Hi-ya! Birthday Asian Style

My little boy, Ethan, turned 6 this weekend -

how can that be - wasn't he just crawling?
He is getting to be quite the martial artist so we decided a
Taekwondo birthday would be it for this year!

Ethan and his Taekwondo instructor Mr. Do.

Ethan breaking a board.

Who gave that boy weapons for his birthday, oh, I did!

Have you ever seen a cake get cut with a sword??????

And, If you know me, you know I tend to go over the top
with my kids birthdays - but I live for them all year long,
so I thought I'd share some of the fun things I came up with:

Sushi

The layout with food and favors in Chinese Takeout boxes

The dragon cake

And of course, black belt cupcakes!

May the Force Be with You!

Every time my kids get into a new phase of life, I seem to learn everything you would ever want to know about it. First there was Thomas, then Cars, and now for a long time running there is STAR WARS.....

So for Mother's Day, I decided I wanted to go to the Happiest Place on Earth - you got it Disneyland. And as much as my sweet husband told my kids, "this is mommy's day, she gets to pick the rides", my kids fought back with "I want to do this and that".

So the self less mom that I am (insert your side jokes here), I chose the first thing I wanted to do was go to Jedi training. Nothing would give me more satifaction that listening to the same script I have heard about 1000 times.....

Ethan has the knack for Jedi training! He has gotten picked almost every time. THANKFULLY, he got picked yesterday or it would have been a looooonnngggg day. Check out my little Padawan...




His only complaint - he did not get to fight Darth Mal. Oh...what has this world come to?

Our family is definitely amusement park junkies. We have our annual passes to Disneyland (thank you Dad and Judi!), and we do Legoland a couple of times a year. And guess where we stopped to take pictures?

May the force be with you.

Sibling Rivalry

Oh how my kids love to fight over everything. Sound familiar?

Today my darling Bella, who is trying so hard to drop her nap, played instigator all day long.

Today's Instigator - Bella doing her best pirate

She pushed, pinched, screamed....the works. I thought maybe playtime outside would help her, but she closed the door on us and screamed "key...key" - Bella speak for lock the door.

How do we as parents deal with our children's inabilities to play together and just fight?
I found solace here today:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28

pump it up

bootcamp was cancelled today. generally my second alternative is to go to the gym, but with ethan's school schedule today that was not going to work. so turned on the dvd,
and popped in "the firm".

of course, the second my kids saw me doing the crazy moves - they were all over it.

we squatted.
we lunged.
we curled.
we pumped.
and man did we laugh.

bella's contribution was to regularly ask for the "lelow" ones (my yellow hand weights).

keeping on the kid fitness track. i decided to actually walk the .75 mile to the grocery store for that one ingredient i needed. bella was in tow in her stroller. on the way home - she exclaimed. "i walk". my first reaction - great this is going to take hours.

but instead - through her, i saw ever color of flower, every fire truck,
every button, and every car.

kids have a way of slowing you down and showing you things you miss.
i think i might have to walk to the store more often.

the fall

i've told him a thousand times. we have talked it about it way too many times. and of course, ethan, my adventurous 5 year old could not resist.

we have a huge pane window in the front of our house - the kind that makes you feel like you are in a fish bowl - and just outside of it there is an all too tempting ledge.

so there we are, saying goodbye to our friends from a play date, and the ethans (yes his friend is also ethan) decided to climb the ledge....and thud.

of course the frantic mom side of me took over - there was blood. we rushed upstairs, pulled out the magic cream (my aunt's name for neosporin) and was about to clean and lecture away, when ethan stared at me and quietly said, "mommy my nose is bloody and my lip is bloody. how am i going to kiss you goodnight?" in turn i quietly hugged him, and told him i would still kiss him no matter what. thankfully my lecture was quieted before it even began.

then i got to thinking. is this what we do when we realize our sins to Jesus? do we look at him with our stained lips and wonder how are we going to still be loved? thank you, Lord that your grace is enough for me.