Life with Isaac (or why I haven't posted in more than two weeks!)

For any of you mothers of two year old boys out there, you know what I mean by the title of this post. My son is a great big ball of energy. He never stops. Ever. In fact I hear him running from room to room upstairs right now, and he's only been up 10 minutes. In fact, I need to see what he's doing. Be right back. . . Okay now everyone is safely downstairs eating poptarts and watching Handy Manny. I might have 15 minutes to finish writing this. Maybe.

Now don't get me wrong. I love my son. He is hilarious. He is just also exhausting. I have compiled some pics to show you what typically happens during the course of a few days at our house.

Isaac locked himself in Kalista's room and was too quiet. When I found him, this is what he looked like!

Isaac loves getting out daddy's cold running gear and putting them on. "My govs, my hat!" is all we hear. . .

Before giving him anything to draw with, I always ask him "Where do we draw?" "On paper," is always his answer. I guess he thought his face was made out of paper. . . Thank goodness for washable markers!

Even at bedtime, it can take him an hour or more to settle down and go to sleep. Last night, for example he was singing "Happy Birthday" at the top of his lungs. When I went in to tell him to go to sleep I asked whose birthday it was. "My giraffe!" He replied. Next we got a very loud rendition of "Jingle Bells". This pic was during his take his diaper off phase, which reappears every couple weeks or so. . .

Enough about funny little boys! The rest of us are doing great. Erin and I celebrated our 7th anniversary on Sunday. We both agreed that we don't feel like we've been married that long, but we feel like we've been parents forever!

Kalista had a great week at school. We had our Thanksgiving Feasts both days and she got to make Native American headbands, and necklaces. And then of course enjoy her feast of Go-Gurt and Applesauce! Isaac loved all the real feast food and pigged out on everything!

I will end with a very sweet Kalista story that reminds me how thankful I am. Last week Kalista was saying her prayers and I was helping her out. Towards the end, I said "Thank you for letting us learn about God and Jesus today at church." After we said "amen" Kalista looked at me and said, "You know mom, next time you should just say thank you for letting us learn about YOU and Jesus, cause we were talking to God!" I was taken aback. I had consciously used God so she wouldn't loose context, but apparently she understands perfectly that when we pray we are talking to God! It amazes me that we can learn so much from little ones who are so close to God. How they can understand that Dora and Diego are pretend, but God who they can't see is real just shows how He can reveal Himself to us if only we let Him!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The Halloween Season

It all started the Saturday before Halloween when Erin and I hosted a party. Really there were just four couples sitting around in costumes playing board games and laughing like crazy. No kids were allowed and we had a lot of fun. Erin and I liked to dress-up in some sort of a couple theme. He has a great Forrest Gump outfit, so I got to be his Jenny.

Then we had Fall Harvest Fest at church on Sunday night. No pics, since I forgot my camera at home, but the kids had lots of fun playing the games, making pillows, and decorating treat bags (not to mention all the cookies they ate!)

Next on the agenda was Pre-school Party day! (or days, since my kids go to both sessions) Kalista kept it easy for me and dressed up as the same thing both days (Bride Ariel). I thought this was a good compromise since we had to talk her into Dorothy and not a Disney princess for the actual Halloween night. Check out the wig. It was so heavy it kept falling off, but she loved it! Isaac being his usual happy go lucky self, didn't care and just wore his lion costume all week long. He really got into roaring when he had it on.

That finally takes us to the actual event of Halloween night. Kalista was really excited, especially when Maw-Maw showed up (my mom) to go trick-or-treating with us. And surprise, surprise she dressed up with our theme too! This all came about from a phone call Kalista had with my dad about 2 months ago where she told him what we were being for Halloween. Now Wizard of Oz is my dad's favorite movie of all time and Kalista knows this, so she told him that he could dress up too and that he could be a flying monkey and Maw-Maw could be the witch. "The good witch, Glenda?" he innocently asked. "No, the mean, ugly one with a green face," Kalista answered. Well, my dad just thought that was hilarious, so he told mom, who being a very good sport obliged!

This last picture was just a really good one of the kids with some of our pumpkins. Erin always does a nice job of carving them.

One last story to share. . . As we were walking around Nancy's neighborhood (after stopping by the Henley's fabulous Open House) with some other friends of ours from church, the kids (they have a 3 1/2 year old girl) were having a hard time remembering all the things they had to say at each house (trick-or-treat, thank-you, etc.), so one of the adults would try to remind them as they were waiting for the door to open. Isaac, being much shorter, would always arrive a bit late, but was still trying to keep up. At one particular house he got there just in time to put his bucket out as I was saying "What do you say?" Emma and Kalista immediately responded with "Trick-or-treat" as the lady was filling their buckets. Isaac, being third in line, piped in with "I want some too!"

We're off to see the Wizard!

I hope everyone had a happy Halloween yesterday. We all had a lot of fun. I'll post more pics later, but here's one of the family!