Kindergarten

It's hard to believe that Lawson is old enough to be in Kindergarten! It seems like just yesterday that he was a little baby, and now he is growing up into such a smart, kind, strong, healthy big boy! After much prayer and discussion, Jon and I decided to homeschool, and I am so blessed and privileged that I continue to be my son's one-on-one, personal teacher. I love that I get to see all of the progress he is making first-hand, and that I am the one helping him when he struggles.
I was so concerned about how schooling would go, but we are a month in and so far it has been wonderful! Lawson really likes doing schoolwork, he loves his supply box, and he really lights up when he learns something new! He also loves the new backpack that Nana and Papa bought him!



I am praying that God blesses Jon and me with wisdom and patience as we try to teach our children the things they need to know and that we can keep God as the foundation of everything that they learn.

A new fan

Monday night Jon and Lawson were able to go watch the Tennessee Titans play in Nashville, thanks to one of our good friends, Ben, giving them tickets b/c he couldn't go to the game. Lawson's friend Joshua let him borrow his Titans jersey, and Lawson loved it! Lawson had never been to a professional game before, and in the past he's not been much of a fan of sports. He has loved playing tee ball, but never cared much for watching any sports at all on TV. Well, Lawson had SO much fun watching this game! Just this year he had started to be interested in football, much to Jon's delight! They had a lot of fun together on their Boy's Night Out!

I'm so thankful they had this opportunity to spend this time together. It's definitely a memory they won't soon forget! Now, the Titans have a new fan! Every time they are on TV, Lawson and Jon sit down to watch them play.
On the way home, they had quite an adventure too! The front driver tire on the van blew out!!! I am so thankful they were safe, but they had to put the donut spare on and had to drive 45 mph all the way home!! They ended up getting home at about 1:45am!! They were exhausted, but at least they had a fun, safe night!

HodgePodge

There are so many things going on in the Stacy world right now...sometimes it seems a little bit overwhelming!! Last thing I knew we were entering a summer that was supposed to be calm and not busy, and next thing I know we've had company about 4 times, been out of town a couple times, and done a million things in between. Here we are at the beginning of a school year and I'm trying to get my ducks all in a row. Well, not my ducks, but my kids, and their schoolwork, and my laundry, and my dishes, and our family stuff, and my marbles! :)

I have had several things floating around in my head lately, and I am hoping that if I just type them out so they can be here to stay that I won't have to spend memory trying not to forget them!

• Last week Jordan said a couple things that cracked me up. One morning I was asking her to come over to me so I could talk to her, but I could tell that she was busy and 'on a mission.' I called her over to me again, but she told me that she'd "...be right back. She saw a fly and she needed to go get the 'swapper' for me!" Of course, she promptly brought me the fly-swatter. Sweet girl.
• Another day she was playing with one of her new birthday toys which resembles a little gumball machine but little plastic balls with toys in them come out instead of actual gumballs. It has two little plastic 'coins' that you use to put in and then turn the handle to get the balls out. Well, someone had put both of the coins in at the same time and they were stuck. I asked Jordan to bring me my make-up bag so I could get my tweezers to get them out. (Side-bar--Jordan loves my make-up and make-up bag. She loves watching me put it on and she wants to know what everything is for. She does not however know the appropriate names for all of the items.) Well a couple minutes later, she runs in, not with the make-up bag, but with my eye-lash curler. I asked her why she didn't bring me my whole bag, and she was so proud to announce that she didn't need to bring me the whole bag because she just got out my "squeezers" for me! Good intentions, right! :)
• I am so excited/nervous/scared/relieved that we decided to home-school Lawson this year for Kindergarten. There may be a post about this later, if I ever get around to it, but for now I shall remember this: We have been doing a lot of work on letters and sounds and writing and things like that. Well, one day last week we were upstairs cleaning up the kids' rooms when Lawson called to me that I could come into his room if I wanted and sit on his "lower-case bed". I thought it was just precious, and pretty contextually correct of him to call his bottom bunk lower-case!
• Today we were going on a field trip with our home-school preschool group and I had given the kids big bottles full of pink lemonade to last the whole day. As we were walking from the car to the park, I realized that Lawson had drunk almost his entire drink in the car on the way there! I asked him why he had drunk it almost all gone, and that now he wasn't going to have much to last the rest of the day, and cool as a cucumber he replied, "It's okay, Mommy. I can hold my thirsty 'til I get home." Ha!!
• A couple of quotes I have found/heard recently that I can't stop thinking about:
  "Being still and doing nothing are two different things." --From Jackie Chan's character in the new Karate Kid
• "But God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if he doesn't come through." --From Francis Chan's Crazy Love
• There are so many things going on in our life right now...this is such a time for us to practice our faith, to experience growth and to fully rely on God to meet our every need. I can't wait to have more time to fill you in on all that God is doing in our lives!!
  

