no more pronouns

I have the most wonderful mother ever, she comes over regularly to help out. Most of the time she helps me keep my sanity by doing dishes, changing diapers, and providing me with some much needed adult conversation. She came to the rescue on Davis' birthday party day by helping clean the house and cooking almost all the food for his party (Kevin grilled the chicken). Kevin came home early to help pull the whole thing together too. I was looking for him, and was walking through the house saying, "Where did he go?" My mom answered, but she assumed I meant Davis when I meant Kevin, and that's when she had a grand realization:

there are five he's in our house. Which was a huge lesson for me: I will have to stop using pronouns in our house.

8 months

Because I know you are all concerned with how big they are getting. Here they are at eight months old (Evan on the left, Eli on the right). Also, their shirts say "smiley" and "happy" which aptly describes them these days.

i am four

Anyone remember what happened on May 24th? Yes, yes, several tornadoes swept across the heartland (again), but it was also Ronin's fourth birthday.

Here he is on the morning of his birthday. Pretty darn excited that he is four. Ronin has been a blessing from the day he was born. He has been laid back from day one, and never in a hurry for anything. He loves nature, playing in sand and dirt, dump-trucks, and he really loves his family.

He planned out his entire birth-day: for breakfast: a blueberry cake and twist donut, for lunch: sammies from Quizno's, for dinner: pancakes, cheesy scrambled eggs, strawberries, apples, grapes, and bananas, for dessert: vanilla cake with vanilla frosting. Ronin declared it would be a vanilla party with the family, and he wanted to go to the park (we didn't make it to the park, but we did go to a friend's house and play outside). To end the day well, he wanted to spend the night with my parents.

No tornado could get him down, as we hunkered down in the bathroom, helmets and all; he asked what we were doing. I explained, and he said, "Oh, cool." We waited out the storm, and my brother and his family came over after to celebrate.

God is so good to us, and in case we doubted, He showed us His mighty power in the tornado, and His immense blessing in the smile of our four-year-old all in one night.

shut the door

Since learning the meaning of the word "privacy," Davis has also found a need for it.

He always spends a notoriously long amount of time in the bathroom for, umm, let's just say #2, and has never felt a need to close the door, he usually tries to have a conversation with you or sings. But now he shuts the door for "privacy."

We had several conversations about the word to clarify the definition, yet for a few weeks each time Kevin hugged me Davis would say to Ronin, "Umm, Ronin, c'mon, let's go to our room, Mommy and Daddy need some privacy."

"No, we don't," we told him.

I explained to him there are things we need privacy for, but hugs are definitely not one of them.

the most important thing

Davis and Daddy occasionally go have coffee and chocolate milk at the coffee shop for some quality time. Recently, they talked about what had been going on at school.

Davis explained how each student stood up to say what they wanted to be when they grew up; his answer: to be a missionary and tell people about Jesus. Apparently there was some discussion amongst the kindergarteners about which job would be the coolest, most agreed: policeman. However, Davis felt the need to tell them being a missionary was the best job, why? Because telling people about Jesus is the most important thing you can do in the world.

Pray with us that Jesus would continue to put a passion in his little heart for Himself, and Davis's vision of who God is and the importance of telling people about Him would only get bigger and bigger.

7 months

This was taken on May 2, the day we got home from our Colorado trip, and also when the babies turned seven months old. The big boys sincerely love the little ones. In fact, I'm telling them constantly they can't be so close to their faces. This is a pretty typical scene at our house, hope you can feel the love.

first plane ride

We have some dear friends in Colorado, and because of Kevin's deployments to Iraq, they are like family to us. Since I've been pregnant, had surgery, and delivered twins, there has not been a lot of time to make a trip out to see them. Until recently. One of our friends got married and gave us the perfect reason to make the trip.

Here I am in the middle of Denver International Airport. We arrived a little too early (for our return flight), so I spent a significant amount of time strolling the concourses with the babies in hopes they would fall asleep. To no avail, but I think we saw every person in the airport, or a more accurate statement might be: every person in the airport saw us.
Evan did incredibly well, we were so blessed to have a row to ourselves (otherwise we would have had to sit on opposite aisles).
I love this stroller, it was easy to break down for the security checkpoints, a must when each adult is holding a baby. Evan is on the left and Eli is on the right. When we arrived to the OKC airport, Kevin had a startling discovery: Everyone is going to stare. By now, I am pretty accustomed to the staring and comments by strangers, but he was not. And he was right, everyone did stare, and it probably would have been worse if we had all four boys with us.
During baby-trade-offs we thought it would be fun to put one baby in the empty middle seat, they thought it was pretty fun too. All in all, it was a great trip. Eli did just as well as Evan, and considering the entire trip was quite a bit of traveling (whether by plane or car), they were super!