Friends

Thanks to my good friend Brandy who took this picture, as well as taking the kids to the beach last week. Left to right are Joshua, Caleb, & Kiernan. Kiernan is not quite 2 months younger than Joshua - I believe she's making sunglasses for herself, or is it binoculars? The boys had a fun day eating, "fishing", chasing each other & splashing around.

Andrew seems to have fully recovered from Roseola by now and is pretty much walking all the time (at least at home). He still gets down on hands & knees outside or in unfamiliar places.

Joshua and Caleb are enjoying VBS which runs at a nearby church 4 evenings this week. They come home with crafts they've made & lessons learned, and also unfortunately, candy. It seems that everyone in this world needs to reward children (for good behaviour or otherwise) with sugar! I'm so glad our new pediatrician has a tub of small, cheap toys the boys can choose from, instead of candy. And the Dentist gives away stickers & toothbrushes.

It's to the point where the children are expecting SOMETHING everywhere they go. We've started saying "No!" to most of their requests for licorice (after they go potty) and they don't even dwell on it. They're able to forget about it surprisingly fast, and I hope that they're learning that not every good deed will always get an immediate reward! Hopefully they will learn that sometimes doing good is just feeling good inside & feeling better about themselves for it. And maybe they'll some day begin to look for opportunities to do good deeds because they enjoy helping others, which also helps themselves. The lost art in children today is their total preoccupation with themselves & "what's in it for me!". Maybe that's in all of us already, not just the children. I will try to do what I can to develop a greater sense of selflessness in my children and leave the rest up to God!

An Explanation

Hello to all you who are reading this. Some of you may be wondering why I have not been updating my blog more often. Well, the bad news is my camera is out of commission; the good news is that there is a 2 year warranty on it & it's in for repairs. Hopefully everything will work out quickly & cheaply!!

Since I'm guessing that most people are checking this blog for pictures of the boys and not because of my eloquent writing, I have refrained from sharing with you all the mundane & relatively unimportant aspects of our lives this past week. The only thing worth mentioning is that Joshua successfully turned 4 years old (WOW!) and received many great presents and had lots of good food; and Andrew had roseola. Other than that, I think our lives have been what we consider to be "normal". Oh, and we've also discovered that Joshua is very sensitive to "scarey" movies and experiences unpleasant dreams as a result. Also, the wasps are worse than ever. I'm thinking of stocking up on Raid and setting out on a night time crusade to rid the neighbourhood of wasps nest, because they must be out there! I'm starting to look forward to winter, only because there will be no wasps!!

One other thing that I'd like to share with you is that our neighbours across the street are becoming more vigilant in the way they take up as much space as possible parking their three (yes, 3) vehicles along the street. They have purposely begun parking their vehicles so that other people have to park farther away from our homes. If I had my camera, I would take a picture for you to see the silliness that they are engaging in. It is downright childish, I think, and I've made the decision to refrain as much as I consciously can to exhibit such childish behaviour as I continue to age! And hopefully, they will never read this when they're having a bad day!