Ben's Clone

There is an infamous tale from Ben's childhood of a time when his mom walked past the bathroom just in time to see Ben accidentally drop his comb in the toilet.  In true Ben fashion, he pretended like it was nothing, pulled it out of the toilet, and kept combing his hair.  "Real men use toilet water," he told his mom.

Fortunately, Thad doesn't use toilet water.  Instead, he uses Ella's princess comb and Lily's cup of water.

Lily is a writer.  She writes whenever she's not playing.  We find her journals and random notes all around the house every day.  We found one the other day that described each person in our family individually.  Under each of our descriptions she wrote, "but we all love snuggles."  Very, very true.

Classical Conversations Graduation

A week ago the kids had their Classical Conversations presentation.  It was precious.  We only have 16 kids in our group and so everybody knows everybody.  It's great.  

They sang songs for us and did a great job.  

Skyler's class with Miss Nicole.

Lily's class with Miss Ginger.

The kids received certificates for finishing up the year and then I was surprised to find out that I was receiving one as well!  Since we moms are our kids' main teachers, we also completed the year in our own way.  

We are done with CC until August, but we still have school until the end of May at home.  This month the kids are reviewing what they've learned and will be testing.  I can't believe how quickly this year has gone by!  I think the biggest surprise of this whole homeschooling adventure has been how much I have appreciated it, not to mention how much the kids love having several extra hours to ride their bikes each day....

Easter

Our kids are a little strange.  Easter is as big of a deal to them as Christmas.  They have a countdown and everything.  

Poor early morning light + lightning speed children = really bad pictures.

ENJOY!

Ella's hair.  I'm its #1 fan.

Lily finding hidden eggs in the windows and motioning for the babies to come find them.

The kids had an egg hunt at our homeschool co-op that week and Thad proved to be way more interested in getting right into the candy inside the eggs instead of hurrying to find more eggs.  Every kid was supposed to end up with 12.  He ended up with 10 because he was the last one (by a loooooong shot) and we couldn't find the last 2.  LOL.  This time around, he was a little better.

The highlight of this hunt was that all 4 kids helped each other find eggs and then gave them to each other during the hunt.  Ben and I definitely didn't prompt them to do this, and it was an amazing thing to just stand back and watch.

We were able to spend the day at church and then had dinner with my parents.  It was a beautiful day that was focused on Christ's resurrection.  Before dinner we watched The Lamb of God with the kids and Ella kept covering her eyes and saying, "I can't watch this!" But really she was peeking through her fingers.  After the movie was over she said, "I was just pretending to be scared.  I actually really liked the movie.  Can we watch it again?"  Oh, Ella.

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter spent with your families.

Garden Boxes

This summer we are taking on a big project: our entire backyard.  We've known it has needed work since we moved in almost 3 years ago.  But something else was always more important, in the way, needed to be done first, or too financially straining.  This year we decided that it is our yard year.  We are one of the absolute lowest houses in our pretty huge neighborhood.  We actually kind of sit in a ravine.  There is literally a 15-20 foot cliff back behind our fence that leads up to the next neighborhood, hence why there is a creek back there.  You can imagine all the water we get in our backyard when it's rainy.  So last year (or the year before?) we installed french drains that connected our gutters and driveway/front yard runoff to the creek.  That helped a lot.

This year we are building garden boxes where we get some of the heavier runoff.  We chose a place where the rain flows well and wouldn't just be standing water.  Hopefully it should take a small dent out of our water problem.

Since our builder completely stripped our property of its topsoil, we are going to be installing 30+ tons of it ourselves and then seeding zoysia to match the front yard.  Zoysia requires seeding at the hottest time of the year.  Yay for working in the worst possible NC heat!  We're so excited!  Hopefully having lots of grass should help with drainage as well.

"Hi Daddy.  This is so much fun.  Do you need help with that?  Don't mind me here.  This isn't awkward at all."

Hopefully we are not the only parents who have experienced this.  ;)

Pink Chicken

We had an amazing dinner for Easter which included ham.  Ella wasn't very fond of it (or really any food other than pizza and waffles for that matter).  Crazy me, I kept calling it ham and she informed me that it was actually pink chicken.  

"Really?" I asked.

"Yes.  Pink chicken.  It comes from a cow."

And now you know the truth about "ham."

Ben's New Job!!!!

Okay, so I realize that Ben is going from working for Cisco to working for Cisco.  No big whoop, right?

WRONG!!!!!

This is a very huge deal for our family.  You may or may not remember when Ben was first hired by a contract company that worked for Cisco.  It is still one of Ben's and my favorite stories ever because of how crazy it was.  You can read all about it HERE.

Back in 2012 when we had to choose between the Cisco job and the other job when they were offering us the same salary at the same time, we felt strongly impressed that the Cisco job would hold the best potential for Ben's future.  Little did we know just how great it would be.

Ben's contracting job wasn't like a usual contracting job.  It was long term instead of being limited to a specific amount of time.  But we always knew that the end goal was to be hired on by Cisco itself, because then we would have better benefits, actual vacation time, and an annual bonus.  

There have been times in the 3 1/2 years that Ben has been somewhat close to getting a position at Cisco, but then it never worked out.  It's pretty difficult getting hired by Cisco, so we knew it could take a while.  

But then we heard about this new possibility, and somehow we knew that this was the one.  We asked our families to pray and fast for us so that Ben could get this position.  After a couple of months of prepping for it and interviewing, Ben got the job!  We are so excited!

It was actually really funny, because just like 3 1/2 years ago, the day we were waiting for the phone call saying that Ben got the job, a different recruiter called Ben and offered him a job on the phone.  They were offering a competitive salary to what Ben would be making with his new job.  Ben told them his situation and that he had been working toward this Cisco job for years, and then turned them down.  10 minutes later they called back offering more money and we had to turn them down again.  We never would have even considered it but we got a good laugh out of it since it reminded us so much of last time.  He then got 3 more job offers that week.  Go figure.

I will write a little bit more about this story in a future post -- because there's more to it than what I've said -- but all I want to say is this:  If the Lord asks you to do something that is way outside of your comfort zone and makes you ask, "Is there no other way?" you really need to do that thing.  Because sometimes the answer to your obedience is a job that you've waited your entire career for.

Ballet Observation Week

When I took Lily to ballet yesterday, I was thrilled to find out it was observation week.  Normally I only get to see Lily practice her ballet through the one way mirror in the wall.  But once a semester they let the parents in the room.  I missed her first one of the year because I was in Hong Kong and I was so bummed.  But I was thrilled I didn't miss it this time!  And Ella was even more excited than I was.  Unfortunately since I didn't know about this ahead of time, I was only armed with my iPhone instead of my camera -- hence, the lame-o pictures.  We can also put some of the blame of my unsteady hand on Ella because she kept grabbing me and saying, "Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, etc." over and over again.  I'm sure you fellow moms know the feeling.

Also, I learned that Lily's two teacher assistants are named Miss Eliza and Miss Bennett.  Enough said.

I am so excited for Lily's recital in June.  Now that she's 7, she gets to perform at the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium.  Her class will be dancing to music from the new Cinderella movie and all their costumes look like her blue dress.  They're gorgeous!

And for the record, I got completely teary-eyed during class.  Oh man.  Being a mom is rough on the hormones.