Easter 2012

Praying you are having a fabulous Easter!

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My Little Sparklers

We had a great 4th of July weekend! But I didn't get pics of almost any of it. I think I was too busy enjoying it. It was just the right balance of resting and going out to have fun. We went to a friends house to see the fireworks in a nearby park on the 4th. My friend, Jill, and her family invites a ton of people over and it was so fun to mingle and play until fireworks time came. I was kinda afraid that Greyson would be frightened by the fireworks since he's never really seen them before, but no, he sat in Ben's lap and would excitedly say "BOOMBOOMBOOM" complete with hand animation every time a firework would go off. Very cute.

I did get some pics of the kids have fun with some sparklers on Sunday afternoon. After Madelyn's incident a couple of years ago with sparklers, we were much more careful this year. Ben gave a complete safety talk followed by a demonstration. :) Here are the pics for your enjoyment!

A rare pic of Madelyn actually smiling for the camera
Ben talking about sparkler safety
Greyson's first time with the sparklers
Greyson takes on two!
Madelyn singing while conducting with her sparklers

Happy Mother's Day

This morning Ben and the kids surprised me with some "flowers"! Aren't these cute!?! They made them while I was on my moms' retreat last weekend. I'm so impressed. What a great man I have... truly, he is wonderful (and I don't tell him nearly enough).


Now, these fresh flowers aren't mine. I got them for my mom while she was visiting this weekend. She loves fresh flowers. They are so pretty. Unfortunately (or not), she is flying back tomorrow and will probably have to leave them. I told her if she could figure out a way to take them, that we would make it happen! However, I am glad to "take care" of them for her if she can't.

Madelyn made this plant for me at preschool. They are marigolds, which I fell in love with last summer. They are so easy to grow and maintain! The pink paper is a very cute bookmark she made as well. It has her version of her name on the back and her school picture on the front with some of her choice stickers. It is very much a snapshot of Madelyn at this time in life. Thank you, Madelyn!

And here they are all together. My gifts. My sister also got me some Lindt chocolates and the sweetest card. What a sweet sister.... (love you, Liz, and thanks for coming to see us!)

I was also blessed today with some time out with my sister and mom. It was wonderful to be able to sit with them in a German restaurant and just talk, laugh, cry, tease, hug, console... for a couple of hours without any other worries. Thank you, Ben....

The Easter Spoils

Ben and I decided that we can't continue to spoil the kids every time a holiday comes around. This year we coordinated gifts with GaGa (who was planning on sending gifts anyway) and got it down to this. We really want to be intentional about teaching the REAL meaning behind the holidays we celebrate, yet we don't want to take away the fun either! I think we did well hitting on a good balance this year. They loved their new things but didn't seem so overtaken by *stuff* to forget that what we are celebrating.

You'll see a little New York sprinkled in the spoils. My sister now lives on Manhattan Island and my Mom (GaGa) picked up some souvenirs for the kids while she was there visiting. Madelyn loved her snow globe and Greyson was trying to hit "homeruns" with his NY Yankees little ball and bat as soon as he saw it! Madelyn was also crazy about her new nail polish and and Greyson about his bubbles and shovel. (I hope he's ready to help pull sod up for a new strawberry patch!)

Then I just had to put this picture in to show Greyson's skills in levitation. Okay, maybe it's Ben skills in photography. Greyson was enjoying putting this ball on his shovel, popping it up in the air, and then trying to catch it back on the shovel again. He was pretty good at it too! I think we might have a little sportsman on our hands here...

Thank you, God, for sending your Son to die for us. Thank you for guiding us in bringing up *your* children. Thank you for your love, grace, and mercy.

Easter Photo Op

Okay, I admit that I'm not a good photographer, but I thought I'd share these photos. I don't think the photos are great but I love what is in them!! Plus, this is a good way to show off the dress that I announced earlier, too.

