Rock Star!

 A friend from AWANA had a rock star birthday party and the girls got all decked out!  We walked in on a red carpet and got to get tattoos, and hair color.  Then there was tons of candy including a pinata (I love the picture of Gloria whacking it)

 They ate and ate, a few moments after this picture Gloria also picked up a cookie.  She had a bite of my piece of cake and then woke up that night crying in her sleep that she didn't get her own piece of cake-sugar induced nightmare I guess!  But after I cut her off the sweets she was fine and probably consumed half a watermelon!

The gang of 5 were all there and this is them striking a rock star pose!  Rachel, Abby, Nita, Lydia & Avery. Birthday parties for them will change this fall as they will all be in different KGs.

Lydia's Performances

 
Lydia has been a busy girl these past months!  This is her church choir end of the year performance.  They did three songs before the big kids did a play about Daniel.

 This is her AWANA awards and small performance

 She also had a pre-K graduation!  They sang a song for every month and spelled some words and were super cute.  We will miss her wonderful teachers-Ms. Muriel and Ms Jill.  It was a great year!

 Caroline, Ellie, Abraham, Emily, Lydia, Mitchell, Chase, Lucas, Lauren-all the girls got along wonderfully so we are going to try and do a summer playdate.

The day of Gloria's in class recital, Lydia's class also had a parent's watch time.  She did wonderful but was so serious while performing so we got to talk about smiling before the big on stage performance...

Summer Fun

I am behind about 10 things in blog posts.  We are still here but summer has been busy (in a good way) and I am watching a tv series called Merlin on Netflix and that is taking up my computer time :).  But the summer will slow down and I'll blog about the beach, camping, recitals and more!

Love & War book

I read John & Staci Eldredge's marriage book.
First of all, I didn't agree with every sentence they said, but I do agree with the big points.  Also it took me a while to get out of my cynical self and jump into their larger than life world (which is also explored in Wild at Heart & Captivating) of danger and romance and beauty.
The couple team wrote this book and tell stories and thoughts both in the first person.  Their biggest advice in marriage is:
1.  Find life in God.
2.  Deal with your brokenness.
3.  Learn to shut down the spiritual attacks that come against your marriage.
They are huge into spiritual warfare and there are two chapters on fighting (against the devil and not each other).  The subtitle of the copy I read is Find Your Way to Something Beautiful in your Marriage but it could be Fight, because if one does everything they recommend, it would be a lot of work and time and effort (of course).
My favorite chapter was on the Shared Adventure.  Our life and our story is about something bigger than ourselves and that mission is part of marriage, but a line I love is that you just can't jump into the huge stuff (of glorifying God and 'saving' the world) without 'practice' in just enjoying each other and navigating life together.  That is really freeing to me who feels guilty for any trip that isn't a mission trip.
I need to reread this one and discuss with Caleb what we really would like to incorporate into our lives.  I highly recommend it (and not just because I received this book free in agreement to review it on my blog from Blogging for Books - WaterBrook/Multmonah)

~Belly Dance~

 A group of India ladies sold clothing at the Friendship Food Fair and they had children's sizes too!  The girls LOVED their outfits and when we got home they made this big plan to surprise Daddy with a dance in their new clothes.  Lydia said she wanted to not wear the undershirt (it should have a scarf to wear sari style but that part was missing).  I told her okay for at home but not out of the house.  Well she danced away while showing her belly.  At first I was thinking that while she has seen Indian ladies in real life in mid drift bearing outfits they are always appropriately mostly covered with their sari.  Then I started thinking about Jasmine (one of my friends, many years ago, said she wasn't going to let her children watch any cartoons with bellies showing-no Ariel!)

 ...and I realized that we do watch a good number of Bollywood (and pseudo Bollywood) music videos such as Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire.  Most Fridays we dance in the living to Friday by Rebecca Black and then Jai Ho featuring the Pussycat Dolls and yes featuring their bellies too!  Well Caleb and I were watchers on the couch while they performed their own rendition of Jai Ho!~

Cousin time!

We just spent the weekend with Matt and kids in Beaumont while Heidi was with family.  The weather was great and the kids played together wonderfully, but kept us busy so I forgot to take pictures except when it was time to leave and Gracie was already taking a nap.  We spent Sunday at church and Linda's, the rest of the time we played in the backyard (pictured) and it made me jealous for green grass and big trees, with the 5 dogs , we went to the park twice (Lydia's favorite part) ate a ton (jello being Gloria's favorite part) and played and played!

Fairy Houses

 A craft the girls made at Friendship was Fairy Houses-such a cute idea!  They brought them home and Lydia put some little dolls in as well and placed them in our front flower bed (not the back because the dog might get the fairies).  The next morning Lydia woke up early to check and see if any fairies had come yet.  They also made 'food' (see on the back table area) out of hummus, crackers and apple sauce!