Sammy’s Kindergarten Graduation

Sammy graduated from kindergarten last week, and we are very proud of his progress this year!  He has learned to read books on his own, add and subtract, count money and write sentences!

Sammy and classmates ready for the ceremony to begin! (aren’t the girls around him adorable?)

Mr. Campbell giving him his first award for completion of kindergarten.

Sammy also got an award for finishing all of his homework assignments.

“Sammysaurus” looking adorable, in my opinion

Hugs from Eli, followed by silliness that wasn’t captured on camera.

Abraham hugs, he was very excited to see Sammy after the long assembly

Our First Sleepover

We decided to start the summer a few days early by having a friend spend the night!  He’s Sammy’s age and all 4 boys get along well.  We made a “mega bed” for them which was jumped on and will hopefully lead to sleep at some point tonight.  :)

Mega bed with 4 cute boys ready for fun

Doing some jumping

Stopping for a picture

Falling over, laughing

Flopping on the beds and jumping some more

Eli requested I take his picture.  I happily obliged the big man on the court.  ha ha!

The crew with stuffed animals distributed and all ready for bed!

Remembering Lilly

You make known to me the path of life;

In your presence there is fullness of joy;

At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 16:11

Eight years ago today our daughter Lillian Grace was born but her soul was already in the presence of God, in fullness of joy.  I am very thankful to have been her mother for 22 short weeks, and for how God has used the loss to teach me about His sovereign love.

When I read or hear about God’s great love that led him to give his Son to ransom me, I think of losing our daughter and can understand more clearly how deep that love is.  When I think of God, the Creator, offering his only child to die for his enemies, I cannot imagine loving someone that much.  And I worship our good God.  I can trust Him even though He has brought us through great pain and loss.  It took several years, but I have learned to love Him more through the losses of Lilly and later miscarriages.  And that has, strangely enough, led me to be thankful and rest in Him.

For our sake He made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  2 Corinthians 5:21

May Catch-Up

Life around our house lately has been busy with school, church, and family.  It’s been a good spring but I’m looking forward to our first summer break when Sammy finishes kindergarten next Thursday!!!

A little of what we’ve been up to lately:

Abraham loves the park right now, and he also likes being Optimus Prime (who is very serious)

Eli and Charlie walk on Friday afternoons to pick Sammy up from school, then the three walk home together.  Eli looks forward to this time all week.  :)

The boys have gotten pretty good at Super Mario this spring and recently bought 2 more controllers with their allowance so they can all four play together.  Fulfilling a dream Charlie’s.  

My grandma passed away this month so we went to Ohio for several days to be with family.  It was a sad time but we really enjoyed seeing our cousins!  Sammy with Baby Reid (my sister Heidi’s baby).

Charlie with sleeping Adelle (Brittany’s baby).  We loved all the baby time and can’t wait till we have our own baby girl in August!!!

The big cousins, minus Wyatt.  (Sophie, Sammy, Claire, Eli and Abraham) *As you can tell, our time together with my family is pretty consumed with kids right now.  We don’t have a picture of the adults but we were there and I really enjoyed seeing my sisters, brothers-in-law and parents!

Daddy’s Helper

Abraham is at that great age where he loves to help Charlie when he’s working outside.  We all spent Saturday out in the yard getting it ready for spring and mowing the yard.  Each winter, Charlie wonders if the mower will start again and Abraham was very helpful as Daddy checked it out.

Helping fill the mower with gasoline

It was very exciting! 

Next they pushed the lawn mower into the yard to try to start it.

It was pretty noisy!!

This pretty much sums up how they feel about each other. Lots of love.

Eli as Papaw

Eli got some Groucho Marx glasses at a parade and decided to dress up like Papaw. 

Here’s the man himself

February Recap

We’re still alive here, sorry for the quiet month!  Most of you probably already know that I’m pregnant, and I’ve been sick for too long (which led to my lack of motivation in blogging).  I’m almost 17 weeks (Saturday) so we find out what we’re having in about 3 1/2 weeks!  Probably no secret that we’re all hoping for a girl, although Charlie admitted he’d be secretly excited for another boy since he knows boys so well.  No, really we’ll all be very thankful for a boy or girl to round out our Evans clan.

Here are a few random pics of our month (mostly taken from Charlie’s iPhone, so I apologize for the lower quality):

We’ve gotten into watercolor painting this month.  Charlie has a lot of new pictures decorating his office!

Eli has enjoyed wearing these glasses for hours on end.  Here he is in disguise with a banana laser:

Firefighter Abey going potty!  He’s decided he is ready for potty training and doing great!

I was waaay over due for a haircut–6 months!–but was trying to hold out till I stopped getting sick.  Who knows if that’ll ever end (ha ha) so I decided to go for it anyway.  It was so nice to get it done!

Eli’s been working on his chocolate milk mustache and Abraham’s been running around causing chaos.  There’s also often been laundry piled on the chair in the hallway (behind Eli) this month!

 

Thanks for walking through February (or the parts we photographed) with us!  Hopefully we’ll be on here more regularly in March!!

Legos and Lifting

 

Our older boys are very much into Legos right now. We’ve even subscribed to Lego Club magazine, which features a monthly building contest. This month the challenge was to build a fire-fighting vehicle. Here’s a few pictures of the boys hard at work:

Working hard

And enjoying it

The finished product: Fire Plane! (notice the fire extinguishers mounted on the underside of the wings)

 

The younger boys have also started joining in with Mommy when she works out.

Abraham working on his shoulders

Look out ladies!

 

Sledding Movie

Sledding

As I write a post about sledding this past Saturday, it is 65 degrees outside and will drop down to 28 for the high in two days.  It’s a strange week here in Virginia.  We had our first big snow two weeks ago!  Now that we have a kindergartener, snow days seem much more exciting!  They got out early on Thursday and had a snow day Friday.  It was very fun playing in the snow but we had forgotten to buy sleds!  Sammy, Eli and Abraham entertained themselves anyway and had a great time playing outside in the snow all morning Friday.  Wouldn’t you know, snow day again the next Friday!!!  (The snow started late morning so we didn’t get out to play in it till Saturday.)  …Still forgot to buy sleds!  We made a family trip to Target Saturday morning, got two sleds, and hit the park!  It was very fun, even though Abraham was a little fussy about having to share “his” sled.

Having fun (note the giant snowball that Eli is pushing around in his sled…it’s a gift for Abraham.  He wasn’t impressed.)

 

Eli dragging the snowball around and loving life

Abraham playing, but still sort of pouting

Sammy, for the first time, loved sledding!

Lots of fun with our boys!

Family picture with the iPhone

This one’s a lower quality but everyone looked happy that I wanted to share it anyway

 

Thankful for the snow and the fun Saturday morning!!