:: Field Day, Dedication & God Sightings ::

As I sit down to blog and upload pictures, I am struck by how much has happened over the last 9 months.  In so many ways it has flown, and in others (like our sleepless nights) it has dragged on and on.  Knox has gone from a little lump of baby love to a moving, shaking, crawling, pulling up, ball-playing master.  

And Parrish has gone from writing one word to writing sentences, and reading books on his own. 

 This school year has definitely brought much progress in the life of my boys and I have loved getting to watch each of them grow and learn more about the world.

 Knox started crawling at 8 months and it only took him a week or two to figure out that it hurts to crawl on your knees and therefore start crawling on his feet.

His favorite things are:
-playing in the cabinet I set up for him in the kitchen with "real" utensils, pots, pans and bowls (above)
-clapping
-crawling
-pulling up
-attempting to balance standing on both feet (Parrish will proudly tell you that he was the first one to see baby Knox try to stand on his own!)
-reading his animal book and watching mommy make all the funny animal noises
-and playing ball!  This is by far my favorite thing to do with him.  He will throw a small plastic ball back and forth with me for as long as I will let him.  It is the cutest thing ever to watch him figure out cause and effect.

 Parrish had his end of the year field day at school last week and I was able to go and volunteer at one of the games.  I loved watching from afar as he and his buddies sprayed each other with water guns, blind folded themselves and walked through a maze, and jumped in inflatables.

On Mother's Day we dedicated Knox to the Lord.  It was a sweet and special time with family and friends where we shared not "what" we wanted Knox to be when he grows up, but "who."  Some of the things we want for him (and Parrish) are for him to be:

-self assured but not conceded

-passionate about Christ, his chosen career path, his family 

-willing to put others before himself

-empathetic, kind & thoughtful

It is a real struggle as a parent not to put what their job will be one day over the importance of who they will be one day.  It is also a struggle not to put your own hopes and dreams for them above their own personal hopes, dreams, and interests.  But I pray often that Cannon and I will be able to do just that for both of our boys.  Cannon says all the time that we have to find and focus on what they are good at and passionate about, and not focus on the things that they are less adept at.  So true!

 Our buddies The Browns (below) came into town for the dedication along with our families and that meant that there were LOTS of boys in one place.  As you can see in the picture above, we picked up quite a few extras on dedication day!

 Tappy helped me make the Orange Dreamsicle Cake that we served at the luncheon after the dedication and let me just tell you that it was delicious and perfect for a warm summer day!

 Here is the recipe, from "The Diary of Dave's Wife" blog:

 We had the luncheon at my favorite little park in Mt Laurel.  The food was good, the company better, and the kids were running around having a blast (see below).  :)

When the dust from all the excitement of the dedication settled though, it was still Mother's Day and this mother is still missing one of her babies.  I was thankful for the distraction of the dedication, but when it was all said and done that was the thought I was left with; and the familiar longing of my heart and arms was even more present than usual.  The next week was a struggle and as I often do when I'm at the end of my rope, I started searching for the Lord more regularly.  In our VBS teacher training this past week we talked about "God sightings."  We'll be looking for God in the every day with our vbs kids and teaching them to do the same.  Sometimes I wonder if I am remembering to have my own God sightings during the daily things, the mundane.  Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, but it has to be a conscious effort before it will become a habit.

A friend recently suggested I read a book called "Anything," by Jennie Allen. In the book last week I read this:

"The desire of God's heart is to deal with suffering-and it is not just his desire; it is his plan.  Once he deals with it, it is over.  He is patient in his judgment, desiring that none be lost (2 Peter 3:9)  If we believe the Bible, we must believe that the heart of our unpredictable, sovereign God is good, that he sees us and is for us, even though he allows this pain.  As my friend Rachel discovered, who is to say what is good or bad anymore?  Not till heaven will we know.  From his eternal perspective, it's tolerable to allow our temporary dreams to fall apart.  But we seize more of God when he seizes us through our broken dreams.  He is wildly unpredictable, and learning to question and accept his ways is part of the journey of following an unsafe, invisible God.  He calls the shots on what happens to us in this short stint here.  He calls them, whether we want to let him or not.  Our faith must remain greater than our pain and our fears." -Jennie Allen, "Anything"

If I am honest, I admit that I seize more of God now that my dreams have been broken.  Is this a good thing in God's eternal perspective?  If it is, it doesn't make it any easier in this life, but it felt like Jennie's words as I read them that day had been specifically meant for me to read.  A God sighting, perhaps??

For now I'm back to the daily and off to get Parrish from his last day as a Kindergartener.  I can't believe I just typed that!  I can't wait to ask him his Kindergarten exit questions and post them.  I wonder if any of the answers have changed from the beginning of the year.  Stay tuned...and Happy Summer!!

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:: March Madness, Part 2::

Easter was also in March this year and we were excited to get more Easter chicks for my "chicks". Between us and our nephews we had 6 chicks to love on! Parrish named them Otter jr., bunny and peep and enjoyed playing with them while his cousins were in town.

I don't think Knox knew quite what to think about the chicks! He just watched them calmly most of the time (there was that once he reached out, grabbed one and squeezed...ahhhhhh....the trauma!).

