Let's Go Fly A Kite (& Feed Fish)

The first weekend in April found our family looking at sunny skies, windy weather, and a brand-new kite. What to do??

How about a kite festival at the Japanese Friendship Garden?

Some of you know of my dear hubby's love of the Japanese culture. He recently acquired a membership to this small, Japanese garden, located in the downtown Phoenix area. It has become a special place for him to go and spend time with the Lord.

As a "member", he gets updates via e-mail about the various going-ons at the garden. That's how we found out about this small kite festival - celebrated in Japan as Children's Day. We loaded up the kiddos and enjoyed a wonderfully windy day together!

The girlies were immediately drawn to the large, blue tubs of koi fish that were being sold at the festival. Fish of all shapes, sizes, and colors swam in the long row of tubs.

The girlies (and J-Boy) also all had the chance to take to the stage to play a real Japanese taiko drum!! A troupe of young boys performed for everyone too.

 

Then it was kite time! For a few dollars, the girlies made a small kite (to go with the one that we had already brought with us). Then it was up, up, and away!!

 

After a little bit of kite-flying fun, we headed over to the garden to feed the large koi fish that live in the pond at the garden. The girls loved how close they could get to the fish and how BIG they opened up their mouths to devour the food!
J-Boy loved the fish too - except he was interested in trying to swim with them - hence the reason he is not in the pictures.

 

Here are some pictures of the garden - it is a lovely and peaceful place.

 

Our family was truly blessed to spend this windy day out enjoying God's creation!

House For Sale

Dreams

Faith

And…..a house…..

For those of you who know me, you know that one of my greatest desires in the last few years has been to abandon Phoenix like a rat from a burning ship (and on a hot, summer day in Arizona, you really do feel like you’re burning…)

Abandon to where, you might ask?? That’s another blog post.

And yet, whenever I would approach my dear hubby about this “burning” desire, he wasn’t ready to take the leap.

So I’ve waited….and prayed….and waited....and whined…and prayed some more

True confession: some of the praying was actually whining too….you know…”But God, this is what I WANT….waaahh”

And then – it happened. One night in March, while my dear hubby and I were praying together, he looked at me and said, “Ok, let’s do it.”

A few weeks later, we listed our house on April 1st - April Fools Day.

I know, God has a sense of humor… :)

So, here it is – our house on the market

 

Quite possibly the worst market that Arizona has seen in my lifetime.

We’ve had one…count it…one person come to look at our house since we put it on the market just a little over a week ago. Our realtor has not given us much hope to expect many more at this point.

And yet, as I hit my knees in prayer, and approach my heavenly Father with the “Why didn’t you give both me AND my hubby peace about this before now??” question….I am filled with a strange reassurance.

Reassurance that HIS way is always best, that HIS timing is worth the wait, and that HE, and HE alone, will work things out together for the “good of those who love Him”.

So I wait…and pray….and wait some more….

J-Boy Is One!!

J-Boy is understandably older (funny how kids do that). He had his first birthday at the end of February. Well….kind-of anyway. Being a leap year kiddo, he didn’t have his actual “date” of birth on the calendar.

We celebrated with a small first birthday party at a local park. He had started to pull up on things and decided to take some of his first “real” steps the day of the party.

He also had a good time eating…i.e. smearing… his own version of dump truck cake (chocolate soy pudding with animal crackers crumbled on top). Mmmmmmm……

 

He still doesn’t have a lot of hair (seems to be a pattern with my kids), but I sometimes spike what little he does have –so he’s still stylin! I love that boy’s punkin head…

He has since learned how to run everywhere on his chubby legs, and I spend most of my days running after him. He is into EVERYTHING!! For example, about a week ago, I found him in our bathroom. He had managed to somehow get the Listerine bottle out and take off the child safety cap. Thankfully, he had decided to NOT drink the liquid, but was delightedly shaking it and causing large amounts of minty freshness to rain down on his clothes, his stuffed animal, and a pile of clean laundry.

He has started to say a few words – “Dad-dee!!”, “Dogg-ie!” (he loves my parents dog), and his favorite “WOW! He points and uses sign language as well. Despite this cuteness, he doesn’t always get what he wants (isn’t life so unfair?) and he uses his newly developed sense of attitude to tell the world what he thinks about that.

He is a solid chunk, who would rather be outside playing in the rocks, dirt, water, and mud than just about anything else. He would also rather play with his sister’s toys or his Daddy’s guitar than any of his own age-appropriate toddler toys. He tries to play in the trashcan, the cat water, and the toilet on a near-constant basis, and has to be watched constantly when he is awake and moving.

He is...a whirlwind. And he whirls each of my days in a most wonderful way! Here are few pics of him for you to enjoy...

Playing on the computer (a used laptop that Daddy lets his sisters play with) He loves ANYTHING with buttons!

 

My little sweetheart!!

 

And...the whirlwind in motion!