Happy Mother's Day!

For Mother's Day 2014, I (Luke) am hijacking the blog. Patty does a wonderful job with this labor of love so that our family and friends know all that is going on with us. As a stay-at-home mom and pastor's wife, much of what she does is unseen and too often goes unnoticed. So in honor of Mother's Day, I want to spotlight Patty for the the hardworking, dedicated, and wonderful mother that she is and say some of the things I am grateful for this Mother's Day.

• I am thankful for how intentional you are with our children. You work so hard to make sure that they are constantly growing and learning through experiences like park day every Tuesday or library day on Thursdays. I know that with three young children it is hard to make time to work on letters and numbers or to read Curious George Goes to the Hospital for the 1,342,109th time. Thank you for sacrificially taking time, energy, and effort to invest in the growth and development of our children.
• I am thankful for how sacrificial you are with your time. With our closest family being two hours away, you don't get much down time or escape time. You don't have family that you can call up at a moments notice to watch the girls (though we do have a wonderful church family who often volunteers to help). Sometimes that means you are sitting in a doctor's office for an appointment as you hold Eleanor and Anna Kate is asking you to explain something she read in a book while Caroline dangles upside down from a chair. All the while, the receptionist is looking at you with that trademarked, Southern "bless your heart" look. And yet, you don't complain. You just do what needs to be done.
• I am thankful for your hard work teaching violin. I am grateful that in addition to being a stay-at-home mom with cloth diapers to be done, reading lessons to be reviewed, and meals to be cooked, you work hard to teach violin lessons three days a week. I love to see how excited you get when you talk about how your students are growing and improving. And I love your passion for music and your desire to pass it on to the next generation.
• I am thankful for your dedication to working with Caroline's allergies. I know this has not been an easy road and much of the burden falls upon your shoulder. Just the other day, Caroline was asking about a party we are going to in a couple of weeks. When the topic of desserts came up, Caroline asked if you could bring one of her cupcakes. She may not understand the work that goes in to baking and keeping a stash of cupcakes in the freezer or cooking a separate meal for almost any time we go out, but she knows you love her and take care of her. I do understand how hard it has been for you emotionally and physically and am forever grateful for you.  I am grateful that Caroline has you as her advocate as you gently explain to yet another person that she has a real allergy (with epi-pen and everything) and eating one of her allergens might send us to the hospital, not just make her tummy a little upset.
• I am thankful that you are my partner in ministry. You don’t just support my calling as a pastor, but you are a partner in ministry and you find joy in it. I am thankful that you have been willing to invest in the girls of our student ministry, giving out your cell phone number, and talking about difficult situations with them. I am thankful that you are willing to open our home and bake brownies for our students and then stay up late cleaning up from our times of fellowship. I am thankful for Sunday mornings where you get the girls up, dressed, and fed while I am at the church getting things ready for worship and LifeGroups. I am thankful for you sharing the joyful (and not so joyful) days of ministry with me. You do more than many people in our church family can even guess and I am truly grateful.
  
  
• I am most of all grateful for your love for God and how that love pours out into everything that you do. You desire for our girls to know God and love Him with their whole hearts. You are constantly reading Bible stories, singing hymns, and speaking love, grace, and mercy into their tiny hearts. Patty, thank you for pursuing the calling of Deuteronomy 6:6-7 - "And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise."

Thank you Patty and Happy Mother’s Day 2014.

Caroline is 2 1/2!

Caroline was officially two and a half a couple of weeks ago. I normally like to do big birthday posts for my girls documenting their little personalities at each age, but so much changes in twelve months that I thought I would do a "2 1/2" post for Caroline. Our sweet, feisty, dramatic, hilarious Caroline. You know that little poem/nursery rhyme about the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead? When she was good she was very, very good, but when she was bad...ok, I'll stop there. But let's just say that it could have been written just for Caroline =)

