Easter

Sorry it has taken me so long to get these pictures up on the blog, better late than never, right?

These two aren't from Easter, but are from the BR St. Patrick's Day Parade. We had beautiful weather and a lot of fun. The highlight for Caroline was seeing "Uncle Neal" on a float. He pummled us with beads and jello shots . . . crazy kids.

Caroline had her first Easter egg hunt of the season with Pa and Pearl in their neighborhood. She even found the "golden egg" and has an enormous bunny to show for that accomplishment.

We spent Good Friday in Slidell with Jeff's family. Once again, great weather and a good time with family. Caroline really loves the park in Slidell - and so does Jeff. We also had the experience of having two very loud trains pass by while we were at the park - Caroline loved it.





The second Easter egg hunt of the season was with friends of mine and their kids - here's Caroline showing her loot!

Of course the Easter Bunny visited our house and here's Caroline "finding" her basket of treats.

Yet another Easter egg hunt, this one was at church on Easter Sunday, right after service. In case you are wondering what we are doing with all of that candy, Jeff has brought a couple of gallon bags filled with chocolate to work to "donate" to his co-workers.

Caroline's Easter nap lasted about 15 mintues in the car . . .

And these last few are from Easter lunch with my Mom's family.

crunchy

On the way to school this morning Caroline was eating Wheat Thins, which she loves. I looked back at her when we stopped at a red light and saw that she was just holding a cracker in her hand, but not eating it. So, I asked, "Caroline, are your crackers good?" She replied, "Here Mama," handing me the bag of crackers and the one in her hand, "dat's too crunchy." I couldn't help but laugh; what must have been going through her little two year old head? I've never even heard her use the word "crunchy" before. She is such a little ray of sunshine.

Embarassing confession: I've watched the Celebrity Apprentice on and off this season and have grown to really like Trace Adkins (the embarassing part is that I've watched the Apprentice). I really like this song; Trace sang it last night on the finale, obviously, not to the Lion King video. But, Caroline recently got that movie from Jo Jo and loves it, so I thought it was appropriate.

Post-Easter thoughts

Here's a link to an article by Anne Rice from Newsweek. I'd like to pick up her newer books, but haven't yet. If you read through the comments, as a believer, they are pretty dis-heartening - so I stopped reading them, but the article itself is really good.

And here's another link to an article about how to glorify God while raising your children. This blog takes a pretty strong stand on theological matters, and I'm not sure whether I agree with him on any of it, but I don't have any arguments with the list! I think it is a good list of ways to glorify God in simply living - you could replace "children" with "friends", "parents", etc. and the list would apply well to those relationships as well. I suppose as a parent though the responsibility is more immense, so being intentional is that much more important.
(H/T: Evangelical Outpost)

I'm going to post Easter pictures soon - we had a great weekend and I hope each of you did too.

Caroline's big girl bed

I have to brag on Jeffrey; he made Caroline a beautiful "big girl bed" that she started sleeping in last night. She knew it had been in the plans for a while, and each time she would see him working on it she would say "dat's my bed, when I sleep in it?" Last night our girl got her chance, she was super-excited and it took her a while to fall asleep, but she did great in it and slept until 7:20 this morning (that is a big deal in my house). Check out Jeff's handy-work and Caroline's excitement below:

Mom's words as a song . . .

If you ar a mom, or have a mom, here's something that should give you a little laugh:

Thoughts for today

I have had a few thoughts running in my head today and I thought I'd go ahead and make a blog post out of them. Please note the random nature of each:

There aren't many TV show that I watch, but from the beginning October Road was one that peeked my interest. It really has a good concept and has that "Dead Poets Society", "A Separate Peace" feel to it: set in the Northeast, small college town, about a writer. But for some reason after I watch each episode this show gets on my nerves more and more. I can't stop watching it though. This show has a lot of potential, but the characters bother me; it is as though each one is a caricature of a real person. I guess that is what "characters" generally are, but the people on this show are so over the top that I can't stand it. Conversations sound so unnatural, I think the writers must sit around and try to come up with lines that all sound like something you'd want to quote. Nothing sounds like anything normal people would say. In this week's episode, they used the word "clobber" many times to describe one character being beaten up by a group (yes a group, and these people are supposed to be about thirty or so) of people. That brings up another thing, the characters act and talk as though they graduated from high school last year; it was at least ten years ago! Again, I am addicted to this show despite, or perhaps it is because of, how much it bothers me.

On to others matters. I love this website ! This post is an especially good one: Top Ten Grammar Myths , who knew?