New Life

Saturday we had an egg hunt (the plastic kind with candy inside) in the back yard. We started inside reading a kids' book, The Story of Easter by Patricia A Pingry (thanks Mom!). It talks about how spring brings Easter, which is a time to remember Jesus and what He did for us. It is a great and simplistic introduction to a complex story. Anyway, when we were done we talked about how Jesus died and when He came back to life, that allowed us to have "new life". Then we talked about eggs and how when eggs are laid by chickens that they are new life too. And that is why we have an Easter egg hunt. (This was the fun part that they were waiting for!) So, off they went for the hunt!

They both did really well finding the eggs. And they love that now have a new stash of candy since the Valentine's candy was pretty much gone!

Then, of course, we had to let them pick an egg to help themselves too...

I love you, Dad!

Dear Dad,

I feel so privileged to be the daughter of Michael Alan Cobb. You were (and are) such a terrific dad and grandpa. You always took an interested in what I was doing but was always careful to give enough freedom to allow me to find myself. However, you were also stern when stern was needed! (I'm specificly remembering the late night outing that I wanted to take!) During our last trip to Grant, I loved watching you with your grandchildren. I can tell that you are little out of practice, but that you loved having them around too. I wish we lived closer to you and Mom... it would be such a blessing to see you and kids interact more often! I would also just love to sit and talk and be with you.... I love you, Dad.

Well, Dad, I had this great idea about putting together a picture collage and having it printed and framed and sent to you - something you could put by your computer and I could update every so often with recent pictures. It really was (and maybe is) a great idea.... in theory. So, I got the collage done, no problem. However, the project got stuck there until it was too late. :( I am still planning to follow through, I promise. Let's plan on me having it for you at Christmas, okay?

Jesus cleaned us white as SNOW!

I had a great time presenting Easter to the kiddos this year! I'm pretty sure that they enjoyed it too. I would even risk to guess that Ben had fun too... This year Madelyn is really starting to get that these traditions that come and go every year are celebrations of things - you know, Christmas = Jesus' birth, Easter = Jesus is alive (again!). I love unfolded these stories for her. She found a book at the library that had a picture of Jesus on the cross and she started asking questions. I truly think that this might have been her first exposure to extreme violence AND to the visual of Jesus hanging like that. She was kind of taken back by it and asked why the people were doing to him. Kinda surprised myself, I told her that he didn't really deserve to be on the cross and that those people didn't know what they were really doing. (It was the best I could come up with at the time.) We brought the book home and since then have had several conversations about it. It is wonderful to see her starting to understand that which gives her mom and dad so much hope. Even though she knows that Easter is about Jesus and how he died and rose again (in her simple 3yr-old way), I also decided to have the Easter Bunny help us celebrate. He (or She according to Madelyn) came and hid the eggs we colored while they were taking naps on Saturday and then brought the celebration gifts that Jesus has risen. The kids both really enjoyed the egg coloring and hunt. And as for the snow reference, we got 5 inches of snow today! I guess that is what happens when Easter comes early!

Hunting for eggs!

"Jesus is Risen" celebration gifts

Family Photo Op

Madelyn and Greyson showing off their Easter outfits (btw, Madelyn's dress is homemade!)

Easter Videos for you!

A Rhodes Family Christmas (Belated post, I know)

For some reason I haven't felt like updating my blog lately. When it comes to a blog, should you update it out of guilt? Well, here is my quilt-offering. I am updating today just because I know there are people that read this and care about us. I love you all too, so here it is. [Note: I must not feel too guilty, because I started this post a month ago and am now just getting back to finishing it.]

So, I haven't told y'all about Christmas yet. I did post some pictures but they in no way tell everything that I want to tell you! Christmas was so much fun! The kids were great and the people that came to celebrate with us, Ben's parents, sisters and their husbands, really made it feel special. They had quite the drive up in white out conditions, but (thank you, God) they arrived safe. Our house was filled to the brim with people, but Ben and I don't think that it was too cramped (we hope the others didn't feel cramped either). It was nice to have everyone here to celebrate Christmas and just play with us. We played games, went sledding, sang Christmas carols, told the Christmas story, open gifts, played lasertag, did lots of talking.... we had a blast! I think that it a little cold for our visitors (single digit temps) but they made though okay.

