Redneck Fireworks

Fireworks are illegal in our city, so Shane ran up to the store hoping to at least find some sparklers for the kids. Nope. So this was what he came home with.

Step #1: Put dry ice in water bottle


Step #2: Fill with water


Step #3: Cover your ears!!


Step #4: Put the lid back on & throw it over the fence


Step #5: Squeal with delight!!!


He had a little too much fun with it. I keep telling him that knowing how to make dry ice bombs doesn't make you a scientist. Yes folks, he's preaching on Sunday.

Camp Photo Shoot

All camped out???

Almost, but not yet!

Tomorrow's our last full day, and this momma's about wiped out! It's been a while since I've spent every waking moment of every day with all three kids. I mean, even when we're home they're all doing different things in different rooms. It really has made their personalities stand out to me even more this week.

SETH ~

He is our thinker. He has such a grasp on the realities of life at such an early age. Here are a few conversations from the past few days...

In the golf cart...

Kallie: If we hit that squirrel we'll have to take it to the veterinarian.
Seth: You don't take wild animals to the veterinarian.
Kallie: Why?
Seth: They just die.

Later on in our cabin the conversation continued...

Seth: (to Kallie) Life is never perfect. Life is never the same. You have to deal with how it goes. Mom, maybe Kallie will understand that when she's five??

He also spent a while yesterday telling me what a great mom I am. He said that I'm the only mom he'll ever have and he's glad it's me. He gushed like that for most of the day. So sweet. I let him sleep in my bed that night. I know, I'm a sucker.

He is such a good big brother to Luke. He really watches out for him. Here they are in their matching pajamas.



KALLIE~

She is our social butterfly. She met a little girl named Ella here at camp who is her age. Kallie's primary concern each day is what Ella is doing. They are instant best friends. At dinner tonight they declared that since they both have blonde hair and blue eyes, they are sisters.

Kallie is my easy child. She is LOW maintenance. She is happy to go with the flow. Unlike Seth, she really has no grasp on reality, but that's okay. She's happy in her world. In her world you take the "runned over squirrel" to the veterinarian to make him all better. Who wouldn't want to live in a world like that?



LUKE~

He is non-stop energy. Luke goes full speed ahead from the moment he wakes up until the moment he goes to bed. I literally cannot take my eyes off him for 5 seconds, or he would be gone. He runs away as fast as he can and never looks back. He jumps and skips everywhere & plays in every dirt pile he can find.

He is a total maniac in the pool. Several times today he jumped in before I was ready & went straight under. He loved it.

He sleeps as hard as he plays. It has been amazing to me how easily and happily he goes to sleep here. We're all in the same room, and he goes right to sleep in his pack-and-play while the kids are still up and the lights are still on. He gets tired and says, "Want night-night...rock you." It is the sweetest. I think it's especially sweet to rock him because he never stops once during the day. I love being the one he finally stops for.

This was at the late-night dodgeball tournamant after he'd played in the dirt a while. He picked up a piece of grass and posed for the camera.

I've got lots of cute videos to post, but the internet connection here moves about as fast as the cafeteria line, so I think I'll just wait to upload those once we're home.

Happy Birthday Nana!!!

You may be wondering why Nana's birthday message was filmed inside the car. That's because we were on hour 6 of our trying-to-get-to-youth-camp adventure! And let me tell you, there were highs and lows.

A few of the lows...

-Packing for a whole family for a week at camp took HOURS. I found the kids all sitting in their seats in the van (that was still parked in the garage) as I was about halfway finished packing.

-Meltdown #1 occured when Seth realized he'd lost his charger for his PlayStation Portable.

-This required a trip to Walmart.

-While we were at Walmart Luke lost one of his crocs. (Okay, they were $7 Target fakes, but they were new.)

-We all traipsed back through Walmart looking for it, which made everyone even crankier & sweatier.

-Walmart, of course, didn't carry the charger we needed, so we had to go to Fry's. More whining & sweating. Luke went in barefoot.

-Meltdown #2 occured when Seth dropped half of the food off his tray in the camp cafeteria line. Although I think this meltdown had been brewing for several minutes as Seth inventoried the food on his tray that didn't quite meet his standards.

-And finally, meltdown #3 occured when an under-napped Luke realized his new crocs had given him blisters.

And a few of the highs...

-Since the kids were so excited to leave for camp, I decided to drive through McDonald's, get them all kids meals, and then park the van back in the garage while they ate & I finished packing. Don't worry, the van was off. They enjoyed their van/garage picnic.

-As we walked out of Walmart for the second time, sweaty and defeated, Kallie spotted the missing croc underneath the van. Woo-hoo!!!

-We highly enjoyed our first mini-road trip in our NEW VAN! We are sooooo excited to have a van with rear air & power side doors. The kids are no longer roasting in the back seat.

