Tender Mercies

Cute little goofy Max has decided he is going to be a baseball player for Halloween. He is so excited about it, he talks about it all the time.Well, Yesterday I started looking for costumes on line, and they are expensive! And dumb looking! SO I kept trying to talk him into other things. Like, "Max look at this cool costume! Don't you want to be batman for Halloween?" Max: "No want to be batman! I be baseball Halloween!!!" That was his repsonse to everything! I thought it was so funny that he is so opinionated even though he is so little and probably doesn't even remember what Halloween is! I did find a cool idea for making a baseball player costume though so I guess it will work.

Something else funny about Max these days is that all trains are Thomas to him and he LOVES Thomas!! We live just about a block away from train tracks, so we hear trains all the time and anytime we go anywhere we drive by the train. Whenever we hear the train or see one, Max screams out, "SLOW DOWN, THOMAS!!" Also when he plays with his own trains, he names them all. Blue ones are always Thomas, green trains are Percy, and Red trains are James and he repeats over and over again, "James no like a get dirty."

Sammy can sit up all by himself now. For a long time too. I can just leave him sitting and go do something else. The other day I tried to take a picture of him sitting by Max and it was funny because he kept leaning over. Max thought it was hillarious! He's such a good boy though. When he wants to play on his tummy, he just leans over so he falls and then rolls over without making a sound.

The workman just left this the other day in the empty lot by our house. No one was there, sooo I insisted we take advantage of the photo op. How often do you get to take a picture in a huge bulldozer?

I love this picture!

We put Max in this church outfit last week for the first time and we were totally flabergasted by how handsome he is. Maybe its just because he's my son, but seriously, so handsome! He knows it too. Yesterday after I got him dressed he ran to my room and said, "Mommy I look in the mirror and see how handsome" So Yeah, I am raising vain children. I can't help it!

And I wish this picture actually captured how beautiful Sammy's eyes are. Some beauties are too delicate to capture on camera I guess. They are changing from grey to pretty brown and I just love staring into them all day! They are sooo pretty.

And his coy little smile too, just for good measure.

They made these, "I am a child of God" crowns in nursery last week and cute Max has wanted to wear it everyday. What a great idea huh.

Speaking of nursery, I had kind of a cool experience this week. I have been so worried about Max and Sam lately. They have just been having a really hard time and I felt completely out of ideas about how to help Max be nicer and Sammy be happier. I felt like part of the problem was my calling because I have been really busy with it lately. Well, I prayed that the Lord would fill in the gaps I was leaving while I was busy with his work and he totally gave me the answer and actually through primary! I was talking to the president the other day and she suggested that maybe my kids needed more sleep. Well, it was one of those moments where you just feel the pure intelligence flowing in and I knew immediately that that would fix the problems. And so, we came home and I worked out what their new sleep schedule should be and since then, they have both been so soooooo much happier and Max has been back to kisses and loves to his brother and Sammy has been all giggles all the time again. I am so grateful!!! It is amazing to me that life always presents us with these situations where we could either do what makes sense (like I was almost thinking about saying, I can't do this calling with 2 babies, its too hard for them) or what God has asked us to do, and doing the thing that doesn't make sense but is in line with God's will always ends up so amazingly much better! Tender Mercy. I think that the Lord mixes things up in our lives sometimes just so he can show us he loves us. Feeling his love is better than living a calm perfect life anyway.