Tarzan...uh, Jane... uh, Jordan?

This is how I found Jordan the other day after breakfast...maybe two sleeves was just too constricting??

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!

A Roadtrip for Freddy

This is Freddy. The very first time I ever remember talking to Freddy was freshman year, with my roomie Lynnette, in the cafeteria. We were talking about a chant that a guy's club had done the previous night. We were being so girly talking about how much we loved watching them parade through campus stomping around, and Freddy must have thought that letting us know that he was one of "them" would be good for conversation! It was, we talked for the rest of that meal, and Freddy was a part of my college experience from that day forward.

I cannot tell you how many times we would go in groups out to eat, or to the movies, or concerts on campus. Going on club events, and doing Spring Sing--so many of my college memories have Freddy in them. Even just hanging out at his apartment watching movies and eating grilled chicken was a fun way to spend the evening. Freddy was such a fun friend. He always had a smile on his face, and he was always a good friend. Everyone knew that.

Another special thing about Freddy--before Jon and I were even friends, we were both independently friends with Freddy. He didn't become Jon's or my "default" friend just because we started dating each other and all of a sudden we were always together--no, Freddy was legitimately both of our friends before there was even an "us".

After graduation, Freddy went on to Virginia/DC, and Jon and I did our thing...except for email and Facebook, we didn't keep in touch as much as we should have, and I hate that. Freddy did send us a gift, though, when he found out that we had had Lawson...little light-up Wee-boks! I'm telling you, he was such a thoughtful, generous guy!

Jon and I were both so sad to hear that on July 7th Freddy had been taken to the hospital and had emergency open-heart surgery after collapsing. We joined with our friends in praying that Freddy's big heart would be strong enough to recover. The next few days were touch and go, but on July 15th Freddy's physical body just couldn't take anymore.

Jon and I went back and forth that weekend trying to decide if it would be possible at all for us to get up to Maryland to attend Freddy's memorial service that Tuesday, and we finally decided that we really couldn't miss it.

Our amazing friends Jason and Sunny agreed to keep the kids for 2 days, and Jon and I rented a car Monday, July 21 for our whirlwind roadtrip for Freddy. I dropped the kids off with Sunny about 11:30 and Jon and I were on the road by 12:30. We drove all day and we really enjoyed that time together! We listened to old CDs that reminded us of our college and dating years. We played silly games. We updated our Facebook statuses and enjoyed a lot of fun conversation with our friends. Really fun times. We arrived at our hotel in Hagerstown, MD at 11:45 Monday night.

For all of the light-hearted fun we had Monday, Tuesday morning brought a whole different mood. The idea that we were there to say farewell to one of our friends was really starting to set in, and we both prepared ourselves emotionally for the day we were facing. We were glad, though, that several of our friends were able to make the trip too, and we were looking forward to catching up after too much time apart. This was my Facebook Status that morning:

Today is going to be a day that is full of both tears and laughter. Saying goodbye to a friend is never an easy thing to do...but reuniting with friends after too many years apart is sure to lighten the mood. I am sure God meant for those two things to go hand-in-hand.

It really was a beautiful service and a tribute to the man Freddy was. He was a believer. He was a son and a brother and an uncle. He was a friend. He was a hard worker. He was generous and kind. He was compassionate. I was so glad to have that time to hear what so many who knew him better than I did had to say about him. I was thankful to meet his mother and his sister and brother. We met one of his friends that we had heard about since we had known Freddy--and were amazed that even after his passing he was bringing people together.

After the memorial service, we all decided to drive the hour and a half to DC and walk around the capital for a few hours before Jon and I had to leave. I am SO glad we were able to do this--It was Jon's first trip there anyways, and I'm glad we were there together, along with our friends. We walked FOREVER and EVER and it was SUPER hot, but I wouldn't have traded it for anything. SO many memories were made that day!

Here are some of my favorite pictures from that trip. The whole album is on my Facebook, so if you are my friend and want to check them all out, feel free!

All of the Harding folk who came, plus Jasmine, one of Freddy's closest friends

Our group sitting in some little booth things we found

Jon and the Washington Monument

This picture cracks me up...I was actually at the WW2 monument and the Lincoln Memorial and reflecting pool were eye-level for us. I tried to snap a picture, but a lady on the sidewalk 20 feet in front of me walked by. If I would caption this, it would be "Lincoln Memorial and surrounding tourists stomped by 200-foot-tall woman!!" Maybe I should send it into the Enquirer...what do you think? :)

Me and my hubby in front of Link

Jon and the Washington Monument

Love this view of the Memorial

Grabbing dinner before Jon and I hit the road to go home

This picture cracks me up because it looks so doctored! This is our friend Armand, who is almost 7 feet tall, using 5'1" me as a arm rest! So funny!

After dinner, Jon and I hit the road at about 9pm, headed back for Hville. The plan was for Jon to drive until 1am, then I would take over driving the rest of the way so Jon could sleep, because he had to work Wednesday morning. After the fun day we had, I had the hardest time falling asleep and was so worried that I wouldn't be able to drive my whole shift! Jon ended up driving til about 2 or 2:30, then I took over. About 5am, I was in pure misery (since I had been awake since 630 to get ready for the service that morning) so I pulled over and took a nap in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. I slept for an hour and 45 minutes, then woke up and drove on home.

It was quick. It was fun. It was tough. It was sad. It was a reunion. It was tiring. It was amazing.

I am thankful we were blessed with this trip. And I am thankful we were blessed by knowing Freddy.