Fall is here!

Fall is my favorite time of the year... for real. Of course, I can find beauty and excitement in each of the seasons, but this one has the others beat by far. Let me tell you why...

First of all, every year there comes a point when I get that first whiff of the fragrance of fall. I always say, "It's starting to smell like pumpkins!" It isn't really pumpkins that I smell, but I've said that since I was a little girl, so I guess it stuck. Actually I don't know why the air smells distinctly different in late September and early October, but it just does, and I'm fine with that! Anyway, when I get this first smell of the autumn season, I know that my favorite time of the year has arrived.

Second, my birthday is in the fall. And Steven's. And Isaac's. And my mom's. And Steven's mom's... and the list goes on! We also got married in the fall! Here's the rundown of only family birthdays (this list doesn't even take into account extended family or friends who also celebrate birthdays and anniversaries in the fall...)

My birthday - October 6th

My grandparents anniversary - October 7th

Steven's birthday - October 11th

Our anniversary - October 16th (ya think we like October??!!)

My mom's birthday - October 20th

Steven's mom's birthday - October 27th

Our niece's birthday - November 19th

Isaac's birthday - November 21st

Really the only day you need to remember is October 6th - my birthday. (and Betsy chuckles! And anxiously awaits presents to abound on her doorstep a week from Monday...)

Anyway, it's obvious that lots of celebrating happens in our family during the fall season! Maybe that's why it's my favorite time of the year...

Third, I absolutely love yard sales! And I especially love yard sale shopping on crisp fall Saturday mornings! Of course deals can be found starting in the spring and all through the summer, but half of the reason I love yard sales is because they give me a reason to get out early in the morning on Saturdays in the fall. It's almost indescribable, but I just love stepping out my front door at 8 AM and taking a big, deep breath of that fall air and then going to find really cool stuff for very little moolah.

Fourth, there are lots of holidays coming up! It should be 'nuff said when I tell you that I love Thanksgiving and Christmas. More about that later! But I also enjoy the last day of October. I know that folks have differing opinions about celebrating or not celebrating the holiday that is recognized on that day, but all I know is that lots (and I mean lots!) of children ring our doorbell from about 6-9 PM on that night every year. They range from tiny babies to teenagers, and each of them seems so sweet when they ring the bell and ask for a treat. Most of the little ones have no idea what they are doing - except for getting way too much yummy candy in their bags. However, the teenagers always amaze me. They seem a little more humble than when you usually see them around town (at the mall, etc.) It's as if they don't really know if you'll give them anything, so they try to say "trick-or-treat" as kindly as possible in hopes that their sweet demeanor will ensure that they'll get something good - for free and from a stranger, I might add. So, regardless of our opinion about the day and its symbolism, every year we know that our doorbell will be rung many times and kids will be awaiting a treat. So, we've enjoyed buying some special candy each year and handing it to the kids while praying that they'll feel the presence of the Lord at our home. This also gives us a great opportunity to meet and reacquaint ourselves with our neighbors. We live in a pretty tight-knit community, so every year this is a time when everyone enjoys some time to visit and get to know each other better.

Fifth, and I guess I'll stop here for now... it's time to plant again! I love getting out in the yard and planting, but there are only two times each year that are really best for doing that - spring and fall. This time last year I was "as big as a house" with Isaac in my belly, so I wasn't up for much planting. However, this year I am very excited about planting pansies in our front flower bed. I'm hoping to also be able to get some lovely mums and pumpkins to adorn our front porch. Once that all takes place, I'll be sure and snap some pictures and post them so that my out-of-town readers can see the fruit of my labors. (or would it be "flowers of my labors?")

Nothing like the fall!

*And something tells me that there will be even more exciting things happening this fall considering the election and the state of our country. Therefore, while I'm celebrating birthdays, yard sale shopping, planting, giving candy, I must remember to lift up the United States in prayer, including our government, military, and civilians. Please join me.*

Brush, brush, brush!

Isaac now has seven teeth! And we think he's cutting the eighth one!