I love this picture of two little chicks.  His twirly toes remind me so much of his sister.

Later this week we'll take the chicks to live at a friends house. She keeps chickens and says she'll even share some of their eggs with us. Yum!  It will be so much fun to show Parrish what they look like all grown up.

The Saturday before Easter our neighborhood does a big egg hunt and this year we REALLY hunted in style. 4,000 eggs were dropped from a HELICOPTER for the kids to hunt! The picture above is Parrish staring at it taking off.  It was a surprise and the kids were all amazed. I can't say that I ever went to an egg hunt that involved a helicopter growing up! Where will we go from here?! Don't think the neighborhood will be able to top that next year!

Knox met the Easter bunny for the first time at the hunt and his daddy even helped him hunt eggs. In his words..."babies like to hunt eggs, too!" Ha! He'd hold him up to a egg and Knox would grab onto it with a precious, chubby little fist. The problem was getting him to let it go in the Easter basket!

Easter Sunday Cannon surprised me with an Easter dress! Can you believe that? It was so sweet I almost cried! I had been complaining the day before that I hadn't given any thought to what I was going to wear, so he took it upon himself to go buy me something new. I just love that man. He was even smart enough to buy it in two sizes! He really brought a smile to my face. What girl wouldn't like a new dress?

Another very special part of my ensemble was the beautiful, old-fashioned Easter corsage that Cannons sister Christy brought me to wear in memory of our precious Olivia. I loved wearing the dainty, pink flowers all day because they reminded me so much of the bouquet she carried at her dedication. It was a small but special way to help us feel like she was with us.

Here's a family shot from the egg hunt.  Parrish ADORES his cousins and it is fun to watch a house full of boys when they are all in town.  As you can imagine, there is lots of energy and never enough food to fill them up!

And of course the bunny made his appearance on Easter eve and left baskets for the boys to find in the morning. He brought Knox some super cool baby shades pictured below.  I couldn't believe they lasted 5 seconds on his little face, much less 5 minutes, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much he liked them!

The boys got matching shark bathing suits from the bunny.  I am dressing them alike as much as I can this year because I have a feeling that Parrish wanting to dress like Knox will be short lived.  I must take advantage of it while it lasts!

Knox's favorite part about his Easter basket was trying to eat the grass, of course.  Parrish's was his book of paper airplanes and of course all the candy!

Here they are in their coordinating Easter "finery."  Aren't they cute??

March was also a busy month for Olivia Charles Antiques!  As I mentioned in a previous post, we are partnering with Southern Stationery (SouthernDipity gifts) to offer engraved gifts like the cross above.  The back of the cross has the family name and each member's name engraved as well.  These have been selling really well (they are $30 + engraving cost and can be purchased here) in addition to the double cross (shown below in natural and red barn wood).

These crosses are $50 and can also be engraved.  You can purchase one here.  Please specify if you would like a red cross.  We only have one left.

 

Mary Catherine of Cotton + Quill has been engraving up a storm for us and here is a bathroom caddy engraved with the old fashioned word for out house, "Privy".  Clever, huh?  Mary Catherine has her own line of hand-drawn and custom fabric available to the trade.  Check it out here!

I promised a picture of the bedside table/bookcase that we did for a client and here it is!  The grass green interior is such an unexpected pop of color in an otherwise all natural barn wood piece.  I am in love with it and can't wait to see it in the room.  

These tables are a steal at $150 and I happen to have one more in turquoise.  If you are interested email me at info@oliviacharlesantiques.com and I can email you a picture of that color way and give you measurements.  It will also be for sale with our other items at the Mt Laurel Spring Festival which is next Saturday, April 13th!  I hope to see you there.

I want to close with a prayer request and some words from my heart.  I have been struggling this last week emotionally.  When you loose a child, every day has it hard parts and lately there have been more of these moments.  I mourn our little girl, and the loss of normalcy for us.  It is tiring going out into the world, living a daily, normal life, but always anxious because you don't know when you're going to be put in a situation where you are expected to talk about our loss, especially with people you don't know well.  It's like having a wound that has scabbed over, but suddenly is ripped off.  Emotionally and mentally I don't feel strong enough to talk about this personal, deep loss with people I have just met.  And that makes me want to isolate myself from situations where this might occur.  Please pray for courage, strength, and endurance for me in these situations, in addition to Cannon and Parrish as it is just as hard for them, but in different ways.

We took Parrish to visit Olivia's gravesite for the first time on Easter and it was a bitter sweet time, but he was ready.  He had asked several times to go and see it so he could bring her the minnie mouse ears that we bought for her birthday while at Disney.  And he really, really wanted to take his new paper airplane book there so we could fly airplanes "with" her.  And so we did.  At first it almost felt disrespectful to fly airplanes with him there, but gradually I felt a peace that she would want to see him happy there.  What a study of opposites.  I place full of sorrow suddenly filled with the joy of a little boy flying paper airplanes.  

What broke my heart the most was him asking for some privacy to go and talk to her.  As I walked toward the car he was sitting on her bench and all I could see was his swinging little feet as he spoke to her.  He is so young to have endured so much and I am so proud of his sweet, tender, and strong little spirit.  

