I'm puzzled!

Henry is getting really good at puzzles. He's always been really curious about how things work, and he always wants to know how things fit together. So it's pretty natural for him to enjoy puzzles.

Recently I introduced Henry to a new puzzle that I had found at a garage sale a while back. It has a Noah's Ark scene on it and it has about 60 pieces. Henry does this puzzle an average of 4 times a day. On a really good day, he'll put this puzzle together at least 10 times. Can you say obsessive? Some days I hide it, just so we can do something besides the puzzle!

The funny part about this for me, is that for some reason, Henry insists on calling it his "Moses Puzzle." He knows the story of Noah (his nursery was decorated in Noah's Ark-he's heard the story!), and he can even tell us all about it. But when it comes to this puzzle, he always wants to do the Moses puzzle. It probably doesn't help that Sam thinks that it's funny, so he started calling it Henry's Moses puzzle too!

A penny for your thoughts...

My wonderful husband has a wooden box of pennies that he has been collecting for I don't know how long. It weighs a ton, and it's starting to get full. I used to keep all of my spare change in a great big pickle jar, but Sam likes to keep the silver separate from the pennies. So we combined the two and the pickle jar now holds all of the silver coins and the box keeps the pennies separate. Both are kept in our closet for convenience (so you can empty your pockets at the end of the day).

The boys have discovered the penny box.

Not only did they do what you can see here, there are pennies everywhere in my house. They are in between all of our clothes on the shelves in our closet. I had to dump out the large pickle jar to remove and separate all the pennies out from the silver coins. I had to fish some pennies out of the toilet in my bathroom (thank you, Jonah), and I found some in my bed (?), under the sink in my bathroom and in my bathtub.

Pennies aren't my favorite right now.

Three year old musings...

This week we've seen some amazing changes in Henry. It's a lot of what we've been working for.....trying to instill a sense of personal responsibility (what I do affects others), manners, respect for others and property, etc.

All of a sudden, Henry gets it. We don't have to remind him to cover his mouth when he coughs. He says please, thank you, and even bless you after someone sneezes. He'll give Jonah whatever he wants to make him happy (not a great habit, I know!), and then give him a hug and tell him he loves him. When he's given direction, he says, "yes, sir" or "yes, ma'am" without prompting, and then does what he was asked to do. He asks if he can help when I'm cleaning things up and wants to have his own chores, like setting the table.

Now I don't want to sound like our work is done, Henry's not perfect. He's still a three year old!I just want to share how much Henry has accomplished recently! We can really tell how hard he is trying to be obedient and how much he wants to please us. He is such a sweet boy!

The really strange part of all of this? It makes me very emotional! These are all things we have been working on and to see Henry's character taking shape.....it gives me glimpses into the kind of man he will one day be. My baby is growing up! Good thing we have a while before the first day of school, because I don't think I would be able to handle it right now!

Sam and Jon

Wouldn't want you all to miss the latest installment on Sam's blog! He updated today.

The link is "Lazy by Nature" (which is anything but true)!

Vacation Pictures!

I posted lots of pictures to make up for my blogging absence! :)

We're back! Florida was a GREAT vacation! We rented a house in a development right across the street from the beach and just a few houses down from a pool. (Way to go Kelly!) The weather couldn't have been better......nice warm days, not too hot, gentle breezes off the ocean.....perfect! Henry and Jonah were in heaven-we went to the beach every morning right after breakfast and then stopped at the pool on the way back to the house.

We were only gone a week, but we did so much that it seemed like longer. We explored a charming little town called Seaside and found a fun little park for the kids to play in while we were in town. The boys (Sam and Jon) went grocery shopping for us and stocked up the shelves in the kitchen. The kids picked up seashells and dug in the sand. We swam. We made home-made ice-cream. We ate ice-cream cones in town. We relaxed on the beach. The boys went deep-sea fishing and caught a bunch of snapper and some other fish. They went golfing on an amazing, beautiful golf course. Kelly and I hit a great sale at the outlet mall (The Children's Place) and found some good deals. We visited Bass Pro Shops and bought crab nets for the guys. They caught about two dozen crabs that we cooked up for dinner!

