every captive thought

We had a great day of celebrating Jude today.  Our sweet boy.  Hands down, the biggest hit of the day was the gigantic birthday balloons.  Figures. They played with them all day. Yeh...I don't know.  I didn't know they'd be that big. The boys loved getting to spend all day with their Daddy! I love this picture. After Jude's speech therapy Nana and Papa came over for cake and presents.  Jude was so excited to celebrate.   Can you tell how his siblings felt about not being the celebrated ones of the day?   Jude was more than happy to share in the fun! Jude's one request for his birthday was pink cake and pink coffee. Strawberry cake, yes...pink coffee, I could not figure out. So Jude settled for pink lemonade.               Happy birthday to my very favorite 3 year old!

Oh my precious Judie Bug.  Happy 3rd birthday my love.  There are times I look at you and I am filled with complete wonderment.  We came so close to losing you that I spend everyday thankful for your life.  Every year that I get to celebrate your birthday I will celebrate with such zeal and eagerness because of the Lord's great gift of you.  You.    You are a constant source of entertainment.  Sometimes you fill me with bewilderment.  You get upset at the funniest things.  We have to laugh because we just don't understand.  Sometimes you fill me with intrigue.  I love to watch the way you do things.  You do things so differently than I do and I love that about you.  You love to read.  You study things.  You are very contemplative.  You would rather sit back and watch, observe first.  You are mysterious.  For a 3 year old. Sometimes you fill me with overflowing joy with your sweetness.  You have a smile...the sincere one.  The closed-lip one.  It catches me off guard

This morning I put Kate's hair into pig tails.  She. Was. Mad.  Something tells me that I will be seeing this expression for the rest of my life.  Particularly during the teen years.  She was not pleased.  She did not think she looked as cute as her brothers and I thought she looked.  And the more we ooh'd and ah'd, the angrier she got until she worked herself up into an all out frenzy. The more she cried, the cuter we thought she looked.  It was a vicious cycle. At the end of the day when I put all the kids in the bath, I took her pig tails out and James said, "Mom, can I wash her horns?"

James has been having a great time at school.  I am so proud of him.  He had homework last weekend.  It took me 3 hours.               They also read a really cute book last week called The Kissing Hand and the teacher sent home this paperboard and instructions for us to send our hand back with a kiss on it for when they miss us.  Love it.   As I've mentioned many times before, both Brad and I are type-a and our little James has inherited those same tendencies.  Organization, timeliness, school supplies, tidiness...all things we love.  And the Scholastic book order form!  Brad and I have talked about how much we loved that time of year when we were in school.  Much to our extreme delight James came home with his very first Scholastic book order forms last week.  He called them his "newspapers".  He looked at them from cover to cover many times.  And then again with Brad and I sitting next to him.  Then he put circles around the ones he wanted a