Seeing the fam

Cole spent a week at Safety Village to learn all about riding bikes, crossing the street and fire safety. It was a fun week for him and he graduated with honors. Now he tries to teach my social butterfly, Lydia, who strangers are since she thinks that everyone is a friend and yells hi. The world we live in...














We headed up north for the 4th of July stopping in Norwalk for a quick parade and picnic at Liz's Grandma's and then went on to Painesville for a small reunion for Steve's side of the family. And had an awesome time out on their sailboat.


Cole got to learn a bit more about sailing from the pros, Aunt Sue and Jack.
Steve and Tom loved the chance to jump in again.


Our day on the water was beautiful and relaxing. Cole and Lydia even fell asleep!
Posing with Aunt Marla
After a speaking at a church service, we headed to Great Gran's to spend the evening. She is eighty-eight years old and planning her 90th birthday bash!

What we've been doing so far!

Here's the almost finished product of the amazing tree house that Steve made this spring. All that's left is a good coat of stain. The kids love it and have no problem climbing up into it. Steve also made chairs out of the leftover wood and the kids got to paint them. It's a good life being a kid!




Lydia just picked up "pumping" to swing by herself last week. It's amazing what a second kid can do. Cole just learned earlier this spring! She's just a few beats behind him. Of course she thinks she's right up there with him like when she tried to jump off something "just like Cole" and took a nose dive into the sand!
Cole loves this hanging bar we have. He's learned to do flips and all sorts of tricks on it.



Our park and Graeters friends, Kate and Ben from church. They are great buds.







And when Mom's working, we like to go and yell Mimi! We try not to catch her in the middle of something so that we don't get her in trouble! She loves her job at Trader Joe's and they love having her!

Starting the Summer off Right!

My trip to Tulsa to help out with Jess's baby was wonderful. Greta is such a good baby. She doesn't even spit up yet! I kept looking for burb cloths cuz it was so hard for me to even hold her without covering my whole body with a cloth. That's all my kids seemed to do. Spit up and drool. Maybe that will still come for Greta. We'll see.


Jess and Greta flew back with me and stayed in Dayton for a week to show her off to the rest of the family here and up north. Cole and Lydia are so proud to finally have a cousin! They kept talking about "their cousin". Lydia loved to pet her and Cole wanted to hold her a lot. And they were very interested in the whole nursing thing.
Poppy's pool is open!!! We're at the Poppy's, chi chi! My Dad worked very hard this spring to get it cleaned and ready for us to jump in. And we are so very grateful and ready! The swim lessons earlier in the year paid off. Cole is jumping in by himself and swimming under water. It's amazing. Lydia isn't very fond of going under water yet but she loves to jump into our arms and do motor boat. It's very fun and we plan on making it worth Poppy's hard effort by using it a lot. We already have a Chi Alpha baptism planned for one of our newly saved students with a pool party following it, of course!

Don't you just love Lydia's pose. It's so funny how dramatic she is. I don't know where girls learn these things. I surely am not like that at all!

My little boy is growing up!

Cole graduated from preschool tonight. We were glad that they let him graduate since he wasn't there the whole year and his credits didn't transfer from Pasos Chiquitas in Mexico. Cole has enjoyed his preschool immensely and even said as we were leaving on his last day that he wanted to live there with Miss Walker forever. We consoled him by reminding him that he's that much closer to starting kindergarten and then he was excited again.

Right after we celebrated by eating at Friendly's, we headed to the ceremony

Look at those blue brannan eyes.

Right as he was receiving his diploma and I was zoomed in with the perfect shot, the guy in front of me stood up to let his wife back into her seat, blocking my view completely and missing the moment. Ironic and sad but then we remembered that this is only a preschool graduation. (And Steve got it on video, too)

Cole is now ready to take on the world!!

Pee Wee Soccer Star

Here are some shots from Saturday's game. After a rained out game and practice we were thrilled to have beautiful weather.

Cole scored the first of the only two goals of the game! Everyone was surprised, including him! He's not the best one on the team but he's really starting to get the idea of the game and loves playing and having friends on the team. Who knows what he'll end up playing if anything, but if I could choose a sport to watch... it's a lot more interesting to watch then baseball! (and a shorter season!)

Cole's posing but he really does get down and serious. It is hilarious to watch him get so into it. Unfortunately, our offense was so good that he didn't get much of a chance this game to show off his goalie skills. He did get to throw the ball in once.

It was picture day and this year Cole decided to do a really good smile instead of his sad face from last year! It is amazing the difference a year can make!

May flowers

It's been a fun spring for me because several of the trees in my yard flowered for the first time since we've lived here. I have 6 lilac "bushes" and none of them ever had blossoms except one barely at all last year. I even had to ask our neighbor what type of tree they were cuz they didn't do anything cool. So without fertilizing or pruning or even praying, 5 out of the 6 have flowers this year! So that means that they'll just get more and more every year. And my dogwood had beautiful pink flowers on it for the first time too. This is a big deal for me because I have no green genes. I didn't inherit any ability to garden or plant or landscape. Nothing on my folks, they just hired it out. So I have no idea what I'm doing but I've got this amazing yard and garden and I'm benefiting from the old owners investments. And the squirrels left some of my tulips alone so we got to enjoy many of them through their whole blooming time! Life is good.


I took a few shots of the kids as we walked around Cox Arboretum

He wanted his hair to be like his friend, Brayton, from school. Fauxhawk. He is starting to ask for gel in the morning.

We have new neighbors across the street and they are a blessing! Kaitlin is their 5 year old and our kids play together nonstop. It is a new thing for me as a mom to let my kids go over to their friends house to play without me! Lydia is only 3 but totally keeps up with them and talks like she's 5. The 3 of them go back and forth between our houses (with our help crossing our extremely non-busy street) as they play. It will make for a fun summer! And it's bonus cuz Kaitlin's parents are really cool too!

Lydia's first ballet recital was tonight. It was adorable! Her class stood on the stage for a good long song and I think there was some choreography. I was just thrilled that she actually danced on stage and didn't freeze and run off. She even smiled at us as she did her plies and tendus. (she's the one that the teacher is positioning before they start)

Like every show, there's a good party afterwards. It was so fun to watch Lydia love it all!

Loving this season

Probably the highlight of ministry since I've been back was this last weekend at the girl's retreat. It was probably the first major retreat we've ever done with only the girls and the first retreat that I was so heavily involved with every detail and speaking times. And it was so much better than I had anticipated. The Lord had given the other two staff girls (Heather and Sarah) and I vision for it and it was dead on with what the girls needed to hear. The Lord spoke and ministered and we all had a wonderful time. And we ate like queens! No hot dogs or PB& J for us! I'm loving where our girls are right now! There is such a hunger for the Lord and vulnerablity. It's a sweet thing to be a part of.

Steve headed out to Mexico Thursday morning for Punto de Encuentro's first retreat!! We were very pumped that he was able to go and be a part of it. The group down there is doing great and growing! It is very encouraging to hear the updates from it. The retreat is going on right now and I don't know exactly how many went but 15-20 students were expected and that is really great for a first retreat. Our Hondoran "Jesus", Freddy, is speaking at the retreat on the Holy Spirit. It should be a pretty sweet time!

While Steve's away... we've been enjoying the beautiful weather! Here are some shots from the park by Mimi and Poppy's house.

(after eating raspberry ice cream!)

They grow up so fast! It really is crazy. It feels like just yesterday when I was at Pizza Hut for my free BookIT pizza and now we're going for Cole!