{pretty, funny, happy, real}

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Every Thursday, at Like Mother, Like Daughter!

{pretty} 

 A friend of my parents made this for them for Christmas.  Isn't it beautiful?

{funny}

Here's Steven Joseph playing with his toy gun outside by my parents' trash cans!  Behind him are Mary Clare's old rainbow shoes that have finally been retired.  She stepped into a muddy pond to try to retrieve Timber who couldn't get himself out of the water (Which was back in November, I still need to write an update about +Timber+.  He'll have a post soon).  

I'm always surprised by how naturally attracted SJ is to weapons.  He wanted pretty much all weapons for Christmas...guns, slingshot, bow & arrow, sword.  And he has broken most of them already, including a wooden one we bought on our trip this past weekend thinking it would be indestructible.  Not quite!  Yesterday he brought me a tiny firefighter figure and told me he wanted a "toy one of these."  I thought he meant a toy fire hose, but looked closer to find he meant a toy chainsaw!

{happy}

Last Friday, Steven had a half-day of work and took the older 3 kids fishing that afternoon, while Thomas and I had a date.  We went to Freebirds...yes, they have Freebirds here!  They also have Wings N More.  All my Aggie friends will relate when I say that those places make me feel like I'm home again!

After our lunch, we shopped for awhile and made a stop at Toys R Us.  He refused to sit in the carts, and kept running away from me.  It was exhausting and I was trying to remember if Mary Clare was such a bad shopper as a child.  I had hoped that shopping with one child would be easy!  But regardless, he was in heaven in this car section of Toys R Us and screamed when I finally dragged him away...

{real}

Our last morning in Houston, Thomas knocked over a pint of white paint in my parents' pantry.  Took me a long time to clean it up, and almost as long to get all the paint off my hands!

Road trips can get real hard with a toddler.  One of the girls finally gave him this toy computer the last few minutes of our road trip home.  He stopped screaming for a bit.

Only one more week until we hit the road to head "home" again, for some more doctor appointments and to celebrate another birthday!  We'll have some good car travelers soon enough!  But the best update, which I don't think I've posted here, is that we got the best Christmas present ever...our house is RENTED!  We are thrilled to no longer have two house payments.  Thank you, Jesus, and all of you who have prayed for us!