Our Little Designer...

Chloe created this outfit for her Little Mermaid doll...

Using only paper, scissors and heart stickers.

Pretty impressive if I do say so myself.

And of course...no outfit would be complete with out silly bands.

The Real Thing...

Chloe has been pretending lately that she has a loose tooth...
(Actually, for a couple years...she has pretended that her gap between her two front teeth is a space left from a lost tooth...)

When I picked her up at school today she showed me she has a REAL loose tooth...

Fer realz.

Here we go!

Fun Friend

This morning I got to have a spontaneous field trip with my friend Amie...

She's the one in the knee pads. She is a fun lady.

Michael's just opened a new store in G'ville and neither of us had been to it yet...so we headed over.
Sans. Kids.
Wooo. Hooo.

Angelic choirs started singing (in Amie's head) as soon as we walked in the door...the BEADS!!! She is going to make some beautiful jewelry with her finds.

We laughed and chatted it up while we oooh-ed and aaahh-ed over all of it...

So much so that another lady in the aisle asked us (jokingly, I think.) what we were smoking...
(REALLY...do people need to smoke something to have as much fun as we were?)

Even the music was fun.
Soooo Jr. High school dance music.
We sang along and at one point Amie did a little shimmy between aisles.
(the 70-something lady behind me may not have laughed as hard as I did...but then again, they were not HER Jr. High dance songs...)

It lasted about an hour...but what a filling-up hour it was.

Love Amie. Love spending time her.

If I had to pick one...

If I had to pick one thing I strongly dislike about the South, it would be cockroaches.

These disgusting monsters do not reside in Indiana...
They were quite a shock to me when we first moved here almost 10 years ago.

THEY ARE HUGE!

If I see one skitter through my house a chill of anger goes up my spine...
because
they are GROSS.
they are FAST
they make me feel DIRTY.

Last night I was in my bathroom washing my face before bed.
Reflecting in the mirror, I could see 'someone' peering at me from behind on the top of shower...
GRRRRRRRRRR...

My heart rate speeds up and I start searching for something, ANYTHING that I can use to KILL THE ROACH!!!

One of Kevin's magazines will do just fine...but the killing must be strategic...because RARELY if EVER are roaches killed on the first attempt.

Side note: Kevin tells me that roaches can actually live for 2 weeks without a head. 2 WEEKS! They actually starve to death... I. Know.

As I said, they rarely die on the first swat...so you have to make sure the nasty things won't corner you or worse yet, CHARGE YOU.

So I choose my position (at the shower door. If it falls from the top, it will be semi trapped in the shower floor and I can slam the door if it is charging me. Arm raised, eye on the target, deep breath, SWAT!

As anticipated the grody thing falls to the floor, scurrying and flopping.

I continue swatting while chanting, "I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!!!"

Finally, it is still. Lying on it's back...but I have learned from previous experience that this position DOES NOT mean that the roach is actually DEAD. Nope, these nightmares know how to play dead. I'm. Serious.

So I get some toilet paper, toss it over the possible corpse...and give it one final THUD with magazine. I am finally satisfied with it's dead-ness once it's guts have splatted out. I get more toilet paper to pick it up (disinfect the splatted area) and flush it down the toilet. Which reminds me why the guts are my only satisfactory sign that the roach is deceased...I have flushed a 'thought to be dead' cockroach down the toilet before and later found it in the bowl again. I. AM. NOT. KIDDING. These bugs are straight from the pit.

You might be surprised by this violent streak in me. I am too, actually.
I believe I reserve the angst for cockroaches only. I hate them that much.

So, while I am not sitting around making lists of the things I hate about the South...the list is super short...

COCKROACHES.

That's it.

Pencil-vania

This has been Chloe's favorite joke for the past 5 days or so...

Kevin is with his family in Pennsylvania for his Grandma's 92nd birthday party.
Every time we mention that he is there, she pipes in with,

"PENCIL!?!?!? How is Daddy in a PENCIL?!?!?"

She cracks herself up.

Opposites...

It's almost a guarantee...
If Chloe asks for the radio to be ON, Eli wants it OFF.
If Chloe is COLD, Eli is HOT.

This is most evident in the van...
I can almost count to 2 before Eli's anticipated opposite-ness...

I did not realize we had done such a thorough job of teaching this particular concept...

But, he's got it. By George, I think he's got it.

The Ride of Her Life...

Sitting at dinner tonight, Chloe was telling us all about school this week. She was talking a mile a minute about how she is stronger than all the boys and faster and...more humble. (not really, Kevin and I added that part.) She discovered she was stronger than all of them when she broke free from their snare at recess.

She recounted how she prayed to God, "God you are always with me, I do not need to be afraid." ...and she "broke right out and ran really, really fast." (which she acted out by running around the living room and back into the kitchen.)

She sat back down at the table and continued her story...

C: "Ever since the tube ride, I have known that God is always with me."
Me: "What happened on the tube ride." (last Friday...Sept. 3, 2010...her very first solo ride)
C: "Well, I prayed, 'God I know you are always with me. I know I don't need to be scared, because you are always with me. Even though the water is deep, You will keep me safe. And all of a sudden, I knew He was inside me. He is living inside me.'"

Both Kevin and I sat stunned with tears in our eyes and our hearts in our throats.
Is she really saying this?? Did this really happen?? Does she understand what she is saying?? Is this enough??

In her short 6 years, she has surprised us with her deep spirituality. She carries an old soul this little girl. She feels things. She senses things. She understands things.

She routinely sings songs about Jesus and how He died on the cross so our sins could be forgiven. She told us that she sings songs to Him on the playground. She tells Him that she knows that nothing can separate her from Him. She loves Him.

But this tube ride...it seems to have changed her life...without us even knowing it.

Happy tears spilled down my cheeks...

He is hers and She is His. Forever.

Sometimes No Plans are the Best Kind of Plans...

Honest.
On Friday morning, Kevin asked me if we had any plans for the Labor Day weekend.
Which I answered with a solid 'no'.

Well, here we are now on Monday afternoon and we have had a VERY FULL, VERY FUN Holiday weekend.

Friday: On the lake with the Grubers. Kevin wakeboarded. Chloe tubed. (All by herself!) Me and E enjoyed the ride!

Saturday: Free day at Lake Lanier Islands water park with the Moores!! Chloe's first experience with water slides...lots of swimming in the wave pool.

Sunday: Kevin lead worship for both services, I did storytelling for Children's church. Lunch with out of town friends, the Buchanans, baptism service for the Gees, and hang out time and fireworks at Concord Days in Clermont.

Monday: Coffee with a friend in the morning. Lazy afternoon at the house. Cook out with Growth Group friends this afternoon!

Sometimes no plans are the best kind of plans!

Scared the Pee Out of Me...

Somehow...when Chloe was supposed to be getting ready for school this morning, she managed to scare Eli.

In attempt to tattle, he said, (very seriously)

E: "Chloe scared the pee out of me."
Me: "She scared the pee out of you?!"
E: "Yeah."
Me: "She scared you and you peed a little bit?"
E: "Yeah. She scared the pee right out of me."

What is doubly funny is that this is not a phrase he has heard us use...so it's almost like he invented it.