Speak the words

Yesterday we said, "goodbye" to Doyle and Christy as they are heading back to Washington soon. It was an adjustment to go from 6 smiles and sets of arms to hold the twins down to 4 again. We were very glad they chose to spend some of their vacation time hanging out with us and some day we'll take the 4 webbs on a vacation to visit them once the twins are old enough to enjoy things like digging for clams and wading in the ocean. Their trip to the Grand Canyon and Sedona went very well and here's a picture of them hanging out over the big hole in the ground.

We spent some time in the pool and ended up with several good pictures. There's nothing cuter than a baby in water and I have no idea why. Here's Layla looking up at the palm trees with her typical inquisitive mind working overtime to take in all the new sights and sounds. By the way, Layla's eye color is really starting to change and right now it looks like she'll be blessed with pretty green eyes. They look really intense and I don't know how long it takes for the color to settle or if it changes continually like a stop light until one day it stops and stays that color forever.

And here's Easton and I playing and splashing. His eye color is a little green in the center and still grey/blue on the outside. We'll see what he ends up with?

A couple of weeks ago the 4 webbs and Oma and Opa Burgess had a good conversation and mini-sermon compliments of Opa. The topic was understanding blessings. I'm not a fan of Kenneth Copeland and the "name it claim it" prosperity gibberish that is taught, but I do believe in blessings and the power of the spoken word. Kendra and I have made a conscious effort to not only avoid speaking negative words into our life, our marriage, and our twins, but also to replace those thoughts and conversations with blessings. I'm stealing some of Opa's thunder here in this discussion because he was busy taking care of the babies tonight and unable to add his own blog!

Blessing means: A pronouncement invoking divine aid. How great is that for someone to "bless" someone else by speaking words as a request for God's help to intervene in a situation or give supernatural results. Since the time Easton and Layla were lint balls in kendra's belly I practiced this kind of blessing without knowing exactly what I was doing. Yes, I know babies don't even develop ears until they are 22 weeks along in the pregnancy and even then there is no way they could even hear my words. However, several times a day I'd lay next to her or get down on my knees in front of her and rub her belly. The only thing I would say is, "Happy and healthy babies!" I'd repeat that over and over again so much that I really believed they would both be happy and healthy. How much difference did it really make? I'll never know. but I still do it today to some extent.

Every time I pick up Easton I quietly sing a little rhyme and say, "Easton Troy is such a good boy. Happy and healthy, smart and strong". Yeah, I know... that doesn't even rhyme, but it is a good summary of what I hope for Easton. What I believe. What I bless him with. If I can look at him as he drives away to college and say he IS those 5 things, then I'll feel successful as a father. Every time I pick up Layla I say, "sweet little princess... precious baby girl. daddy loves you". I've heard so many people speak negative words over their kids and I don't understand why they say things like, "he has so many problems", or "he never does what he is told and is rebellious", or "she'll never get over her fear of swimming". Why? Why speak those negative words and reinforce the bad things? I suppose people in general don't believe in the power their words have in the life of a child. or a spouse or friend or even themselves. Don't get me wrong, i understand as time goes on and you catch your child cramming a pancake into your DVD player that it is much more difficult to speak positive words into his/her life at that moment. Overall though I'm really proud of Kendra and I for doing our best to speak words of blessing and catching each other when we fail in this area.

Because I rambled on more than my allotted blogging space already, I'll save my personal changes and battles for another day. :) Here is one other picture of Easton and I where he is just hanging out being mellow. Oma was waving her arms around directly in front of the camera trying to get him to flash his signature smile. Her arms flying around covering the camera's ability to take a picture was really funny to me for some reason so this is one of the most genuine smiles you'll ever see from me because I was laughing hard.

Tonight Oma and Opa Burgess took the twins out to Baja Fresh for dinner while Kendra and I went out with our friend Wei for sushi and some time away from the babies. Apparently people didn't realize the twins were with their GRANDbabies and thought they were the parents of the twins. They were able to recollect what it was like to be "parents" and we were glad to give them that opportunity while we enjoyed some alone time for a couple of hours. Nothing much exciting happened today except Easton and Layla both were given their first "sippy cup" and they LOVE it. They play with it like a toy and drink water from it already. Hooray for cheap thrills!

Have a great evening!