mikey’s favorite book of late has been dr. seuss’ “green eggs and ham”.  he asks me to read it every morning as he drinks his cup of milk.  and he asks me to read it every night before bed.  the good thing is that i enjoy the story as well and so i don’t mind reading it over and over and over…    so guess what mikey had for breakfast yesterday?   I do not like them, Sam-I-am. I do not like green eggs and ham.   You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may, I say.  …

a few more pictures… after we put the kids to bed each night, we adults would take turns going out.  tuesday night, adam and phil went out to catch the new james bond movie, the next night lorie and i went and saw “stranger than fiction”- totally not as good as we were hoping it would be, the movie even had some editing problems as we saw the overhead microphone enter the top of the screen at least ten times!  thursday night phil and i went on a date- yahoo!!!  we went sky diving.  ha ha, just kidding.  but we DID go to a sky diving simulator!   i wasn’t able to take pictures…

finally, here’s a recap of our trip to florida.  it feels like it was so long ago already!  maybe posting our pics will make me feel like i’m back on vacation…  i’m feeling about ready for a vacation from this stressful month!  actually, i’m just really thankful that our family is healthy again.  allie’s got an appointment with an ent doctor on tuesday, but she’s back to her normal self for the most part. our version of “traveling light”.  this is as good as it gets with two little ones in tow.  phil and i shared one medium-sized suitcase for all our stuff for the week and all the other bags held all…

future reference for mikey and allie (from the mahaneys). Q & A One of our readers wrote Nicole to ask: “I’d love to hear how your parents counseled you all through your various relationships and into engagement. Specifically, how did they guide you in guarding your hearts? What did they tell you to look for in a husband? And how—with three different men and three varying courtships did they counsel each of you differently about the actual process of those courtships?” Over the next several days, each of the girls will recount her personal journey of falling in love with the man who is now her husband. In the process…

Courtship Resources We decided to briefly interrupt the courtship stories with some recommended reading.  If you’ve read this blog for any period of time, you know that one of the things we love to do most is encourage you to read good books.  Why?  John Piper captures our enthusiasm: “God has appointed for us to be helped in our understanding and enjoyment of Scripture by human teachers—living and dead….Some of these write down their teachings. This is why we have books.…None of us is so free from sin or bias or blindness that we can see the infallible Scriptures infallibly. We need help. We need correction. We need guidance and…