brotherly love

i know, 3 posts in one day, i just had to share this...

we set this up for caleb, and owen decided he loved it-



but we put his little brother in it, and this is what happened...








yikes! jealous, much?

Partaaay

Nathan and i both had wonderful weekends and a crazy week, so i thought I'd sum them up...

I flew to Florida on Thursday for the fabulous surprise birthday party for my mom. It turned out to be so great! She says she has no idea... But who knows :) my sister and April and i spent lots of time working on the scrapbook, getting pics for the slideshow, etc. April made incredible cupcakes and dad order barbecue for the meal. We had it at my uncle stans house, which is on the beach and goooorgeous. April decorated the tables. She's good, real good. People flew in from everywhere to see her... Georgia, alabama, Texas, even California! Caleb and i surprised her, along with her best friends from high school, and lots of her texas buddies. It was a total success! Here are a few more pics of the event.







Nathan went to denton for the weekend to hang with his fam, and Owen went with him. He got to go to rangers game and got to hang with his buddy Andrew. The car broke down on nathans way to Denton, in the middle of fort worth traffic, in the pouring rain! Owen did ok though. $600 later our car is fixed. Dangit!

When we both got back home, owen got super sick. His temp was almost 104. Not good. We took himto urgent care and he has a throat virus. He was miserable, and there aren't antibiotics for this virus, so he had to tough it out. He did great. Caleb is good but still tends to get fussy in the evenings. I'm gonna stop dairy for a few weeks to see if that helps.

Everything else is dandy. Still trying to eat a semi-organic diet. Nathan is starting to work a lot more and the ministry is rolling. Life is good in Austin!
Here are a few pics for your viewing pleasure.

Be jealous, you should be

Of my garden, that is. And if you're not jealous, then I'll give you a home-grown pepper in a few months, and you will be! Nathan and i have wanted a garden since we lived in Louisville. When we moved into our house in Austin, we found giant beds lining every inch of the yard out back. And since nathans good friend from High school is an organic farmer and gave us seed, we planted our own garden! It was a ton of work. We planted once and dang hurricane Alex drowned everything but our tomatoes and a few squash. So, ive been planting again. The tomatoes, peppers, and squash are done, and tomorrow i plan on finishing the cantaloupe and watermelon. Here are a few pics of before and after. And a few of my little seedlings starting to sprout.

ps- i cant get the pictures to work right, so the "before" pictures are actually after the "after" ones, but i think you get the point!








Babys waking up, I'll blog more later!

Food for thought

Ok, nathan and I are going to start eating better. Don't get me wrong, we aren't going crazy strict organic (yet...?), but we have decided to really start thinking about what we are putting into our bodies. This entire thought process was started when we had dinner with our farmer friends, neysa and Travis. After leaving their jobs/schooling in Boston for the life of farming, they have come to know quite a bit about food and the food industry! Neysa recommended a book, in defense of food by Michael pollan, that i just started reading a few days ago. It has completely changed the way i see food and our common grocery stores. Again, we aren't going crazy strict organic, but after learning how the food industry works, I'm just not super confident about what's in lots of the "food product" that i normally purchase. We don't plan on being food snobs and will enjoy our brownie sundaes, but as for our daily meals, I'm going to attempt to make organic, whole food meals. I may have to look up some new recipes, but I'll enjoy it! We made our first trip to our organic grocery store today, and we had a lot of fun! It should be an adventure, but at least we'll fit in better with all of the local hippies, right?

Yikes

I've been out of the blogging loop for far too long. But i guess having a baby is a good excuse. And now that he is six weeks old and I'm released to do whatever I want again, i guess the blogging can resume. So much has happened in the last six weeks, please forgive me for skimming over the details in order to fit everything in. In fact, i may write a few blogs, in order to spare the blogging world of serious boredom. And since our laptop is at best buy being repaired, I'm using the iPad to write... Which means there will be no pictures or videos. Just plain old words. Super boring!