Madelyn really soaked in the season this year. She really enjoyed all the things that come with Christmas - the decorating, carols, stories about Jesus, family, gifts, making a gingerbread house, making cookies... I think her favorite part was just having family here to play with. Greyson also loved having everyone here. I think his favorite part was the Christmas Eve carols. He loved it! He got up and danced to Uncle Mike's guitar playing while everyone else was singing.... so cute! What followed was my favorite part where Grandad (Buddy) read the Christmas story. It is the perfect end to Christmas Eve night. Thanks, Rhodes Family, for coming and making our Christmas so special!! We feel so blessed!

Turkey Day

It was really nice spending Thanksgiving with my family in Alabama this year. We were able to see ALL of my family. Even though there aren't the many of us, we are pretty spread out - coming from Florida, Minnesota, and Michigan. It was good to get everyone together for the second time this year though. (Everyone, except for my grandmother, had been up for Ben's graduation in June.) There aren't that many of us. Here's the rundown. My Mom is an only child and her father is still in amazing shape for his 86 years young. My Dad has one brother, who has a wife and no children, and a mother, who is also running pretty strong and sassy in her 80's too. Then, I have a younger sister who isn't even dating currently. So, for those that are counting, that comes to 11 people in my extended family, including Ben, me, and the kids. Not so big, huh? Compared to Ben's family, it is kinda laughable. His family is so huge!! Just in his immediate family is 10 people and then we starting counting his parents parents, siblings, and their children (and grandchildren) and you are talking almost 60 people! Amazing... it was definitely a culture shock when I went to the first family reunion. [Man, that was quite a tangent.] Anywho...

All 11 members of my family

So, since the last time I've been down to my parents house, they have finished a "bonus" room over the garage that was absolutely perfect for Ben, the kids, and I. It allowed us a space to get away to and put the kids down for naps and bedtimes that was quiet. It also allowed us a space to be loud in the morning where we didn't disturb everyone else that was sleeping. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

When my parents moved into their "retirement house", I think they never expected to have my grandmother and grandfather moving onto their road too. Now they have one living on either side of them (one right next door and the other a few houses down). They seem to handle living close together fairly well though. I think they get together about once a week for dinner. My Mom has said that it is nice to have them close for when they need to get to them quick though (i.e., my grandfather has needed to go to the hospital 3 times within the last 6 months). Truly, it makes it much easier for us, because when we want to see family, most times we can just fly to Alabama and get to see everyone. I'm glad we were able to get down to see them and have them see us. It made the trip all that much better. It is sad to say, but at their age, you just don't know when it will be the last time that we will be able to hug their necks and say "I love you". I tried to let them both have some quality time with their only great-grandchildren too. I hope that I will be able to take them back down this summer too.

This is my aunt walking us out after visiting my grandmother's house.

All and all, Thanksgiving was a wonderful time of rest, food, family, and more food. The kids were amazing on the flights down and back. Madelyn was very interested in the safety card on one of the flights back. She kept herself and her daddy entertained for at least 45 minutes looking at the pictures and asking "what are they doing here?" It was very cute. Greyson has learned to smile and get smiles back from just about anybody, even the stoic businessmen. Yet, he still VERY much a momma's boy. He isn't really interested in leaving my arms. To tell you the truth, I enjoy it most of the time...

Oh yeah, an update on the laptop addiction. Soon after my previous post, Ben and I decided to buy a laptop as a big 9th anniversary and Christmas present to each other. So, really no withdrawl ensued. Although, I did go buy some swedish fish anyway.

Easter overload!

Well, we weren't planning on giving the kids a whole lot for Easter.... until the packages got here with Easter gifts. GaGa and Great-Granddad (Thurlkill) sent Easter presents so we put them out with ours. We got Madelyn a bike (paid for with GaGa's and Grandpa's Christmas money) and Greyson a couple of small toys. Then we were going to supplement that with a little candy and call it quits. Looks like we didn't need to put out anything! The relatives had us covered!

