On Friday night we took advantage of the aquarium’s last discount priced Friday night of the season and enjoyed some family fun.
We took 293 pictures during our 3 hours at the aquarium. From those we narrowed down 42 keepers.
And from those, I have the difficult task of dwindling down some for the blog.
The kids favorite part of the evening was the dolphin show.
When I came out to the kitchen to make breakfast this morning, I felt a cold draft. I then noticed my son sitting in the sliding glass door.
He told me he was listening to the birds in the backyard. They were offering up a beautiful melody. One thing I love about life with small children is that they help you to stop and take notice of the everyday miracles in the world around you.
During our recent visit to El Paso, we survived the desert trek to reach Carlsbad Caverns ( number 23 of the 47 U.S. National Parks we plan to visit in our life together). It was a perfect day alone with the man of my dreams exploring and enjoying God’s creation. We spent 5 hours exploring the caves 800 feet below the earth’s surface.
Pictures truly can’t do it justice, but I’ll try.
Last week we took the kids to the local zoo. We have tried to go once a year for the past several years. We go in part b/c we want to give the kids a chance to see the exotic animals up close. It’s so fun to watch their reactions. But, I’ll be honest, we also go b/c I love to see the animals up close! It is amazing and awe inspiring and I don’t think I could ever tire of it!
Mudpies
Slugs
Puddle Jumping
We’ve had plenty of baths at the circus this weekend. But the extra laundry and baths are totally worth it to see my kids truly delighting in the simplest of pleasures and enjoying the world around them. Mud, and slugs, and puddles…giggles, wonder, and smiles…
I’m trying my best to summarize our almost 2 week vacation, so as to keep you up to date with our circus adventures, without boring you with every.single.picture we took (if you knew how many pics we took, you would realize this is NO.SMALL.FEAT). I realized today though that I haven’t really posted any pictures of the actual parks yet. Hmmm…perhaps I should do something about that.
So, any guesses on which national park this is from?
Sometimes little snippets of the extraordinary appear in the midst of everyday life. Right smack in the middle of a messy kitchen with trashcans overflowing, and kids walking around half naked, a conversation took place at our dining room table. Scott was having eggnog with the two oldest children and I had gotten the video camera out to catch my littlest one playing with the tripod. She was walking around setting up the tripod and exclaiming, “Cheese.
Last week as we were running errands the Christian radio station played one of those 60 sec minisermons. The person was speaking on 1 John 4 and read the passage which states, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
Son: " Mom, why did she say we don’t love God?"
Me: “They were saying that we didn’t love God first, but that God loved us and then we loved him.
My son loves sunsets. He comes by it naturally as his father also enjoys looking at God’s handiwork. One evening, several months ago, when we were looking out the window for Daddy to come home, he pointed out to me how pretty the sunset was. I told him that sunsets are like pictures that God draws for us to show us He loves us. I told him that just like he draws pictures for me and Daddy to show us he loves us, God makes the sunsets to show us that HE loves US (pretty amazing stuff)!