Thought For The Day

I read this today. It was just attached to the bottom of an email that I received. I sat here for a couple of minutes and pondered it, so I thought I would share.

"When the world pushes you to your knees, you are in the perfect position to pray"

How true it is! Oftentimes, our faith is weak because things are going so good in life. Your faith in God is required when things look bad to us. It is during those times when we sometimes have the best message to share with a sinful world. They see God's grace and love through our suffering and perseverance. It is then that we usually hit our knees and look up for guidance when we should be looking up all along. Remember today to look up and if nothing else, be thankful to what God has given to us.

Our First Family Swim

We finally got to have our first family swim! It was three weeks ago now! I can't believe how long it has been since I have blogged! I know, I'm a slacker! Anyway, here are a few pics from our first swim.

Joshua and Daddy. Joshua is quite the little fish. He really wants for us to let him go on his own but then he either goes face-down in the water or he drinks the water...not quite sure why he things it tastes good...

Dad has made the pool look so nice this year...not that it's usually dirty but it is soooo clean and smooth and refreshing!

My boys...having a blast.

"Come on Mom! The water is fine!"
Actually, the weather hasn't been hot enough with enough sun and the water is
COLD!

Here I am with my little pal. It's great that we have the chance for me to spend my days hanging out by the pool with my little buddy. Thanks Jesse!

First Trip To The Zoo!

We took our first trip to the Zoo for the year on Friday. Our friends Angie, Aubrey and Reese came along for the adventure. The kids did a great job and Angie and I were so impressed. We didn't deal with whining and crying. The kids were excited to be there and they had so much fun.

Here is Aubrey

Aubrey and Reese on the Tiger Statue. Joshua wasn't quite sure about climbing on the big animals yet.

Here is Joshua leading the way.

Joshua and Reese checking out the snakes. The snakes are already one of Joshua's favorite. The thinks they are cool because they are so much bigger than the ones in our yard and they are in pens so he can look for a long time.

I took some watermelon for Joshua. It's a good thing b/c he didn't want to drink anything.

They have the coolest set up for the building that houses the Manatee. Here is Aubrey walking in.

This is the view as you come around the corner. That is the Manatee pen.

Joshua wasn't too sure about getting really close to the glass at first. He loved the view though.

Aubrey & Reese

Here is Angie with all the kids.

Joshua checking out the Manatee.

Aubrey & Resse checking it out.

Joshua & Aubrey are good friends. He loves them both. There are many days where I will mention Angie for something and Joshua immediately says "my Auby and Eese?"

Here are some shots of the animals that we saw...

Little Bit of Rain

Last week we got quite a bit of rain. The field tiles next to our back yard are busted and are in serious need of being fixed. This was the result of a lot of rain, really fast and busted field tiles. The pictures are blurry because I was trying to take them and keep the soaking wet dog off of me.

Here is the nice little river that was running through our yard. The garage is to my right and the water flows around the garage on each end and then comes back together in this.

You can't really see them, but the water is completely drowning my berries.

The dog house is on a hill and the water is almost inside it. The gate is to the pig pen....he was drowning too...too bad not all the way though!

This is a picture of our neighbors yard. That last section of fence is a gate in between the yards. Just outside that gate in their yard is a brand new drain. Even it couldn't handle all the water that was coming that quick and their yard flooded too.

It was an interesting morning waking up to all of this. The storms were pretty rough but, of course, my little angel slept through all of it.

New Friends

On Sunday night of our weekend at the lake, we went to a party down the street. Joshua made some new friends there.

This is a picture of Joshua and Bennett. They were playing cornhole since it seemed that none of the adults wanted to play.

And this is Joshua's new friend, Zaden. Zaden and his grandparents actually just moved in two houses down from Grandpa Joe and Grandma Laurie. So, when Joshua goes down there, he may have a friend who can come play with him.

Here is a closer picture of Zaden.

Here is Joshua.

And here is Joshua after getting all sweaty running around. Brent(the guy who threw the party) has a pretty steep driveway and it's pretty long. Joshua probably ran up and down it no less that like 25 times! Needless to say that he slept very well!

One last shot of Zaden....take a look at this picture and then say Zaden 10 times fast.

My cool pictures

While we were at the lake, I had a couple opportunities to take some interesting shots.
Down there, the cicadas were going crazy. The noise was really loud and if you were still for very long, they got really close to you. Not quite as bad as it was in 2004, but not too far from it.

Here are my shots of a spider eating a cicada on the deck. I was in awe since the cicada is like 3X the size of the spider. Joshua found this interesting and then disgusting.

Right next to the water line, next to the dock, there was a congregation of butterflies. I don't know what was there that they were so attracted to, but I got a couple good shots. There are several on the ground in these shots but there are also a ton flying above them.

Out on the Lake Sunday

I am FINALLY getting the rest of our lake pictures on here from our Memorial Day trip. I only took a few on Sunday because I wanted to just sit in the boat and relax myself.

Here is a picture of all three of us in the tube. Joshua had a blast. Notice that he thinks that he is going to be pulled behind a boat and manage to keep a nuk in his mouth...

Joshua loved the feel of the rushing water. He kept leaning all the way over the side of the tube(my fingers and Jesse's were linked in the straps of his jacket) to feel the water. Notice that Joshua has managed to hang onto the nuk.

I got some pretty good pictures of Jesse skiing. It's one of his favorite things to do at the lake.

Here is Joshua watching Daddy ski. He loves the outdoor but he especially loves the outdoors with water!