I can’t believe it, but today we are celebrating our sixteenth wedding anniversary! Right about this time I remember seeing Janell appear in the back of Grace Bible Church in her gown. It is something I’ll never forget. I’m so happy to be married to her and be on this journey of life together.
We’re celebrating by doing normal things, since we can’t drive our car today. We’ll be waiting until another day to go out to eat. I did buy her 2 dozen roses yesterday, so at least that’s something. I’ll grill her some steak on the grill tonight after I write an 8 page book review for one of the classes I’m taking.
Romantic, right?
It’s amazing how many things happen in 16 years.
- We’ve been on so many airplanes, and we’ve traveled to so many places, including Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and others.
- We moved to another country.
- We’ve lived in so many houses I can’t remember.
- We’ve learned another language.
- We’ve been to and spoken in so many churches.
- We’ve had 3 incredible kids.
- We’ve watched a lot of Rays’ and Dolphins’ games.
- She’s put up with a lot of corny jokes.
- We’ve taught and mentored a lot of students.
…And we’re really only getting started. Here’s to many, many, more years!
Today is Ben’s 5th birthday. It’s hard to believe that our little guy is 5 already, but it’s a fact. Unfortunately, all of our family has been sick. It started a few days ago when Nathan got a sore throat. After a few days he was better but Benjamin was sick. He’s still sick. Which leads us to today.
We cancelled the birthday party we had planned for Saturday because we felt it was better to not subject our friends and their kids to the illness. Today is the official birthday, so we made a cake last night, went to lunch today, and went to the store to get ice cream. We were on the mend, or so we thought.
We sang happy birthday, cut the cake, and scooped the ice cream. Then Ben got the ear ache of his life. We left the ice cream and cake on the plates and went to the pharmacy to see the doctor who is there. Ben wailed almost the whole time. He gave us some medicine, and our little birthday boy screamed for the next few hours. His little ear was hurting him so bad.
Janell put some chopped onion wrapped in a cloth on his ear, and he finally fell asleep. He’s been mostly okay since, but it still hurts him. About an hour after putting Shiloh to bed, she started crying. Her belly was hurting, so when I picked her up to comfort her, I almost got a puke shower. Luckily I moved out of the way fast enough. She’s okay now, resting on the couch watching cartoons with her brother.
As you can see, instead of really celebrating Ben’s birthday today, we barely survived. It’s still early, so who knows what else could happen.
Happy Easter! We had a great day at church this morning. Then we had lunch with some friends, watched some basketball (sorry Duke and Florida lost), and had some other friends and their kids over to hunt Easter eggs.
We hope you had a great day, too.
We’ve wanted to get the kids a playground or swingset or something, but our backyard is so small that there’s not enough room for something like that. So when we saw a miniature trampoline at Sam’s Club, we knew we should get it for them.
We first saw it about a year ago, and we’ve been putting it off and putting it off.
Today we finally broke down and got it for them. They’re so cute on it. It will probably keep them busy for a long time.
Here’s a tweet I sent out with a quick video of them…
It’s not everyday that I get a brilliant idea, so when I do I need to write about it here. I’m not sure that it’s so brilliant, but it’s something that I am happy about, so I wanted to share it.
We’ve never been very good at “family devotions.” You hear the stories of the families that spend hours praying together and studying the Bible, but since we have three very active little kids, it’s not been something we’ve been able to perfect as a family.
Sure, as we are going along, we talk about God and the Bible (which might be one of the most important things to do), but we’ve not made a whole lot of progress of being intentional about those conversations so far. Our family is young, so we have some time, but not that much. Like everyone says, “They’ll be grown before we know it.”
A few weeks ago, we I (Dennis) had a crazy idea to paint one of the walls in our house with chalkboard paint. It’s fun and the kids get permission to draw on a wall. We use it for home school and other things. Then it hit me: Why not post an intentional question on the wall and let the kids answer with a word or a drawing? The parents can play along, too, answering the question each day as we pass by the wall.
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We were at Janell’s mom’s house the other night, and for some reason she had pulled out this old picture of her and her Grandmother and her Aunt at Jones Beach in New York.
I think she looks exactly like Ben does right about now. It might have something to do with the hair, but it’s amazing to me to see the resemblance.
Here’s a recent picture of Ben helping decorate the Christmas tree:
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