Caleb is an outstanding baby. I truly cant believe how great he is. I was so uptight when Owen was born, constantly trying to get him on schedule, always wondering if he was ok. I haven't even thought about a schedule with caleb, because he is sleeping so well at night! Eventually i will work out naps and all, but its incredible how great he is at night, which allows me to be more lax about his schedule during the day. Owen is a wonderful big brother. He kisses caleb and helps me a lot. He has his moments, thats for sure. But overall, things are outstanding!

Nathan and i moved to Austin on June thirteenth and have been getting situated since then. We love our home, our neighborhood, and the city of Austin. We are also moving forward with the church plant, which is the real reason we are here. Nathan has weekly staff meetings, we had a big church gathering last week, and things continue to progress. We will start having Sunday morning worship soon, which is so exciting! We are being challenged to live more missionally in our daily lives, to really grasp and understand the gospel. And we get to work with some pretty awesome people too! I'm actually going to start a blog soon for our ministry, but want to wait until i can upload pictures. I'll be sure to let everyone know what it is!

Not much else going on around here. We are continuing to figure out life with two baby boys, getting used to the new house, and still raising support. Oh also, we have decided to eat better! Hmm, I'll start a new blog for that.

Sprinklers

Heres a quick video of daddy and Owen playing in the sprinkler :)

OUTNUMBERED

who would have thought that id be so outnumbered in my own house! a husband, 2 baby boys, and a male dog. one day we'll get another female in here. but we wont even start thinking about that for a looooong time! :)

i would apologize for not blogging sooner, but i think i have a pretty good excuse. life with 2 babies is a tad different than life with one! and we are preparing to move to austin, so its getting a tad hectic. not really, life is really good. but things are definitely changing. so here is a quick rundown of the past few weeks-

i went in for my c-section on friday at 6am. the spinal went great (the part i was most nervous about), and caleb was born at 8:20am. they didnt get around to giving me my pain meds till a while after the surgery, so i was in quite a bit of pain there for a bit. but, once i got amped up on morphine and vicodin, i felt great! caleb is a WONDERFUL baby. he has brown hair and dark eyes, the complete opposite of owen! when owen was born, my mom said "my babies looked just like that!" and this time, when caleb was born, nathan's mom said the exact same thing! its so crazy how genetics work. both of my babies are precious, and represent their parents well! :)

my mom, dad, sister, aunt marla, and stacy all came to texas to visit. it was so wonderful having them here! nathans parents and family were also tremendous! the birth this time was SO different than owens birth in louisville. this time, we had CONSTANT family and friends at the hospital. i loved it! though at one point, i remember being super drugged and everyones faces were kindof spinning. not too sure how that worked out for everyone else there.. :)

we have been home for over a week, and caleb is just TOO good. he has slept through the night since day one. verrrry weird. people are praying for me, and thats a fact! he eats every 2-3 hours, but sleeps all night inbetween. in a few days ill start working him toward a schedule. he is so wonderful though. owen had a quick episode of jealousy for a few days, but seems to have gotten over it. hes a tad more fussy than usual, but itll pass. hopefully..

welp, we're moving to austin in 10 days and we cant wait! nathan and his buddies are moving all of our stuff down this weekend, then we'll make the offical move next weekend, after evans wedding. we love our house and cant wait to get there! itll take a while to get adjusted, but im READY! we already bought a baby pool to put in the backyard, and a waterhose, so owen will be 100% entertained. he LOVES being outside and LOVES water. and i LOVE him :)

not much else going on around here. nathan has been my bestest friend through all of this. he has taken care of owen and caleb so much, i almost feel like the transition to 2 babies has been too easy for me! what would i do without him? id be a wreck! he takes owen and titus on a walk at the park every morning before he goes to work, so i can sleep. and he takes owen swimming every afternoon so i can get a break! i mean really, hes amazing.

here are a few pics i thought id share, though im sure everyone has seen them on facebook. not sure when ill get around to blogging again, but ill try my best!