Reasons why I love Sundays

I love Sundays for several reasons. One facet of Sunday I particularly relish is getting everyone dressed up for church. I know that probably sounds horribly old-fashioned. But I love the hustle and bustle of getting ready (presuming we're not running late) and then finally piling into the car for the family trip to church.

Now that we have the cutest children in the world it's even more fun to get all gussied up on Sunday. They just look extra adorable in their church duds! And I never thought I'd enjoy dressing a boy but Clive looks so snazzy in his little man clothes. Let me assure you, sweater vests are all the rage in his church nursery room.

We tried to capture their Sunday-cuteness yesterday but it didn't go too well. As you can see, Clive does not like to be restrained for photo purposes.

Another reason I love Sundays is the football watching. We don't watch TV during the week so for the Sunday afternoon/evening football games we soak it up.

Usually we watch football together at home as a family. But this year we actually got invited to a real superbowl party! It was tons of fun eating chili and chatting it up with the other moms while the guys watched football over the din of playing children. And we still honored our packer fealty by all dressing in green and gold (Chloe's idea). It's official. We're a family of nerds.

And what an incredible superbowl it was, eh? We were rooting for the underdogs, the Cardinals, but both teams played some outstanding football. Who did you cheer for?

Easter Sunday celebrations

Yup, you guessed it. I tried ragging Chloe's hair again for church. And THIS time I wisely aired a portion of the Curious George movie to keep her still while I worked slowly and carefully on her head.

The result was Shirley-Templesque! Chloe's curls mind you weren't the beautifully perfect springy spirals of little Shirley, but in my opinion she looked cuter in her slightly-wild curly hair. Add a well-placed pink bow, her homemade dress from abuela and Chloe was a vision of Easter cuteness!

I tried REALLY hard to get a cute photo of Chloe at church, but it was a wild morning. We served in the nursery for the 2nd and 3rd services plus it was our turn to bring snacks for the workers and we also packed a lunch since we knew we'd be at church for so long. As you can imagine, I was one busy whirlwind of preparation this morning.

All that to say I took lots of photos, but none truly captured Chloe's adorableness. After her brief nap this afternoon, I took more shots at home and the curls looked better a bit combed out.

Our Easter service was a celebration of Jesus! It was immensely encouraging and Christ-focused. The music was a special treat to my heart. The Gettys led/organized the music and it was stirring and chocked full of truth. If you have time, I highly recommend you to listen online.

After lots of Masters viewing (bummer about Tiger but we were very impressed with Z. Johnson) we had a family Easter dinner of all the traditional staples - ham, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, rolls, salad and peach cobbler for dessert. Everything turned out yummily!

Hope you greatly enjoyed your Easter Sunday festivities. Thine be the glory, risen conquering Son!






















I couldn't bear to put Chloe in her dress to eat breakfast so I just slapped her tights on with a sweater. I had to include this photo to show my sister that Chloe is not the chub-tart she thinks she is. :) Love you, Shauna.


















Chloe pretending she's a crawling baby.























I know this shot cuts off Chloe's face, but it shows the lovely dress that abuela Horn made. Thank you, abuela!























This was the ONLY photo I took of Chloe at church. Here we're eating our lunch. Our church has such great facilities!

















Chloe's beautiful golden curls.

















Chloe: half girl/half squirrel

















Chloe tried SO HARD to get milk to come out of her baby bottle.

















Daddy and Chloe share a laugh.

Chloe sings you a song for your Lord's Day

Forgive the poor quality of this little video. I was trying to record this while Chloe was sitting on my lap and attempting to avoid getting any of myself on the video. And don't I sound like I'm trying to be on Broadway? Maybe I should consider a career change? Anyone know why the sound is a bit delayed?


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Excited for church tomorrow!

Since we missed church last Sunday due to illness, I find myself greatly anticipating the fellowship of believers tomorrow! Our pastor is preaching an awesome, and very practical, series working through the book of James. He just began the series so right now he's talking about how to consider our trials as valuable joys. If you're interested and have the time, I highly recommend you listen to his message from last week. (While you're there, check out the Gettys' concert at the 1-21-07 evening service! They are modern hymn-writers and have written some beautiful sound songs in the last few years. They've been at our church for the last year and I just found out they co-wrote one of my favorite new hymns, In Christ Alone.)

Enjoy your Lord's Day tomorrow!

Sickies and Count it all joy

Chloe and I are sickies. She got hit with some majorly bad diarrhea (I'll spare you the graphic details) and I caught a head cold. In our family, it seems that God always makes only one parent sick at a time. That's such a blessing! Does it work that way in your families too? While I slept most of the day away yesterday, Matt took care of Chloe and put supper together for us.

So, we stayed home from church this morning and we're looking forward to hearing our pastor on the radio this evening. That's one benefit of going to a large church! Lots of multimedia opportunities to catch a service if you miss one. Our services are also video streamed online but this morning's isn't posted yet.

Last week our pastor preached a powerful message to begin a series in James. He really only got through a few verses and focused most of his message on the idea of counting it pure joy when we fall into various trials and temptations. Pure joy? Seems contradictory doesn't it? Not a natural reaction at all! Anyways, I won't expound but the message from James was a huge encouragement to us as we struggle during this financially difficult student phase of our lives.

Achoo! Hope you are staying well in this season of illness and enjoying strong teaching this Lord's Day.