Passion Week

Caleb said the best thing about his birthday was the cake. The volcano was caked by trimming a bundt cake and stacking the trim on top. Iced brown to hide the seam, Elijah wanted to put "more in" so Jessica grabbed the chocolate jimmies for texture and wow! it really worked. Lava was piped on along with "Happy 5th birthday Caleb!" Moments before serving Reddi Whip applied to the crater. Caleb and guests went on a fossil hunt in the dining room finding shark's teeth, coral, sting ray vertabrae and shells. They glued their finds into 3 x 2 picture frames as the goodie bag. Before cake though was pizza and Chris is the pizza man. Friday night he bake 3 recipes to make 6 crusts. Saturday at 11 he began putting the pizzas in two at a time for the next 27 minutes. All the pizza disappeared between 10 kids and and 8 adults. Jessica can see the wisdom in 1 friend, 1 activity for the 6 and up crowd. Of course this being Caleb's birthday, we invited the Jeromes into our home AGAIN. Yes that's 6 kids and 4 parents in the house for 3 days. We managed with pleasure. Caleb (okay this blog is mostly about Caleb) sang a solo at both services last week. He reprised his God of Wonders song from two years ago and sang the whole thing. He took the stage with a leap up all the stairs and just beamed. It's his element. You always wonder about those kind of kids. Second service was packed and Caleb being 5 still have some misconceptions about the lyrics, "The universe de-quares your majesty", "When I stumble in the darkness I will call you name I know". Dequares brought out the "oh, so precious" gigs throughout the sanctuary and when Caleb heard them his smile faded and his voice quieted but he continued singing and mere seconds later got his confidence back. We're encouraged to "make a joyful noise" and Caleb loves it.
School brought us out of Spring week where we planted some seeds in paper towels. Yes, and it worked. We learned that cucumber plants smell like cucumbers. Jaci blessed us with frog eggs Tuesday evening after track. They're funny looking and fascinating. By Thursday morning they were changing from round black dots to well basically mouse poop looking shapes. Friday night the first 6 came out of their eggs. By Saturday night all but a few were out. We have happy tadpoles after 4 days and they moved into the tank which means we'll probably get snails again too.
Thursday Rebekah got to go on a date with Chris to see The Princess and the Pea at Middletown Middle where a church friend had the lead of the Princess. While the older ones were away Jessica and the boys took some time to see to their summer haircuts. Would you know those boys have more hair per space than she has ever seen, with the exception of maybe Kevin and Evan. Caleb is not far behind though. Elijah took 2 1/2 inches off to have "hair like Daddy's." caleb's was about 2 inches all around. We decided to save the sideburns and Jessica has been touching up ever since. So Elijah's bangs that really made you look at his soft brown eyes are gone and Caleb's swirly curls are history. Now Elijah's face is suddenly so much more expressive and Caleb is well Caleb. Jessica couldn't pick which pic of them she liked better so you get both. Oh yeah, the feat was accomplished with each boy getting to select his own 19 minute episode of the Challenge of the Superfriends and of course haircuts are given with shirts off.

"Mama Mama"--there are days when you wish the montior was 2-way. So up 2 flights to Elijah's room with the door still closed. "Mama there's a scary, yucky, BAD, MEAN bug in my room." Right, this from the boy that wants to adopt every milkbug and leafbug into the habitat. "Where is it?" "On the floor." (Can't see anything moving) "Where?" "Under there." He had "squashed" a wasp under a toy and was keeping close eyes on it--hence just hollering out of his room behind a colsed door. "Squish it, Mama." When Jessica got that thing between two pieces of wood, his snicker of satifaction was priceless. This from the boy that yesterday declared that he "like Daddy better." Quiet ended soon after and this is where we found Caleb--swimming in his toy box with his stuffties.

School has had us looking at Passion Week from Palm Sunday through Passover. We're very adept at waving palms and shouting Hosanna. We know Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem. We talked about Jesus being passionate about His Father's house. We began looking at Passover going all the way back to the story of Moses. Rebekah is simply off her rocker with realizations this year. She just exploded with excitement as she put together that Jesus is the Passover lamb. Watching the faith of a child grow is a beautiful thing.

Saturday was WONDERFUL. Our first official Saturday where we didn't HAVE to get up after 8 weeks of Upward games and Caleb's birthday bash. The children treated Chris and Jessica to sleeping in until 8:15 and after that we were still able to get up before them. After breakfasting we headed out to tackle home depot, kohls and walmart plus spend the rest of the Christmas Arch Dollars. Chris picked up nececssities to finish outside. Jessica and the kids struck out at kids workshop because they're having it on the 24th. A new griddle was found at Kohls while Chirs struck out looking for jeans at Wal-Mart. We came home to tend the garden plots and then since it was still so beautiful outside we put in an hour working on riding bikes. The picutres are probably misleading. Caleb is close though.