we wait in hope for the Lord, He is our strength and shield; in Him our hearts rejoice for we trust in His holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our faith in you. psalm 33:20-21
One year ago, at 6:35 am the Lord blessed us with a precious little girl, Grace. She is beautiful inside and out. Already we see a sensitive spirit in her, sweet innocence and amusement. In the nature of our little family she has her own little 'spicy' side, too. We like to think of it as the very emotional manner that is common in all four of us - our emotions run strong.
Like all blessings should, Grace, is a constant reminder of how undeserving we are of the things that the Lord grants us out of his goodness and mercy. Moreover, this is why we chose her name, as a namesake for the amazing love and grace that God showed us in his greatest gift to us; giving us His son, Jesus, to bear our sin on the cross and be the perfect substitutionary sacrifice that redeems us to God. The Lords holiness is so beautiful, awesome and perfect. Alex and I are truly humbled by his sovereignty that saw to bring us to himself. Beyond that....everything else is just....a gift of love, which we are so undeserving.
For that reason, today, we praise the Lord for Grace and all that he will do through her life. Happy Birthday to my beautiful, sweet little Gracie-Grace!
This past weekend we had the wonderful pleasure of witnessing the marriage of my brother, Aaron, to his beautiful fiancee, Mandy. They had a very intimate ceremony attended only by immediate family.
I will readily admit that Alex and I are both very emotional people (we have, in fact, cried watching: American Idol, the Apprentice finale, Humane Society commercials- for a few examples) - but the ceremony was very emotional for everyone present. Certainly, it was emotional because the caliber of their relationship and their love for each other is so great. But I think that the emotion really came from a different place. The tears of joy came from hearing Aaron and Mandy express so beautifully their commitment to God and their promise to honor Him through their marriage. Their vows were words of praise to their Lord, Jesus Christ, - who has blessed them with salvation and who they recognize has blessed them further with love that He ordained.
I am thrilled to have Mandy as a sister-in-law. She is quite possibly the sweetest woman I've ever met. She makes Aaron a better man (which is saying a lot, b/c he was nothing to sneeze at to begin with) ;)
Aaron and Mandy - Alex and I love you so much. We praise God for you, individually, as as a couple.
We had a little technical glitch which resulted in being unable to download my camera. Namely, that the projects for our family photos was also stored in external drive that stores all of Alex's client work -- which is stored securely away from our computer. So...I had to wait for him to move those projects back onto our computer.
Nonetheless - we are back and ready to catch up on documenting the kids' fun over the last month or so.
First - this is huge - we went to Disney World! Alex and I tried as hard as we could to avoid introducing Caleb to the Mouse. But it is futile, the Mouse is too powerful. It was, however, really, really fun; absolutely exhausting, but fun.
After Disney, we made a very, very wise decision and spent 3 days in Bonita Springs Beach over on the west coast - to relax after the vacation. Then, as if that wasn't enough fun for everyone...right when we got home, my best friend, Lourdes arrived in Miami with her girls - Sienna and Ellie. So we spent even more time at the beach with them.
Ellie and Grace in a staring contest....
We also got invited to Lourdes' dad's birthday party - we love joining in on Molina family celebrations!!!
Sienna was in desperate need of a bath - which she was not interested in taking. We used Caleb as a human bribe and he took a bath too. It was super-fast and there were still tears involved, but at least everyone was clean!
This summer is really hot, but we are exploring all the fun ways to keep cool and stay outside to make Caleb nice and tired. This is a new favorite - the Pinecrest Gardens Splash Park - it is SO fun and safe. It only costs $3!
At first, Caleb was afraid of running under the big waterfall feature - but he was in love once I helped launch him under the water. Mommy knows best.
I know that Caleb's birthday was a little bit ago - but my brother, Aaron - had taken some cool videos on his 'GoPro' video camera. This is the tiny video camera that snowboarders and skateboarders mount on poles or helmets to get their cool action shots. Aaron got it for his recent snowboarding vacation.
