Things I'm Loving Right Now...

 1. I love this picture.  I'm not really sure why.  Corey just looks so cool and renegade in it.  His brother made him try on some of his gear at the Fire Station and this was the result. Watch out!

 

 2.  I love my little baseball fan.  He is SO into baseball right now, it cracks me up.  He plays pretend baseball, which entails standing at bat, whacking it out of the park, running bases, and being the announcer, with a New Yorker accent...in the house.  Hilarious.  Corey bought the boys their first baseball cards recently, and Ash just finished his first t-ball season (next year, machine pitch...yikes!).  When we go to Isotopes games, he actually watches the game too, which is more than I can say for myself half the time.  I get so easily distracted by the huge, manicured lawn. It's all about baseball, all the time.

 3.  I love my garden!  It's not fantastic compared to most, but to me it's a little oasis in our desert home.  My onions actually turned into real live, edible onions, which seemed a miracle to me.  I had a small harvest!  Next year I'm determined to make it better, since you definitely learn as you go.  So far we've had lettuce, onions, tomatoes, kale, snap peas, carrots, cilantro, basil, chives, cantaloupe, cucumbers, and a few straggler green chilis.  Most of them were grown from seed, which makes them even more near and dear. 

 4.  I love this wide, toothless grin:)  Even when he's getting in trouble for deliberately whacking his brother, I have a hard time not smiling when I see this boy and all his missing teeth staring back.  It's just plain fun. 

 5.  I love my Olympic score keeper.  Asher ran around making scoreboards all over the house for 3 weeks during the Summer Olympics this year.  Mostly he focused on the USA, Japan and Greece(aka Gres), but from the tallymarks I found on various mediums(chalk board, paper, etc.) the USA was always winning.  He loved the Olympics!

6.  I love my little dresser-upper.  In past weeks, this kid has been known to dress as an elephant, a fireman, and a tricycle riding tiger (in 100 degree weather no less), pretty much anything he can find.  I just love me a kiddo dressed up as a cute, cuddly animal.  He makes the best stuffed animal ever. Just today he was dressed as an elephant, running up the street as I walked someone to their car.  It was hilarious to watch his big ears flouncing as he ran around:)




7. I love my little garden buddy. Beck loves to come out an pick tomatoes, etc. He always notices the little changes in the plants and the flowers blossoming outside, which always surprises me considering he's three. He also likes to kiss the food from the garden after he picks it.  My own little garden gnome, bringing a little luck as he goes.

 8.  I love my little reader.  Ash has been reading for a while now, slowly getting better all the time, but recently he's started reading everything, which is so exciting(for both of us, I think!).  We went to a spray ground a couple of weeks back and I snapped him reading the 'rules'.  Too funny. 

9.  I love my sunflowers.  These ones in particular were a surprise, since we never planted them.  The birds or wind must have spread the seeds last fall from our neighbor's yard. We did plant a few giant ones, and love those too.  After a wicked wind/rain storm earlier in the summer, this plant was knocked completely over, left laying on the ground.   A few days later, I decided to finally go out and throw it away, but I looked outside I realized it was still green and not at all wilting and dead like it should have been.  Not only that, but the top several inches of the plant had picked itself up off the pavement and was once again growing upwards towards the sun.  I was dumbfounded.  It was anchored to the ground by a tiny shred of its once huge stalk, which was completely snapped.  It was a sunflower miracle!  It's will to live amazed me, so I just moved it over a bit and it's growing on it's side now, showing off with lots of bright blooms.  They are a good reminder to me of how life should be lived...and when life knocks you down, you just need to lift yourself up and reach for the Son.