Christmas in July

Another flashback...

This is a video of Grace from 2009, when she was 3.  She started to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," but forgot the lyrics...

(What a look!  That's still her puzzled look at 6 years old.)

So she started over again:

Whoa...I didn't know that Santa drove slaves, did you?

Grace reciting the Lord's Prayer

I've already posted this video before, but you get to see it again.  :)  This is, in my opinion, the best one!

The video was recorded in October 2009, when Grace was 3 years old.

Brown Bear, Lellow Duck, Puhpa Cat, and the rest of them

You know how kids will memorize a favorite book, often figuring out the words from the illustrations on the pages?  Here is a video of Grace "reading" the children's book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" when she was three years old.

Now, if that isn't all kinds of cuteness, I don't know what is!

Music Recital: "Dee"

As promised, here is Robert's performance of "Dee," a guitar piece by Randy Rhoads that Robert (age 14) played yesterday during the music recital.  Enjoy!

Check out Robert's performance of "Crazy Train" by clicking here.

Music Recital: Josiah's piece

Here is Josiah (9) playing "Lightly Row" during Sunday's music recital:

 
Josiah had taken a break from music lessons for the majority of a year...and proceeded to practice more often than he had when he was taking lessons.  Go figure.  He just now started back with lessons so he had one lesson under his belt before this recital. 

Great job, Josiah!

Music Recital: "Crazy Train"

Both boys had a music recital on Sunday.  Here is Robert (14) playing his first Randy Rhoads piece, "Crazy Train."  It has taken a sweet forever for the video to load on YouTube, so this is all I finished uploading tonight. 

As his music teacher said, he killed it. Way to go, Robert! 

Want to see his performance from last year?  Click here to see Robert playing Eddie Van Halen's Eruption.

Updated to add:
Here's Robert's performance of  "Dee" by Randy Rhoads.

Look who's reading!

Grace, age five ("and a half," as she always adds), reading from a storybook Bible:

Grace has been our earliest successful reader--she's already about 3/4 of the way through the Alpha-Phonics book and is highly motivated to read.  She has been reading on her own a lot lately without any prompting, and found she could read the vast majority of the words in this storybook Bible. 

She has now decided to read "the whole entire Bible" to me.  (If you've ever heard Grace say "entire," it has most certainly had "whole" immediately before it...which is quite possibly like my usage of "vast majority.")

As you can see, she is very comfortable in front of the camera.  ;)  She would have kept reading the next story if I hadn't stopped her.

Fourteen years ago...

My firstborn arrived


long, skinny...and with really long feet.

He's still long and skinny...and he still has really long feet. :)

Wiiiiiiii! We now have a Wii. :)

And he has loved Star Wars and LEGOs since they first met...

I thought since I posted a video of him last year playing his guitar on his birthday I would post one now. This was from a recent music recital both boys played in (I'll post Josiah's soon) and Robert played "Eruption" by Van Halen.

Happy birthday, Robert!

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! :)

A quick message

Y'all have to check this out...

Gravity

This is the song that 4 year old Grace has been walking around singing these days: "Come, Jesus, Come. Come quickly. Come quickly." Break Open the Sky is from Toby Mac's new CD, Tonight. Let me know what you think of it! (Click here if you can't see the video within this post.)

From the lips of desperation
Different nations, every man's cry
Comes a song of anticipation
As we wait for a crack in the sky
Side by side, we recognize that
Hope has brought us together tonight
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Break open the sky
Won't You turn off gravity so we can fly?
We wanna see Your face
So tear the roof off this place
Jesus, break open the sky

So we sing
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

We believe, and we imagine
'Til the dawn of our beautiful dream
Through the noise I hear the voices
Melodies that are flooding our streets
Not forgotten are your people
So let a thousand church bells ring
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Come, Jesus, come
Come quickly
Come quickly

Break open, open the sky.

Lead Me to the Cross

Thank you, Lord, for everything you endured for us!

Lead Me to the Cross performed by Hillsong United with clips from The Passion of the Christ.

He is Risen!

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' " (Mark 16:5-7 NIV)

Happy Easter, everyone!

Waking up is hard to do

If the video doesn't appear above, you can click here to see it.

And, yes, these are actual anesthesiologists--you can learn more about them here. And here's Mister Gasman, and Breathe if you want more videos. :)

I think I'm going to be singing my own version of this in the morning, 'cause it's in my head now...

