You Capture: Yellow

This week's theme for You Capture is Yellow. Yellow is not my specialty, so I thought I would ask Grace for some help. ;)

Yellow, through the eyes of an exuberant four year old girl, who says yellow is...

"Delicious!"

Honeysuckle.

"Gorgeous!"


And really fun to run through...



Check out other yellow entries at I Should Be Folding Laundry, and join in on the fun!

~~~~~

Check out my giveaway for a 24x36 inch vinyl banner! This giveaway ends May 26th.

Robert and his white Lamborghini

Presenting...

Robert's debut performance on his new guitar, the "white Lamborghini," which he helped buy on his birthday! He's playing a portion of Eddie Van Halen's guitar part in Michael Jackson's "Beat It."




(Please excuse the shakiness--I had 4 year old Grace climbing onto my lap as I was recording this.)

Please show him some Comment Love! :)

Our Brand New Teen

We recently celebrated Robert's 13th birthday. How did he get to be thirteen so quickly?


It seems like just last week that he was "cow surfing" on Josiah's rocking toy (while dressed as Woody from Toy Story)

2003

Blowing bubbles on the driveway

2004

Dressing up as the Boy Wonder

2004

And loving dinosaurs.

2005
With an exhibit of his all-time favorite kind of dinosaur, Parasaurolophus

He became a big brother to a little girl who (sometimes) has him wrapped around her little finger

2006

Became fascinated with NASCAR (in particular, Jeff Gordon)

2007

And skateboarding

2008

And the electric guitar he got on his 12th birthday

2009

As well as cars

Pretending to eat the "CHEETOZ" Mustang at a 2009 car show

And now...

He requests (certain) t-shirts for gifts

Kramer Guitars

Still doesn't mind his grandparents singing "Happy Birthday" to him over the phone


And will smile for me to take his picture if there is birthday cake (and/or presents) involved.


His new favorite t-shirt...

Family Force 5

Before you feel too sorry for him getting "only clothes" for his birthday, let me assure you he didn't get only these gifts. Robert has been saving his money to buy a special guitar he's had his eye on for a while ("a while" being less than a year, since he's only been taking guitar lessons since his 12th birthday), with the agreement that if he saved up a certain amount and traded in his current electric guitar, we would match the amount he saved so he could buy the "White Lamborghini," as he's been referring to it.

With birthday money he's received from relatives, he made it to his goal! Goodbye, guitar (plus a whole lot more money than he has ever saved up before)...


Hello, White Lamborghini!

He thought he was going to drive with Jason to pick up the guitar...Jason surprised him with it in the car.

Robert was absolutely thrilled!


And he started trying out the bells and whistles on the new guitar right away.


(I'll post a video soon of his debut performance on the White Lamborghini...)

Happy birthday, Robert!
We love you!

~~~~~

Check out my giveaway for a 24x36 vinyl banner! This giveaway ends May 26th.

Giveaway: Vinyl banner

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For a chance to win this giveaway, leave a comment telling me how you would use the vinyl banner.

For an extra entry, subscribe to my feed by feed reader or by email (and leave an extra comment letting me know if you already do or just now subscribed).

A winner will be chosen randomly from the comments on Wednesday, May 26th at 10:00 p.m. The winner will receive an email with instructions on how to claim the giveaway prize.

Check out these links to learn more of the specifics about their vinyl banners as well as poster prints.

You Capture: Spring (again)

This week's theme for You Capture is Spring...again...only this time we're challenged to find different things that mean spring to us than last week.

Let's see...there are rabbits in the yard


Grass trying desperately to fill in the bare spots


Kudzu growing on whatever it finds


And beautiful tree canopies.


There are squeals on the playground



And cheeks red from the heat rather than from the cold.




Last but not least, Spring also means a certain someone's birthday...Doesn't this seem like an awful lot of candles on his cake?!?

Our brand new teenager, Robert.

