Whew! Another "Quickie"...

I have three other posts started and saved but no time to finish them right now while we pack up to move. So to keep things relatively "fresh" on here, I'm going to keep things simple with pictures of every day life over the last week or so...

  

 Baby boy hanging out, getting photographed by someone small. He's pretty amiable. I tried to get a picture of him with his purple ball, but he wouldn't sit still for me, just them.

One of my best friends, Spinster Beth, at her annual birthday tea. I have a shot of Slick, (the third blogger in our shared blog Three Friend's Fitness,) but it was a weird, not-so-flattering side shot so I'm sparing her.

A while back, Chef decided to raise funds for a mission-support organization called SAMP (Support A Mission Priest) run through the OCMC. On his own, he raised $50 and sent it in through our priest, who (apparently) told them about how Chef had worked to go door-to-door and to ask people at coffee hour to donate $5 each to SAMP. They sent him this lovely handwritten note, prayer card and wooden Christmas ornament in the mail as a "thank you." What a great surprise, and something to be proud of! (Want to help out? He'd love to send more - let us know!)

 Our Maestro has been getting HUGE lately. Above, Maestro is working to mow the lawn using our neighbor's push mower - ours broke, wouldn't you know, two weeks before our move. That push mower is a good workout! Whew! 

This is Maestro too - helping dig the dirt beneath our play set to level it out. It's needed doing for a few years but we always thought it would take more than it did and be a bigger job than it ended up being. Isn't that how it goes, though?? 

The movement of the body makes a HUGE difference in how we deal with adversity, frustration (younger siblings, anyone?), and peer pressure, on top of learning and maturation. These brief bouts of physical exertion have been good for Maestro this week! 

On top of that, it is good for our young men (especially those around the junior high age!) to work alongside older men, toward a mutual goal. Another blog post for a later date...

Below, our boy stands next to his Pop as we get ready to head to church. Not even a foot down from his dad. How time flies. At his sports physical, the doc told us that at his present rate of growth, he'll end up around 6'2" - the same height as his Grandpa. Not bad at all. Lucky kid to be tall! I'm pretty proud of this boy!

Chef is playing his own unique version of Risk with a best friend. Who knows? Maybe it will catch on! It's sort of a cross between Risk, Civilization, and Age of Empires. His friends love it, and so do I as it reinforces lessons learned in history, geography and social sciences.

 

Bruiser, Buttercup (below) and another best friend taking an hour-long turn on the wii. Splitting them up by age group has been a huge sanity saver - why didn't I think of this before?! MarioKart Wiiiiiiii!! (Wheeee??)

See all the packing boxes behind Buttercup? It has been a time of bittersweet fun as we prepare to leave our home in two weeks. But I've really worked hard to make sure that we have time with these friends that we've built such strong ties with. 

I am grateful to our friends who have let our family join them at the local pool, loaned us cars to use so having one car wasn't the "burden" we thought it would be (truly an answered prayer!), offered babysitting, a shoulder to lean on, dinners, and just their time for fellowship. We have been - and are blessed.