Hodge-Podge

Last week the girls from study weren't able to get together Wednesday night due to husbands being out of town as well as some sicknesses, so we decided to all get together Friday during the day with all of our kids. We threw them all in the backyard and pulled out every toy we had for their entertainment. Hilarious. The scene was totally ghetto and it looked like we were running an illegal in-home daycare. It was only Angie, Brady, and I..and between the 3 of us we had Trevor, Charlie, Olivia, Shephard, Sawyer, Sanders, Knox, Greer, and we also picked up Teal's kids (she is still in Africa), Caden and Murphy. So that's 10 kids, not to mention 5 of them were age 2 and under...and.... we had a set of twinsies. WHOOP WHOOP! Now that I think about it, we should have invited all the teenagers in a 10 mile radius to come on over...they would have had a great dose of birth control :).

 Knox and Sanders were a little warm and thought that they should actually get IN the water table

It was super chaotic, and the adults didn't get to sit and chat like we hoped for, but the kids had fun.

Friday night, after we put the kids to bed, Lee and I poured a glass of wine and blew off the dust from our rehearsal dinner slideshow. Some pictures were so funny that I laughed until I cried, and some were  so bad that well...I just wanted to cry. I want to personally thank everyone that continued to be my friend through some terrrrrible hair decisions, clothes decisions, make up decisions, etc. Man, some of it was hard to watch. However, I did love seeing some pictures of us as babies since we have children of our own now. I almost spit the wine through my nose when I saw this picture of Lee:

He was in the 10th grade. I can't handle the skinny-ness. I am almost certain that my own arms and legs have never been that skinny. Even when I was a newborn. Hilarious. 

We both instantly agreed that Greer Lawson looks JUST like Lee in this picture:

And then we both SCREAMED when we saw this one. I am Knox's mother, and I can honestly tell you that I had to do a double take. They could have been identical twins!

Here is my baby picture. Yep. They look NOTHING like me. The only thing that I passed down is the baby pug nose :). Greer and I have the same exact nose. K's was pug too. There you go, kiddos. My gift to you. O'well. Maybe you'll have my dancing skills.

And this one just made me smile. We were engaged and Lolli had just given us some cute trinkets for our tropical honeymoon. We look so carefree and young. So much has changed since this picture was taken, and definitely for the better. No, it hasn't been easy having 2 kids so close in age within 5 years of marriage, but it has challenged us, strengthened us, and drawn the both of us closer to the Lord, and well...that's always better :)

It was really fun to sit with Lee and look at all the pictures. If I had time, and it wasn't annoying, I would post all of them on here. It has been a sweet thing for my heart to look back and see where we came from and all that the Lord has taken us through in the almost 5 years that we have been married. When I was engaged, people told me that marriage wasn't always easy. I scoffed. My marriage would be different. Easy. Loving all the time. Pleasant all the time. No tears would be shed and I would never be frustrated with my sweet husband (or frustrate him :)). One word for that brief vision of deception: humbled. I love looking at the picture above, but I more so love looking at the picture of where we are today. Continuously being molded and shaped into the children, spouses, and parents that God wants us to be. Hard at times, but always good. 

And lastly, I'm going to continue to "give it up" for the big guy for as long as I can. I was telling Brady yesterday that I am going to really continue to praise him for all that he is doing because so often I focus on the negatives and I can really get sad and frustrated when he doesn't behave the exact way I want him to. Terrible, I know. So...Knox is still doing awesome in the big boy bed, AND he is really blowing us away with his eating! He will eat anything I serve him! I'm talking anything. He even ate a whole piece of baked fish the other night with all the sides, and he loved it! He also sat for the entire meal at chic-fil-a with Lee and I on Saturday and ate every bite without really being distracted by the playground. So pleasant!  For those of you who know our struggles with this, you know how big this is. I am not naive enough to think we are in the clear, but I am definitely thrilled enough to praise this little boy's pants off while I can! Thank you, Lord, for even the smallest of things that can make parenting so much smoother. It's little peaks like this that can really help encourage us when we go through the valleys!

You rock, Foxie!