Hello again!

Well, summer has finally started, and I am feeling like I've caught up enough to blog again! I spent the early part of the week catching up on sleep, de-cluttering all the toys and clothes we don't need anymore and re-arranging the boys' room. Where we used to have the bed, I made them a little reading / playing nook:

And the bed is now against the inside wall of the room, making it feel a little more cozy (note how nicely I got them to make the bed this morning . . . )

I had a lot of clothes to declutter. Its not that I've bought a lot of clothes since we got here, but two things have happened:
1. the children decided to grow. I know they do that way too fast. and since Emma is probably baby number last, we don't need all those baby clothes anymore.
2. people gave me clothes. I love it when people give me clothes. The problem is that the boys are developing their own styles now, and won't wear clothes that don't fit into their personal styles. So about half of the clothes we can use, and the other half we can't.

My apologies for the picture quality -- our camera is slowly dying

The other big new development is Emma's budding independence. For a while she would start screaming and fussing whenever I went to put the tray on her chair so she could eat. I thought she wasn't hungry. On the contrary, she just wanted to sit at the table.

On Tuesday we took the Metro to check out the kids' section of the Jazz Festival (which was awesome -- too bad that due to construction it is far away from any music that was playing at the time), and Emma insisted on doing everything herself. She wanted to go into the bouncy castle with the big kids. She wanted to go down the slide with the big kids. On the way back she insisted on walking down all the stairs to the underground tunnel below the Place Des Arts herself, on getting on the metro herself, and - funniest of all - on sitting in the seat not on my lap, but all by herself. Here she was, this tiny little girl in little dress, sitting next to a huge lady. She was looking up at the lady as if to say, "Yes, that's right. Here we are, two big people sitting on the metro together." It was priceless.

For the first week of summer, Andrew is at a Day Camp put on by Crosstalk Minsitries at our church. I sent Aaron, too, even though we're paying for 3 days of babysitting. The topic is the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, and Andrew is fascinated by the idea of the Holy Spirit. He has a lego flame, and he has taken to sticking it on the head of one of his Lego guys and pretending that the guy is filled with the Holy Spirit. We have to discuss wether the Holy Spirit would win in a battle against Storm Troopers, and I hear him yelling, "I can defeat you because I have the power of the HOLY SPIRIT!" Its pretty funny.