Last week I learned that some old family friends lost their second child.  Their first son in a pool accident at least 20 years ago and their second son, a college student, just last week in a car accident.  Please keep this family in your prayers.  It is unfathomable to me how a family could endure the loss of a child for the second time, yet I know they will have no choice but to do just that.  You don't ever think that lightning is going to strike in the same place twice and hearing that it has has been a hard reality for me to take in.  My heart aches for them, but the only thing I know to do for them right now is to pray, so I would ask that you please remember them in your prayers as well.  

"Now you don't need to be afraid of the dark anymore, nor fear the dangers of the day; nor dread the plagues of darkness, nor disasters in the morning." Psalm 91:5-6

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:: March Madness, Part 1::

When I sat down to post this entry I really didn't know where to start.  I like to include pictures from as many of our adventures as possible so I can print my blog at the end of the year and it's like a scrapbook (because Lawd knows I would never make the time to ACTUALLY scrapbook!)  :)  So with my laptop computer on the fritz (apparently I need to free up disk space, which is probably code for, "you have WAY too many pictures stored on your computer") I attempted to upload pictures from my iPad.  Which was a success, if you ignore the fact that I accidentally uploaded all the pictures to two separate posts (sigh!).  So instead of taking the time to re-upload I am just going to do a part 1 and part 2.

March has been a crazy month full of fun adventures.  We started off the month with our annual trip to the "big apple" with The Browns.  We look forward to this time with our friends every year and the trip did not disappoint.

Here we are on our first day there.  We always manage to eat at Rue 57, which is a good restaurant near our hotel.

That night we ate at a great tapas restaurant called Alta.  The building was so non-descript we actually walked past it once, but then you go inside and it is two floors with an open balcony to below and the coolest ambiance.  Tapas is such a fun way to eat.  You get to have a little bit of it all.  On our walk home I was experiencing my typical first day in NYC awe taking in the beautiful buildings and decided Nancy and I needed a photo perched on one of the cool stoops.  It seemed like a really good idea at the time!  :)

We took a lot of pictures of the guys this trip (much to their chagrin, I'm sure) so we could send them to Karl's mom who wanted a play-by-play of what we were up to.

We had lunch at the Central Park Boat House.  The picture below is the view from our table.  Gorgeous!  The crab cakes were divine, but the view was the best part of the whole meal.  We'd love to take Parrish back one warm day and take him out on the paddle boats.

We walked through Central Park on our way home that day and snapped a few pictures.  We came across some softball fields and I was trying to imagine bringing Parrish to little league games in the middle of Manhattan.  I guess you'd get used to it, but it sure seems amazing.

We were there over St. Patty's day weekend, so our trip wouldn't have been complete without a visit to an Irish Pub.  We stumbled across The Wren in Soho and were so impressed.  Their corned beef and gruyere sandwiches were something to write home about.

And because I can't have you thinking that all we did was eat (which if I'm honest we did A LOT of!), here is a picture of Cannon loving on Lady Liberty at the store Olde Good Things.  I LOVE this place (almost as much as Cannon loves the statue of liberty).  It has every kind of vintage piece or antique you could dream of.  I only wish we had a store like this in the Ham.  We found awesome pulls for our living room barn doors here and enjoyed visiting with the owners.  They often come to Scott's in Atlanta, FYI, so look out for them if you go!

While we were there we saw the Broadway play, "The Book of Mormon."  Entertainment and choreography-wise it was awesome, but I have to say that it was at times very offensive to Christians (not just Mormons) and full of shock-value.  It wasn't what I was expecting, but it was definitely an experience I won't soon forget!

The picture above is the view from Nancy and Karl's balcony.  The weather while we were there was cold (it even snowed one day!) but that didn't stop us from enjoying a glass of wine taking in this view!

When we got back to Birmingham Parrish was out of school for Spring Break so we packed back up and headed to the beach to spend time with Frankie and Tappy and my sister Caroline for a few days.

It occurs to me that I haven't mentioned on my blog that my mom (aka Tappy) got married to a wonderful man in February!  They had a sweet, family ceremony at Frankie's house followed by cake and coffee and we could not be more thrilled for them.  Frankie's grandaddy name is "Pap" and he is already adored by Parrish and Knox.  Here's a picture of the happy couple:

So, as I was saying...we went to the beach to visit with them over Spring Break and...

Parrish loved the stuffed alligator at The Shrimp Boat restaurant.

And spent the rest of his time braving the frigid water to skim board.

It is amazing to me that kids rarely let the cold stop them.  Parrish has fun no matter the weather and I love that about him!  The grin from ear to ear that Knox has on his face is the reaction he has anytime his brother comes into view.  These two boys love each other so much and it makes my heart so happy.

Caroline, Tappy and Knox came out to see the skim boarding show.

And Parrish and I built a sand castle.

Knox and I snuggled...

And he enjoyed his very first beach trip.  

Cannon buried P in the sand to form a recliner of sorts. 

We all had a lot of fun and are really looking forward to spending more time in the surf and on the sand this summer!

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