There may be more later, but for now I shall head to bed with a slightly lighter load.

Have a great day! And be sure to look for God's power working in your life...when you are able to be an eye-witness to what He is doing in your life, you will be changed!

Quite the doodler...

In the last few weeks, Jordan has really taken to drawing, writing and doodling. She has always been an 'arts-and-crafts' girl, and I'm sure that she is going to continue to amaze me with her creativity! I love when they doodle on white boards, and when they do something I love, I always try to take a picture of it so it's not gone forever!
Love these pics of her working so intently on her picture...and her little people are SO.DARN.CUTE. :)
See...I told you!
I just love their big googly eyes, and their rainbow-ey yet thin hair and the cutest little hands and feet you ever saw!! She's also working on her name, but no matter how many times I show her the right way she still makes the J backwards, colors in the O, and gets the last 3 or 4 letters in a jumbled scramble. We're working on it!
This one was so funny I had to write down the story...See the two biggest heads? That's me and Jon. She was telling me about this and said, "That's you. And that's daddy. And these people (waving motion to the other people with just 2 eyes) are me and Lawson and Kenny and Jamey." So I pointed at the one with 4 eyes and asked her who that was and she informed me, "Oh. That's the big, mean, scary monster!" Well then. Maybe that's why we all look so scared! :)
Keep it up, sweet girl!

Party for a Princess

Jordan wanted a princess party this year, and Nana and Papa wanted to get a bouncer for her party, so I was so excited to find this pretty castle bouncer! The kids LOVED bouncing the whole time, and the adults enjoyed being able to sit and talk without having to worry about what the kids were getting into!

As always, I made the cake, and this one was HUGE! It took 9 cake mixes and about 12 batches of homemade icing and it was so heavy! I was more worried about what it looked like than how much supply I had to use. Actually, it looked different in my head, but time restraints made me modify and downscale what I had in mind! I was worried it wasn't good enough, but Jordan came down from her nap whenI was icing and decorating it. She gasped a huge gasp, got the hugest smile on her face, and sighed, "It's so beautiful!" That made every second of it worth it!
I didn't do a good job of taking pictures of everyone who was there and getting a lot of action shots. I was so tired, and I really just wanted to relax and enjoy the evening! We got a few good ones, though!
Here is the "cut-into" cake. Massive.
It was a fun party, and as always, I am so thankful for our friends and family who come out to make our special days even more special!

I'm thankful for Jordan and the blessing that she is to our family, and being able to celebrate another year of her vibrant life and her healthy growth is such a blessing for us!

Visitors for Jordan's Birthday!

Jordan was so excited when I told her that Nana and Papa were coming to visit for her birthday and that they were bringing cousin Maddison!! Lawson and Jordan love getting to play with their cousin, but we live so far away we don't get to see each other as much as we'd like. Maddie and her family recently moved to Texas, so now they live even farther away, and we were so excited that she was going to get to spend some time visiting and that they would all get to celebrate Jordan's birthday together!

The first night Maddison slept with Jordan. I was wondering how they would do sharing Jordan's full-sized bed, because Jordan has never really slept with anyone at all. A few hours after they fell asleep I checked in on them and thought this was super cute--Maddie had snuggled her way right over to where Jordan was!
It was SO hot outside, so we tried to come up with some fun things to do inside...
We also went to see Shrek Forever After and eat at Five Guys (YUM!)
We love getting to eat at Red Lobster on Sundays, here are a couple good pics I got at our table:

Lawson, Maddison, and Jordan outside Red Lobster
On Jordan's birthday we prepared ourselves for a fun day! Here are the kiddos in Lawson's room that morning...
We went downstairs and we decided to go ahead and make the birthday cupcakes. Everyone helped me out, and while they were baking we did Beauty Shop on the girls and I painted their finger and toenails. They LOVED it!And since birthdays only come once a year, we eat cupcakes for breakfast on our birthdays!!Jordan chose Chili's for her birthday dinner and it was a lot of fun...Then we came home for dessert cupcakes and birthday presents. Jordan was sharing the candles from her cupcake with Lawson and Maddison.That's my pretty girl!And there's the diva!!!

Jordan is Four!

Happy Birthday Baby Girl! Mommy and Daddy love you so much!

A fun way to watch TV

It hasn't even been a month and there's so much to catch up on--not to mention a lot of stuff coming up for us in the next week...but here's one of our summer pictures. It has been so HOT this summer that we really haven't spent as much time outside as we usually do.
Thank goodness for movies! We don't do it all the time, but every now and then it's a nice treat for the kids and a nice break for me! I had put something on the TV (don't even remember what it was) and I walked into the living room and found that they had set up camp! I hope little things like this are building happy childhood memories for them!