"You Could Be in Pictures."

Secret Moment

Tea Party

Sophia pouring our "tea"

Super proud of her stellar pouring skillz

Yum!

First attempt to "smile" at Mama

Second attempt went a little better. A little.

Cheers!

Dedicated

Broderic Earl was publicly dedicated to God on Sunday, July 18th, 2010.

Today we recognize this child as a gift from God and give heartfelt thanks for God's blessing.

We now dedicate him to the Lord who gave him to us surrendering all worldly claims in his life in the hope that he will belong wholly to God.

We pledge as parents that, with God's fatherly help, we will bring him up in the "discipline and instruction of the Lord," making every reasonable effort, with patience and love, to build the Word of God, the character of Christ and the joy of the Lord into his life.

We promise to provide, through God's blessing, for the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs of this child, looking to our own heavenly Father for the wisdom, love and strength to serve him and not use him.

We promise to make it our regular prayer that by God's grace he will come to trust in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of his sins and follow Him as Lord, obeying His teachings.

Helmet Heads

Helmets are useful in any situation...

...drinking milk in the kitchen...
...watching a movie...

...reading books...

...playing on pillows...

...walking around dangerous objects...

...extra protection is needed sometimes too.

Helmet heads

Happy HelmetHead

Grrrrrr.

Safety sisters

Confession

After Sophia dumped out an entire bin of toys onto the living room floor...

Me: "Sophia, do you like making messes?"
Sophia: "Noooo."
Me: "Yes you do."
Sophia: "Yeah, I do."

Problem Solved:

Protective gear required to be worn daily at all times. No exceptions.

911

My precious Jazlyn is our wild child. She is going to give this Mama a few heart attacks while we reside under the same roof. She gave me my first one tonight.

I was in the kitchen preparing a cup for milk for each of my angels, when I caught a glimpse that Jazlyn had climbed up on the rocking chair. Just as I told her to get down, Sophia, who was laying in the floor near the rocking chair, put her feet on the back of it and gave it a good shove, which sent Jazlyn hurdling headlong to the floor. She landed square on her head, and her body bent backwards in an in-human way. She started weakly whimpering as I ran and scooped her up in my arms. As soon as I straightened upright, Jazlyn's eyes rolled back in her head and her head flopped backwards. I think my heart stopped beating for a second, and then kicked in to overdrive. I screamed at her and after a few seconds she slowly came-to but her eyes were still twitching. I tested her head by moving my supporting hand just a bit and her head starting falling back again. I also noticed that her lips started turned blue. I was sure her neck was broken, and it crossed my mind that I had just made things worse by picking her up. With adrenaline surging, I flew up the stairs in record time screaming for Papa to call the police. By the time I reached the top of the stairs, she was conscious again and started crying very hard. I laid her flat on the ground and made her lay still. She cried loud and strong for several minutes (music to my ears, folks!) and by the time the EMT arrived about 5 minutes later, she was acting pretty normal again. The incredible EMT checked her out (he was soooooo good with kids and incredibly kind to this frightened mama). He concluded that she had probably just lost consciousness for a few seconds, but reassured me it was the right thing to do to call and get her checked.

She is doing totally fine now, but I'm still recovering...

Tiny Dancer

Sophia started dance classes this week! She is an excellent student and is very attentive to her teacher. (Makes this mama so proud!) She seems to really enjoy it so far and I am secretly hoping she will want to continue dance in the future.

Sophia and her teacher, Miss Brianna

RIP Sweet Monkey

Update: George was not at the airport Lost and Found :( I fear he has been laid to rest in a garbage can grave... Boy are we lucky that he has approximately ten thousand identical twin siblings.

The Grand Reunion

We broke down and bought a new Monkey. Here's a taste of Jazi's day...

The reunion

(too bad I was so excited I forgot to take the tags off! It didn't phase her though, thank goodness!)

She ate lunch with Monkey...

She brushed Monkey's hair...

She got Monkey dressed...

They watched Curious George together...

They went everywhere together... (Note whats on tv in the backround)

They played together...

...and they fell asleep together

Mop Top

Brody's first haircut at 3 months-- now that's Jared's son.

Before:

After:

New York in Pictures

Ready to go to New York!

Walking in the terminal with Daddy
Armed with coloring books for the plane

Through security, on to the gate!

The last pic we have of Jaz and Monkey together...

Riding the tram to our gate.
Even Mr. Brodes is excited to go to NY!

Coloring her new Princess sticker/coloring book

About the time we realized Monkey was missing :(

Jaz and her Great Papa Vinton!

Sophia and Great Papa. Both of the girls took to him immediately!

Our new nephew, Samuel, and Brody. Two months apart!

Papa swimming with all his girls

I wonder if anybody will notice if I take this root beer...

Mr. Brodes bouncing on the beach ball

Roasting marshmallows!

Family campfire

S'mores!

Kisses for Great Papa

Every morning the girls snuggled Great Papa and watching cartoons together

Playing in the creek that Jared played in as a little boy. We spent all morning here one morning.

Jazlyn and her new BFF, Ashley (Jared's second cousin)

My handsome hub

Papa played in this creek as a little boy too!

Beautiful.

My precious Jazlyn.

My Colezy

All of us in the creek

The toad that Daddy's sacrificed his leg for (see below)

Sophia and her toad

Daddy's leg-egg from diving into the creek after Sophia dropped her toad and starting screaming for Daddy to catch it.

Four generations: Vinton, Gary, Jared, Broderic

Time to go home. We tried to stuff Ashley in our suitcase and bring her home with us, but her mom wouldn't let us :(