Happy Birthday Princess!

Today is Hannah's first birthday! One year ago today I gave birth to my first girl. I remember when I was about to find out the sex of the baby. I had prepared myself that it was another boy - and I was even excited about the idea of 3 boys! I really didn't think it could be that different with a girl, I thought I would be fine without having any girls. Well, after Hannah Joy was born, I found out that I was so wrong. Having a girl is totally different, and I'm so thankful that I could experience the love and fun of a little girl. She is such a sweet, laid back baby, and always full of smiles. She is such a fast learner - and she's even walking all around the house now, barely stopping to take a break. In fact, in the last 3 days she has gone from taking a few steps at a time to walking across whole rooms and back! I love to hear her say Mama - and more often she calls me Da-Da (but I think it's just my nickname). My prayer for Hannah is that she will be a woman that loves and fears the Lord with all her heart, and that she will always radiate with God's love. I love you birthday girl!

Opening presents! She was especially excited about this little guy! Here she is telling Lilly all about the toy!

Decorations for the party! We had just a small family party with some close church friends too.

Princess Hannah, you're cake awaits you!

MMMM!!! First taste of cake! It was definitely a winner! She kept coming back for more and finished off her whole piece. I'll have to post the pictures from today in her preschool class as soon as her teacher gets them to me!

Three year old Mischief!

This morning I was sending some leftover cupcakes to the Manna House (our church food ministry) workers at our church. Mistakenly I left them for about 3 minutes on a table by the door so they wouldn't be forgotten....Well, they were not forgotten, especially by Caleb. In the 3 minute time span some mysterious things happened to the cupcakes. When I came back in I looked at Caleb with his innocent, but caught look on his face. I asked him, what did you do? His reply: " I wicked 'em!!!" Well, I guess that was a pretty obvious answer. I know I shouldn't have taken a picture of him to encourage the behavior, but it was just too cute!!!

Lesson for today: Don't leave cupcakes in reach of a sweets-loving three-year old boy!

Random Pictures

I thought I would try and get caught up on pictures before Hannah's birthday. I haven't taken that many pictures, considering the busyness. The picture above is kind of strange, but to me it's interesting. We have been getting a ton of rain here. This is a picture of the ants trying to escape the water. What looks like dirt on the wall, is a solid mass of ants moving up the wall. They looked like they were going into the attic - yuck!!
Here is a picture of our first day of school. Everyone is going to school this year, including mom. As I've mentioned before, Jonah has been attending Forerunner Christian Academy, a university-model school. This year, I am teaching third grade. It's a wonderful schedule - I teach Mondays and Wednesdays until 1:30 and then Fridays until 11:30. Caleb and Hannah are in the preschool there at the school, except for on Fridays, when they stay home with Dad (it's his day-off).
It has definitely been an adjustment getting used to making weekly lesson plans for my third grade class, homeschooling Jonah on Tuesdays and Thursdays (while finding activities for Hannah and Caleb), trying to find time to grade papers and make sure my at-home lesson plans make sense to the parents, and still trying to keep my house clean and church duties fulfilled...I absolutely love teaching, I love homeschooling on Tue/Thur , I love my 5 students in my class, I know this is where the Lord wants me - I have no doubt about that. But I am EXHAUSTED! I really would like to go to bed at 7:30 every night! I'm starting to get in a rhythm on some things, the trick is to never get behind on anything! Which is virtually impossible, but I just keep telling myself to take it one thing at a time. It's okay if sometimes the dishes are still dirty when I go to bed, and my children's clothes are not perfectly ironed, and we eat pizza a couple of nights a week, and the laundry gets piled up...I could probably go on and on. Prioritize and live life as it comes! ---- I'll have to give more details about my wonderful class later!

SEEEWWWEEY!!! This is our friend Mark (who is the music minister at our church). Well, that's not him - that's the pig - but you get the idea! This is his new little piglets, they are only two days old in the picture. We took a little field trip to his farm to meet the new little babies. The momma pig was not too happy that he was picking up one of her little ones - I don't blame her.

All the kids loved the piglets. Hannah was especially fascinated. Look at her face in this picture. That's Elizabeth, Mark's daughter, standing next to us. Hannah just kept laughing and squealing, she was so excited! We were surprised that she noticed them so much - she couldn't keep her eyes of of them. She loved watching the goats too! I think we have our animal-lover!

Okay, I just have to say that I had an almost 30 year old moment the other day. I was picking up some food that Adam had ordered (in person). The teenage girl asked me "What did your son want on his hamburger?"....Did you catch that - she thought I was his mom!!! She said it a couple of more times too! Not the best of experiences for someone who will only be 29 for about a week more!....watch out, I might be wearing leather and sporting a new Harley on the next picture on the blog!!!!!