My Cakes

This boy... he's something else. In the past few days, he's "repainted" the couch, wall, table and type bins in the playroom, not once, but twice, with fingerprint. He's also attempted to write on various non-writing surfaces with whatever pen or marker he can fine. Oh, and he likes to rip up books. But then he does something like this:

**while lying in bed tonight.
"Mommy?"
"Yes, Judah?"
"Can you pray for me?"
"Of course sweetie."
"No, I wanna pray for you! 'Thank you for Mommy, I love you so much, Amen.' It was a short one."
"Aww, that was very sweet, Judah."
"Mm-hmm!"
"You're very humble too, aren't you?" :)
"Mm-hmm!"

I love that kid.

Mmmmm....

Someone decided to eat watercolors. They must not have tasted that bad if she took it this far.

Jesslyn is FOUR!

I know the pic is sideways---Blogger doesn't care for portrait orientations. But I wanted to mark this momentous occasion! We've been celebrating all day and having a blast! Jesslyn got a bunch of new dress up clothes and ponies, so she's a happy camper. I'm just glad her age is finally beginning to catch up with her personality! Our little princess is full of spunk, and super sweet. We love her so much! It's been quite an exciting four years!

2nd day of school!

"If at first you don't succeed, try try again."

Yesterday was rough. I mean, ROUGH! Between me feeling overwhelmed, Joy refusing to nap at the right times, Judah whining and a whirlwind of a mess post-getaway this past weekend, nothing went smoothly. But we did complete "school" for the day, and made it today, which went MUCH better.

We're still figuring things out, but the kids practically demand school now, and they're eager to begin once the babes are sleeping (oh I hope that never wears off!) Today, we learned about the letter "B" and it was more of a struggle than A, but they still did well.

They're now asking for craft time. They have it in their head (probably from church/VBS/MOPS/etc,) that you have a Bible story, lesson, craft time, play time and then "go home" time. Well, after 45 minutes of "lesson" time, they had had enough, so I let them have "play" time, to which Jesslyn exclaimed, "But Mommy! We didn't do a craft!" Guess what I've been looking up tonight?! For "C" day, we'll be making a cute little pom pom caterpillar. That'd better be good enough. :)

Tomorrow is busy, as I'll be at "training" for CBS, since I'm teaching some of the kids this year. I'm starting to feel like I'm in my sophomore year of high school again. Why? Well, in my freshman year, I got my yearbook and noticed there were pics for EVERY activity at the school. So I was determined to get in as many group pics as possible. I signed up for the Yearbook team (ha ha!,) chorus, drama, and a couple other things that I just can't remember (my yearbooks are downstairs... I guess I could go look. But I'm quite happy here in my chair for now.) They did all the group photos on the same day, and you were called out of class to take them. After the 3rd or 4th time, the photographer joked that I should just stay there the rest of the day. I did not repeat that busyness in my Junior/Senior years.

So yeah, why is this year like my sophomore year? Because, boy do I have a lot of pics to take! Between MOPS leadership, Preparing for Marriage Coaching, CBS teaching, helping out with 2nd Saturday at our campus, and, oh, raising and homeschooling four kids, I've got barely enough time to breathe! Oh, and I forgot, volunteering in preschool once a month at church. :/ Something's gotta give. They're all GOOD things to be doing, but I dunno. And the crazy thing is... there's so much more I still wanted to do! Someone put a leash on me!

My prayer lately is that I would be able to juggle it all while still glorifying God. Yes, all those things are good things, but if they're distracting from Him, than it's not worth it. Thankfully, I've actually been able to find a little bit of time for quiet time lately. I figured out that it's [usually] pretty quiet when I put Joy to bed, and it's just her and me (and she's sleeping most of the time!) So in that regard, I'm better than I was when I started all this craziness. I'm still working on the "be still" part, though. I have a hard time just shutting off me and really listening, y'know? I think the next step will be waking up early and having my quiet time at some ghastly hour, like 7 a.m. (oh the horror!)

Anyway! Yeah, busy day tomorrow, and I've got lunches to pack. Gonna try my hand at "bento boxes" for them! I will post pics, if they're anything to get excited about. :)

First day of school!

Today, Fairfax county school kids returned to their classrooms and studies began. Here at the Wilcox abode, my "students" arrived ready bland eager to learn. Although their teacher [me] was not quite as eager.

We had a rough first day to say the least. But! The kids did well, had fun, and are ready to work again tomorrow. So I guess it wasn't a total bust. I think it'll take a few more weeks until we're in a good rhythm, but their excitement is encouraging.

Now Mama just needs to figure out what the heck she's doing. :)

Randomness

I have a lot to post about on the recent meanderings of the Wilcox Fam, but for now, I wanted to share this tidbit of randomness. Our espresso maker that we got Jeremy for his birthday is on the fritz. So I decided now was a good time to register it with Cuisinart, in case we need to call in a warranty repair. Here's one of the [many] questions they ask you to complete during the registration:

Please check all that apply to your household.
 

Shop by Catalog/Mail  Shop via the Internet  Member of Frequent Flyer Program  Donate to Charitable Causes  Own a Compact Disc Player  Have a Dog

Have a Cat  Own a Wireless/Cellular Phone  Speak Spanish  Own an Apple/Macintosh Computer  Own a CD-ROM Drive

I get the first two, about shopping habits. But then it gets.... random. Not sure why they need to know the type of pet we have, if we own a compact disc player (what's that?? lol) or a CD-Rom drive (people still use those?? Ha!) I guess that kind of makes sense from an instructional standpoint (our machine came with a dvd to watch,) but I still don't get the pet thing. Or donate to charitable causes?? Raaaaaandom!

Anyway. Just thought I'd share. It gave me a chuckle.

Momma/Dadda date night!