Don't take my cloth away from me*
Don't you leave me here in misery
She didn't sleep
Nor did I, too,
So waking up is hard to do.

*I sleep with a cloth over my eyes, like this:

Grace at 18 months old, imitating Mommy's sleeping habits

(Thank you, Kirsten, for sharing this YouTube link!)

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Click here to enter to win 250 FREE custom stickers or labels! This giveaway ends March 2nd at 9:00 p.m.

A Furry, Happy Confession

We heard R.E.M.'s song Shiny Happy People during lunch today, and I have a confession to make.

This is what I think of every single time I hear that song now...



(If the video doesn't appear for you, you can click here to see it on YouTube.)

One of us would make a really great elf...

My sister-in-law Cindy sent this to us recently...click here to see our family as ELVES. Grace's reaction was "I'm as big as Daddy!" And I don't know how many times I've heard, "Mom looks like a boy!" So thank you, Cindy... ;)

Also, click here to see Retooning the Nativity. It's a clever little video commenting on the details of the Christmas story.

Merry Christmas!

The Lord's Prayer

After I posted the last video of Grace, I remembered that the Pledge of Allegiance was not what she first memorized...it was the Lord's Prayer. So I had to record that, too...

Enjoy! She gets a little, um, excited and emphatic at the end. ;)

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
Matthew 6:9-13 (NIV)

Grace learned the Lord's Prayer the same way she learned the pledge--simply hearing me repeat it every night during her bedtime routine. I'm taking my friend Christi's advice and teaching her Psalm 23 now. Maybe she will spend more time repeating that rather than singing "Yankee Doodle" about a hundred times each day--that's something else she has recently learned.

Um...Invisible?

Did you enjoy Grace's last video? If you haven't seen it, click here and see it now. Go ahead--I'll wait for you right here. :)

I recorded this next video immediately after she did her Mayor of Whoville impression. She still had the Mayor on her mind, and began with "So..." She quickly remembered what she was supposed to say, though, and began reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. She gets the majority of the words correct, with the most noteable exceptions of "plublic" (republic) and "invisible" (indivisible). Cute!!

And, no, I did not coach her to say "The Pledge of Allegiance" first before she began reciting it. She's simply a natural. ;)

Grace learned the pledge because I recited it while brushing her teeth each night for a few weeks. It's a (fairly) good way to keep her still enough long enough, and she learns lots of things very quickly, very painlessly, as a bonus!

What's the word?

Our littlest Horton Hears a Who fan occasionally has times where she interjects "So, JoJo...What's shakin'? What's the word?" into conversations--with the mayor's hand motions and everything. I finally got it on video. :)



Grace is 3 years old in this video.

Click here and leave a comment to enter for a chance to win a FREE 18" x 24" poster print of one of your photographs, or maybe another image! Hurry--This giveaway ends tonight (September 29, 2009) at 10:00 p.m.!

Overheard: The Grace Edition

Grace, sitting next to two women she has just met for the first time at our Christmas celebration last weekend with my side of the family: "I gonna win!" (She was talking about winning with eating...finishing her meal before the women finished theirs. Can you tell she has two older brothers? Make that two highly competitive older brothers?)

Later that day, Grace was running around shouting gleefully at one of these women because the woman commented that Grace was such a big girl: "No, I little! I little!"

She's really good at making first impressions.

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Grace, while we were riding around one evening looking at Christmas lights: "But I don't wanna ride 'round lookin' at da lights! I wanna go in a house with lots of FOOD!"

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Grace, singing what she heard in a Christmas song: "Cinnamon is going to town! Cinnamon is going to town!"

She has since been corrected, but not before I was able to capture her version on video.




And "Jingle Bells." When she's done singing, she's done and runs it all together.




~~~~~

Last night, Grace was pretending to talk on the phone, and I asked her who she was talking to. She answered me, "May-ree," and then continued on with her pretend conversation..."Sooo, how's da baby?" (Baby Jesus, that is.)

"Away in a Manger," girly-girl style, with lots and lots of head-tilting and, unfortunately, not a lot of volume as she sings that "The little Lord Jesus did lay down his sweet head":



Merry Christmas!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

"Jesus loves me! This I know, for the Bible tells me so."

--Theologian Karl Barth, when asked what was the greatest thought to have ever passed through his mind.






Grace's exact lyrics:

Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones want Him be strong.
He is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me.

We do want Him to be strong, don't we? And He is strong!