel busy and responsible all of the time. At the back of our minds, we are always crunching nap and feeding schedule and checking diapers. We are the kind of couple that can’t name any of today’s t.v. sitcoms or top 10 recording artists. Can you?

Thankfully, the Sunday School class turned out to be perfect. We were in our little military community, and it was a small class. Almost all of the people in there were also parents. It was a match. Phew!

…….Meanwhile…..the kids…..

The second week of June, the oldest three boys stayed with Alan’s parents, and we let JD stay with us. This worked out just fine. JD even got us all to himself for once.

Alan’s parents were wonderful. They drove up and met Alan halfway to get the boys, and they kept them busy, happy, and well fed. What more could you ask for? The boys got to go to a museum, visit their great-grandparents, their cousins, ride the lawnmower/golf cart thing, go to the movies, and do a ton of slip-n-sliding! Nonna worked so hard at keeping them from over-doing the electronics, as she knows how that bothers us. I felt bad about that, Nonna. I totally should’ve told you the “what happens at Nonna’s stays at Nonna’s philosophy” before your week so you could have felt less pressure.

I can honestly say that while we felt sad for them having to say good-bye to their friends, we were never the least bit worried about them because we knew Nonna and DaddyO were taking such good care of them.

Our boys go, non-stop, all day, so this is a job. DaddyO said the very first morning he barely opened one eye, sometime around 5am, and there was Caleb, just standing by his bed. Caleb whispered, “You know, it’s morning outside.”

They wake up early, and it doesn’t matter how late you keep them up at night, they wake up early.

We reunited with the boys after that week, spent a few days with our family in Alabama, and then hit the road again, this time leaving all four with my parents.

Mom and Dad, I never worried. I knew ya’ll would be just fine. I still cannot believe ya’ll braved the zoo in the Alabama heat with all four boys, but I am amazed.

Mom had the added difficulty of JD’s night time plans…

I hate to even admit this, but JD still wakes up one time a night for a bottle. I know. It’s a little depressing. He slept through the night for a few months there, and then that was over. I’ve tried lots of different things to change it, but the fact is that he wakes up for the calories, and if you fail to provide them at the one wake-up, he will just keep waking up every hour until you do, so we just go in armed with an 8 oz bottle.

Thankfully, this is our 4th baby, so while this would have caused us great stress with the first baby, this doesn’t even register in the ‘problem’ category at this point. At JD’s 1 year well baby appointment, they asked how he sleeps, and I said, “He wakes up once each night for a feeding.” The first nurse explained to the new nurse-in-training, “That’s normal at this age.”

Thank you!!  Would someone please publish this for all new mothers who feel like they are failing because their baby has to have a midnight bottle? It’s normal. Just normal.

However, it does make the job harder, so I felt bad for my mom!!! She persevered. THANK you, Mom!!!! Oh, and there were a lot of rainy days, so thank you Mom and Dad, for handling all of the sibling conflicts. I did not miss that! The boys carried on their slip-n-slide fun at my parents’ house too. This will go down as the slip-n-slide summer.

The boys also went to an aviation museum (which was a huge hit with all four), as well as the library and the toy store. Between both sets of grandparents, Joshua, Caleb, Dan, and JD have had all the indoor lounging, video gaming, day trips, ice cream, and summer fun that anyone could ask for. I feel like my ‘bring the summer fun’ job is done for the year. Thanks ya’ll!!!

I know. We really do have the best two sets of parents ever.

***********

Daniel is hilarious!

So today I was pushing Daniel on the swing outside, and we had this really great talk:

Me: Daniel, you are so precious. You know that? You are just so adorable and sweet and precious.

Daniel: …..talking softly…..no idea what he said….but smiling really really big

Me: I love you, Dan. I love you.

Dan: I love you, Mommy. …more soft talking…I want to go to your house.  *****(He’s always called our house ‘mommy’s house’. I don’t know what that says about me, but that’s what he calls it….)*****

Me: Oh, Dan, we will. We are all going to go to a new house. We are going to have a new house, with new rooms. You will have a new room. I will have a new room. Your brothers will have a new room. It’ll be really great.

Daniel: I have troubles too. *Brother hit me, at the door, right there.

What a smart boy! Never underestimate your children!!

*name omitted

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