bsmiles and sunny days

The kids and I have watched this video clip so many times and screamed with laughter that I cannot bear to keep it to myself any longer.

This is what the girls look like in their new matching outfits complete with homespun hats, mittens, and slippers from Nana. Max really wants to eat those big pompoms, but so far we have kept them intact. And this is what Leila looks like in our new baby sling. After putting her into it, I'm not sure I'll be able to find a tiny baby in the huge thing. We may have to grow into this one. And besides, what will I carry Leila around in if we put the baby in it? Sheesh! It's not like she's an adult capable of getting around on her own! And this is what I looked like last Thursday on our way out to Angela's for Mexican food. Dale bought me this hat that I adore for Christmas at Anthropologie, my all time favorite place to shop. I could spend all afternoon just looking and touching. There's been some debate about this jacket that I didn't get at Anthropologie but at Goodwill. I thought it was a perfect solution to not quite fitting into the sweater that I wear ...

I herded the kids out the door at 8:30 thinking we'd have time to get to Bible study and still a few minutes to sit down at the piano before the room was full of ladies but I was wrong. We pulled into the church parking lot at 8:57. If Bible study started at 9 I was in trouble! What I didn't know is that they don't do anything opening anything, the worship leader just comes in, sits down, and turns on the sound. I wouldn't know that because thus far I've never been in attendance for the first few minutes of the meeting. But I was about to find out. We all hustled to the front doors of the building and to our surprise, they were locked! I lead the pack to the office entrance where they told me to make myself at home and practice all I needed to before people started to arrive. We were half an hour early! WOOHOO! This has happened a couple of times now in my career as a mother. I find myself sitting in a parking lot after driving my children out of bed too ea...

In my former life, one of my favorite things to do on Saturday night was sit at the piano and play and sing to my hearts' content. After we set the house up for church, Dale would usually polish up on his message and my sister would be cutting and drawing and gluing and organizing for Kids on the Rock, so we would all be together on the main floor with our minds geared for Sunday's activities. Nearing midnight, Sarah had usually joined me at the piano and Dale would be sitting on the couch singing along with his eyes closed. I miss those nights. Seven months ago I left my piano *and my heart* in Nebraska where we whittled down our possessions to the bare minimum, kind of, and moved across the country. Our lives are busy, but not so busy I wouldn't still sit down at the piano a few times a week if we had brought it. Someone would've had to sleep on it though because our space is pretty limited. So last week when the opportunity to lead worship for our ladies' Bi...

During the Superbowl the kids discovered out of the sheer blue an exciting new game to play called Emergency Room. You would not believe the details that go into the care of these poor souls that find themselves in the Sutton ER. Lolly had an IV, a bandaged arm, a thermometer taped to her skin, and a wrapped finger! This little guy started out in pretty good shape but his condition worsened every time I was called on to observe his treatment. And this poor thing had to be strapped to a board for the duration of his treatment. His doctor demonstrated how he could shake the board upside-down and sideways and he wouldn't go anywhere. That's a good doctor! I feel bad for his recovery though and the removal of all that Scotch tape... Notice the lock. He got beat up so bad that the aggressor threw a lock at him and it stuck in his chest, knocking his heart completely out! The heart is gone from his body and only the lock remains. The eye, the leg... just a shame. It's a traged...

Maybe you remember when Max was just a little tyke, a runt of sorts, a sweet, innocent bundle of snuggles and love. A little insecure. A little misunderstood. A little lost in this big new world. Things have changed. Our boy is quickly becoming a full-grown male boxer; no reservations, no hesitations, no careful calculation as to whether he'll fit into the space he's climbing to fill on the couch. The dog is something else. And we adore him. I have had so much fun training this little man into a responsible adult. Don't get me wrong, it's not easy task to harness sixty pounds of energy long enough to teach submission, but he's smart. And Scooter speaks my language and somehow translates to Max when I can't get him to understand so that helps. But for the most part, he's getting it and learning the ways of life in the Sutton home. Sometimes I worry that he's too skinny and that Kibbles and Bits aren't good enough to achieve the stature of his breed, ...

Leila must've been up at five o'clock in anticipation of the super-duper Valentines Day festivities. I could hear her chattering away for a long time before Dale's alarm went off at seven. With half a stack of care packages from family waiting to be opened, a cabinet full of doilies and constuction paper waiting to be created into hearts and springs, and a drawer full of candy to decorate cookies with, the energy was high by eight o'clock. Kennedy made red heart-shaped pancakes while while I worked with the little one on their schoolwork. I gave the older ones the option to do part of their work today and part of it tomorrow since technically, we have a four day weekend. In our program we have the flexibility of taking the scheduled days off or working through them, which I love. SO when the mailman rang the doorbell, you can imagine the squeals and stampede that greeted her. It was rivetting. The only shadows in our sunshine are that we can't take homemade cookies ...