So... per the Dentist's instructions, we went out and bought a baby toothbrush and baby toothpaste. We tried it out last night, and Isaac enjoyed it very much! The toothpaste is safe to swallow, so I just put a tiny bit on the toothbrush and handed it over to the little man. He grabbed it, and straight into the mouth it went! Yum! Clean teeth and gums ~ even yummier!

Whew... he's definitely growing up too fast, but, boy, is it super-fun watching him grow!!! We celebrated his 10 month birthday on Sunday, but we haven't been able to do his 10 month photo shoot yet. We'll be sure and post those pictures as soon as we have them.

Our visit to see the birds!

On Saturday, Steven, Isaac and I vistited the Carolina Raptor Center for the first time as a family! We enjoyed our visit so much that we decided to get a family membership for the year so that we can go back often and take advantage of all their special events (and, of course, use those visits as opportunities to teach Isaac all about birds!)

We enjoyed learning about the birds that the Raptor Center helps to rehabilitate, and we spent quite a bit of time watching them fly and squawk. It was a wonderful family outing on a gorgeous first day of fall!

Here are some pictures from our day:

Yummm...tasty!

Nothin' quite like the TV stand to whet your appetite for dinner... :)

Carrie would love this...

Steven and I enjoyed this video so much that we thought we'd share it with you all! Hopefully it brings you a laugh on this beautiful weekend!

NOTE: Before watching, please pause our blog music, which is located at the bottom of this page (scroll all the way down and click the play/pause button). Otherwise you won't be able to hear the music on the video. Enjoy!



We laughed so much while watching it that Isaac (who wasn't watching directly) was even chuckling along!

*Video and arrangement by Tim Hawkins

Isaac can stand on his own!

Over the past week, Isaac has started to let go when he's cruising the furniture, which means he is then left standing without anything to help hold him up!

I don't have any pictures yet, as this is something that happens so quickly and then he tumbles to the floor!

Isaac loves to crawl and doesn't seem too interested in walking yet. Of course, we're not rushing him because the crawling is so important for his development. In the next few months, though, we're sure he'll become brave enough to take those first steps!

Juice Plus and baby food? A great combination!

One of the great uses that I've found for Juice Plus capsules is this: adding additional nutrition to baby food! Every day, I open up a Juice Plus fruit capsule and empty half of it into Isaac's breakfast food (yogurt, cereal, etc.), and then I open up a Juice Plus veggie capsule and empty half of it into his dinner food (peas, carrots, etc.) Even now that he's eating a lot of finger foods, I still make sure he eats something that's pureed so that I can add the super-whole-foods in the Juice Plus capsule to it. (Once Isaac gets a few molars, he'll be able to chew the Juice Plus gummies, which have all the power-packed nutrients, as well!)

Juice Plus is packed with vitamins and nutraceuticals! Every day, I am learning more and more about the benefits that come from taking Juice Plus. Just a few weeks ago, I learned that a daily serving of Juice Plus contains 420 micrograms of folate, which is a very important nutrient, especially for women of childbearing age. (We take Juice Plus in the place of a multivitamin since we get everything we need in it, and we like it better because the nutrients are directly from plant sources. Juice Plus is whole food nutrition!)

We're almost ten months into Isaac's life and he's not yet had anything even close to a cold or virus! I thank God for protecting his little body, and I believe one of the ways he's done that is through the super nutritional power in Juice Plus!

Let me know if you're interested in learning more about Juice Plus - I'd love to share a brochure or an informative DVD or CD with you. We love this stuff and we'd love to share it with you!

Stitches are OUT!

Yesterday Isaac had his stitches taken out. Boy was I wrong when I thought that the taking out of stitches would be easier than having them put in! Of course, we weren't in the room when the ER doctor put them in for Isaac, but I am betting he didn't cry as intensely and seem as much in pain as he did yesterday. (Which makes sense because his wound was numbed while he was getting them in, but it wasn't numbed yesterday.) It took the doctor, a nurse, the office manager of Southlake Pediatrics, and me to hold Isaac steady for the removal. I was praying the whole time, and after they were done, I scooped my little angel up and comforted him. He was a trooper, as usual! After a couple seconds in my arms, he was calm and smiling again!

