The Owl and Jewelry

Hoooootie friends and family,

Easton is passionate about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Kendra fanned the flames by buying him a Leonardo mask and plastic katana.  I'm cast in the role of Splinter, the humanoid Ninja Master rat.  Layla made up a girl TMNT character named "Sparkle" because the real characters are all boys.  I'm not sure who Kendra's character is because we haven't been spending much time playing as the 4 Webbs lately.

However, we took time for a family dinner by exercising our option to eat outside since evenings are cool and calm.  We rarely eat steaks, but on this special occasion I grilled up some cow for.

 As we finished dinner Easton excitedly screams, "Hootie!"  Our neighborhood owl flew right over the greenbelt and landed in the tree next to us.  The mythical owl we hear and watch for came right to us!

I ran inside and grabbed my camera with the long lens and steadied my hands for a difficult close up.  I turned on the video camera and I apologize in advance for the shakiness.  Hootie took flight and we saw his float off into the sunset.

We spent an afternoon together and ended up at the train park.  Easton found some friends and ran around playing chase.  Layla didn't have a girl close to her age so she was doing karate kicks and punches alone in the middle of the playground.  I joined her for some ninja training and showed the boys what's up. After she completed her training and felt ready to be a ninja turtle she headed off to fight the bad guys.  While pretending to be a hero she poked her head out from the slide at just the right time and I captured this.

Even in her imaginary superhero role she is still all smiles and happiness.  I finally found the perfect way to describe Layla.  She is a party waiting to happen!  Everything from the way she skips and flutters to her contagious laugh leads me to believe she may be the happiest kid on Earth.

Easton's doing well himself in that department, but as he was interacting with some mean spirited boys he came to me looking for an explanation about why they were mean.  It's tough to explain to a well-behaved 4 year old why the 6 year old boy is a jerk while his parents stand by watching his mean-spirited behavior. he's resilient though so after a brief explanation about how he just needs to take care of doing what he knows is right, he was off to play again.  He is finally big enough and strong enough and coordinated enough to climb on top of the slide.  uh oh...  time for another level of trust to be given and let them take on some new challenges.

Layla's bracelet given to her by Aimee broke because of too much usage.  We went to Hobby Lobby to get some string and extra beads.  The cost was so high I ended up just buying a whole bead making kit.  the twins did very well with stringing the beads and deciding which ones would go together best.

Easton has a necklace from Ouma and Layla has a bracelet from Ouma which were hand built last year when she was visiting.  Easton built a bracelet and Layla built a necklace so they were both back to even on the jewelry department.  Here they are in their jewelry modeling debut.

Morgan is sorting through her belongs to get ready for moving out of the Webb house into her own place.  She graciously gave Layla a windfall of jewelry and a very special jewelry box that belonged to Morgan's family.  What a special gift! That was very kind of Morgan to make Layla feel special with so many goodies. Much appreciated!

Layla requested I help her pick out her church dress last Sunday.  What she really meant is, "choose my Easter dress!"  After figuring out what she really wanted I gladly picked out her girly dress and got her ready to go.  Easton's shirt has a collar.  That's dressed up enough for him!

Kendra and I worked through a couple of difficult discussions this week.  Nothing serious or major, just dealing with the lack of time together as best we can and vowing never to over-commit so deeply again.  We are tapped out and spent!  We talked today about how there are just so many hurting people and it's difficult to say no to the opportunities to help.  We'll figure it out together though.  We did a very good job of not letting the sun go down on our anger.  We stayed up extra late a couple of nights to wrestle this out and were able to resolve some things.  Such a great feeling.

Our marathon cycle of crazy-busy is almost done and we can see the finish line just one week away.  Almost there.