This Week: October 19th - October 24th

I took a bunch of random videos and pictures this week, but I will try to document them in a somewhat organized fashion!  Let's start with some pictures and videos of Summer:

Summer

Helping Daddy make pizza on Sunday night

First time painting her nails by herself

  Summer is getting better and better at writing her name...except for me placing 4 dots (in blue) to help her with her "s" she can do it all by herself now....

Here is a video of her writing it...she is getting faster!




Summer has been making huge strides in swimming this fall.  Her favorite parts are "walking on the moon" (when they walk with their hands along the side of the pool), the "rocket" (where they push off the side of the pool with their feet and float on their backs), and the back float (which she did all by herself this morning).  However, the "getting her head wet" thing has really been hard for her.  The first few weeks she was scared to put her "eyes" in the water.  In the past few weeks, she has allowed Ms. Sarah (her instructor) to put her head under on a count of 3.  Today, for the first time, she put her own head in!  Summer's biggest fear in swimming lessons is jumping in the pool.  She doesn't like the feel of the water going over her head.  Up until today, Ms. Sarah had to pick her up off the side of the pool and put her in the water.  Today, Summer decided she was going to jump in all by herself.  I love this video because it shows how nervous she is...you can see her shaking..and yet she does it...for the first time.  I am VERY proud of her, overcoming so many fears these past two months!





Summer finished up her Fall 1 swim lessons (We start Fall 2 lessons next week).  At Swim Wise Swim School, the instructor writes a little message to each student at the end of the sesson.  Such a sweet touch!  Here is Summer's:

Colton

 I enjoyed some fun one-on-one time with Colton this week, when Summer slept in and also when Daddy took Summer with him on a Menard's run.  I don't get very much one-on-one with my little boy, so I eat up the moments I do have to completely focus on him.  One thing I have been noticing lately is that Colton's vocabulary has now expanded to include words that are not nouns.  He now uses often and correctly these types of words: "heavy", "bumpy", "upside-down", "hot", "under", "tall", etc.  He is also loving learning how to help mommy put away laundry, just like Summer did at his age.  It is also funny to see his little personality developing.  He likes things put "back" when he is done with them!  When I tell him we need to go, he will always put "back" whatever he was playing with and then come.  He also is very exact in placing his blankie in a spot before we leave it somewhere.  No corner can be sticking out...it has to be in a nice, small, ball-like pile.  Too funny!  Here are a few pictures and videos of him from this week...

Red wagon

love this profile

this face melts my heart :)

he loves his pumpkin!

loves to "open close open close" the cabinets

my favorite boys in plaid

playing with "letters"  (i love this cheek profile)

 I smile inside when I think about the adorable differences between having a boy and a girl.  Colton definitely is more interested in action than in learning colors, etc!  I have to laugh at my attempts to teach him things...because often they turn out like these next two videos!  I want to share them because I want to remember his cute little personality of how he says "no" to himself when he thinks he is choosing the "wrong" color!  I also want to remember snippets of how he says things and acts.  Videos do a great job of that.  So while there is nothing inherently special about these next two videos, they accomplish the above purpose for me.  Anyway, we were attempting to practice our colors in these next two videos....:)









Spiritual Growth
More important to me than teaching Summer how to write her name, or Colton his colors, is teaching them to love God and about his word.  We continue to read their Bible stories each morning and pray together, but this week we started something new for each kid.

For Summer (and the family as well) we started Scripture memory. Since we started BSF, I have been looking at different ways to make a chalkboard for our kitchen for the purpose of writing down a weekly memory verse (BSF gives us a memory verse each week).   I found this little door at Goodwill a few weeks ago and immediately thought of the verse Deuteronomy 11:18-20:

 ¹⁸ Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ¹⁹ Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ²⁰ Write them on the DOORFRAMES of your houses and on your gates,

 and decided to make it into a scripture memory verse of the week chalkboard for Summer's BSF verses.  After a bit of paint, attaching a mini chalkboard, playing with computer fonts, and some mod-podge to put Deuteronomy 11:18-20 on the bottom, I now have this chalkboard.  I hung it right by our back door next to our kitchen table so we see it each time we leave, as well as each time we sit down to eat, to remind us to talk about it during meal time.

Our BSF verse of the week this week is Matthew 5:44.  Summer and I spent a while discussing what it means and memorizing it on Wednesday at lunch after BSF, and she had it memorized almost right away!  Now when she sees the chalkbaord, she will go over and "pretend" to read it (from memory).  I love it!  Here is a video of her first "verse of the week".  I hope to post one each week-- we will see out it goes! 




For Colton, we started teaching him how to pray this week.  About this age we did the same thing with Summer, and she now does an awesome job of talking to God about everything (Paul and often have to hide our giggles when Summer prays for our meals!!)  We start by having the kids repeat basic words of a prayer, with the hopes that eventually they will take it, and make it their own.  Here is a little video of Colton learning how to pray.





Just for fun

Here are a few "just for fun" pictures from this week. Several of them are from one cloudy, cold day when we all needed a little "pick-me-up" and we decided to make waffles for lunch.  Fun how little things like that can turn a crabby hour into an exciting hour :-).

Summer had whip cream and chocolate chips on her waffle :-)

Colton likes to dip his waffles in syrup

My favorite way to eat a waffle??  Peanut butter and syrup :)

Silly girl!

We had fun making up a birthday package to send to Grandma T....

...putting a hat on Tucker....

...and taking birthday pictures for Grandma T :)

Love Colton's legs in this picture!!!!

We loved celebrating Brandon's third birthday!

Cute CARS theme

The party was at "Good Times Park"-- and indoor park

The kids loved playing in the room with massive blocks!

We also loved going to Eli's house to decorate cookies.  Summer frosted and sprinkled 17 cookies all by herself!