After she took the sutures out, Isaac's doctor said, "I'm so sorry!!" I told her that I was okay and I knew Isaac wouldn't remember this (even within an hour!) I think she was grateful that I wasn't going crazy, and she even complimented me by saying I was a very calm "first time mother". If that's true, I must attribute that to the strength of God and his steady hand on my life. I know that his hand is holding Isaac's life, as well, and there is no safer place for all of us to be!

Let's start from the very beginning...

I don't know what hit me, but all of a sudden, I got a wave of excitement surrounding the thought of homeschooling Isaac! Steven and I are planning to "officially" homeschool Isaac when he reaches school age. However, since education really begins at birth, I see our homeschooling journey quite holistically. In other words, I've been trying to teach Isaac as much as possible since he joined our family in November 2007.

Now, though, he's getting to the age that he is learning so much every day (really, every hour!) and I'm excited to take his enthusiasm and run with it! For the past few weeks, I've been thinking about what I can do now to foster an environment of learning in our home even more than what we already do (allowing him plenty of floor/explore time, playing peek-a-boo, reading with him, etc.) While doing some research on this, I stumbled upon a website that is exactly what I was looking for! This site, www.letteroftheweek.com, is a great resource for parents looking for preschool curriculum to use with their children. I had seen this site a while back, but I never noticed that they have monthly lessons for babies and toddlers, in addition to your traditional preschoolers, age 2-5. Each monthly lesson is an outline for parents that includes: books to read, classical music to listen to, Bible verses to read, games to play, nursery rhymes to repeat, and more. I was very impressed that these lesson plans are available online for free!

Isaac and I took a trip to the library after lunch today, and we got a few board books, a nursery rhyme book, an educational baby DVD, and some Mozart CD's. I plan to start using the www.letteroftheweek.com lesson plans for Isaac immediately. I'm sure that over the next year I'll learn more about all the other resources out there for homeschooling moms, but for now, this is just what we need!

For those of you who don't know, I want to share that I was homeschooled from 7th grade through high school, and Steven was briefly homeschooled during high school. We both look back on our homeschool days with great memories, and we look forward to being able to share in similar experiences with our children. We feel very blessed to have the unique perspective of two people who spent days in public school, private school (Steven) and then were homeschooled, while having parents (mine) who were educators in the public school system. We are very fortunate to have so many options to choose from when it comes to the education of our children. This is just another reason I am so grateful to live in the good 'ole U.S. of A!

A first of hopefully not many...

Late Monday afternoon, Isaac had another first... Not his first boo-boo ever - he's already had several bumps and bruises because he's such and active little boy - but his first boo-boo that required a visit to the Emergency Room.

It all started as I was talking to my mom on the phone, and Isaac was cruising the furniture as usual. Suddenly he lost his footing and slipped in an unusual fashion, hitting his face on one of our end tables. I had been standing right over him, so I scooped him up, and immediately threw the phone down. I screamed out to my mom because I saw blood spewing from his mouth. I thought he had knocked a tooth out! Thankfully it wasn't his tooth, but, after a great effort to stop the bleeding, I was able to see that he'd suffered a blow to his lower lip and there was a pretty good sized wound. Since there was so much bleeding and the wound was gaping open, I called Isaac's pediatrician. While I was waiting on a call back from the nurse-on-call (it was after hours), Steven's sister, Michelle, called. I told her what had happened and asked her what I should do. She said I'd need to apply a cold compress to the wound to help reduce the bleeding. Thank God for a wonderful, knowledgeable sister-in-law to call at just the right moment! I did just that, and it did help th bleeding subside. A couple minutes later, I got a call back from the pediatrician's office. The nurse-on-call told me to give Isaac some Advil and put ice on the wound and then she said, "You'll need to take him to the ER or the Urgent Care to see if he'll need stitches." I seriously thought she was joking. I asked for her to repeat herself! She said, "Yep, the ER."

By this time, it was 5:30 PM and my mom, who had heard everything on the phone, was on her way to our house. I called Steven to let him know that we'd be cancelling our plans for the evening and going to the Urgent Care instead. Once he got home, we went to the Urgent Care in our neighborhood. They saw us pretty quickly (we felt special!), but they said that since the cut was on both the lip and facial skin, they'd have to send us to the hospital. So we left, after getting a refund of our copay (YEAH! Thank you Lord!), and headed to Levine Children's Hospital.

