My Only Request

This Mother's Day I had one thing on my mind.  Breakfast in bed?  Not a big deal.  Chores?  Would be nice if someone else did them, but no.  Relaxation?  Hmm, maybe. 

Snowcones.  Yep, that's right.  All I wanted to was to hunt down an ice cold, sugary snowcone.

Here I'm enjoying a coconut snowcone.  I can thank my smart mother for my love of the coconut flavored cone.  As a child who grew up in the hot hot South, snowcones (or snowballs, as they are also called) were a familiar summer treat.  The coconut flavor (as well as pina colada) is clear and thus is not capable of staining clothes.  

Clearly I didn't inherit my mother's sensible side.  Luckily no one spilled on themselves (with the exception of my child-like hubby).   But even if we did, nothing could have ruined our day.  We were headed to the beach!  

I know that by now you must think that we are beach bums.  And I'd have to say that you might be right.  We just can't help but head down there when we have free time.  Somehow, the waves and the wind seem to make you forget all about everything.  Just what a mom with an overworked brain needs every once and a while.  And here's the special treat that magically appeared on the beach.  

Well, to some passerby it might seem like magic.  To me it was more like a simple combination of gratitude and kindness.  Love built that sandcastle.  And I loved it!  

It was a great Mother's Day.   I'll leave you with more pictures of our snowcone/beach adventure.

I hope all you mothers had a happy Mother's Day.  May you all be celebrated every day of the year.  

Once For All

Funny story.  Orry and Isaac were sitting next to each other in the back of the van.  Orry turns to Isaac and says, "Put your arms out like you're on the cross.  I'm going to hammer you to the cross."  I turn to look and sure enough, Isaac is sitting there with arms wide open and his head hanging down.  Crucified.  Orry had his turn at it.  I'm sure that he could give Jim Caviezel a run for his money.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend.  Here's a bit of what ours looked like:

Sandcastle #2

About to sing in the Easter Eve service

Way too early to dig into baskets in their underwear...

Hunting eggs in rain boots

2 out of 3 ain't bad

"For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.  He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit."

A Labor of Love

I hope you all thanked your mothers today for laboring on your behalf.  Your lives would be considerably less exciting if they hadn't done that...

Seriously.

I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend.  We had a delightful time this weekend despite it having flown by so fast.  I guess that's what happens when you are really busy having fun.

Saturday we spent the morning at the beach.  It was a really windy day thanks to T.S. Lee.  The waves were pretty rough and sand was blown all over, but we still managed to build a small sandcastle and do other fun beachy things...

Another masterpiece

On Sunday we went to church.  After church we had a shopping errand to run and as we drove to the store we passed the dollar theater.  We saw that Kung Fu Panda 2 was playing and we made plans to go back in a couple of hours and watch it.  We have never taken our kids to the movies.  So this was really testing the waters.  I'm glad I had Troy with me.  He sure came in handy, putting Annie to sleep while the boys and I wiggled all around the row of seats, laughing at that fat panda.  Later that day we played outside since the weather has gotten down below the 100's recently.  

Oh, the joy of bubbles

And what did we do with our Labor Day?  We spent the morning at the zoo!  Again, since the weather was so "cool" we hit the road early to avoid the inevitable crowds and spent the morning watching elephants getting a bath and bats getting some brunch.  We went home for lunch and to get ready for our busy week coming up.  

Tomorrow, Isaac will start going to pre-preschool.  I'll have to pack his lunch and a few sets of clean clothes to change into.  He will also start following a routine.  This means a scheduled "rest" time and that means that he needed a nap mat.  So I made him one.

So I guess you can say that I labored on Labor Day.  But it was a small labor of love.  I'm sending my baby boy out into the world (kind of) and he needs something to remember me by.  Hopefully he'll look at the nap mat and remember me saying that the dots are "dinosaur green".  And if he doesn't remember me then, maybe he'll think of me when he eats his snacks and his lunch.  And if not then, then maybe when he puts on that dry pair of underwear and pants that I so lovingly packed him...

Like I said earlier, I hope you all thanked your mothers today...

Our Family Tradition

My little Becker family has a summertime tradition.  I didn't realize it was a tradition until this year, when Troy said, "We need to build our yearly sandcastle.".  Could it be?  Did we really make a sandcastle every year.  Well, let's see.  

That is the castle from 2006.  We made it to Pensacola, FL before Orry came along.  (Troy and I also made a castle in 2005, but we weren't married and I don't have a picture to show you, so does it count?)  

And that is 2007's sandcastle.  That year we went to Destin, FL.  Orry was somewhere between 10 and 11 months.  Here's what he looked like:

He didn't particularly like the ocean.  But he didn't dislike it either.  When kids go the ocean for the first time it is pretty amazing.  It is such a vast thing to behold.  I can understand the excitement that is mixed with fear as the waves break over their shoulders.  The feeling that they could just be swept away into that big sea...

Now our journey takes us to 2008 and Korea.  That sandcastle was built by Troy and his brother, Trent.  We were in Yang Yang, South Korea, looking at the Sea of Japan.

Here we are when Orry was two, Isaac was a wee little 4 month old, Troy was less bald, and I was rocking a "new mom for the second time" haircut.  This was before we learned that Koreans preferred that we called the Sea of Japan the East Sea.

A year later we were still in Korea.  This time we journeyed to Donghae to build a sandcastle.  And here you can still see the East Sea.  

In 2010 we moved to Houston, TX.  Looking back, it was a good move to make in regards to this family tradition.  Now we live about 1 hour away from Galveston.  So here we are in Galveston, making another sandcastle. 

It was a great beach trip because Orry got over his fear of being in the water.  Isaac was thrilled to jump right in and I think this encouraged his older brother a bit.  

Another reason that it was so great was because we brought our newest addition along for the ride.  (Well, we couldn't just leave her home alone...)

And that is our sandcastle from today.  It was a lovely time filled with sand, sun, and salty water.  

Annie didn't like the sand or the water.  But she did like getting her beach pose on.

Troy was the work horse.  I was the baby monitor.

Isaac kept his shirt on for "swimming".  He sure loved the water.  He loved getting it in his mouth and then spitting everywhere to try and get it out.  

And Orry.  Well, Orry was busy showing the babes where the beach was...