Nathan and his horses

My boy Nathan has been smitten with horses for a very long time. Really it's been as long as I can remember! He knows exactly where to find the library's section of horse books - the non-fiction section. Unfortunately, we only have about 6 to choose from so we have read them all multiple times. Repetition is developmentally appropriate for this age and I guess it's starting to pay off.

We have started to buy the horses carrots. Whenever he hears that somebody is heading to the grocery store, he reminds them to buy " more carrots for the horses".

He just loves these 4 friends.

He wants so desperately for these horses to be living at his house.

The big 9

I have become a very inconsistent blogger these past months. It's like 3 weeks since Peter's birthday and not even a peep from me about it. Yikes-We did celebrate the big day. The last year before double digits in grand style. He decided he wanted a "Ryan size" party. So we invited just about everyone we could think of, ordered a cake from Costco and played a great game of kickball.

Yes, this is a picture of Peter flinging Nathan across home plate. Yes, Nathan has a gigantic grin on his face. No, he didn't get hurt. Yes, Peter still adores his baby brother.
I found a picture recently of Peter's 5th birthday party. We had our neighbors and a family from church over. It's such a blessing to see how God has provided friends for our family over the years.
Peter is an amazing 9 year old. He has taught me a lot of over these 9 years.

Watermelon

This evening's weather felt like a gift. It was a perfect night to dig into the remaining half of a watermelon we had in the fridge.My kids are quite excited when they find out that the watermelon in our fridge has seeds in it. There happens to be a certain Daddy in our family that grew up having watermelon seed spitting contests.
The tradition seems to have been successfully handed down. Too bad Nathan hasn't quite figured out how to escape the spitting.
Although, he really didn't seem to mind having a face and head covered in seeds.
It's nights like this that I truly enjoy my kids. They are a gift.

July in review

Seeing as it has been an entire month since my last post, I figured I needed to do one large update. So here goes my first attempt at Windows movie maker!