Dale has a big event at work this week so his schedule got moved around which meant he was home two days last week, worked the weekend, and then was off again Monday and Tuesday, which we all love because when he's here we party. He had this great idea. *Let's take the kids seperately for the day and then we'll surprise them and meet up somewhere and stay the night!* I used to be really spontaneous and fun and adventurous and fun and nice and fun. Now my initial response is always: a. what will it cost? b. how much work will I have to do to get there? c. how long will it take me to clean up after the fun's done? This must be natural for a mother of five, I would assume. I mean, I don't have documentation or anything, but I don't think it's impractical for me to consider the repercussions of anything that disrupts our regular routine. However... I learned early on in my relationship with Dale that he has a gift, and that is, he brings the silver lining into ...

I have never been a fan of televised sports with the exception of the World's Strongest Man competition which is a simple display of brute strength in primitive surivival skill events, events like chopping logs, and carrying concrete blocks from there to there and throwing things over walls. Heavy things. This year I have come to enjoy Ninja Warrior. I don't know why I love these shows, but they are fascinating to me. I could watch them for hours. This year, however, I came to love and appreciate a sport that I had never really understood, even thought I love football season and going to football games. But my affinity was more for wearing sweatshirts and turtlenecks, eating popcorn and drinking hot chocolate, and snuggling under a blanket for a couple of hours amidst the fanatical cheering and cursing. My son becoming the greatest football hero on the field turned my attention to the skill and dynamics of the game. Graciously my sister explained downs and the chain gang to me...

As soon as dinner was cleaned up, we all crowded around the dining room table where the supplies were piled and the excitement was rumbling. The boys chose a foam fort and a pine derby car. Micah took charge of the fort right away, and Tre did more on the car. The girls chose the foam castle and these little felt and pipe cleaner fairies. I love to do stuff like this because it occupies a window of time that is enough to be enjoyable, but not so wide that it can't be completed. I tend to be a little obsessive and wanted the wraps all the same width, the legs and arms the same length, the hair to be even... But once Leila ripped the head off and the dress off of my first one, I decided not to spend too many hours fixing imperfections. We had so much fun. I wish we could do this every night; it really builds a sense of togetherness. I find myself pushing off the kids requests for me to play way too often in exchange for some busyness in the house or some kind of waste of...

The sun was shining, a light breeze was blowing, and the weather outside was simply perfect. I was gently reminded of why we fell in love with this city upon arrival. While my friends and family are being buried under blankets of snow, we were out and about and full of good cheer today and it was quite rejuvinating. In a desperate attempt to get out of the house, I suggested we make a trip to Santa Maria to Target where Snackwell's are only $2.54 a box. They are a staple around here and at $3.99 regular grocery store price, it's well worth a trip to stock up. Dale rebutted with the cost of gas not balancing the savings. My reply was an earnest plea to "PLEASE GET ME OUT OF HERE!" It was beautiful and we should go to the park. And wouldn't it be fun to feed the ducks? And besides, we could try that new place for lunch. We ended up eating really tasty BBQ and then venturing out to the Big Boys Toys across the street. It happened to be next to a Michael'...

At Bible study on Friday, I was overwhelmed with the number of requests in our little group for sickness in their households. There are so many different weird things going around and somehow we have dodged all of it. Because of our tight living quarters, when one person gets sick, usually it knocks us all out; sometimes it goes around a second time. I had to express my gratitude for God's generosity toward us in shielding us thus far from every strain of cough and flu that is, I'm sure, globbed onto the carts at WalMart and Albertsons, the carts I occassionally catch Leila licking. My health has been so good with this pregnancy and Dale is really working hard to lead us in this new healthy lifestyle; I'm just thankful for the return. I have been reading little segments of this blog someone told me about called Nitty.Gritty. The author is the mother of five, four here and one in heaven, has one little one with some kind of chronic sickness, I can't quite figure out...

My friend S most enjoys the posts with pictures so for her recent homecoming, I thought I'd choose some random photos of my kids for your viewing enjoyment. This is the top half of the roller skates on my myspace profile. Dale is adamently opposed to having pictures of any of us on that site, which I scoffed at until four zillion photo files were stolen off of private myspace accounts recently. Now I'm just thankful that he has that kind of foresight and I have learned to just adhere to what he adamently opposes. While I was clicking through file after file I found myself lost in a time warp. Remember in Super Mario Brothers when you could go through warp zones and it would skip you into another time and place? That's what it felt like. It felt like they were so grown up back then and now I'm teary at the sight of their little toothless grins and fuzzy baby haircuts. I've heard parents say a million times, "Where does the time go?" and now I'm in the...