Saturday, June 25, 2011

All Kinds of Stuff Keeping Us Busy!

Trips to California, lots of visitors, baby showers, getting a nursery ready, keeping up with Kade and Ryne....yes we have a busy life! But we LOVE it! And wouldn't trade it for the world. Can't imagine just how busy we are going to be when we add Tesa and Tyce to the roll call. Ha!
Here is just a peek at the other things that have been going on in our world....

Laughing at these guys! They are SO silly!

Trips to the park...

Picnics!

And playgrounds!

Could anything be more fun for a four year old and two year old?

Well, maybe having a fire in your very own backyard....

My three men!

I think the smoke made this one a little blurry but it still makes me smile.


Is it any wonder people ask us all the time if Kade and Ryne are twins?

The purpose of the fire wasn't just to keep us warm on the evening of May 28th. I note the date here for those of you wondering why we are wearing jackets....it is quite obvious we were not in Arkansas on that evening. I just checked the weather history for Little Rock, AR and it was 90 degrees that day. Anyway, back to the point of the fire....

Marshmallow roasting, of course!

Kade was an excellent marshmallow roaster.

He thought he did a fine job himself when he took his first gooey bite.

Ryne spent most of the time playing here....

That was until he spotted Kade eating his yummy roasted marshmallow.

Then he decided to join the roasting party...

He reluctantly accepted a little help from Dad to keep his marshmallow from going up in flames.


Showing off his marshmallow.
This one he didn't let roast very long because I think he just really wanted to eat it.

Kade had a couple more himself....

Looks pretty yummy, huh?
Let's just say, this was not the last time we've done marshmallow roasting at our house. It has become a big hit with the boys.

Life Church is going great!
We had a fun picnic for Memorial Day weekend.
Played games...




Listened to Derek introduce the next sermon series...






Did some egg tossing...

It was a fun evening!
We've started our Life Groups back up for the summer, too.
That is going so well we actually had to split up the group that meets at our house on Wednesday nights. Life Groups are supposed to be "small" groups so that dialogue happens easily. Our small group turned into about 28 adults and dozen kiddos...not so small. We were sad because we didn't want to not have any of those people in our group at our house. But for the sake of the study, we made the split and will start meeting as two separate groups next week.


There is always some kind of art going on...



And just in case you wondered if the pirate phase had ended at the Lewallen household....

Here's proof that it is alive and well!


Ryne made this sword and shield at school one day and was so happy to bring it home and put it to use.

Speaking of school, the boys had a chance to do a science project for school.
The catch was, it had to be entirely their idea and they had to complete it all themselves with very little, if any, parental assistance.
Kade quickly decided that he wanted to make an ant farm.
We got him a container and he went to work in the backyard...

First, it needs dirt.

Ryne thought he would try to do the same thing but it didn't work out so well for him.

He ended up just wanting to help me take pictures so his project turned into ant photography.
Here are a couple of the pictures he took all by himself for his project.....

Not too bad for a two year old, huh?

Kade was busy looking for ants of his own....

Found out he needed a little help to get them in the box of dirt and get the lid back on before they could escape. That was the parental assistance I gave to him.


He even found a worm that he added to his ant farm.
With the farm full of ants and a worm we took the container inside for some finishing touches.
Kade knew they would need some food so he decided they would probably enjoy graham crackers. They would probably be thirsty as well so they got a cotton ball full of water.

Here he is checking out the finished product.
Then he had to write up his project paper....

Of course he had to ask how to spell some words but I was so proud of what a good job he did with his project paper. Got all the steps written down and even drew a picture of his ant farm.

Can you tell he was proud to have it ready to take to school and show his teachers?

Take note of his paper...and his name in permanent marker written on the side of the farm. I think he was as proud that I let him write with permanent marker as anything.

The ant farm and ant pictures were a great success! They had a science fair showing at school and we went to check out all the projects. I have pictures of that somewhere on one of our cameras. Those will have to make an appearance in a later post.

Summertime finally decided to make an appearance. At least a day or two here and there anyway. We took advantage of one of those days and did some flower planting....

Mr. Cool in his shades!


