Back from the Beach

I've returned to the blogging world after 10 days away. Our family drove to VA, spent a few days with Brad's family and then drove on to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware where we met up with Janelle's family for a week at the beach. The weather was almost perfect, the water was pretty cold, but tolerable for short cool-downs and we all had a great time. Noelle personalized a sand pit made by her daddy.

After a brief acclimation to the sand, Sadie loved serving it up.

Family beach picture (Noelle was tired of smiling at this point)

The "Sauder" family

2 very tired girls, returning to KY

Caught!

Caught red-handed. Make that "blue-mouthed." Is it possible you have you been applying a blue marker as chapstick?

Happy Father's Day

Noelle and Sadie have the best dad ever. Noelle is so certain of it that she regularly announces her love for Brad. It is not uncommon to hear these phrases in our house several times a day:
"I love Daddy sooo much."
"I love Daddy even more then cantaloupe" (or whatever we're eating at the moment)
"Daddy, do you love me as much as I love you?"
"Daddy, I'm giving you this snack because I love you sooo much."
But my favorite was one morning when we had to catch an early flight to go to VA. Noelle was already awake when Brad went to wake her up a little after 6:00. Since she was awake extra early, Brad asked her if she excited about our plane trip. Her response was "No, I'm so excited about how much I love you."

Here's a picture of Sadie expressing her love for her wonderful Daddy.

Remembering God's Faithfulness

Over the past few weeks I've been reminiscing what our lives were like a year ago today. On May 30, 2007 Noelle broke her leg and had to be in a body cast for 6 weeks. It was a long six weeks, but we had so many friends to carry us through it.

People brought meals, came to visit, brought/mailed activities, sent cards and helped me manage a wheelchair and 5-month old baby getting from my car to the Nursery at church. We are so blessed to have such amazing friends and an even more amazing God that worked through them. We give God all the credit for a perfectly healthy and active Noelle whose only memories about that time are good.

Just home from the hospital

Enjoying some new activities

Not-so-Logical Conversation with a 4-yr-old

Noelle - "I don't want to do any more of the things you tell me to do. I just want to do the things I tell myself to do."
Janelle - "You need to do your chores because you're part of the family and everyone needs to help to be sure we have a clean house, clean clothes and food to eat. Besides you need to learn how to do everything for when you're a mommy."
Noelle - "I'll have a daddy (she means husband, but doesn't understand the concept of a husband) who doesn't have a job. He'll stay home and do the work."
J- "If he doesn't have a job how will you have money to buy food?"
N - "We'll just go to the bank and get money."

What's a Prairie?

We recently started reading "Little House on the Prairie" books to Noelle. I guess prairie is not a common word for her so one day she asked if I could read "Little House on the Fairy" to her. She's all girl.

Stories

Noelle loves to be told stories. At first I started with The 3 Bears. It’s a good story until about the 45th time and then it’s just old. I got so desperate that I made up 2 stories about a rooster named Ralph. Although they’re creative and have a good moral, they get monotonous for the storyteller after a few dozen times as well.
Then it dawned on me, I should be telling her Bible stories in order to “talk about [the Bible] when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Deu 6:7 (duh!) So I now have about a dozen stories Noelle refers to as “Jesus Stories.” They are typically parables that Jesus told.
I’ve found, however, I have to use some creative liberties to make a story longer then the 2-minutes it may take to read it from the Bible. For example, we discuss what kind of clothes the Prodigal Son wore when he was rich and what kind of clothes he wore when he was poor. We also talk about what was in the pig slop that the son thought was so appetizing.
The biggest exaggeration I’ve had to make is with The Good Samaritan. Since a priest, Levite and Samaritan don’t mean much to a 4-year old, I’ve translated it into a dog that gets beaten up and is passed by a prim and proper poodle, a powerful wolf and saved by a cat pulling a wagon. The cat’s name is Samaritan, so it all works:)