~ Caroline is the comedian of the family. She really is developing quite a sense of humor. And she actually knows what she is saying when she makes a joke. For example, a few weeks back, I made the girls chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast (not something that happens very often)! After Caroline took her first bite, she started singing, "Pancakes from the REALMS of glory!" And another one...the other day we were reading "Go, Dog, Go!" Since the word "go" is repeated so many times, I thought I would point to the word and see if she could tell me what it was. So I asked her and she looked at the word, and then looked at me with a smirk and said, "GO...rilla!"
~ Caroline is a great big sister to Eleanor. She is constantly giving her hugs and kisses wanting to hold her. She even made up a game to play with Ellie yesterday. She built a few block towers right on the blanket where Eleanor was laying and placed them right by her feet. When Eleanor kicked her feet, she would kick over the towers and Caroline would just crack up hysterically and rebuild the towers to do it all over again!
~ Caroline also loves that she is big enough to actually play WITH Anna Kate. They love to play baby dolls together, or read together, or play any number of pretend games together. And we're working on the sharing and arguing over toys thing...
~ Caroline is a night owl. She often takes quite a while to fall asleep after we put her to bed. Sometimes she just sits in her crib and plays with her baby doll, and other times she keeps us quite entertained as we watch her on the video monitor. She can do some pretty impressive headstands...
~ Along with being a night owl, Caroline is definitely NOT a morning person. She sleeps much later than Anna Kate and even when she does wake up, she takes quite a while to fully accustom herself to the idea that it's daytime. She will sometimes sit up in bed and put her blanket over her head for awhile until she's ready to face the day.
~ Caroline is extremely expressive and makes the greatest faces. We recently read a book from the library about a little mouse that is "small and gray and bright-eyed." Caroline does the BEST "bright eyes!"
~ Caroline can be quite independent (when she wants to be). She wants to do almost everything herself (get dressed, use the potty, get in her carseat, etc.). The only thing she doesn't want to do herself is walk. She always wants to be carried. Lovely.
~ Caroline loves "practicing" t-ball with Anna Kate. She's too little to be on the team yet, but she has a pretty impressive throw and quite a powerful (left-handed) swing.
~ Talking with Caroline about anything in the past or in the future is pretty funny. She calls anything in the past "lasterday." Like a combination between last night and yesterday (even if it was two months ago). Anything in the future is "after tomorrow." Even if she means it will happen in 30 minutes.
~ Caroline knows most of her uppercase letters and can almost spell her name. She gets a little mixed up with the order of the "L-I-N-E" part.
~ Caroline has become extremely affectionate lately, toward all of us, but especially her daddy it seems. She just loves cuddling, rocking, hugging, and kissing. And we can't get enough of it! 
~ Caroline is doing really well understanding her allergies lately. She doesn't pitch fits anymore if she can't have something, and readily accepts an appropriate substitute. For example, today she saw an invitation to a party and asked if we could go. When I told her we were planning on it, she said, "And you bring my Cuk-cape?" She knows Mommy always has cupcakes ready to go for her!
~ Caroline has quite a few nicknames: I usually just call her Bears, but other notable variations include Care Bear, Line line, Liney Hope, and Carrie.

Caroline, you're just the greatest. We all love you so much more than you will ever know. You are such a special part of our family!

3-month-old Eleanor!

Sweet Ellie-Belle, your precious newborn days are quickly fleeting and you are now three months old! Our days are often filled with the busyness that your big sisters bring, but we are never too busy to get down on the floor with you and watch you learn to play, or snuggle up with you on the couch, or just watch your face light up with joy when you lock eyes with us. Here are some of the ways you are growing and changing this month.

~ You are a great sleeper! We usually put you down to bed between 9 and 10pm and you always give us at least a good 5-6 hour (and sometimes even 7-8 hour!) stretch before you need to eat again!
~ It is very easy to get smiles out of you! You will give a big smile to just about anyone who gets right up close to talk to you. You also really like ceiling fans and smile really big when you see one.
~ You really enjoy playing on your playmat now. You have learned how to bat at the toys as well as grab onto them. sometimes you hold on so tightly that you bring the whole mat with you when I pick you up.
~ You are getting pretty chubby these days =) That's probably because you nurse at least every two hours during the day. You weigh somewhere right around 13 pounds. You are wearing all 6-month clothes now.
~ The jury's still out on what color your eyes are going to be, as well as who you look most like. Right now your eyes are still blue, but they are a very dark blue. I think that you are a very good combination of both your big sisters in your pretty facial features.
~ You had a minor little medical procedure done last week (a tongue-tie clipping) and you were very brave! It was pretty traumatic for about three minutes, but you nursed right away and everything was all better!
~ You are now officially a thumb-sucker. I can't lie, it's pretty cute. Maybe I'll be changing my tune when you're headed to kindergarten and still sucking your thumb, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it =)

 

