Recommendations

Thank you all for leaving your thoughts on Zeke's poop-playing. He hasn't done it again since I wrote about it, but that's not to say he won't start up again. If he does, I guess I'll have the duct tape ready.

I really wanted to write today because I have been going through this book Praying the Names of God by Ann Spangler since January and it is fabulous. If anyone is looking for a new devotional, I HIGHLY recommend this book. It goes over 26 different names of God found in the Bible and explores each one over five days. It gives prayer guidelines for each day too, which I find wonderful and would recommend that if you do give this study a try you might want to buy a journal to write out your prayers each day. It's what I've been doing and I'm loving it. I can see my prayers going deeper each time (well, most of the time), and it's great getting to know God even more and seeing more of Him and who He is. I also have her second book, Praying the Names of Jesus, and can't wait to do that the second half of this year.

I also wanted to recommend to those of you who have friends with more than one blog (like I know many of you do) a site that helps you to check everyone's blogs a little more easily. If you're like me, you would get on every day or so and go down the list of your friends sites and check each one individually looking for an update. Well, my blog-savvy sister-in-law Linda introduced me to bloglines.com. You go to this site, you sign up (it's free), you enter all of your blogs that you check and then you're done. Then every day after that all you have to do is check that one site and it will let you know which of your friends (if any) have updated their blogs. Then you just click on their blog, and it'll pull up the blog starting with the latest entry. It saves tons of time and it's so easy to use. So I just thought I would put that out there.

I also wanted to put this out there:

The reason the picture looks so dark is because that's how hard it's snowing right now. It's 11 in the morning and it's dark as night (almost) because the snow is out of control! Oh, wait. It stopped. And just like that, just like Germany weather, the sun is out. I guess you can disregard that last part. Sun and snow at the same time. You gotta love it!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...Easter?

I thought March was supposed to "come in like a lion and out like a lamb," not the other way around. As you can see by the picture, we got our first "real" snow for the year last night. Sure it flurried and snowed here are there twice or something like that, but the sun always came out and made sure the snow didn't stick around. I guess it's tough for the sun to do that when it's nighttime. Oh, that clever, clever snow. And since the sun threatened to rid us of said snow early in the day, we decided Zeke HAD to play in it before it went away (in case it doesn't snow again) so here he is with Daddy. Yay!

Yes, That's Poop.

So Zeke has found himself a new hobby that I'm not exactly thrilled with. During naptimes he has decided that pooping and then putting his hand into his poop is a good activity. I think you can see why I'm less than thrilled with this. And short of making him wear onesies all the time, I have no idea how to stop this. Any suggestions? We were told by someone that he's trying to tell us that he's ready to start potty training, that he's playing with his poop because he doesn't like the way it feels on his bottom. I don't think I buy that. I think it's more that he is intrigued by the feel of his poop on his hands and (sorry if this is gross) the way it squishes in his fingers, and that's why he does it. Sigh. What's a mom to do?

Bye, Bye Bebo?

So I've been thinking about it and thinking about it, and I'm just not sure. I signed up for Flickr today to see what I think about it, and I think I'm going to give it a month or so trial before I decide, but I am thinking about giving up on my bebo page and just loading all of my pictures onto Flickr from now on and having that little badge (as it's called) on the left side of my page that you all can click on and see all of my current pictures at. You can even order pictures from there, I think. I just don't know. I'm sort of tired of bebo. I haven't used the blog function since I really started using this one, and I just don't ever want to load pictures onto bebo anymore because it's slow and it takes awhile. With Flickr I can post a picture, give it a title and write a little story or whatever with it. So we'll see. I'll try using Flickr this month and next, and you can let me know whether or not you think it's worth the change. This means that there won't be any pictures put up on bebo for the next two months. I'll make a note of that on my page. I hope you all have wonderful weeks!

Some Things I've Been Meaning to Blog About

So, last month (February), I all these thoughts for all these different blogs as all these different events (if you will) took place, but I didn't have the pictures for them, and so they sat there in my mind until the pictures were taken. Well, the pictures have been taken and so I can now put up three blogs in one. So, strap on your saftey belts as away we go!

3 out of 4 ain't bad

February was a big month for me knitting project-wise. I had four projects currently going for who-knows-how-long, and I finished three of them this month! Yay me! And now the fourth is "on hold" at the moment while I work on something else. But that's almost done, which means #4 is almost done. But here are some pictures of the projects I finished this month.

1.) A reversable hat for Deacon (this one I actually did the whole thing in February, but since it was finished in February, I'm counting it)...

2.) a blanket I've been crocheting FOREVER (named "Harvest Bounty" by Linda)



3.) Last but not least, some fingerless gloves! (I know they are totally 80's but I don't care. I think they are suh-weeeeet!!)

I can breathe a sigh of relief now. Ahh...
(*since starting this blog, I finished the fourth project. no pictures though...they're just little blankets)

Yay for Unexpected Visitors!

Over President's Weekend we had (as you can tell from the title of this "blog") some unexpected visitors. A friend of mine here, Monica, called me Thursday morning kind of panicked. You see, they were in the process of getting out of Germany, and were supposed to be staying with another friend of ours and her husband since Monica and family had to "check out" of their home (as it were) on Friday, and weren't flying until Monday. However, this friend of ours got incredibly sick so Monica decided that with having a two-year-old, and with being pregnant, staying in a sick person's house for four days would NOT be a good idea. Very smart, I think. BUT this meant they had to find somewhere else to go and pronto. So Monica called me, and I answered. We had so much fun having Monica, Steve and Lillian here with us that weekend. Here are a few pictures from that weekend. Obviously they are almost all of the kids, because what's more fun than two two-year-olds hanging out?

What a great weekend!

We're so white and nerdy!

Well, it's here. Josh's new car. Josh's brand new 2008 Volvo XC90. That's right. We are now the proud owners of not one, but two Volvos. Does that just scream preppy or what? Whatever word you would use to describe us now or no, it is a pretty sweet ride. Here are some pictures.

Happy Driving Honey!

It had to happen sometime.

Well, Deacon's crawling. I can't say exactly when it happened, but it happened. Sometime this weekend, I think. Is it terrible that I don't know exactly? I mean, it really has been a work in progress. With Zeke, he wasn't crawling one day, then the next day he was. He wasn't willing to try it until he was sure he had it all worked out mentally. Kind of like how he his with everything else. Deacon, on the other hand, has been working on it physically (and as you can see by the video, he is still putting the finishing touches on it) for the last few weeks. But he really seemed to "get it" this weekend. All the same, it's still very exciting.

Another exciting thing...Zeke is counting! It's pretty funny. He's still not talking much or using many "real" words (I put real in quotations because he is doing plenty of "Zeke speak" with his own words and sounds), but he is counting. He can go all the way up to ten. It's very sweet. He mostly uses this new trick when climbing stairs. The best part is he likes to end on ten when he gets to the top, so he'll repeat any given number (usually 5 or 8) until he gets to the top then says, "Ten! Yay!" Oh the fun never ends.

Ummm....

Mayhaps I put too many chocolate chips in this time?

But doesn't his new haircut look snazzy?