Check out his movie - and all the accolades that he gave himself! :) Caleb loves it and watched it about 5 times in a row, he was very amused by seeing himself in the swing.
Wow! So many fun pictures to share. Since the last post we've had some fun times. Caleb turned TWO years old (woohoo for two!) He had a super-awesome, low stress birthday party (yay for mommy and low stress!) My parents, the kids and I left, literally, from the birthday party to start a drive up to Chattanooga to visit some of my awesome family up there. We had a blast. It was significantly less stressful than I imagined b/c I purchased a portable DVD player (yay for television in the car! --road trips only- ) and I brought my pump, so I could pump and feed Grace w/out stopping.
Here's the evidence of all the fun we've had...
Look! Mommy and Caleb woke up with the same bed-head!
My friend, Jenna, makes cakes (hint, hint). She made Caleb's amazing dump truck cake - it rocked. The layer-cake bottom was yellow cake w/ chocolate frosting and the dump truck was chocolate with vanilla frosting (yum!).
He liked the cake but he LOVED eating the sugar stop signs on the side of the cake.
Caleb's Abu and Aya gave him this awesome, realistic recycling truck!
You can even make it dump the cans into the truck and then you can turn a nob to make the gears take the trash into the truck - fun!
Caleb's Tia, Tio and cousins gave him a Melissa and Doug piano. It's also the perfect height for Grace! Ok, northward in TN, we spent quality time with my Aunt Peggy.
We visited Mommy's alma mater, Bryan College. And Caleb got the obligatory picture with the Bryan Lions. Actually, the whole clan who visited Bryan that day were alumni - Mommy, Grandmother, Buddy, Aunt Peggy and their friend who came along with us. It's an awesome place and I wish that I had taken full advantage of the wonderful Biblical teachers that I had there...oh well, we live and learn.
Penguins are MUCH bigger than I anticipated! Chattanooga is the family friendliest place I've ever visited. If I didn't live in Miami, I would want to live there. We visited the aquarium - which was fish-overkill. By the end of it, I would try to excite a tired Caleb and he would say, "No, no Mommy, no fish!"
Speaking of family-friendly - check out the size of this playground! What the?!
We took the incline rail to the top of Lookout Mountain. For all intents and purposes for Caleb it was a train. Here is the view from near the top inside the car.
Here's the view inside the car...Yes, my mom is laughing - but her eyes are closed out of fear. :)
For the first time, Caleb got to play with his 2nd cousin, Dylan. He's 5 and very witty.
Dylan and his dad - my cousin, Dave. He is a complete kindie rocker. Yes, for those of us with kids - that is a new genre of music. It's like indie rock for kids. It's what super-cool rockers (Lisa Loeb, Weezer, the lead singer of the Presidents of the United States of the America, and the Verve) end up doing when they started having kids. So, Dave hosts a web-and-podcast called the Saturday Morning Cereal Bowl where he DJ's kindie rock. Check it out, it rocks (sweetly).
We also visited Julie's doughnut shop. Oh goodness. What that woman does with a doughnut is just not right...and I don't even care for doughnuts (who can eat that much sugar in the morning?) But these were simply dessert-like. Check out the labels.
And yes, she even does this... I ate that doughnut. It was really good, very much a novelty and I couldn't eat it very often (like I can't eat bacon all that often). But I have a sneaky suspicion that if you got one of those fresh off the line that it might be like manna from heaven.
Caleb ate his first, and still only, doughnut. He ate five bites - aka the magic number. He hardly takes more than 5 bites of anything.
And finally - whew - what a post! Here are some videos!!
Grace is learning how to conduct an orchestra under the tutelage of Dylan and then Caleb.
Part 1 - Dylan instructs...
Part 2 - Caleb instructs...
'Milk': Caleb just cannot say 'milk'. It's not the mmm sound- it's just milk. Too cute.