You'll probably notice the bike is a "boy's" bike. It is the one that Madelyn picked out though. She WAS NOT interested in the pink and purple one! She wanted the blue and green one. We figured that would okay. Greyson wouldn't have to ride the pink and purple one then.

One of the big hits of the presents were the bunny ears. Everyone got a chance to wear them, even Greyson. Isn't he cute in his outfit too?!?! (Thanks Aunt Christina!)

Madelyn is quite happy with her new bike! We have some video of her first real ride on it too. I will have to post that after we pull it off the camera.

One of things that I found out about yesterday that I think I'll start with Madelyn next year is "Resurrection Eggs". Pretty neat idea to get the kids focused on the right thing - Jesus.

Our first Christmas at home

Before Madelyn was born, we decided to give each of the new grandparents one Christmas with their first grandchild and then we would start celebrating Christmas at our house. It is time that we start our own traditions and don't put so much pressure on ourselves to go somewhere. Traveling is such a pain with little children! So, Madelyn's first Christmas was spent with the Cobb grandparents and her second Christmas was spent with the Rhodes grandparents and they were both great! However, this year was our first year that we spent at home. It was a good first year, but we have some room for improvement! Ben came down with the flu on Christmas Eve and after getting up and opening presents with the rest of us, he spent most of Christmas day in bed - poor Ben! So we postponed Christmas dinner for the day after Christmas so that Ben could enjoy it with us. While Ben was in bed, Madelyn, Greyson and I had blast playing with toys and cooing. It was too bad that Ben had to miss out on it. Greyson didn't get much because he has pretty much everything he needs for the next year plus some. He did get a few new toys, a couple of outfits, a embroidered blanket with his birth stats, a quilt and an Easter outfit. The Easter outfit is so cute! It has a little buttonup shirt with a sweater vest and tie. He will be the handsome-est baby in the nursery! Madelyn really made out this year though! She got a Magna-doodle (Ben's favorite gift of hers!), a baby stroller and a new baby, some block toys, playdough, puppets, a little rocking chair (it was Ben's when he was little), a huge rolling backpack FULL of dress-up outfits (see pics), a quilt, and a sled. I know there was more but I just can't remember it all right now. She also got money from Ga-Ga to buy a tricycle in the spring. So many presents! Now, we have so many thank-yous to send! They will get out this year, I promise. They may not be very timely, but they will be sent!

Even though dinner was a day late, it ended up being awesome! I think that we made the best turkey that I've ever had! Moist and juicy! We didn't want to overdo dinner; we kept it pretty easy - turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, and sliced pineapple. It was wonderful! We made a 12 lb. turkey; there was so much left that I took half our leftovers to a neighbor after we were done!

We also went sledding with Madelyn the day after Christmas. We have a really nice sledding hill about a half mile from our house, so we bundled ourselves and the kids up and walked down there. Madelyn had a blast! We thought that she wasn't going to want to go down by herself at first so I was all ready to take the first trip with her and she refused to get on the sled! She was saying, "Madelyn's sled!! Get off, Mommy!" So I sent her down herself and she laughed out loud all the way down! It was so fun! She took about six trips down before she lost her grip on the sled once and it scared her, so she took a break and then asked to go down again. She took another few trips and didn't want to stop to head home. Just another thing to prove how much of a daredevil we have on our hands!

I got a wonderful Christmas gift this year - a lot of time with Ben! He is off from school and because he was sick, he decided to lay low this week, so he stayed home from work almost all week! It was so nice to have time to spend with him talking and laughing. It seems that lately we spend so much of our attention on the kids or just trying to be quiet after they go to bed. But this week I was able to have a little fun with just my husband and it was wonderful!

The Rhodes Thanksgiving - continued

Here are some more pictures from our Thanksgiving trip. ENJOY!