Mr. Double-Cool in his shades with his shirt off like Daddy.

Kyle was so good.
He let them both take turns planting flowers in our pots.


If only they wanted to help out with everything else like they wanted to help with this project.
Oh, things like cleaning their room every day, doing the dishes, washing the laundry, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, cooking dinner, changing diapers here in a few weeks. What's that you say? They're only four and two?! Oh, I guess you're right...those times are still to come. I'll keep waiting!
And you guys can keep waiting, too....for the next post that is. Only have about three weeks of Lewallen adventures to catch up on now! And I better hurry and do some catching up because we only have about three weeks until Tesa and Tyce will be ready to make an appearance!

Showers of Blessing

I am so amazingly blessed!
God has put so many loving people in our lives here in Washington.
So many, in fact, that we've had two baby showers for Tesa and Tyce!
I mentioned one of them in my last post because my beautiful sister was here for the first one.

She served as my assistant and photographer at the shower our Life Church family did for us.
It was absolutely adorable.
Take a look....

The theme "a perfect pair."
Beautiful yum-o-licious cake by Kristy, of course!

A candy table. Too cute!

Our sweet friend Sarah hosted the shower at her house and look at what cute artwork she had on her kitchen chalk board.

Fabulous diaper cake by Laura!

It was quite a party!
With SO many fun ladies...

Lots of chatting to do.


Adri hanging out with baby Levi.


Alissa had lots of fun "pair" games to play.


Jenny between a "pair" of pregnant ladies!
Sweet Jaclyn to the right of Jenny had her sweet baby boy, Mason, just a few days later.


Jenny won!


Hi Alesha! Looks like you won a prize, too!


And Laura was yet another winner!!!

Of course, I was the big winner that day!
Got lots of awesome things for Tesa and Tyce.

I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves....





Little explanation here...I was actually telling Levi thanks for growing so fast. That bag was from him and it was full of diapers that he outgrew before we got to use them!






See, I told you I was blessed! So many cute things and I didn't even put up a picture of everything. There were just way too many to post them all.
Besides, that was just shower number one....had to save room to post about shower number two!
But first let me show you who else scored big at the baby shower....

D and Lissa sent Kade and Ryne their very own presents from the shower.
How cool is that?

They were thrilled!

Kade even wanted to model his new backpack for a picture!
And I saved them a couple of presents to help unwrap...


Happy boys, for sure!

Shower number two was hosted by our Sunbreak family!
That is the church in Olympia who supports us in our church planting efforts in DuPont.
An amazing group of people, no doubt.
And they threw an amazing shower for Tesa and Tyce.

Check out the fun decor and yummy food....





How fun are these "T n T" bags that went with the candy table?
Tesa n Tyce....hope they aren't too much dynamite in our world. Ha!



There were fun games, too....

Karie and Anndria playing the sock matching game.


Lots of fun ladies to chat with.

And look at this fun table of onesies and paint....

Everyone got to create their own little special shower souvenir for Tesa and Tyce.
How fun!

And of course there were lots of other fabulous gifts.
Like handmade blankets....

Thanks Sara!


Thanks Gwen!

And thanks, Alissa, for being my assistant for this shower! I can't get much done these days without assistants. Ha!

Lots of cute outfits...





Even something for Mommy....

Not sure why I have such a crazy face, I must have been saying something like "I love it, thanks so much for getting something for me."


Two thumbs up for two boxes of diapers!

Check out the original artwork by our friend LeHua...

Two peas in a pod!
Isn't it adorable?!?!

Such a fun shower!
There was only one sad thing about it.
It was one of the last thing we would be getting to do with our friend Dawn.

She is moving to Portland! For a year!
It's only two hours away, but yet it is two hours away.
The smiles are for the sake of taking a good picture, not representative of how we feel about her being gone. We will certainly be missing Dawn and Chuck and Aaron and Delaney!
Thanks for helping throw such an amazing shower, Dawn! Love you!

Super blessed! That's me! Such amazing friends in my life!

Alrighty, one post closer now to being caught up. Two or three more might get it done.
Stay tuned....