Above and Beyond...

Nile let Josie get him all prettied up-she thought it was the

best thing ever.

Skateboarding

The boys had been saving their allowance for months, so Nile took them to spend it a few weeks ago. I had been saying "no skateboards" to them for quite a while, mainly because I was worried about head injuries or knocked out teeth...I can handle the normal boy stuff-Seth has already had two sets of stitches & a broken bone & I get that boys are boys. Anyway, they came back from their date with Daddy carrying new skateboards:) And my prayer life amped up considerably. They love them and have done a great job so far!

Notice Mercy Hospital in the background-we are covered
should any accidents occur.

I know this isn't skateboarding & it's blurry,

but it is SO Josie, I had to include it. She is always
running & always smiling-she has her daddy's good form:)

Seth as he was falling off his skateboard (he

didn't get hurt at all)

Nature Walk

It was a beautiful day when Nile's parents came to visit, so we walked on a fun trail and let the kids ride their scooters and explore in the woods. I will admit I was slightly nervous about ticks (with good reason! I got bit way before it was the "normal" tick season and got Lyme disease, after never being in the woods at all.) I didn't say a word, though, as I don't want the kids to ever be scared to play and just be kids...well, I didn't say a word to anyone except God:) They had a blast and scared me half to death with their daring. Then Jim and Shirley took us to eat at Red Robin to celebrate my birthday, which was really fun, too.

Gabe found the neatest twisty tree branch-I had

never seen anything like it. It was almost like a vine,
but was super long and more like a tree branch.

A Few Birthday Pictures

I have done just rotten on my blog since I started Facebook...it's so much faster to download a bunch of pictures on FB, why is that?! I need to do a better job. Anyway...Nile and the kids did a great job on my birthday. Seth had been making me cards for over a week before my birthday, so I had 8 from him, even though I kept telling him one was sufficient! Gabe made me a very sweet card, as did Josie. Gabe made me tickets to hear the BlackOut Singers (their rock band), and Seth used one of my old high school sports medals and some floss to make me a necklace. Josie and Nile got me some nice presents, as well:) Nile and I got to have a date after the kids went to bed-our neighbor came down to study so we could go out. Thanks so much, Dan & Liz, for the gift card, which funded our date!! That was so nice. It was a really nice birthday!

The kids and I...Josie had just face-planted on the cement

the day before:(

The Most Precious Smile in the World

I had to include one more quick video of Cayla and Josie...it's nothing too exciting, but Cayla's smile at the end makes it totally worth the 53 seconds (or just skip to about 50 seconds!) it takes. Please, please disregard my gratingly annoying voice... had I known that this is what I sound like, I would be silent much more frequently...now I know:) When our friends were here, Seth told them, "We have a cousin named Cayla. She is the cutest baby in the whole Earth." Love it.