One Special Moment After Another... Reflections-- July 26, 2010

First and foremost, happy two and a half year birthday, Ellie-Kate!! In just over a week, we have celebrated so many milestones... Chelsea Meagan reached her "sweet 16;" Roger and I marked 11 years together, and, today, Ellie-Kate turned two and a half. Additionally, "life," as we experience it every summer, continues to press on in the form of 4-H "stuff," various camps, and home renovations.

Emmy dug deep and charmed 4-H judges in food and photography. In the next few weeks, we'll be headed for the state fair in skit (Chelsea), food (Emmy), and dog (Emmy) as well as pretty much living at our county fair. Chelsea will show her rabbits and work the swine shows as a member of the Junior Fair Board. I'm a 4-H advisor so I'll be helping our club members as well as running the poultry show as a team leader for the Junior Fair Committee. Ellie-Kate is already talking about showing a pig in the future, and Britti's bumming because she won't be home for the fair for the first time in forever... Although stressful at times, 4-H is just part of our summer...

After two weeks at Wooster tennis camp, Chelsea is eagerly gearing up for another tennis season. Of course, try-outs coincide with our county fair, but we're still hoping for the best. Emmy just finished one week of soccer camp, and she was named Player of the Week! She will attend the British Soccer camp (held here in Athens) in August, just before rec league soccer starts. Emmy also attended two weeks of art camp this summer, and one of her pieces was selected for a special show at the Athens Public Library in August.

Other than 4-H and camps, our big project for the summer involved renovating our house. Blessedly, our flooring is now done, and, yes, it's beautiful. We're very grateful that we were able to do the extra summer teaching, and, even though the girls complain that I'm now too overprotective of it, we all just love how it changed the look of our home. As one last move, we're pricing used ping pong tables for our basement. Roger and I went to Burr Oak for our anniversary and played hours of ping pong, discovering that we're quite good at it :) Thus, we're going to move things around downstairs and create space for a ping pong table. All of the girls love ping pong too, and I'm sure that their friends will enjoy the addition too.

As all of these "special" moments take place, I find myself yearning to savor the mundane as well. I love to play Barbies with Emmy and to go out in the yard and play ball with the little girls too. I adore reading to Ellie-Kate and playing baby dolls with her or building various versions of Mister Potato Head with both of the younger girls. (Britti and I purchased three Disney-themed Mister Potato Heads with all kinds of fun accessories, and we can just spend hours on creating different incarnations of these toys.) During the very cold months as well as now the very hot ones, we have so much fun as we relax in the mall playground or the indoor playground at Burger King. Although we're not into video games at all, when we're not playing inside or out, we love Hannah Montana, Sweet Life on Deck, and "The Show about Us"-- a video of our 2003 and 2006 trips to Disney World.

I love that our home constitutes the "fun" place to be on the block. We're well stocked with sports equipment, popsickles, and props for creative adventure. Ellie-Kate has so much fun interacting with all of Emmy's neighborhood friends, and they adore her too. For Ellie-Kate, our neighbor kids as well as babysitters have become extended members of our family. She asks about them, wondering when they're coming again and what they do when they're not in our house. Yet, she clearly knows which people belong "here at home" as opposed to "there in their home." I'm still in awe that she makes that distinction and how easily that she has bonded with us as her mommy and daddy.

At two and a half, we're still working on potty training, but Ellie-Kate is well ahead of target in so many other areas... She's quite a conversationalist, and she easily speaks in complete sentences and asks smart questions. She "gets it," in terms of understanding how things work and how she contributes to interactions. I am a big fan of how she responds to requests-- "of course!" she replies :) One of her few remaining "baby things" is that she will readily assert "Yeah am" when she insists that she is able to do something (likely something that she really doesn't have permission to do!) She loves to play pretend games, and she is a huge fan of playing pretend cooking (like her big sister!) and loving her baby dolls and stuffed animals, especially Pei Wei, her panda. She sings her ABC song (a lot!), and she'll sit and count-- just for kicks! Her favorite Disney princess is Snow White, and she's eager to give Mickey and his friends a "high five" when we go to visit Britti in October.

We are so blessed that God chose to bring Ellie-Kate into our lives. She's such a cool person-- beautiful, smart, athletic, curious, and eager to learn and experience life. Life Emmy, she loves sports... Like Chelsea, she loves to embrace learning-- while looking very cute, of course! Like Britti, she cares about animals and others, and, well, she always asks if she should go to the doctor and check out a scrape or scratch :) (Let's just say that Britti's a bit of a hypochondriac!) Like her mommy, Ellie-Kate is a bit OCD, and, like Daddy, she loves to build things and to watch sports on tv. How cool how God planned this perfect addition to our family!!!

As we continue our summer, I plan to scrapbook our trip to China and start Ellie-Kate's baby album. I yearn to preserve our memories while taking time to cherish events as they happen now... With a large and active family, that's quite a quest, but it's one that I continue to pursue because "now" seems so fleeting... I can't believe that one of my babies is already almost done with her master's... that another is 16 already... that our "youngest"-- at least for years is now nine, and that "the baby" is already two and a half and over three feet tall! Each of them does cool new things every day, and I pray daily for God to give me wisdom about how to invest my time so that I balance responsibilities with opportunities to savor all of the richness that abounds in my life. He's truly been good to us, to me, and I pray for His guidance as I strive to be a good steward of these precious gifts.

Enjoy the new pictures! I hope that you're having a blessed summer as well :)

Christie