July Pictures - Water Table and Friends!

Hunter got an early birthday present from Oma and Opa - a water table! We are very, very excited around this house!

Play date with cousins!!

Brianna has been sending drawings to her Opa recently but this one is very special because she wrote his name on this one! Opa should feel very privileged. :)

One of Brianna's favorite things to do at Classy Paci is try on the shoes, tell me to take a picture, and then run away! So most of my pictures come out blurry!

A favorite thing to do at home is clean the windows. I am not even kidding you. I think most kids love this chore and I am all about giving her the glass cleaner and a rag and letting her go at it.

One of Bri's door decorations: a scarf and tape. God help the person who takes this scarf off this door!

New Bookshelf

Ever since Brianna was a baby we've had this bookshelf up in her room:

I love it (it matches all her furniture) and it was free (thanks, Leila!) but I kept seeing a couple of flaws with it at this age. It's not very sturdy, and the kids could only use the bottom two or three shelves. Even the third shelf was a bit high for the kids and it made them want to climb up to it. This entire bookshelf actually fell on top of Brianna one time when she did that! So I told Stephen I wanted to move it to the attic until she was old enough for it. But then just a couple of days later, I was looking on Facebook at our online garage sale page and came across a bookshelf that was TOO CUTE, but the best part was - 41 hardcover books were included with the sale! It was just $45 and I grabbed that sucker!

The best part is, Bri's old bookshelf didn't have to go in the attic - we just passed it on to Kaleb!

I was super proud of my buy, as sometimes I have a tendency to splurge on things that end up not getting used (yes, even those of us with frugal mind-sets have mess-ups!).  We love the look in Brianna's room and I love the books!

Redemption Review

I recently had the opportunity to read a book called "Redemption" by Bryan Clay. When I chose to review this book, I will be honest - it's because it looked the best out of all the options. It wasn't because I thought I would enjoy it, or because I knew who Bryan Clay was (an amazing Olympic athlete.) I actually put off reading the book for a couple of weeks because I don't normally like autobiographies very much. When I did finally pick up this book it took me just a couple of nights to read the whole thing. Bryan has a great testimony. He spent his childhood dealing with a broken family, constantly getting into trouble, and running from God as fast as possible. But his mother just as constantly was on her knees praying for his future. It's amazing to read his story and see how he came from a kid who just liked to run to an Olympic athlete.

For me, reading his story of growing in his faith was really interesting. Bryan is a completely likeable person, and he was so honest about all of his feelings throughout his early years growing up and in college. But then I was also intrigued by his details of what was happening in his track & field life. As a former track star (okay, okay, that's over-reaching!) I knew many of the sports he was discussing, but I'd never heard of a decathlon. I never knew the physical stamina you must have for events that seem so simple, like javelin-throwing and the high jump. I was really into those parts of the book.

I finished the book around 11:00pm last night and immediately started Googling Bryan. I have not been watching the Olympics this year and I was now berating myself - if he was participating I definitely wanted to watch! Unfortunately he did miss the Olympic trials this year and is commentating rather than competing.

This book still made me gain so much respect for athletes. There is so much that goes on in the background that we don't know about, especially for competitions that don't get as much publicity like track & field. Also, Bryan's faith is extremely prevalent in his life. I now follow him on Facebook and you can tell he's just a normal, honest family man who has really strengthened his faith over these last few years.

I am definitely passing this book on, and I highly recommend for it to be read by you.

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Two Videos

This first video is less than a minute long. It's just from one day when I was watering the garden and the kids decided they wanted to take part too. This was just one of many days where this was an afternoon activity earlier this summer!




This video is just over a minute long - thank goodness Dad taught me how to edit my videos! Now y'all don't have to watch the ENTIRE thing!

So, Brianna has a tendency to randomly start telling stories that may or may not be totally accurate. This is one time I caught it on tape!

The story begins with someone returning to Ninevah....

"And she went back to God and said a prayer, and now he went back to life and... ??? (Very serious look.) And Jonah went in a big whale... told ??? to SPIT UP onto the land."

Me: "You're right!"

Bri: "And he came back to life."

Me: "Well, he didn't die when he was in the fish's stomach..."

Bri: "But he did swallow!

Me: "But he did swallow."

Bri: "But he did swallow Jonah. But he said, "God, I think I'm gonna go to Ninevah!"

July Pictures

One of Hunter's favorite activities now is "cheesing" for the camera!!

Brianna pushing her "baby" around the house in a stroller... I can't believe this stroller is still standing!

Talking to her "baby". She makes sure he's comfortable for the duration of the stroll. :)

 With Daddy!

 As crazy as our 4th of July got - sparklers in the driveway. Haha!

 Coloring a Hungry Caterpillar with finger paints that Grandma and Grandpa got for the kids!

 Brianna's first year of Vacation Bible School at church! I was in skits before and after classes, and I led music class so I didn't have time to take pictures unfortunately. But I did snap these the first night when Brianna was the one picked to hold the Bible! She did it with pride, and then for the rest of the week, coached the rest of the children on how to hold their flags or Bible "higher! higher!"

 Our friend Aaron at church got all the kids these cool buckets! They sure came in handy this week at the beach, but before they were used with sand they were used as hats at our house!