-The camp food was actually really yummy. (I happen to love camp food. Hey, it's a hot meal & I don't have to cook it or wash the dishes afterwards.)

-Seeing Luke & Kallie snuggled up in bed together watching Elmo & eating apples was pretty cute. They were so content.

-I got to rock Luke to sleep on the front porch of our cabin as we listened to the crickets and watched the full moon.

-And right now, I'm watching all three of my kids sleeping at once. It's been a long time since they've been asleep in the same room.

MORE EXCITING CAMP ADVENTURES TO COME!

No cute pictures...just some thoughts from today...

Well, I have decided to follow Melissa's lead and brag on my husband for a minute.

Today was our graduation service at church. Shane always preaches for graduation Sunday, and it is always such a sweet service. Today was no exception. In fact, Shane didn't just preach, he BROUGHT IT. It is such a privilege to be married to man who doesn't care at all what anyone thinks of him compared to what His God thinks of him.

He asked me early on in the week to begin praying for the Lord to show him exactly what he should say. It was so important to him to make sure that they weren't just his words and his thoughts, but that they were God's.

I, personally, know that he'd much rather be hanging out with a bunch of teenagers than preaching to a bunch of adults, but I really don't think you'd ever know it just listening to him preach.

In the fall he will begin his 11th year of youth work at this church. As I sat there today, I was amazed at what an honor it is to be able to actually see the fruit from this season of ministry. The average time for youth pastors to stay in one place right now is around 18 months. The group that graduated today is the fifth group of students that he's had the opportunity to work with from 7th grade all the way through 12th.

That really is amazing. And it's amazing the difference it makes for those students. It's such an investment in their lives. It's the opportunity for the parents to build a relationship with Shane long before their child enters junior high. It's the chance to help build a foundation in these students that will carry them straight into a life that is fully surrendered to Christ.

I really, truly am so proud of him. I'll be sure to post the link to his sermon once it's up on the website. I love you, Shane!

We've got a two-year-old in the house!

You know how you hear parents say things like...I just can't believe he's already two...how time flies!!? Well, I have to be honest and say that I really can't even remember what life was like without Luke. It feels like we've had him around forever! It baffles me that just a little over two years ago our family was Lukeless!

We had a fun little birthday party for him while my parents were here. Well, it was little if you count 14 kids as little! Luke decided to be shy for the first time in his life. He even crawled up in my friend Amanda's lap about halfway through the party and wouldn't get down.

We covered the tables with white craft paper & gave them markers, crayons, stickers & modeling clay. This is Luke & his buddy Noah.




Luke LOVES Elmo!! (or mo-mo, as he calls him) This was a bunch of cupcakes stuck together...isn't it cute? Messy, but cute.


He even blew out his candles in Amanda's lap.


This is Kallie's friend Connor. First, he colored all over his face with a red marker. Then he smashed the red cupcake all over his face & up his nose. Can you say Luke-in-two-years?!


He got out of Amanda's lap to open presents...


This picture makes me laugh. Luke looks like he's asking so politely.












He wouldn't eat a cupcake when everone else ate one. But after the party was over he wanted one. And he enjoyed it!


My parents gave him a rocking horse...


Luke is so full of life. You never forget that he's around. Here are some things about him at this age that I want to remember.

-He has just started watching tv. His favorite thing to watch is Elmo.
-He LOVES the Sesame Street songs, especially the one that goes, "Sing, sing a song. Sing out loud, sing out strong..." He makes me sing it to him at night while I'm rocking him. If I start to sing something else he puts his finger on my mouth and says, "NO! Sing song!"
-He plays with Kallie all day long. They love to pretend together. It's not unusual for him to have a baby in one arm, a purse on the other arm, and say, "Bye-bye Mommy!" and head for the front door.
-Oh, and he can open doors now. We often find him in the backyard by himself.
-Daddy is not thrilled with his newfound fascination for baby dolls. He loves them. He almost always is carrying around one of Kallie's babies or her giant Dora doll.
-He loves Dora too. He calls her "Woo-wah". It is quite the battle to get him to leave the giant Dora doll in the car when we're going somewhere.
-He loves to greet us with "Hi Daddy! Hi Momma!" and sometimes screams for me in the morning from his bed, "Mommy, ah-you??" (Mommy, where are you?)
-If he doesn't like or gets bored with his food, he plays with it. He smashes, crunches, smooshes, throws, and smears (usually in his hair).
-He is a climber. I find him on top of all of our furniture.
-He is VERY tough. Bloody knees...who cares!
-He has a strong will. Often his will is stronger than mine. Not good.
-He LOVES to be rocked at night. He says "rock you" to me as I'm getting him ready for bed.
-He loves to play outside.
-He tells us that he loves us spontaneously. "Mommy, i-yooooooo".
-He has a little boy haircut (as opposed to a big boy, layered haircut) and I love it.
-He sleeps soooooo good.
-He really is pure joy!