What does spring look like for you? Check out other entries at I Should Be Folding Laundry, or join in on the fun!

~~~~~

Check out my giveaway for a 24x36 vinyl banner! This giveaway ends May 26th.

Overheard: Burger Boy

One of Josiah's nicknames that Jason calls him is "Burger Boy"...now, Josiah doesn't particularly like to be called this (so please don't start calling him Burger Boy...), but that doesn't stop his father one bit. The following things were recently overheard:

We were telling Jason about the incredibly warm room where the musical recital was held. Josiah misunderstood ignored my instructions of "put on your church clothes again," and decided to put his church clothes over his shirt and shorts rather than doing the logical thing of undressing before putting on new clothes. He was terribly hot with the extra layer of clothing.

Me: I told him he could go take off the shorts and shirt he was wearing underneath, but he didn't. I'm surprised he didn't melt in the heat.

Jason [to Josiah]: If you had melted, all that would have remained would have been two eyes and a burger!

Josiah nearly fell over laughing at this thought.

~~~~~

Someone at church heard Jason calling Josiah "Burger Boy," and asked why he called him that.

Jason: It's shorter than "Eating us out of house and home."

Seriously, he's always hungry! It wasn't that long ago that, after eating out, he would ask on the way home, "What's for supper?" I can't imagine how much he'll eat when he's a teenager. He already eats more than me.

~~~~~

Josiah: When it's my birthday, I want to go to Outback so I can have a bacon cheeseburger!

He's talking about eating the adult-sized burger; he has ordered and finished this burger before. Did I mention he's only 7? There's a reason for the "Burger Boy" nickname...

And it's entirely possible that between now and the end of June, he will force us decide to go to Chuck E. Cheese instead. But a mother can hope, right?

Our big busy weekend

Our weekends aren't typically like this, for which I am very grateful! But this past weekend went something like this...

[Read at a frantic pace to get the full effect. Or...don't.]

Jason and Robert woke up at 6:00 a.m. so Jason could take Robert to help at the youth yard sale at our church. Jason came back home and got ready to go to a ceremony he had been invited to at the elementary school our church partners with. I was still blissfully asleep at this point and don't even know what time he left.

After I woke up, I began getting us ready: packing all of the things that would need to go into the van for the remainder of our day and making sure everyone was dressed appropriately (a bigger job than usual due to a certain child's stubborn refusal to understand English). Shortly before lunchtime, the kids and I went to the church to pick up Robert so he could take a shower, and we came back home to eat before leaving for Josiah's pre-game practice. Jason met us at the ballpark.


Josiah's baseball game was supposed to begin at 1:30 didn't start until 2:00. This wouldn't normally matter too much except for the fact that we were supposed to be in Athens at 4:00 for my Dad's 70th birthday party. We were pleasantly surprised that it was a quick game, because Jason and I were discussing what time we would need to pull Josiah out of the game...and we didn't even need to. Whew! So we got on the road and drove to the Athens area for the big birthday party. We didn't get there at 4:00, but we weren't terribly late, either.

Here are some of the family members with May birthdays who were part of the celebration:


After supper, there was time to eat birthday cake

I told him it was going on the blog anyway...He wasn't really this tired but was merely resistant to being photographed. ;)

Hang out and talk



Square dance for those who wanted to or were coerced



Chat some more



Play basketball




Do tricks with a basketball




nd twirl around with a hoola hoop.

This is our best guess as to what Robert will look like when he's all grown up: like my cousin Mike. I didn't realize how close the resemblance was until seeing the photos from Mike's childhood the night before he got married last year.

Gran'dad opened his present and commented on the number of hands. He may have even counted all the fingers just to be sure. ;)





We headed back home at a semi-reasonable time so we could be ready for church Sunday morning. I think all of us slept very well that night.

On Sunday afternoon, Robert participated in his first music recital. I was video-recording his performance since Jason couldn't be there because of a church-related meeting, so I didn't get a photo of him while performing. Here is a shot of him with his guitar teacher--there were technical difficulties with the music Robert wanted as accompaniment, and his teacher was briefly talking with him about what he needed to do until the music started.




He played the guitar part for Michael Jackson's song, "Beat It," in case you are wondering. And he played very well!

Robert also won the drawing contest to design the cover of the recital program:

"TJ's Music Academy."
Click on image to enlarge.

Josiah has been taking keyboard lessons since Christmas but he didn't want to participate in the recital. His reason? He thought he'd be too nervous to play in front of a lot of people. Can you imagine Josiah having stage fright for anything?! I don't think it's possible...

Next weekend, the only thing we have on the calendar is a wedding to attend on Saturday. Oh, and maybe a date!!