The Birthday Boy

Spirit Walking Bear turned 5!

He requested an Ironman birthday .... which is kind of funny considering he really doesn't know who Ironman is, nor will he see either movie any time soon...but he had a great day.  He was treated to lunch by his Aunt and Cousin. (He had been waiting since March when his big sister had been treated for her birthday!)  Then he had to suffer through a short quiet time and wait for dinner. 

After dinner is when the rest of his birthday joy showed up...

Notice Smiling Butterfly trying to open a present.... that is not hers.

Spirit Walking Bear and his cousin, reading the card his cousin made for him.

An Ironman shirt...

mask, flashlight, figure, AND stickers.  Some monster trucks (for the monster truck 'stadium' his brothers are building him), and a build-it-with grandpa-or-daddy bird feeder.

 

The cake was a surprise....and Ironman.

Now that we are 5 we think we can cut our cake....

and serve it too!

He did a great job!

It was a fun day, we all had a nice evening and now we have a 5 year old in our midst. Scary!

Happy Birthday Spirit Walking Bear!

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

The 4th of July.  What a wonderful day for our nation.  A day when so many come together to celebrate...without the division of my thoughts vs yours.  We are one nation under God. 

Where else in the world do you have the RIGHT to LIFE, LIBERTY, and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS?  You gotta love America. 

And yes, there are many things you don't have to love about it, but the reality is its just a great country, founded on principles so strong, faith and hope are at their root. 

We celebrated our country's birthday in a rather quiet manner this year.
We started our day with Mass.  A Marine carried in the American Flag while we sang the National Anthem.  Then, once Mass started, we sang a multitude of beautiful patriotic hymns - what a wonderful way to start our day!

And it was a day.... full of life, liberty, and the pursuit of fireflies...its simple but its happiness.

Red, White and Blue...

Sparklers?  Really?

This may not be too bad....

Can we do this every day? (yes, she asked for sparklers for a couple more days!)

And the fireflies....

The end of the day.

We hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July!

Lemonade and Ice Pops

Well they finally did it.  Star Feather and Spirit Walking Bear held their first lemonade stand ...and pop shop.  Unfortunately they chose the coldest NC summer day i have seen in a long time.  A beautiful day mind you, but not a typical one.  No humidity, no 90 degree weather (or higher), few bugs.  I sat wrapped in a blanket for the 1st hour or so.  They did a great job. 

They made fliers that the kids distributed on thursday to all the mailboxes on this street and the one behind us.  They made signs for each side of the table (with help from Memaw who contributed post-it letters).  They made Lemonade and froze ice pops.  They recruited everyone to help out in some way...

...and then they waited

....and waited

.....and waited.

But we all know, patience is a virtue .... and it does pay off ...literally in their case!













So what did they do next?  The only logical thing......

They ate the profit!

Taking a Break

Before i go into pictures and such i must say, people always question my sanity when i take all the kids by myself to the beach.  They say on vacation mom really isn't on vacation.  Well, i disagree this time.  Being without a home of our own for 11 months now, the week at the beach was wonderful.  We were able to just be ourselves. We are very thankful for the opportunity to take this time and look froward to doing so again some time soon.

So how did our week go?

It was a relaxing, calming, change from the usual - or in our case the not so usual.

This is the view from the balcony.  We are on the NC shore between Atlantic Beach and Emerald Isle.


We found that most every day we were up and at the pool when it opened at 9:30, but sometimes there was some down-time before then.  I happened to remember to bring a thing or two to do besides watching tv and movies. 
This particular morning the kids put together the cut out animals their Aunt and Uncle gave them for Christmas.  By the time the pool opened we had a whole zoo in the kitchen!

We took some time to take a few fun pictures of the kids....

Uh.......

Funny Faces!

Fish Faces?

Phew, made it through that group!

Below is the second night Dad was with us.  We had sherbet ...in cones?  (notice the sunburned boy near the front? ...that's another story in and of its self.)

Dad even brought our telescope!  And we managed to find the moon! ; ) Ok, so it was our first try with the thing and its a bit more technical then we were ready for.  It belonged to Dad's Grandmother so we are learning as we go.  We did find a star or two as well - next time we'll find more!

Our last day we hit the beach for a bit of boogie boarding. 

Smiling Butterfly and i took to the blanket and tried to stay away from the sand surrounding us.

We also made it to the pool one last time.....

And were a bit tired by the time we left.

We had the chance to see grandparents (as my parents and 2 youngest brothers headed down to Florida) and aunts and uncles. 

We had a wonderful week!

We learned/remembered how to swim, played in the sand, read on the balcony, listened to the sea, watched movies, visited a maritime museum, visited family, burned our feet, built a sand castle, visited Camp Lejeune, collected sea shells, and just spent time together.

Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Graham! 

We had a great time!

Jumping In

As you can see from the date of the last/first post i have put off/procrastinated/delayed writing.  You feel like so many other people out there have more to say then you do, or at the very least...can say it better.  But i recently read something that points at procrastination and labels it as sabotage ...sabotaging ourselves, and they are exactly right.  So here i am jumping in.  Adding my own words to the great big world.  I'm looking forward to hearing your comments on thoughts and feelings i manage to get out of my head and onto this paper of sorts.  I'm looking forward to sharing with you a bit of our life and how we are striving daily to drag (ok, lead?) as many souls to Heaven with us as we can....I'm looking forward to meeting you and sharing our Lord with you as we walk through this world. 


We are all inclined to procrastinate i think.  It's something some have overcome early on, but there are many of us who work best under pressure and blame that for the occasional lack of doing.  Laziness may be a factor here guys, hate to say it, but I'm not lazy by any means. If it means getting it wrong, making mistakes, baring my guts, i'm gonna put it off.  I will not lie to ya.  So how do we teach our children to not procrastinate?  By setting good examples. By applauding their efforts in a timely manner.  By listening, responding, even just acknowledging them.  Its not hard but if you delay the job they will be harder to teach the older they get.


So i've jumped in, i'm done procrastinating - but what does that mean for you?  Hopefully you'll be able to visit me daily or weekly to see what's going on around here.  Someday i'll think of something inspiring to say... until then if you'll bear with me, we all may find a few gems somewhere around here that just might leave a small imprint on our hearts.