Gardening with Papa and Goodbyes to AD

Papa had the brilliant idea to plant tomatoes in our yard with Madison! They had a wonderful time digging, planting, naming the tomatoes, and watering them.

There are always opportunities to teach our children about the Lord...I love how my dad does that!

They planted three "Specialty" tomatoes and names them: Meenie, Minie, and Mo. The "Champion"tomatoes were named: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Derrick Jeter (after the Yankee champions, of course :)!

Savannah watched some of the planting from her bedroom window.

High fives when the job was done!!

Thank you Papa for the fun times and future lessons in responsibility, sewing and reaping (spiritually too) and many other lessons that can be learned through gardening.

Aunt Dottie just spent the last 6 weeks in CA visiting us. Savannah and Madison just adore her!

And I adore her, too. We are going to miss you Aunt Dottie...thanks for coming to visit :)

GOC guys' night: Fire and meat

What is more manly than food and fire? Grace on Campus had a guys night this weekend where Austin came and taught our men about the theology of smoking meat. Our guys learned the difference between a grill and a barbeque, direct/indirect heat, and why California is the only place in the world with tri-tip.

Of course, there was preaching on how God views food, and why he made the world so that work is connected to eating.

The day started with smoking nearly 20 pounds of tri-tip:

And ended with the guys learning how to clean, quarter, and barbeque a chicken:

Here Austin is explaining how to start a fire, and why you do so on brick rather than concrete (you should ask him sometime why that is and how he knows it):

The guys learned how to make their own rubs, sauces, and how to doctor beans to make them wicked good:

Here is the finished product:

Dessert was a few pounds of sausage, with bacon bits added, placed inside of a bacon weave, and then smoked for about an hour. Here is the presmoked version. You may have a heart attack just looking at it:

Even Maddie was in on the fun:

Savannah's Four Months!

We're so thankful for this sweet girl! We like calling her "Sissy". Maddie also calls her "Little Sister" and "Veena".

She loves chewing her hands, drooling, and laughing at Maddie jumping or doing anything for that matter. She just loves her big sister. They are so sweet together.

Savannah's stats: she weighs 12 pounds, 10 ounces (25% percentile) and is 25 1/4 inches long (75% percentile). It's funny to see already how she and Madison are different. For one thing, she's wearing much bigger clothes at this age than Maddie did. Savannah is already wearing 6 month clothes! She's sleeping much longer at night- from about 10pm until 5:30 or 6am. Sometimes she cries at night just wanting her paci, but overall she's just a happy girl.

We are so thankful to the Lord for this sweet blessing!

Housewarming!

We are so thankful to the Lord for providing us with a house to live in! Right after we started renting this house a month ago, we talked and prayed about wanting our home to be a place where we serve each other, the body of Christ, and show the world God's love. We pray that wherever we move we will always look at our home as God's, and that all of our "stuff" will be used for His glory. We've already had the opportunity to have 2 different families stay with us for different reasons, and we've had many people over to warm our little home. We had a party here for our Bible study and friends to see our new place.

My friend, Pauline, decorated the dessert table- she's so talented! If your interested in hiring an interior designer or someone to decorate for an event, she's the gal!

Pauline found this very cool chandelier to hang on our back porch- I just love it!

Here's Pauline and Aunt Dottie before the house got filled with people.

A few of our college friends.

Hannah built houses with Maddie for quite a while.

Jesse and the guys.

I didn't get very many photos, since I was visiting with people, but these were the few I snapped. Thanks to all of you who came and warmed our home with your presence!

It Feels Like Spring...

Mimi had a brilliant idea the other day...she brought over a few flowers for Maddie and her to plant.

They had a great time preparing the soil.

Maddie loves checking her flowers each day!

We had a fun outing at the Americana the other day.

Madison loved watching the fountain!

All the ladies...after walking around and having lunch, we tired out Savannah!

That evening we had our first BBQ of the year! It was so fun to have the Verdugos, Aunt Dottie, and my parents over. They surprised Jesse and I with such kind house warming gifts- two new chairs for outside and a tub filled with plates, cups, and trays for outside use. They know we love eating outside in warm weather!

Jesse with his new grill. He made excellent burgers that night. We used his dad's recipe- 1 egg for each pound of ground beef, some bread crumbs, garlic, onion powder, and salt and pepper. They were delicious!

Maddie is doing it...

First of all, I love this girl. She's quite a character and she knows how to make me laugh. She's full of personality and spunk. I love seeing her learning kindness, gentleness, and thinking of others before herself...this is such a hard lesson for little ones. It makes my heart glad when I see those traits in her as I'm praying for God's work of causing her to love Him more than anything else. Well, lately, she's become a little lady because now she wears undies!

We stayed home from pretty much everything for 3 days and worked on keeping her undies dry. This meant we set a timer the first day for every 10 minutes until she was successful going on the potty. If she was dry....she had a small special treat to choose from. If she went on the toilet...she got a sticker on her sticker chart (which when she filled it up was a toy of her choice from Target). If she had an accident...there were no treats. We made the whole experience fun with princess undies, streamers and balloons decorating the bathroom, etc.

The best part- Daddy stayed home from work the first day just to help.

Here's Daddy and his little girl having a tea party. We had lots of liquids that day- which quickened the learning process. She started catching on going to the potty by the afternoon of the first day. We had tried other methods of potty training before that were just complete failures. So, thanks to a few friends who game me these ideas.

Starting her early with reading good books on the toilet :)

I'm so glad to only have one child in diapers now!!!

Out of all the toys at Target, Maddie choose this ball which was $2.88. What a deal! She was so happy about this ball, she sang "Welcome home ball to my new house" on the way home as she held it in her car seat. Then when we got home she introduced it to all of her other balls. She asked to sleep with it that night- so funny!

Seminary Banquet at the Reagan Library

We enjoy going to the Reagan Library once a year for the Seminary Banquet. This year wasn't like the others! It was the 25th anniversary of the seminary, so 1000 people came. Dinner was served around and below Air Force One. Pretty cool.

My handsome date :) I love this man.

This is my dear friend Rachel who is recently engaged. I'm pretty excited to be in her wedding in June. Maddie gets to be a flower girl and Jesse is officiating. The Johnson's are thrilled for her and Mike!

The night was made even better because I was seated not only next to my wonderful date, but also Karen Harasick. I absolutely love her. I'm thankful for her wisdom in parenting and just being a good friend!

Savannah's Three Month Photos

Here's sweet Savvy Grace sleeping with a smile.

Waking up with a yawn...

And smile! This girl wakes up so happy!

Picture time! Thanks so much Hannah for taking these photos- you have such skills!

We are so thankful for the three months God has given us Savannah- what pure joy she is. She's full of smiles and giggles. She rolls from her tummy to her back and is trying very hard to make it the other way. She's going longer stretches at night- just last night was 10pm-5:45am- such an improvement!! She loves her sister, and looks her a bit.Here's Maddie's 3 month pics. And makes lots of baby talk sounds. We love our Sissy Girl tons:)