This is silly. I have nothing against the Catholic Church - I have many friends and family members who are Catholic Christians. This kind of things seems like a lot of effort and hoopla over nothing. Sins don't need to be listed or updated; sin is missing the mark, plain and simple. To use an analogy from my work, when I write a contract, I have to very careful about making specific lists or references to only particular laws or ordinances because I run the risk of forgetting something, missing something that might happen that is not contemplated by the contract. I don't try to make a contract vague, but I am careful to either be certain I've considered everything that could possibly go wrong and the consequences of that, or to be as general as possible. Now, of course just because a church chooses not to "list a sin" doesn't mean God doesn't see it as sin, but the church then runs the risk of having its adherents look to the list to be sure they are measuring up. Besides not being Biblical, that sets its people up for a hard fall if the church misses something. Here's a link to a Catholic's take on it.
UPDATE: Looks like maybe this story was blown a little out of proportion . . .

The Eliot Spitzer "scandal" reminded me of something I heard in church this past Sunday. It was a quote from Eugene Peterson, and I don't have the quote in front of me so I'll probably butcher it, but here's the gist: People today in America especially will tell you that what you believe in your heart is a private matter, it isn't anyone else's business what you believe in your heart. That is wrong. It is everyone else's business what I believe in my heart because that shapes how I act toward you and everyone else in this world. What I believe in my heart is actually a very public thing. Evangelical Outpost has thoughts on the subject as well.

I promise I am thinking about other things, but I'll end it there!

Caroline Illustrated

When we were at Laura and Seamus' house this weekend, we stayed until about 6:45 PM or so and so we thought it would be a good idea to put Caroline in her PJ's before we got in the car, in case she fell asleep on the drive home. Mama, however, forgot her PJ's at home, so Laura was nice enough to let us borrow a pair of Brady's PJ's. Caroline has fallen in love with the boy PJ's; they are red and blue and have pictures of construction equipment on the shirt with the words "Work Zone" on them as well. No mistaking that these are "boy" PJ's. Yesterday morning when I went in Caroline's room to get her after she woke up, she was in the process of taking off her pink floral PJ's in favor of the Work Zone PJ's. When I walked in she said, "I need to wear dese. Dey are mine." I responded by telling her that they were Brady's, but she was borrowing them. She said, "No, he lost 'em." I didn't think there was any use trying to explain the concept of borrowing to a 2 year old, so I let it go. After we put on the new outfit, she put on her pink Tutu to show me the dances she was going to be doing in her dance class at school. She loves Tuesdays and from the moment we remind her that she is having dance class that day, she dances around the house in anticipation. And of course, we had to put in her newly beloved "hair bow" before school as well.

I think yesterday morning illustrates Caroline well: busy as can be, able to hang with the boys (and sometimes wanting to wear their clothing), but loving her dances, tutus, and hair bows. She certainly has her own personality, and it is really fun watching her grow.

Here are a couple of pictures of our girl. One is her with her animals and dolls all lined up for their "check ups", check out the thermometer in her hand. The other is of her all dressed up in her "ballerina" outfit (it is actually a Cinderella costume).

Ducks, crawfish, and horses!

Those three animals have filled the past couple of weekends in our family! Two weekends ago we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went out to feed the ducks at the LSU lakes. Caroline loves to feed the ducks and to help her mom differentiate between ducks and geese ("No, mama, dos are GEESE!)! She's also learned to tell the more aggressive ones to "Get back!" with a little kick that looks like something Jeff says I do (ducks and geese are NOT my favorite animals). Here are some pics from that adventure:

And here's a picture of Caroline from that same weekend right before we went to church, she was very proud of her new dress! Thanks Lauren!

This past Saturday morning Jeff took Caroline out to part of LSU's Ag campus to see all the animals. She was especially enthralled with the horses. Here are some pictures of her with the most friendly one (and just in case you were wondering, she picked out the outfit. It consisted of jeans, a T-Shirt, an LSU T-Shirt Dress, a fleece, and her LSU crocs. STYLE!).

After Jeff and Caroline returned from their outing, we headed down the road to Mandeville to visit friends and have a crawfish boil. We discovered that Caroline does not like boiled crawfish, but she does like red velvet cupcakes. A lot! The company was wonderful and the weather was perfect. Caroline was having so much fun that she skipped a nap and did just fine without it. She had to keep up with those busy boys.

And then Sunday we were off to church again. This time Caroline was wearing a dress that was mine when I was her age and remembered to bring along her Bible.

Sunday afternoon, after Caroline's nap we had to spend some more time out in the beautiful weather and Caroline's hair is finally agreeable to having a "hair bow".

We've also spent time with family and had some fun just hanging around the house in the past couple of weekends, but this is just an overview of life lately. We are extra-excited that Spring is trying to peek through these grey winter days. Hopefully we'll have lots more outside pics to come!