~ You still love to be carried around in Mommy's sling. We took you to the zoo for the first time last week and you stayed in it the whole time. Anna Kate and Caroline made the observation that you're kind of like a little kangaroo joey!
~ Speaking of the sling, you go with Mommy each week to the preschool to teach Spanish and you stay in your sling the whole time. Usually you sleep for the whole hour, but sometimes you are content to just look around and listen to the children sing their songs.
~ You have now gone to the church nursery a handful of times (especially during Easter week while Mommy was pretty busy). You've done really well each time, but I still like to keep you with me mostly.
~ You are starting to really love your daddy. I have had a number of evening commitments this month and you do really well with Daddy. He's always able to rock and cuddle you to sleep (as long as I'm not gone more than a maximum of 2.5 hours, at which point you become STARVING).
~ You do really well with tummy time for short periods of time. You hold your head and chest up very high off the ground and I know that you're going to start flipping over any day!
~ Your big sisters just can't get enough of you. They were clamoring to get their picture taken with you today, so I had to humor them =)

Baby Eleanor, you are just the sweetest. You are our "bright, shining one" and you light up our lives. We love you and look forward to what your fourth month will bring.

Love,
Mommy and Daddy

And now for some comparison pics...

Anna Kate - 3 months old

Caroline - 3 months old

Eleanor - 3 months old

A visit from Uncle Jonathan

It's been a busy spring for Uncle Jonathan (Luke's brother) with classes and internships, but he was able to come visit this past weekend and we had a great time! This was also the first time that he met Eleanor. We had a great time playing outside, watching AK's t-ball game, and just spending time with him. Here are a couple pictures of our weekend.

Thanks for visiting, Jonathan! Come back any time!

Eleanor's first zoo trip!

Since it turned out to be a beautiful spring day, we took a family trip to the zoo this morning. This was Eleanor's first zoo trip and this is how she spent most of it:

She did wake up in time to see the flamingos before we left!

And we had to stop at the gorilla sculpture to take this picture.

Reminds me of this one we took almost exactly 4 years ago. How things have changed!

 Happy Friday, everyone!

Easter 2014

We have had a wonderful time celebrating and teaching our girls about Jesus' resurrection over the past few weeks. We did the 12 days of Easter again, which includes Bible stories and activities to go along with the resurrection eggs that have become pretty popular. The girls loved learning about the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection. It has been neat to see how they grow more and more each year in their understanding.

Saturday morning we made "Resurrection Rolls" with our good friends Will and Caitlin and baby Henry (and unfortunately forgot to take pictures). But funny story...so to make the resurrection rolls, you roll a marshmallow (representing Jesus' body wrapped in a linen cloth) in cinnamon (representing the burial spices) and wrap it inside a crescent roll (the tomb). When you bake it, the marshmallow melts away inside the roll so that when you open up the tomb, Jesus' body isn't there anymore! Sounds great, right? Well, try telling that to a 2- and 4-year-old who were expecting to get to eat a marshmallow inside their breakfast. My girls were all but crying because the tomb was empty. But don't worry, we saved the day and gave them another marshmallow to eat alongside their resurrection roll. Crisis averted.

And here we are on Sunday afternoon at the Thompson's house (after Sunrise service, church-wide breakfast, LifeGroups, and worship service - what a day)!

He is risen, indeed!

Play Ball!

(Photo credit to my good friend Lisa whose son is also on AK's team)

I feel like we have entered a new season in this whole parenting thing. The world of extra-curricular activities! Now, Anna Kate has been playing violin for a while now, but I just teach her at home as one of our "preschooling" activities. So, starting t-ball this spring has been a whole new ball game (pun intended).

Our county rec department baseball league is pretty popular around here. T-ball for the 4- and 5-year-olds, Coaches Pitch for 6- through 8-year-olds, and player pitch after that. Anna Kate has been talking about wanting to play t-ball since last spring when some of her older friends played. Well, actually, sometime around September she told us (totally out of the blue) that she decided she was going to switch from t-ball to golf. Mind you, she hadn't even started t-ball yet, but her sights were set on golf. We explained to her that golf isn't really an option for four-year-olds, so maybe she better start with t-ball. That was satisfactory. She was so excited when the time finally came!

Here is a picture of our little ball player and her team!

(She's the second one from the left on the front row and her good buddy Colten is second from the right)

Playing center field in their first game

 

 

Waiting her turn...

And her first at bat!

 (The pink Hello Kitty bat makes all the difference)

Luke is really enjoying getting to practice throwing and catching and batting with her, and we are all having a great time getting out in our community each Saturday morning to meet new friends and watch these sweet little ones play ball!