Here's the birthday boy.

God has allowed Sydney to reach his 10th birthday. We were wondering if Merrie and I would be able to make it. You certainly learn a lot about God's grace having children of your own. His official party will be tomorrow doing laser tag. Hopefully I'll get a pic up here. He and I went camping with Scouts Saturday. That was the FIRST time I've gotten to camp alone with one of our boys. It was a great time. The Webelos had to work on their fire starting skills. They were each paired up with a Boy Scout.


Even Samuel is a challenge (and danger to himself). He's being far more daring than his siblings ever were. Yesterday he climbed up onto the dining room table and started tossing things off before we realized what he was doing. Our house is beginning to look rather comical with all the measures we've had to continue to add to keep him safe or out of things. Yesterday he was going to climb over the gate since he was on the other side helping mom make a pie, but I convinced him that wasn't a good idea at this point.


He's finally getting some more teeth. One eye tooth has just popped through and you can see the other one will do so today or tomorrow and then the top 2 front teeth will join their lower counterparts within a week. He's also still nursing any chance he gets, but Merrie may turn off the tap once those other teeth arrive.

Samuel started to walk on Wednesday, while both sets of grandparents were here for Sydney's grandparents day at school so he picked a good day to show off. He managed several steps, traversing about 6 feet. Of course, each time I got my camera ready he decided not to show off.

I did catch him in a bad hair day a couple weeks ago.


Children can also teach us quite a bit. Not many adults experience joy or at least express it very well. While Samuel doesn't know the joy of a personal relationship with Jesus yet (though I suspect there are some people who would argue that), he can find joy in the simplest things.


After seeing so many kids in high school driving nice cars like Hummers, we decided we needed to keep up with the Joneses and got Steph a new truck now that he has his license.


NOT! It's actually one my parents bought for their business, but I'm not lying about teens driving Hummers and Navigators in high school. Nothing like teaching little Johnny about the value of hard work, eh? Nuff said.

God's about to do mighty works in Terre Haute. I'm heavily involved in a proposal for a local community center, and there are several others in the area that have a hunger for reaching the lost. Some of these people met Thursday night for an awesome event of networking and fellowship and we've got the next one planned. I'm excited yet scared to death - it should be fun.