the best ever reading of psalm 23

I love love LOVE this!

God is bigger than all of it!

Thanks for sending me this link, Tony!

Jonah's 1st Birthday!

We celebrated Jonah's 1st birthday last Friday morning, September 28th. We brought him downstairs and had his present under a big blue tablecloth.

I don't think Jonah boy really understood what was happening. I guess we have to give him some credit... he is only 1 and he's never had a birthday before. So Dada helped.

What's under there?

I'll help !

What IS it!?

Curious George riding a Bounce & Spin Zebra! Awesome!

Funny monkey!

This zebra is soooo fun!

Look at me! I'm a big one year old ridin' my zebra!



And finally, the pièce de résistance...

Can I Live

I just saw this video and it brought me to tears.



"We all need to appreciate life."

"Apple Picking" at Kuipers

We went to Kuipers today for an apple picking adventure.

We discovered when we got there however that they don't allow strollers in the orchard. We weren't about to carry Jonah through the orchard (he's about 24 pounds and quite squirmy at times) and we thought if we put him in a wagon he'd probably fall out...

So we decided to go the less adventurous route and "pick apples" in the store. Oh, we still picked our apples alright... just not directly off of the trees. They had pre-made 1/2 pecks in the store, but oh no! We hand-picked a variety of apples out of bushels. So at least we can say we did technically pick apples at Kuipers today!

Jonah wanted to help hold the apples when we were putting them in the bag. Little problem... after he got ahold of that bag he wouldn't let us take it away... not even to pay for them. What a good helper!

Here are some more photos of our mini-adventure... (you can see the rest here).

Jonah and mommy (and the apples)
Jonah and daddy (and the apples)Watch out for this crazy driver! Who can spot the typo?
Jonah, you have to wait until the vehicle comes to a complete stop before you get off!

tooth #10

I spotted tooth number 10 today when I was holding Jonah upside-down and tickling him. I feel like I could just copy and paste my report from September 4th. I think I will. I'll just replace "right" with "left"...

This one is coming in on the top left, but not the one right next to his top teeth. it's one more back.

eternal weekends and shredded tissue

Friday night I was complaining a little that Dave was going to be gone all day on Saturday (Andrew's bachelor party) and that it was going to be just like a weekday. Boo hoo. That's when Dave pointed out a great truth to me. Maybe instead of thinking of Saturday as a weekday, I should think of all of my weekdays as weekends. I get to be home with my boy.

I am so blessed.

I had a blast with Jonah today. He is such a good kid. Well, mostly. [wink]

I had gone into the kitchen to do something (can't remember what) when I heard a thump. Nothing major. It sounded like a kleenex box. When I get back to the living room I find Jonah sitting in front of the end table. Tissue in hand. Box toppled over next to him.


So I grabbed the box before he could snag another one, but I let him keep his tissue. What can I say, I'm a sucker for that widdle face. And I knew he was just dyyying to rip it up into a million pieces. Plus he's getting pretty good at not eating everything he touches lately. And if he did that would count as fiber, right?

So I let him play with his tissue. And here's what happened...

I just love those curious little hands.

Mama's on the floor with her camera... Charge!

The aftermath.

Wow! That was fun!

Ian Michael

Jonah got to meet his new little friend Ian yesterday. He thought Ian was pretty entertaining and kept squeaking at him, although the cats really stole the show. He kept following them around and barking at them... cats, dogs, what's the difference, right?

Here's Jonah and his little buddy. Can you believe what a difference 11 months makes!? I remember when Jonah used to have skinny little legs like that.
And of course since I had my camera with me I had to get some shots of little Mr. Ian...

"Dad, I'm ready for my first drum lesson. Oh wait. These sticks are as big as me." Look at that foot tappin' and hands movin' already...

Congratulations Mike & Karla!

Computer contest

Jesus and Satan were having an on-going argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering.

Finally fed up, God said, "THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will judge who does the better job."

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.
They moused.
They faxed.
They e-mailed.
They e-mailed with attachments.
They downloaded.
They did spreadsheets!
They wrote reports.
They created labels and cards.
They created charts and graphs.
They did some genealogy reports
They did every job known to man.

Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell.

Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off.

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.

Jesus just sighed.

Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming: "It's gone! It's all GONE! I lost everything when the power went out!"

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work.

Satan observed this and became irate.

"Wait!" he screamed. "That's not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don't have any?"

God just shrugged and said...

JESUS SAVES

jonah signing for food