It was really fun to see Stacy. She is one of Ben's great friends from college. They met at the Baptist Student Union there. Here she is with Ben holding Greyson. She and I both owned up to being in crabby moods as soon as we arrived at Ray's PeGe to visit over ice cream. Hers was due to having to be on-call for the holiday weekend and mine was due to the last 3 (almost sleepless) nights. But ice cream must make everything better because as we ate it, we actually laughed some and had a good visit. Ben's eyes are a little wierd in this picture because the dork blinked as I was taking the picture. Oh well....

This is one of my favorite pictures of the trip. The women in the picture is Ben's sister, Christina. She and Madelyn get along great. Christina loves to play with her. Madelyn is trying to tickle her with a long piece of grass in this picture (and I guess she is succeeding). The background is Ben's Grandfather Thurlkill's land (on his mother's side). They call this "the back 40" because it is a 40-acre piece of land that is connect to the rest of Grandfather Thurlkill's land by a skinny dirty road. Ben seems to loves this land! So the family decided to walk it while we were there. Behind Christina and Madelyn you can see the pond that we stopped at.
Here is a picture of Ben and I (and a bundled up Greyson). This is also out on "the back 40". Nothing more...
A picture of four generations on the Thurlkill side - Grandfather Thurlkill, Momma Susan, Ben, and our kids. The picture was taken in Grandfather Thurlkill's gas station/store. We got there in time to have breakfast and he fed us some the best brekfast biscuits I have ever had!
And to round out our trip, we stayed at Christina and Brandon's house in Dallas before flying out of Dallas the next day. Also meet their dog Cooper. Madelyn and Cooper were good long-distance friends. Madelyn loved Cooper as long as he couldn't get to her, which made Cooper sad because he wanted to play with her! It was great spending time with Christina and Brandon and seeing their house for the first time. They house is beautiful! Also, staying at their house was a great relief after 4 relatively sleepless nights. We had a sleeping setup at their house that separated us into two bedrooms that worked really well, therefore we got a pretty good night's sleep - finally!

Well, that's all for now, folks!

The Rhodes Thanksgiving

This Rhodes Family really had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was an adventure though! Several months ago, Ben and I decided that we would take our family down to Louisiana to the extended Rhodes Family Thanksgiving. This is where Ben's Grandparents Rhodes and their children's families get together every year to celebrate Thanksgiving. We aren't able to make it every year, but we try to make it every other year. This year was the year we were supposed to go and we figured that traveling with a 2-yr-old and a newborn would be do-able, so we bought tickets way back in the summer time. Well, we weren't too far off. The kids really did great during the trip and it was REALLY great to let the extended family see them (and meet Greyson for the first time). There were some sleepless nights due to some less than ideal sleeping arrangements, but all in all it was a good trip. Of course, there was Sonic which always makes a trip to the south worth it! Here are some pictures of our trip:

Here's a pic of Madelyn by the fountain in the middle of the quad at Louisiana Tech (Ben's and my alma mater). We visited Ruston and Tech when we arrived to the area. It was a perfect day! Warm and beautiful!

Here is the "cool kids" table at the Rhodes Thanksgiving. They have already accepted Madelyn to sit with them (haha). Here is Grandmother Rhodes holding Greyson. I know that he looks slightly concerned but Grandmother really was very good with him. He loosened up and did a lot of cooing and smiling for her too.(I have more pictures but can't seem to get them to show up on this post coreectly so I will put up another post with them.)

Now, since we were celebrating Thanksgiving, I guess I will tell you what I'm thankful for. There is SO MUCH to be thankful for right now! Too many to name everything but I want to name a few specifically -

• My family! With our new addition this year, Ben and I have a ton to be thankful for.... starting with a healthy baby boy who is a dream second child and a little girl who keeps us on our toes!
• Extended family. We have had an awesome time over the last six weeks seeing and spending time with our extended families. It has just been awesome to show off our children!
• Friends. Ben and I have been so blessed with wonderful friends. They really are our family when "real" family can't be there.