Mommy and Daddy may be heading to dinner at a schwanky restaurant, butter that doesn't mean our little Princess can't get dolled up as well! :)

All he wants for Christmas is...

Jeremiah has now lost 6 baby teeth since just before Christmas. If there we're an Olympic event for losing the most baby teeth in a year, I'm pretty he'd win at last bronze.

He's not really capitalized on the whole Tooth Fairy thing, though. Half the teeth ended up under his pillow, the other half are still in baggies on the fridge. He's just not all that excited about money making. Jesslyn, on the other hand, is practically counting down the days til she can start losing teeth and filling her piggy bank. Kids. :)

Vroom!

Jeremiah made these playdough race cars all by his little self. Then I had to make a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd medal stand for them.

That orange car is always sneaking by to place first...

Free gift!

I gots my nails did tonight.

Since Jeremy it outta town and Mama needs regular adult interaction to stay sane, I called in some backup in the form of Uncle James for some babysitting. He watched the kiddies (which is as much a treat for them as it is for me,) and I ran off to get a pedi.

The place I go to is a hoot. They give you soda and chocolate when you get there, and then they have a pile of "free gifts!" when you leave. This pile consists of old library books, anime and Hd-DVD's. The selection cracks me up. It's no wonder they're always stacked high there.

It was a tough choice.... Hammerboy was tempting, but I had to go with Billy Madison on HD DVD. Gotta go dust that drive off now to play it...

Awesome pedi, though. :)

Prayer

I wanted to take a little nap today while the girls slept and the boys played. So I asked them to sing me a lullaby to help me fall asleep. Judah put his hand on me one said, "Thank you Jesus, for you, bless ah bodies, sleep."

I love listening to the kids prayers. :)

Happy 9 months, Joy!

Yeah, I know, this is a week late. COMPLETELY blanked on it. Not sure how that happened---guess I was a little preoccupied coming up with yumminess for "Miss Amelia's" birthday party. :)

Nine months. Wow. I only have 3 more stickers for her pictures, and then.... she'll be ONE.

I know, I know, Joy. I don't want you to turn one, either. You're still my sweet baby girl! Even though you're so close to standing alone without support, and will probably be walking super soon (and climbing all over everything,) you're still my baby. Although you still wanna cuddle with Mommy, especially at bedtime (don't even think about Daddy taking you up, huh?) Yup, still my baby. Until we have another, at least. 

What? :)

Jeremiah has really been into building with Legos lately (hey, he's a 5.5 year old boy. It was inevitable, right?) He's got a set of he smaller ones, but I don't like finding those all over when little ones are crawling around. I bought the kids some used duplos  and they're very happy to play with those instead.

Jeremiah wIll build all sorts of things with Legos. Planes and swords are his favorite, but yesterday, he wanted to make a hot air balloon (shown). He was quite proud of it.

Oh, and yes, that's Jesslyn trying to "photo bomb" his pic in the background there. Gotta love little sisters.

Doublemint twins

She wants to be just like her big brother. :)

Jeremiah prays

I went in to pray for the boys tonight, and Jeremiah insisted that I let him pray for himself. So I prayed with him. This is what he said:

"Dear God, thank you for myself and help me have good dreams tonight, and you have good dreams too, because I love you so much and I love you all the time. And thank you for Minecraft, because I love it so much and it's my favorite game and I love the creepers. In Jesus name, Amen."

Amen. :)

Dear cicadas and other bugs of the night who keep trying to enter our house by slamming into the glass door.

You're doing it wrong.

Love, us.

Washing windows

Judah is something else. I never know what's going to happen when he's around. He's got this personality that just makes ya chuckle, though at other times, you just have to take him seriously.

Today, he decided he wanted to wash windows. Actually, I'm pretty sure the thought process began more with the fact that there was an open pack of wipes within view, but he needed a good reason to take one. Ah ha! Raindrops on the door. So he grabbed a wipe (or 3....) and proceeded to clean the inside of the door before moving outside to get the errant raindrops leftover from an afternoon shower. In a few years (probably sooner...) this won't be fun anymore. And the door is a bit streaky as a result. But hey, you're only two once.

If only we could dial him back to when he couldn't climb out of his crib. Like, yesterday?

Ah, Judah. He's my favorite Cakers.

Separated at birth... and 33 years.

Look! We found Uncle Ben's OTHER twin! 

Seriously, the whole time we were at dinner (at the Counter in RTC. Because it's yummy,) I thought everyone was going to think Judah was his kid instead of ours. We had to buzz his head, since his blonde hair is SO THIN that it mats almost instantly when he sleeps or is in his carseat. And since it's even more challenging to comb tangles outta a 2 yo boy's hair than a girl's, it was easier to just shave it all off. 

He looks so tough now. Well, if he could look up without seeing the sun.

Joy Ella, the "cutey cutah!"

She lives up to her namesake. Here she is enjoying some sushi paper/seaweed/nori/whatever. :)

I'm back!

Well, you know what they say... if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. And Facebook was that kitchen. So I quit. For now, at least. I'm sure I'll be back someday. In the meantime, I sure am enjoying all this extra "free" time. And since my outlet is gone, thought it'd be a good time to update ye old blog. So here we go.

Okay, first off, the name is about 9 months too old. Joy Ella joined our expanding family on Nov 9, 2011 around 2:04 a.m. The only reason I can remember the time is because I was looking at Lori (our birth assistant's) phone as I was pushing her out. The midwife hadn't yet arrived so she put her on speaker so she could talk Lori through it. Exciting times. :) She was our second smallest baby, at 10lbs 6oz. Had a full head of dark brown hair, which, unfortunately for Mommy, has lightened up considerably. Oh well.

Secondly, this place is in major need of renovations! But that's for another time.