Once we got to the Children's Emergency Room (at 8:00 PM), we signed in and were told to wait. There was definitely no sense of urgency there! We were called back to the triage unit around 8:30, and they determined that Isaac did need a couple stitches, but they had a window of 12 hours from the incident before the stitches had to be in place, so they put us on low priority. Apparently all the families in the waiting room were on low priority because we were all still there three hours later. A little after midnight we were finally called back and given a room. Close to 1:00 AM we saw a doctor and she told us that she'd put some numbing cream on Isaac's wound and we'd need to wait anothr 30-45 minutes for the cream to take effect. (NOTE: They usually do not use numbing cream for toddlers like Isaac because they are so active and will wipe it off or lick it off. However, since it was the middle of the night and Isaac was zonked out, they were able to use it on him instead of a shot of numbing solution! Another thanks to the Lord!)

Around 2:00 AM, it was time for the stitches to be put in. We handed Isaac over to the doctor and left the room. We went to the waiting room to pray, and within 3-4 minutes we were called back. Isaac was not too happy about the stitches, but he, yet again, showed us what a strong little boy he is. He calmed down when we held him and then I nursed him a little bit before we headed home. We all got in bed around 3:00 AM this morning.

Here are some pictures from our experience:

Shortly after the accident:


Isaac sleeping in Steven's arms in the waiting room:


Once we got in our room:


After the stitches:


Whew. What a long night, but our little one is now all stitched up and back to his happy, playful self! What an interesting and insightful experience for us all! As they say, "Boys will be boys." If I heard this once, I heard it a million times yesterday - "Oh honey, this is only the first of many times like this! You have a boy. Get used to it!" :)

Another Car Show!

On Saturday, we ventured out to Lowes Motor Speedway to the annual Food Lion Auto Fair. We had a blast looking at all the old (and new) cars, seeing the Speedway for the first time, and meeting some very friendly people!

Here are a few pictures from the show:

Steven and Isaac in front of a 1966 white Mustang (just like ours, but all spiffed up!):


Steven admires a 1966 GT 350 Shelby Mustang (we like these!):


A funny picture - our Mustang in the parking lot beside a 2008 Mustang:


By the way ~ we are considering selling our Mustang. If you know of anyone who would be interested in it, let us know!

Labor Day!

We spent the Labor Day holiday with Kati and Ray at the Matthews Alive festival in Matthews, NC. Steven and I have been to this festival for the past couple years and have enjoyed walking around and sipping freshly squeezed lemonade. This year, we were excited to bring Isaac and let him experience the fun of watching all the people and riding around in his new stroller. We expected the festival to be the same as in years past, so we were pleasantly surprised when we saw that there was a new event this year - a car show. (Maybe there have been car shows in the past, but we've never seen them there...so it was a new event for us!) We (especially Steven) love antique cars and show cars! We especially enjoy looking at Ford Mustangs since we own a 1966 classic. This was probably one of the best car shows we've seen because there were so many different cars from decades past and some especially "hot" cars, like a Shelby Mustang, a Dodge Viper, and fancy schmancy Corvettes.

We had a great time visiting with "Aunt Kati" and "Uncle Ray" and eating at Fuddruckers, which is one of our favorite burger restaurants, before heading to the festival. Once we got there, we spent most of our time at the car show and then walked around the main streets of the festival and also walked through the quilt show (I loved it! Thanks Steven, Ray and Kati for kindly walking through with me and acting interested!!)

We were so glad that we could bring Isaac in on the fun of his very first car show! Hopefully the show provided him some inspiration to help his Daddy work on spiffing up our Mustang! It sure inspired us!

Steven and Isaac in front of a 1966 Mustang Coupe (This one started out looking exactly the same as ours and then it's owners souped it up with all the Cobra stuff.) Pretty sweet!


Steven, Ray and Isaac in front of a GT Mustang fastback. This one was valued at almost half a million dollars!


Isaac was tuckered out after a fun day of riding around Matthews!


Bye-bye summertime! Hello glorious fall!