Our Quirky Two Year Old

Noah has a few quirky things that he does. But maybe it's just because he's two years old. Here are a few of them:

1. When all of the cereal in his bowl has been soaked by the milk, he has to have another layer of dry pieces on top before he will eat anymore.

2. After he has had his bath and has been dried off and gotten his pajamas on, he has to stuff his wet towel back in the linen closet. I try to remember to go back later and get it out to hang it up, but sometimes I forget. He gets mad if he sees me do this.

3. He loves to help me put away the groceries after we come back from the store. However, he only likes to put things in the refrigerator. So later on in the day, when I'm searching high and low for the vegetable soup mix I know I bought, I remember that Noah helped me put everything away. Sure enough, there is the soup in the crisper along with the crackers and the coffee.

4. He's currently in the midst of potty training. When he is sitting on the potty, he has to have all of his clothes off including his shirt and socks. Because of this, he is often either completely naked or only wearing a diaper. It's a good thing that we live in Florida.

5. He gets mad if we go anywhere without his diaper bag. He won't let me leave the house without it even if we're only going to be gone for a few minutes to pick up Emily at school.

6. Every time I lay him down for a nap or at bedtime I have to sing him "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" and he sings along with me. Okay, this isn't really a quirk. It's sweet and I love it.

I'm sure there are more things. I just can't think of them right now.

Child Labor

A List of Classic Literature

I saw this list of books floating around on Facebook and thought it was interesting. The directions were to put an x next to the ones you have read, a plus sign next to the ones that you read and really liked and an asterisk next to the ones that you want to read. The BBC estimates that most people will only have read six of these books. This is the list with my answers:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x +
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x +
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible x +
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott *
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x +
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x + (my all-time fave)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (started this one but didn't finish)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x +
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X +
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x +
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X +
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Aleandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac *
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray x
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x (reading this right now with Emily)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom x
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Aleandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo * ( I really should read this. Seen the Broadway musical twice)

My total : 27

This has inspired me to start reading some of these great classics.

The Hiding Place

I recently read this book written by Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie and her sister Betsie lived with their father in Nazi occupied Holland during WWII. They were Christians, but were imprisoned and later sent to a concentration camp for aiding and hiding Jews in their house. Their father died shortly after they were put in prison and her sister Betsie died in the concentration camp in Germany. Corrie survived and was miraculously released from the camp.

It took me a long time to finish the book because sometimes I could only read a few pages at a time. Sometimes the words were too painful to read and I would have to put the book down to weep. You can imagine the horrible, unspeakable things that they experienced.

One of the things that struck me as I read this book was that these events happened not very long ago- just over 50 years ago. This was during my grandparents generation. Sometimes it's easy to forget that even today there are many places in the world where there is great injustice and persecution. Maybe it's easy to ignore the fact that there is great evil and wickedness in the world because we live in a peaceful country where we have great freedom. The reality is that we live in a fallen, sinful world full of depravity. Thankfully, we have a Savior who will one day bring swift and complete justice.

I've often wondered how I would respond if I was ever severely persecuted for my faith. I hear stories of people who have undergone extreme persecution who later talk about how those times were some of the sweetest moments they have experienced with Christ. This story was no exception. I've often wondered how this could be. I imagine myself being angry with God and asking all the "Why me?" questions. I think that maybe if God is truly the only thing in your life that you have to hold on to, when you have absolutely nothing else, that he truly becomes the most precious thing to you.

A Day on the River

Last weekend, our friends the Weiss's invited us to spend the day with them on their boat. We went up the St. John's River to Blue Springs State Park. We had such a great time. The weather was gorgeous and we got to see a lot of wildlife.

This was Noah's first time on a boat other than the Jungle Cruise at Disney.

Emily and Rileigh

Some Florida wildlife

Noah wasn't real happy when the boat went fast but he got used to it by the end of the trip.

Emily driving.

Manatees at Blue Springs State Park

The girls watching the manatees.

Another gator

Somebody missed his nap and had his cranky pants on.

Relaxin' on the boat

Emily driving fast with Walt. She loved that.

Noah after he finally got used to going fast.

My Prayer for Today

Lord,

Be pleased to live and move within me,
breathing in my prayers,
inhabiting my praises,
speaking in my words,
moving in my actions,
living in my life,
causing me to grow in grace.


(from the Valley of Vision)

A Girl and Her Bear

This is a picture of Emily when she was five days old with the teddy bear that my brother gave her when she was born. Notice how clean and shiny his fur is.

Here is what "Bear" looks like today. No longer clean and shiny. He has certainly been well loved and is Emily's favorite toy.

When she was one year old, her favorites were Bear, Duckie and Lambie. Then at some point it became all about the bear. Duckie and Lambie are in a toy box in her room with some other stuffed animals and haven't seen the light of day in several years.

She literally used to take him everywhere she went.

He has celebrated every Christmas with her.



And has been on every car trip.

He was with us when we were getting ready to go the hospital to have Noah.



He's just like another member of our family.

Here he is with Papa. Emily must of taken this picture herself.

And in Charlotte with Uncle Mike.

With Aunt Moni.

He's even been on the Mississippi River.

He's been dressed up in all kinds of crazy outfits.


He was with us when Emily had to be hospitalized for a week.

Even Noah likes to play with him.

I'm sure he'll be a part of her life for many years to come.