"And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,” (Ephesians 4:11-15, NASB95)

It was actually quite a while ago, but I never mentioned it here. Our ex-neighbors Jill and Brian had a birthday party for their daughter Annie at Little Gym. It seemed like a very girly activity, but the boys and girls had lots of fun. And actually, I wish I was small enough to play on this stuff but I think I would have broken something on either myself or in the facility!

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Here’s a photo of Matthew jumping from the balance beam.

As an icebreaker, they had each kid say their name and then have them knock down this padded ramp.

They they played a game of following simple fun instructions involving a little red cloth.

Meanwhile, Claire sorta did her own thing.

And the parents were up against the wall with their cameras.

One of the hardest things for Matthew was to stand still on the little spot.

Then they did a little tumble routing, each person taking a turn.

They also had some yummy cake and played with balloons. It was a lot of fun and what a treat Annie had to spend her Birthday with friends in such a exciting place.

Perhaps I should create a photo album of all of Claire’s defense moves and we can start the Claire School of Self Defense. Even while brother is using both hands to immobilize her, she manages to perform the claw move.

Recently, Matthew has found it fun to eat some food items with a toothpick. It started when we sampled some sausages at Costco. They used the little toothpicks to serve them.

I served the little slices of sausage on a plate and he wanted to eat them with a “stick”. It took forever to figure out what he wanted because it had already been days since our Costco trip and we had long forgot. Matthew kept saying “stick, stick!”. And he wouldn’t eat the sausages.

In our normal manner we probably said something like, “no, we’re not playing with sticks right now, eat the sausage”. But he was very insistent and pointing up above the microwave saying “stick”. Well, we keep the toothpicks above the microwave and after deep blank thought, and by the grace of God I finally, I realized he wanted to eat the sausages with a toothpick.

“Oh, you mean a toothpick?” Matthew agreed.

So now he likes to eat various foods with a toothpick. He pleasantly surprised us recently when he suddenly said, “look, Jesus cross.” And we turned to see his veggies put to good use.

And he ate his veggies too.

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Our 14 year old dog Sayrah has had bone cancer and a broken leg for over a month now. She's hanging in there. I took her to another vet recently and she said I'm doing the right thing to not do the amputation, just keep her comfortable, on pain killers and let her enjoy things as they come. We took her to the park yesterday and she hopped around, sniffing things and just enjoying the change in scenery. I recently posted some photos that we took with her.

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See any similarities?

Here we asked Matthew to put his head real close to her.

This is very typical of Claire to get excited and bang on something. But isn’t she just adorable when she’s doing it? Oh yeah, we should discourage this behavior. Oops, I was distracted by her cuteness.

Jenn always wanted a sweet daughter to love and nurture. What she didn’t expect was to get a generous amount of spice. Here’s a photo of Claire with the infamous grab the brother’s face move.

Sometimes Matthew grabs her and because she’s just starting to walk she can easily fall over and get hurt. Sometimes we hear her crying and we come to see the aftermath, but we’re not quite sure what happened. Here’s a photo of a precarious situation. Looks lovely and sweet, but it’s really an unstable situation. We just hope Claire can survive her brother’s hugs.

Oh, okay, here’s that sweet girl that we signed up for. This is what makes every bad moment worth the trouble.

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