Art Exhibit

Annalise is starting to show that all of Caleb's painting, pasting and cutting has inspired her. It's really neat to do a craft with them and see how 2 years of ability changes how they are able to complete it! For example, this fingerprint fall tree - inspired by an art display at the school at our church:

Caleb has started signing everything, sometimes he writes CALEB, sometimes BELAC and sometimes one letter will just go haywire and wind up in different part of the paper altogether!

Annalise's interpretation of a fingerprint fall tree:

Good thing I showed Caleb's first, right? Not that I don't think she did a good job, but it does look a bit like a bloody hand!

But this doesn't. Just this last weekend, Annalise started drawing faces:

She said it is "Pawpaw" - Grandpa (didn't specify which one).

Proverbs and the Origin of Wisdom

In my quest for wisdom (for myself and to impart to my children), I frequently feel like true wisdom is out of my grasp. I can take in the precepts, but application is beyond me. I found some unexpected comfort in chapter 8 where wisdom is speaking:

Proverbs 8:22-23
"The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works,
before his deeds of old;
I was appointed from eternity,
from the beginning, before the world began.

This is just a short part of a longer discussion of how widsom existed before creation, before time began - as this vibrant, almost participartory attribute of God. That means that wisdom is not something "of this world". People will say and do wise things, but on the whole true wisdom is not a human thing - making it more like santification, something that can progress in life, but is never fully realized in a fallen world.

Ground Orchid

I was suprised with blooms on my ground orchid this week. They are from the bunch of plants my friend Nina gave me...probably 8 or 9 months ago. Out of no where I noticed a bud about 2 or 3 weeks back and now...


Too bad the best picture I took had my neighbor's trash can in the background!


Another bud about to bloom.

And a back view...

Annalise Turns TWO!

Today is my baby's birthday - and I still feel like she is a baby! I keep remembering Lori telling me that when #2 is an age you remember #1 being, you are amazed at how young #1 was when you felt they were so grown up!

Rob has a meeting in Key West tomorrow morning, and he had to leave this afternoon. We couldn't plan any sort of birthday celebration for tonight, so we went to McDonalds for breakfast instead. I brought the candles and sprinkles from home to garnish her cinnamon melts. They were so hot that one of the candles melted on the bottom! They are very much like monkey bread -or cinnamon pull aparts- minus the sweet old lady making them in her bundt pan.

Isn't it funny how she's holding that straw? It's like it's a prize. Yea straw!
And of course half (or 3/4 or maybe 9/10 of the fun of going to McDonalds) is the playplace. For the record, we did have her in socks, but she pulled them off.

And in honor of her 2nd birthday, a little Annalise trivia:
*She likes to walk on her tippy toes.
*She can count to 3.
*She likes "Kicky Cats".
*She finds great joy in ripping plants out of the ground.
*She thinks seeing herself on video is hilarious.
*She hates to wear barrettes.
*She only likes to wear hats if it was her idea.
*She can whistle.

A Few Pretty Much Unrelated Pictures

All these are backward chronologically, but if that doesn't bother you, I won't let it bother me.

Spaghetti Night at our house - I was trying to get a picture of Annalise eating a noodle, but she wouldn't look my way, this came in 2nd though.

We have caterpillars again; it is kind of like spring here. Well, hotter than spring, but things are blooming again.

Our theme this week - making mud. A priceless quote from Caleb, "It takes a lot of dirt to make mud!"

I take full credit for how her clothes don't really match in this picture. She's making what we call a giraffe tongue - that is she's sticking it out as far as it will go. We have a book that says, "Giraffes have long necks and long legs, they even have long tongues!"

Annalise very chipper while playing. You may notice in the left hand corner - her "train" - toys lined up in a row, which she declared to be a train ("Tane, mama!"). Caleb used to do this a lot too.

But here is what Caleb does a lot these days - use all the couch cushions to make a house, which I guess is pretty typical. Our neighbor's kids handed down this little kitchen to us, which really added some homeiness to his "cozy house".

And finally this big green caterpillar we found while we were playing with a neighbor-friend. I am sort of regretting not putting it in the butterfly cage. When we found it I told the kids I was sure it was a moth (it was huge), but after scanning picture online I'm not totally sure it isn't a type of swallowtail. I saw one at a friends' house a few days later and it was enormous. It crawled like it was on a mission, the same way the monarch cats do when they are ready to go "make the J".

Wordless Wednesday

Caleb Meets a Celebrity

How famous does someone have to be to be considered a celebrity? I have fallen so out of popular culture that even superstars are relative unknowns to me. To me, Jen Yates is a famous person I'd like to meet....ok and Alton Brown.

I digress...Caleb met a relatively famous person this weekend - Chris Sligh.

and Chris Sligh is....

a former American Idol contestant, as evidenced by this Youtube video:

Obviously this is his audition, but he did make it on the show. Rob interviewed him on the radio prior to a concert he did in Ft. Myers Saturday night.

Caleb also met some other musicians - here he's having a serious discourse with a member of Manic Drive, a band from Canada. Rob said, Caleb told him he knew all about Canada because he has a book about Canada. (He does not have a book about Canada.)

Here he is playing hide and seek in one of the drum cases.

He told me he talked on the radio, but Rob assured me he only talked into the microphone.

And he is one great helper, passing out station cards to people at the concert. Rob took him along last night and Annalise and I had a girls afternoon/evening. I would say we had a girls night, but she goes to bed at 7:30. :)

Just Born

I have been watching a couple of eggs in the backyard butterfly garden this week and knew they would hatch soon. So I checked on them early this morning and this is what I found:

This one is about to hatch. The dark spot is the head. I have seen them like this before, but didn't realize how close this is to hatching until I found:
This is not the same caterpillar/egg, but obviously one "just born" - they eat the egg before moving on to the leaves. If you click on the picture you can see the lines on the egg and tiny antenna on the caterpillar - four, so this is a monarch.

Kite Runner

Caleb and I made a couple of kites yesterday - a totally free craft (everything was either trash or leftover from another purpose) we made the frame with wooden skewers, the tail out of some old ribbons, the flying line with yarn, and the part I actually think of as a kite of out some packing paper. How good they flew is not important, how much of Caleb's energy they used is!





In that last picture, I like how the shadow looks underneath him.

A Couple of Proverbs

I recently estimated about how long it is going to take to read Proverbs by reading 1 a day - I've been working at it for a year now and it should take at least 2 more years to finish.

A couple of verses stood out to me this week. One is Proverbs 8:2

On the heights along the way,
where the paths meet, she takes her stand

"She" in this case is Wisdom, and I kind of like how wisdom is personified as a woman in Proverbs. In chapter 8, Wisdom is speaking directly to the reader - "Listen" she implores. And verse 2 gives a good clue as a time to really have your ears open - "where the paths meet". When we are caught up in the hum-drum of life, we tend to keep our status-quo, but when there is a decision that must be made, Wisdom's voice will be nearby. It's an opportunity to hear it and heed it.

The other verse I wanted to mention is 8:4

"To you, O men, I call out;
I raise my voice to all mankind.

It's like, who's that fool she's talking it? oh yeah, that's me...And I find this verse very encouraging, in the past reading Proverbs made me think, "I'm so glad I'm not a fool!" and this time, I've realized in horror that I am a fool! But the need for wisdom is universal and without it, we all are fools. And thankfully, life is not all status-quo; there are always decisions to be made and opportunities to hear Widsom calling.