Athens and Back!

Last week, the boys were in the Markham Woods church Vacation Bible School, and it was all about Athens and Paul's journey.  Each day they would come home, singing their little hearts out and telling us all about the journeys of Paul and what their daily snack was.  Why the snack you ask? (Other than boys just always being hungry!!!) - well, the leaders would be very clever about crafting some way in which the snack food was teaching them about God's love and there was an accompanying Bible verse that went with the snack.  It was all very cute, and made an impression on the boys.  The week ended with a Friday night program as always, and it just does a parent's heart proud to see the boys up there singing away, doing the actions and being praise to God in such a fun, joyful way.  The Markham Woods program is very well done, and is evidenced by how much the boys always love it and want to keep going back to VBS.  They lucked out this year (thanks to Miss Jenn!) who then signed them up for the Florida Hospital VBS program  for the week that we just ended.  They found that one to be just as exciting, and it was a different program than the Athens one, so it was all brand new as well.  Lucky ducks!

 

  Addison has decided this week that the army crawl is for babies, and she's no baby!  So, up onto all fours she goes and away she went!  Just magically one day she seemed to figure out how to keep herself up on the hands and knees and she is super fast!  She is definitely one determined little girl.  One funny little habit that we've noticed - she takes after her Mommy in one major way.  Amy has ALWAYS (since birth) liked to put her feet up in the air (usually up on chairs, dashboards etc).  She blames it on having short legs, but there is a picture of her as a baby with her feet up in the air as well.  Anyway, Addison has the same habit and is always putting her feet up on the table, or the carseat bar etc.  She has long legs, so not sure what the difference is! :)

 

10 months old!

Our dear friends Kent and Kelli have had their baby girl!  Elin (pronounced E-Lynn) was born on Thursday June 20th and weighed 6 lbs 9 ounces.  She looks much like her older brother Erik, and is a very good baby at this early stage! :)

 

 

Phrase of the week:  Kaleb emerges from his bedroom after bedtime one night, snuggles in beside Amy in the chair, and tells "Mommy, I've been thinking..... I'm not tired because my legs are hungry." as he rubs his legs very intently.  This from the child whom we have to urge to eat almost every single bite at certain meals.....and tell him to sit up....not drop his utensil on the floor....not get up to go to the bathroom!"  This child is going to waste away to skin and bones if we're not careful - apparently he's only hungry when trying to avoid going to bedtime! :)

New Frontiers

This is just a short update this week, as our life has been blessedly 'routine' (if one can call it routine to be living between two houses, trying to paint every day and pack to eventually move!!!).    The kids have been up to some new "tricks" so this is what we've dedicated this week's post to.

Trying out apple "Puffs" for the first time.  Big Brother Kaleb is a bigger fan than she is!

A huge fan though of ice water!  Yummy!

What could be more fun than pantry diving and pulling everything out!  Great fun!

The boys have recently become obsessed with a new game - this balloon pictured below has been around for weeks now, and they bat it back and forth in the family room, trying to keep it up in the air for as long as possible - falling all over each other and laughing uproariously.

Phrase of the week:  One evening, we had a family "clean-up" night during which Amy acted as the 'traffic cop' directing what needed to picked up and put where.  After the room was cleaned up, Zachary heaved a big sigh and said 'Why are you treating us like your slaves?'  The Z parents then went into a definition of what a slave was, and did that mean that we were slaves because we were always doing things for the boys???!!  He answered certainly "No", but had a bit of a time understanding the difference between being a slave and having Mom tell him a bunch of things to do!

Official Milestone Pictures - 7, 5 and 9 months!

A few weeks ago, we spent some time with Tim Putt to capture the kids at their official birthday pictures, with Zachary being 7, Kaleb being 5 and Addison of course at 9 months.  We split up the photo shoot between a Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon, and got some cute pictures of the kids.

Phrase of the week:  Zachary said to Amy:  "My taste buds are asleep."  Amy: "Why do you say that?" Zachary:  "Because they aren't working, I can't taste anything!"

Memorial Day Happenings

Memorial Day weekend was an extremely busy weekend for us - who would have thought that we would pack so much into one weekend!

We started off with taking Addison to Sabbath School (Zachary's) so that Miss Deanna could see how big she was getting.  The last time that we were able to take her regularly was when she was 6 months, so she's grown a lot since then!  She isn't as quiet as she used to be, but she thought that the kids were intriguing.  We ended with going over to Heather and William's to enjoy their pool, and for the ladies to plan upcoming events.  Even Addison got into the fun and dipped her little toes into the water!  Speaking of that, Addison has started swimming lessons this week with Coach Cheryl, who is a survival swimming instructor.  It'll take 4 to 5 weeks on average, and of course we know exactly what to expect after going through this with the two boys. Hopefully she'll love swimming just as much as they do, and will take after Kaleb who only cried for the first week (vs Zachary who cried the entire 6 week lessons!)

Hanging out with Miss Deanna in Zachary's Sabbath School classroom.

Hanging out with Daddy and Uncle William

 Miss Jennifer is making a fashionista out of Miss Addie - looking good there!

On Sunday, the Z-boys headed off to the beach with some friends, which was really fun for all.  They enjoyed the BEAUTIFUL weather (82 here in Orlando, so even cooler at the beach!), the waves, and even made an "aquarium" complete with jelly fish, crabs, small fish etc.  Thankfully no-one was stung by the jelly fish!

Crafting their aquarium

Amy held down the fort at home and continued packing, in hopes that someday we'll actually be able to move out of the house! :)

On Tuesday, Karis took the day off and they headed down with Jennifer to Legoland - the park and the water park!  They had a super good time, and Zachary's favorite thing was to do the "big boy driving school" with cars that actually had brakes and gas pedals!

Bergherms, Deacon and Maddix (visiting Bergherms from out of town) and Z boys

Enjoying some rest time at the water park

On Thursday, the boys and Miss Jennifer headed down to SeaWorld, where Karis joined them after he got off of work.  (Isn't Karis lucky that he has been able to join them on all of these escapades - Amy is looking forward to Addison turning a year old, when the nursing will stop, and Amy will have more freedom to join them as well!).  They had a blast at the new penguin ride which just opened up at SeaWorld.

A bit blurry, but you can make out the penguins behind them if you look closely - the black and white areas!

Random Pictures:

Zachary helping "catch" items that Daddy was taking out of the attic to move - big helper!



Zachary reading a bedtime story to Kaleb