The story of the little girl with the broken arm...

Okay, I know it's driving some of you nuts that all of my posts are out of order! I'm sorry to report that I still have several more that I owe you, and they will not be in order either. But once I'm caught up, I plan to stay caught up!


Alright, so here's how Kallie broke her arm. She was in the living room and I was in the kitchen. Shane had just bought us a new Hoover Windtunnel vacuum cleaner. It was sitting out in the middle of the living room. Kallie was purposely balancing herself on the hose of the vacuum cleaner, and when it rolled she fell face forward onto the hardwood floor. It was such a loud fall that I went running from the kitchen, somehow knowing that she had to have hurt something. I scooped her up and quickly noticed that her little arm was curved. It was very obviously broken. Being the non-panicker that I am (ha!) I quickly gathered up all of the stuff we would need for the hospital & made arrangements for the boys to go to the Cuppett's. I think I was crying as much as Kallie. Shane warned me that it appeared to be a pretty bad break and that they would have to set it. Kallie was obviously crying alot at this point too.


So we went straight to Cook Children's Hospital (we've learned from past experience that when you try to go somewhere else, they just end up sending you to Cook's anyway...if it's a bad injury, that is) and the waiting room was packed. I signed her in and wrote something on the sign-in sheet like, "appears to be compound fracture, severe, CURVED" and they called us back within 5 minutes. The nurse in triage warned us that they would either have to put her to sleep to set it or they would have to do a conscious sedation. I was not feeling very brave at this point. Kallie, on the other hand, had stopped crying and was already talking about what color cast she was going to get.


They took us back to x-ray. The doctor finally came out and said that her radius was broken right in half, but luckily the other bone (what's it called?) was just fine. BIG sigh of relief. He also said that the break had a 15 degree angle to it, and they don't set anything under 20 degrees because they usually straighten out on their own. BIGGER sigh of relief! So she got a temporary cast that night and a hot pink cast that went all the way up her arm the next day.


She wore the pink cast for 3 weeks, and then she was able to get that one switched out for a short purple cast for the last 3 weeks. Now at least she is able to bend her elbow. She gets this one off on June 9th, just in time for summer!


Everywhere we go people ask her how she broke it. We have gotten so many funny looks from the response, "I fell off the vacuum cleaner." Since she's had her cast on she has fallen down the stairs head first, fallen out of several chairs, hurt her broken arm by running into things...I really don't know what to do with her. I don't know how to teach someone not to be clumsy. I'm afraid she gets it honest. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, read this. Anyway, we now have a both-feet-on-the-floor-at-all-times policy for all the women in our house.


This was in triage. Daddy made a splint out of cardboard and wrapped it for her. Did you know that if God didn't call him into ministry he would have been an EMT?



This was right before we went home. Cook's is so good...once Kallie got stickers & popsicles she pretty much forgot about her arm.



The long pink cast...



The short purple cast...

You can see by this picture that she is already breaking the both-feet-on-the-ground-at-all-times policy.

Bring on the summer!!!

We stayed home for Memorial Day & enjoyed some family togetherness! We had been invited to swim with some friends but had to decline because of Kallie's cast, so we decided to improvise & enjoy some backyard sprinkler fun! Daddy grilled ribs & sausage & we had chocolate cake...yum!



These two were big chickens & mostly just sat on the side & watched Seth...


Of course, Daddy had to antagonize them with the water hose...

So I'll dance with Cinderella...

I have to tell you, I had put off posting these pictures simply because we have been so busy, and now that I'm finally looking at them, they've taken on a whole new meaning. Please continue to pray for Steven Curtis & Mary Beth Chapman and their family. My heart has been so heavy for them this week.

Shane took Kallie to the "Cinderella Ball" while I was away on my ladies retreat last month. Kallie was soooooo excited about it! It took us a while to get her to understand that Cinderella herself would not really be there. (This was a charity event to support the Boys & Girls Clubs of Arlington). She wanted to look like Cinderella, so she wore a blue dress & the Cuppett girls put her hair up in a bun like Cinderella's. They enjoyed some father/daughter dancing, but Shane said she was sound asleep on him before the real dancing started.




Shane took her to Claire's in the mall to get some magnetic earrings. He had the boys with him too and said they were all quite the sight walking into Claire's together, double stroller & all. Apparently, when Kallie heard Shane ask the clerk about earrings, she assumed he was going to make her get her ears pierced and started bawling. It took a while to calm her down & convince her that the magnets wouldn't hurt, but once she understood she was so excited!


Shane said that she enjoyed the dancing, but her favorite part of the evening was the salad! This girl is such a rabbit!