I just realized I never posted pictures from Eben's little birthday party. He had multiple celebrations - one being with Scott's family while they were in town and then another a week after his birthday with some of his friends. Here's pictures of the festivities ...
On Wednesday night Eben's front tooth said hello to the sidewalk while riding his bike. As a consequence, he will be saying goodbye to his tooth on Tuesday! For the following pictures on this blog you'll be seeing him missing his left front tooth - it was fractured in three places and will be pulled making a nice, premature spot for his grownup tooth to move down in a couple years. Here's his injured tooth - in a few days I'll post a shot of his new smile!
Now that school has started, vacations are over and Labor Day has passed, I guess it's time to say goodbye to the summer! I LOVED this summer even though it was so crazy! As a farewell, here are the kids with their final ice cream cones of the summer!
On Labor Day Gustav came to visit! To celebrate our first real hurricane since living here, we boarded up the house and hit the road. We chose Natchez, MS as our destination, visiting friends the Bates who lived here running disaster assistance after Katrina. Turned out we had very little damage here, just some fallen tree limbs and short loss of power. In Natchez we had a great time, ate great food, swam and spent good time with friends. However, it turned out we were without power for half the time we were there! How ironic!
Tate and Eben are slowly beginning to have a relationship not completely based on violence. Occasionally they now play with eachother and get in trouble together. Eben is training up Tate in all things "boy" - making great sound effects, jumping in puddles and riding bikes. It's so great to see them becoming occasional friends instead of purely enemies! Here are lots of pictures and videos of them lately ...
I love the hair in this first picture:
Helping (or hurting) their relationship, Eben finally moved in the "boy" room! When we first moved into the house Tyler wanted him in the room with her and then he became a bit of a nomad and moved during the night between our bed, Tyler's room and a sleeping bag on our floor. He was finally eager to move into the room with Tate and we put him back in a toddler bed. Here are the boys together in the bed after we built it together:
After staying inside while Tropical Storm Faye came through, we were ready to get out and jump some puddles. This was a first for Tate and really, probably the first time in Eben's memory ...
Finally, here's a video (yes, I was driving and filming at the same time) of Eben singing his favorite song "Joshua 1:9" from VBS this past summer. He loves to sing it loud and with motions. Here you can also see Tate joining in and then being abused by his brother - all in good fun!
In mid-August, Tyler started the second grade. Here's a picture of her that morning - CAN'T believe she's in second grade and about to be seven!
While Scott attended his annual Coop gathering in Lake Tahoe, I took the kids to Luboock, TX and spent some time with our wonderful friends from seminary, Christina and Ami and their kids. So, three moms, nine kids: insane you may say but it was wonderful! We drove first to Dallas and joined up with Christina and she and I piled all eight of us into her minivan and drove the seemingly 1000-hour trip to Lubbock. Here are a ton of pictures of all of us:
