Happy Birthday Matt!

This past Thursday was Matt's birthday. I won't say how old he is, but I will say that this is his last year in his thirties. Hee hee! We celebrated his birthday as we always do at Amigo's for Mexican food.

Yum!

Somebody had too much chocolate.

"Soy uno chico guapo!"

I guess Noah was done with the picture taking.

Daddy and his "Mini-Me"

A Magic Night

Last weekend, we left Noah home with the babysitter and took Emily and Griffon to watch the Magic play the Knicks. This was Emily's first NBA game. We had such a great time. Emily especially enjoyed it and surprisingly was able to follow most of the game. She always knew what the score was and whether the Magic were winning or not. She'd get nervous when the Knicks would start to catch up. Our seats were where the Magic player's family and friends sit. It's fun to watch the players communicate with the people sitting around us. I like to guess who belongs to who.

Emily cheering on her team.

Stuff "The Magic Dragon" paid a visit to our row. I wish I had thought to send Emily out to the aisle to get her picture taken with him. Right before I took this picture, Emily asked me where Stuff was at. A little while before he had been on the court on the other side of the Arena. Then we heard a commotion behind us and turned around. There he was! Emily was so excited to see him up close.

Shooting "fire" out of his nose.

This was the score with two minutes left in the game. It was very close and exciting. The Magic ended up winning 110 to 103.

Game is over and getting ready to leave with some of the streamers that came down from the ceiling.

Healthy Eating

In January, we had a Naturopathic Physician come speak to our Mom's group at church. He's actually the husband of one of our moms. Now I know the difference between healthy foods and non-healthy foods, but I walked away from that meeting having learned several things about nutrition and feeling convicted about what I have been feeding my children and the long term effects that what I feed them now will affect their health for the rest of their life. As the one in our family who does all the grocery shopping and cooking, I have a huge responsibility to make sure that what I feed my family is good and healthy and will improve their life- and not the reverse.

I knew before that sugar has absolutely no nutritional value and rots your teeth. What I learned, though, is how much damage sugar does to your immune system. Anything you eat or drink that has sugar in it weakens your immune system which in turn makes you more susceptible to getting sick.

Here are some of the changes I have made:

1. No more sugary cereals. I was really worried about this one because the kids loved them. Surprisingly, they love the healthy cereals, too. Noah usually eats Multi Grain Cheerios. I also bought a Kashi cereal that has lots of nuts and crunchy things in it and he loves that too.

2. No more sugary juice drinks and soda. They only drink milk, orange juice or water. I started buying the pure orange juice (not the from concentrate stuff). Once in a while I buy an organic milk. But it's so expensive, so unfortunately, I can't do it very often.

3. Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. Noah loves the fruit especially strawberries, blackberries and bananas. He's not a big fan of the vegetables yet, but I am working on him. Emily loves berries, melons, apples and peaches. She is usually a great vegetable eater, too. Once in a while I set out some raw veggies with a dip while I am cooking and she will eat them up.

4. Avoiding processed foods with tons of chemicals and preservatives. I have started actually reading the labels in the grocery store. If I pick something up and it has a huge list of ingredients many of which I cannot pronounce, I put the product back on the shelf.

5. My kids inherited my sweet tooth. We love sweets! I don't want to deprive them completely of these things because they love them so much, as do I. So, I think as long as they have something once in a while in moderation is okay. They love ice cream, so I will usually give them the Breyer's brand which has very few ingredients. Usually on the weekends, I will make a special dessert. This is in lieu of having packaged sweets in the pantry that they would snack on all the time. I also started making a fun appetizer on the weekends for the family to enjoy instead of buying processed snack foods. Some dry snacks I give them are pretzels and a goldfish cracker that is made with whole wheat.

6. Whole grain wheat bread with no high fructose corn syrup instead of white. Emily does not like this as well as the white bread, but she will still eat a ton of the whole wheat.

7. I have stopped making my super sweet iced tea which Emily was addicted to unless we have company over. Emily kept asking for this over and over every day, but now she has stopped asking.

8. No more deli meat or hot dogs that have msg and nitrites. There is an Oscar Meyer healthy turkey with no nitrites that I have been buying. There are also some organic brands of healthy deli meat available. I've noticed that the expiration date for these products comes up very quickly I guess because there are no preservatives in them. I also found an Oscar Meyer hot dog that has no nitrites. Of course, it is more expensive and there are only 6 hot dogs in the package, but I feel better about giving this to them once in a while instead of the alternative.

Since making these changes, my children have not been sick. For several months before this, they were getting sick constantly. Now, Noah did have a runny nose for a few hours the other day, but it went away as quickly as it came. Emily started coughing one night, but a little while later it was gone completely. I have not had to give them any kind of Tylenol or pain reliever since before Christmas. I know it is inevitable that at some point they will get some type of virus and get sick, but this is huge progress for us. It has been great not having to keep taking them to the doctor.

Charlotte's Web

Emily and I recently read "Charlotte's Web". It was the first "real" book that we have read together. By "real", I mean a book that took us longer than one sitting to read. I am excited to read some more classic children's literature with her. We started "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" around Christmas, but we got sidetracked and never finished it. We'll have to go back and finish that one and the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia, too. I loved the "Anne of Green Gables" series when I was young, so we may try that also. I am determined that my kids are going to love to read as much as I do. I recently started limiting her time on the computer to 30 minutes per day and have noticed since then she has started to spend more time reading on her own in her room. Yeah!

One thing I thought about as we read "Charlotte's Web" is how this story and many other great stories involve someone giving their life for someone else. Of course, this story originated with our Creator before He laid the foundations of the earth.

This was something kind of funny that came up while reading this. Emily was confused about why the people wanted to kill Wilbur the pig. I explained to her that pigs provide food for us like ham, bacon and pork chops. She looked at me in amazement like she could not believe this. It reminded me of an episode of "The Simpsons" when Lisa decided to become a vegetarian. She was explaining to Homer that she could not eat bacon, ham and pork because they come from pigs. Homer starts to chuckle and says "Oh, yeah right, the pig...it's a magical animal."

Some Thoughts on Real Christianity

One of the books I'm reading right now is an abridged version of William Wilberforce's "Real Christianity". Written in Britain in the late 1700's, Wilberforce sought to challenge the understanding of the faith of those who professed to be Christians. It's amazing the similarities between that era and ours. I guess some things never change. I think the term "Christian" is one that is used very loosely and many people who claim to be such have no idea what the real meaning of it is. How sad.
Wilberforce says (regarding many of those who profess to be Christians), "The Bible lies on a shelf unopened. And they would be wholly ignorant of its contents, except for what they hear occasionally in church. Or perhaps they retain vague traces of the truth in their memories from the lessons of childhood....How criminal, then, must this voluntary ignorance of Christianity and the Word of God appear in the sight of God. When God of His goodness has granted us such abundant means of instruction, how great must be the guilt, and how awful must be the punishment, of voluntary ignorance." Later on he says, "Though the Gospel had been predicted, prayed and longed for, announced, characterized and rejoiced in, we scarcely accept this heavenly treasure even when it is poured in our lap in rich abundance. We turn from it coldly or, at best, possess it negligently as a thing of no estimation."

A Note from Emily

Matt found this note on the floor outside Noah's room one night. Apparently, Emily wrote it and left it for Noah after we put her to bed. Awww, she loves her baby brother.

Emily's First Visit from the Tooth Fairy

A few weeks ago Emily lost her first tooth! It was loose FOREVER before it finally fell out. She refused to let us try to pull it out when it got really loose. Unfortunately, it came out when she was eating lunch at school and she lost it. We left the Tooth Fairy a note explaining what happened and she still received a present much to her delight. She looks so cute with her missing tooth. Her smile looks so different to me now. My little girl is growing up. (sigh)

Noah and Lisa's Night Out

While Emily and Matt were at the Daddy/Daughter Dance, Noah and I went out on the town. We met up with some friends whose husbands and dads were also going to the dance. We took the boys to dinner at Chic-Fila which is Noah's favorite restaurant. Then we went putt-putt golfing. After that we went to get ice cream. We had such a great time. I kept Noah up way past his bedtime and he was exhausted by the end of the night especially because he had refused to take a nap that afternoon. He fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Here's Noah with his friends Nick and Jack at the golf course. This was Noah's first time playing putt-putt. He has a lot to learn about the rules of golf. It's a good thing that we were not on a real golf course because he probably would have been thrown out. He broke many rules including the really important rule about not picking up other player's balls and throwing them in the bushes.

The Daddy Daughter Dance

One of the highlights of the year for Emily and Matt is the Daddy Daughter Dance that our church has every March. This is the third year that they have gone to it. Usually around summertime, Emily will start asking "Is the Daddy Daughter Dance coming up soon?". She gets so excited about it. It has become such a great tradition for them to share together. He gets her a corsage and she gets him a boutonniere. Before the dance, they go out to eat at Mimi's which is one of Emily's favorite restaurants. It's such a special time for them. The church does a wonderful job with the dance with all of the decorations, food and other activities besides dancing. They estimated that they had 1200 dads and daughters in attendance this year. At one point during the night, our pastor has everyone come into the sanctuary where he leads them in taking some Daddy/Daughter vows. Then they play the video from the Cinderella song by Steven Curtis Chapman. If I had been there, I'm sure I would have been bawling my eyes out.

The Great Duck Derby

Last Saturday we enjoyed a fun day at Mead Gardens for the

Great Duck Derby .

Visiting with some firemen

Painting our ducks for the duck race.

Here they come!

If you look closely you can see Noah's duck. His is near the bottom of the picture just above the white duck. His has a red dot on its head. We have no idea where Emily's is. Hers had so much paint on it that it was hard to recognize. Even after the race when we went to pick it up, she had no idea which one was hers.

Approaching the finish line. The blue one won.

Noah watching the race.

Yeah! Spring is here!

Hay ride

Getting their faces painted

Emily got a butterfly

Noah got a spider.

Here comes the big duck