finally ripe!

we harvested our first tomato yesterday and it was SOOO yummy. we have bunches more that will be ripe soon. ours are a little later than usual...maybe i put them in too shady of a spot? this little fellow loves, loves, loves to eat tomatoes. can't say the same for his big sis...

footage from the most recent daddy-daughter date

adam is trying to be more consistent about spending one-on-one time with snuggle bug as she is rapidly growing up and has about 5 billion questions a day like "did God make poopies?" or "can i get into your tummy again like when i was a baby?". she loves to spend time with daddy chattering his ear off.



she has been really into the wrinkly nose camera smile lately too.


so graham and i dropped the two of them off at a local sweetery where they shared a slice of strawberry cake (because it was pink and every thing that is pink is awesome to marit lately, even if it is just sweet 'n' low) while we went on a grocery shopping date. i think they had more fun than we did because graham pretty much fell apart in the middle...he's been a bit of a mess lately, but oh so cute (and it's a good thing, if you know what i mean!).

with his children

"for you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory." 1Thess 2:11-12

sweet husband:
i am so thankful for you. for exhorting, encouraging, charging our children. for living a life of repentance before them...ever acknowledging your faults and at the same time assuring them of your love for them and striving to point them to Jesus. my love for you has been enriched as i watch you love our children...growing into your fatherly roll with each passing day and with our growing family.









happy father's day adam!

mostly recent photos of the little people

she likes to wear her helmet "like daddy does" when she rides her bike

drying off

the beginnings of our neighborhood babysitting co-op (and this is about half the kids!)

my handsomes

from a recent nature discovery walk near our house

marit is probably trying to persuade graham to be just like her in some way. seriously, graham imitates just about everything she does these days...

think his feet will be as big as daddy's? so far, so good in that respect!

dancing to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, which is appropriate since adam impulsively bought her this "ballerina dress" that she wears nearly every day

even ballerinas get tired

marit fell and hit her eye on the corner of a stool...this is when it was starting to look a lot better...SO sad!


these blocks were a fantastic garage sale purchase. adam likes them almost as much as the kids. you can see the kind of tower he likes to build and the kind graham likes to build. the main challenge is to keep graham from knocking over all in-process structures no matter the size.

ready for the summer sun!

'round these parts

my blogging of late has degenerated to a photo and a sentence post every once in a while. the heat, the baby in my belly (as marit calls it), and the two very challenging of late toddlers have pretty much sapped my brain of its ability to write much. i do have a bunch of pictures that i need to post so i can remember things. the old SI joint has already begun to give me some trouble. i don't remember when it started last time, but it seems to get a little worse with each pregnancy. and so i bring you:

the piriformis stretch

they are such little imitators lately. oh, and yes, i do wear those grey maternity shorts pretty much everyday.

and on a related note, here are my three favorites doing the downward dog

more pictures later perhaps

shameless-hunbaba mei tai givaway

but this would be great for baby #3. i love carriers with a hip strap!
go here and enter yourself if you like!

marit likes to pretend she's pregnant

morning at the park

met some sweet friends at the park yesterday. i happened to have my camera along (a rarity it seems) and we had a lovely time! thanks for the invite tara!
tara brought a book along and then the girls and graham had fun looking for living things. marit found a cricket, butterfly, spider, caterpillar (i think it died after it got passed around so many times)


i think graham just ate something that was 'alive'

all looking and 3/5 smiles!


she loved the hydrangeas the size of her head

rikki and charlie joined us!

slow-moving with all those little people

they were talking to the lady

note: 7-yr old t-shirt and the badly-in-need-of-washing hair

tuckered out!

cheaper than a pool membership

this might be the best $7.99 i spend this summer. we have been alternating sprinkler with kiddie pool this week and it has been FUN!


pax loves water play too.
graham usually takes his wet body and sits in the man-hole pax dug to get boyishly muddy...so different from my daughter who wants to wash her hands if they get remotely dirty!

oh project

since baby # 3 is due in october (by the way, we didn't find out what we are having last week at our ultrasound...a fun surprise is in store!), we have embarked on this ginormous project to make better use of our upstairs space. our house is 3 bedroom right now, but the 3rd bdr is downstairs and was added on 90 years after the rest of the house was built. thus, from the back bdr, you can hear nothing, see nothing, know nothing about what is going on upstairs. with leeetle children, we just feel better about all being upstairs when this babe comes along. graham and marit do a great job sharing their room and we have this unnecessarily large bathroom and had a lot of wasted space in the laundry room as well, so we set out to more efficiently use the space.
will be the nursery:

we are combining the laundry room (stacking washer and drier) and bathroom. once adam pulled up the floor in here, we discovered all the necessary plumbing for a bathroom so it seems we are converting it back to the original plan. we were so thankful to see those pipes since that meant we would not have to hire a plumber! adam has been plugging away at this project in his limited spare time with a little help from our dads on occasion.
my dad did most of the wiring!

though having bunches of power tools, lumber, pipes, sawdust, bathtubs etc kind of take over the upstairs can be annoying, adam has been so sweet about trying to keep it fairly tidy and i am so thankful he is able to do most of the work himself... even if it takes a little longer. my mother-in-law and some sweet friends have allowed me to borrow their washer/drier every once in a while and we are just learning to be more flexible in general. i've been napping marit back in the crib as there are many hazards around now...
pipes and joists (the floor had to be built up so it would be flat...you know old house crookedness)

shower stall built: we plan to do subway tiles around the tub, sagey green wall, terracotta tiled floors, maybe leave some of the old beams exposed...many more pictures to come as we progress...

i have kind of struggled over how to blog about this. my blog is not intended to stir up controversy, to preach to anyone (though i hope the Gospel is evident in our lives), but simply to take note of life as it quickly passes by and to also note God's faithfulness in small and big ways. i will include the email we sent out when we decided to baptize our small children. if you are totally opposed to infant baptism, please don't be quick to judge that we think our kids are safely going to heaven now or anything, but more importantly as our pastor eloquently put it "they are being baptized into discipleship," which is so much of parenting. we would love to more thoroughly explain ourselves to you if you think we have fallen of the deep end or something...we invite in-person discussion. my family falls on both sides of this discussion, but many of them came to support us and there were no major fits, squeals, or meltdowns that distracted from the sweetness of the day.

from the email we sent out:
we finally decided to have marit and graham baptized! we have been off and on stewing over this decision since ellen was pregnant with marit 3 years ago...read a lot of Piper, Grudem, Keller, Driscoll, and other people mixed in. basically we feel like there is scriptural support for both believers and infant baptism, but the thing is that we are raising our kids to know about Jesus and pleading with the Lord daily to give each of them a love for Him that they might not ever remember not knowing Him. Of course, it is our hope that they will one day make the Christian faith their own, but it may not be a specific moment in time that they can point to because we are raising them Christianly. The baptism is simply a symbol of that commitment to teach them about Jesus and to try to get to their little hearts and the sin that is there and their desperate need for the Gospel in every area of life. We do not believe it "saves" them, and we will not teach them that they are going to heaven because they are baptized...rather it is a symbol of our covenant with God to raise them in the faith and of His faithfulness to call people to Himself that they might come to depend on Jesus for their salvation. we like the case that this guys makes for it.


in addition, after the funeral of the 4yr old daughter of our dear friends, things began to click a little clearer for us in this area (covenant theology speaking). and because we go to a pca church that baptizes both believers/converts and infants and children, we feel like this is an important step in our submission to the church leadership. we feel like there is a lot of mystery surrounding the sacrament of baptism and so feel that there is much room for grace. we hope if you disagree with our decision, that you can offer us that grace