We had such a fun trip and it was really relaxing. Jon and Kelly are so fun and easy to vacation with! The boys are a little worn out after all the excitement of the last week. And Henry is a little confused. He thought that the house we were renting was "our new house." So we came home last night, and he said, "Why are we at our old house?" This morning during breakfast, he asked, "Mommy, are we going to the beach today?" Sorry, buddy. Back to reality! :)

Florida, here we come!

Tomorrow we are heading to Florida for a little relaxing vacation on the beach with Jon and Kelly and Jordan! We are very excited and looking forward to some family time.

We actually made the mistake of telling Henry about it too early. All this week, when we get ready to go somewhere....Henry runs to the door, claps his hands (his whole arms, really) and says, "Yay! Time to go to the beach! Yayyyyyyyy!" Or we'll stop somewhere, like the library, and he'll say, "Oh, we're going here first? Then the beach. Yay!" I'm not sure he understands the whole 11 hour drive part of getting to the beach! :) Oops.

This is a picture from our last vacation with Jon and Kelly, right before we split up to fly home to Montana. Aren't they a cute family? And isn't God great? At the time this picture was taken, we had no idea that five months later we'd be living down here near all of Sam's immediate family!

We are so blessed! I will post again next week to let everyone know how the vacation went!

Web Tales

Here's a picture of my silly boys helping me out with some yard chores. They were both very excited to have found gardening gloves to wear!

Yesterday Sam and I woke up before the boys. (This is a pretty unusual occasion.) Anyway, we were talking, and Sam leaned over and poked me, saying, "Lou, look out the window over there!" And what do I see, but a HUGE spider in an even bigger web stretched out right outside my bedroom window. We have a pretty big window in there, and the web easily took up half of the window.

Don't tell Sam, but I really thought it was pretty cool! It's kind of like looking at something at the zoo. You know it can't hurt you, so you're free to look. Those who know me know that I'm not exactly a spider fan, but I'll admit this....East Texas really has some pretty cool spiders!

P.S. My mom will read this at some point, and since I inherited my "spider-phobia" from her, I won't be posting the picture I took of the spider! :)

Picnic Time!

Last week Kelly and I took our kids and Cole to the zoo. The weather was perfect since it has cooled down a little, and we all had a great time! While we were there, we had a picnic, and I took this cute picture of everyone. It doesn't look like Jonah saved any sandwiches for anyone else!

I took the boys to the science center yesterday for a little while. It's one of their favorite places, and we went with the Smith family (which is also one of their favorite things!). It was a very good time. Henry can't seem to say "science center," it always comes out as "setence siner." It sounds so cute, so Sam and I always ask him to repeat it over and over so we can get a good laugh! (One of the perks of being a parent--always something to laugh about!)

That Sam-I-Am!

My wonderful husband lost a bet recently. As some of you may have heard, Sam and Jon lost to their wives and have to create blogs. Kelly and I were starting to wonder if it would actually happen, and it finally has! Sam's blog was started today...it is definitely worth a visit!
www.samhasz.blogspot.com I think you can just click on this link, but I will also put a link on the sidebar. Trust me, you don't want to miss Sam's blog. And make sure you leave him a comment so he knows you've seen it!

Betty Crocker? I think not.

Here is an example of my baking skills....

I can make a beautiful banana cream pie (with meringue on top!), as long as you don't mind a little fire in the kitchen!

When I was making this I was so paranoid that I would burn the meringue that I set two timers just to be sure. When I smelled smoke coming from the kitchen, I just couldn't believe it. I checked...everything looked fine. It could use a few more minutes. Oh, wait. Not everything looked fine. There was that potholder smoldering on the burner that I had left turned on. Oops!

So I couldn't use it to pull out the pie, but the pie did turn out pretty well! :)