Summer is just SPEEDING by and I just can’t keep up on here!!

Nathan’s actual birthday was so so fun. We just had a low key day, let him open presents, our wonderful friends Clint, Leigh Ann, Hayley and Abigail came over for lunch and he chewed approximately 87 pieces of gum.

Not even exaggerating.

Since Leigh Ann was in town, the rest of the Lunch Bunch ladies got together for girl’s night the Friday night before Nathan’s party. LOVED this. So wonderful to visit and catch up without children around!! These are precious friends.

We had our Spider-Man party the next morning. Nothing better than donuts, coffee and lots of tattooed children running through a park early in the morning. 😉

Then, Sunday, it was someone’s VERY MUCH ANTICIPATED birthday!!

The first thing we did was open a package of gum and he got to chew his very first piece. This was a SUPER big deal, folks. We built this up like crazy and he loved every second of it.

And we discovered that someone had grown overnight. 😉

We had a fun, chill morning and ate leftover donuts and played and then Clint, Leigh Ann, Hayley and Abigail came over for lunch.

SO FUN. We have missed these dear friends so much!!

Us and the babies!! Abigail is just so so precious – when we last saw our friends, we were still making guesses as to whether she was a boy or girl in there. 😉

These two were just ridiculously cute together.

A long time ago, after Nathan was born, when Jon and I would talk about other names we liked, we always loved Parker. And then we found out that is also Clint’s middle name and that made us like it even more. I love that our boy shares his name with our dear friend!

We Skyped with Caleb and Nicole for a little while after the Trebeshes left. So good to see their faces! We miss them greatly.

And then it was time for Chuck E. Cheese. Because that’s what you do on your birthday. 😉 At least, that’s what we told him last year when he wanted to go back there every day for the next few months after he turned three.

Afterward, we met Gammy and Pops at Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Nathan got to sit on the saddle and everyone yelled a happy birthday to him. He LOVED that.

Gammy and Pops with the birthday boy!!

Opening presents. He got spoiled rotten. Again. 😉

Then we all collapsed into bed. 😉

Oh how we love these boys and our time with them! It is going by way way way way too fast.

So, remember the Mickey Mouse and whale and super cuddly adorable things we used to have as our party themes?

Yeah. No more.

Nathan was VERY insistent that he wanted a Spider-Man party at the Spider-Man park. And there needed to be donuts and coffee involved. Okay, I might have insisted on that last one. 😉

We had the best time!! Our wonderful friends made the party so so so much fun! And, to totally add the frosting on the donut (like how I did that?), our dear friends Clint, Leigh Ann, Hayley and their newest little one Abigail were in town and got to come!

This guy is a great dad. 🙂

I can’t believe those little sweet cheeks are four years old!!

The feeling is mutual, kid. 😉

Crazy goofball. I just can’t get enough of him.

Donut party!!

The reason we call it the Spider-Man park is because of this huge, web-like structure. And all the colors are Spider-Man colors. It really is made for a Spider-Man party. 😉 LOVE this shot of some of the kids!!

He MIGHT have had a little too much sugar that morning. Or adrenaline. Or both.

We did presents later at home. His friends spoiled him rotten. And he definitely had too much sugar.

Ha! Parker was totally enthralled by this opening of the presents thing. Or maybe it was more the insane antics of his sugar-high, hopped-up-on-birthday brother. Who knows?

Such a wonderful day to celebrate this hilarious little guy. 🙂 What a great way to start the celebration of turning four!!

Chick-Fil-A always has their Cow Appreciation Day right before Nathan’s birthday, so it’s become sort of a tradition now to go dress up and get a free meal. It’s always hilarious. I love it. 🙂

Us. 🙂

The boys were bouncing off the walls too. There were huge groups of people there and I think our little table of four was by far the loudest and most obnoxious. Jon and I could not stop laughing at them.

This little guy is just getting funnier and funnier.

Somehow Nathan talked us into a gigantic ice cream cone. The sugar helped the decibel level. Um, not. 😉

Love these crazies!

On top of everything else going on, my parents sold their house and their new house didn’t have the space for Caleb’s big mastiff, Joey. Since Caleb just moved to California for dental school, a couple who already has two mastiffs expressed some interest in adopting Joey. It seemed like the best plan for everyone and she appears to be very happy with her new family. We were sad to say goodbye – she’s big and drooly but she has been wonderful with Nathan and that makes her a good dog in our book.

Jon and I went on our annual Friday Night Before The
Birthday date so we could do some birthday shopping for Nathan and get
dinner and dessert. We brought along our little third wheel but it was
so fun and so needed to have a conversation without being interrupted
431 times by our chatty boy. 🙂 All Nathan talked about for the last six
months was getting to chew gum when he turned four and so we bought
that child NINE packs of gum.

Temporomandibular joint issues, here we come. 😉

And this is just ridiculous how fast it’s going.

Parker is four months old today! I can’t believe it. He is busy developing his little personality and totally killing us with his cuteness. 🙂

Parker has learned so many fun things this month!!

He can roll from his stomach to his back and is so so so close to rolling from his back to his stomach. I’m hoping he waits a little longer so we don’t have to break him of the swaddle so soon! He loves sitting in the Bumbo – mostly because then he feels like he’s a part of everything. 😉

Parker is still a great little sleeper and a terrible little napper. 😉 We had an unprecedented 1.5 hour nap yesterday (at the same time that Nathan was napping! It was a miracle!) but he’s usually closer to about 45 minutes. He wakes up at 6am, eats and goes back to sleep for a few hours usually before being up for the day and he usually takes three naps.

He is hands down the happiest little guy I’ve ever seen. He LOVES to smile. And laughs all the time – usually at Nathan. 😉 He is very loud and very obnoxious about being loud – I’m fairly certain our neighbors think we adopted a baby pterodactyl. He must be included in absolutely everything we do or he goes from smiling to mad in about .03 seconds.

Parker adores his brother and when Nathan is not around for some reason, Parker is just not a very happy camper and spends most of the time looking around for Nathan. It’s absolutely adorable. And if Nathan didn’t notice me putting Parker in bed, he is in a panic about where Parker is. I love that they already have such a strong bond!!

He loves, loves, loves, LOVES his blanket. Loves it. Anytime he is just super tired or cranky, if I give him a blanket, he calms down immediately and just sits there, rubbing his face in it. It’s about my favorite thing ever. I still don’t let him sleep with it but I will rock him with it.

He has become a big mama’s boy. And this mama doesn’t mind in the least. 😉 He spits up about a quart a day so the two of us always stink so good (as my friend Eryn would say). 😉

He’s just the sweetest little baby and we are totally in love with him!!

My precious big boy,

I cannot believe that we are already at four – it just sounds so old. You just keep speeding up here, kid, and I’m SO ready for life to slow down a little bit.

What a year you have had!!

This year has been filled to the brim with everything under the sun and so many changes. You have grown and matured and gotten easier and harder all at the same time. You are still amazingly fun!

You are still my little social butterfly. Every single person we pass on walks, in the grocery store, in the post office, wherever we are, we have to stop and say hi to. Every. Single. Person. We have met so many random strangers, I can’t even keep track anymore. You have the friendliest heart, but oh how it worries me. I feel like I am constantly praying for protection for you!

You talk all the time. And when you aren’t talking, you’re singing a song you know or a made up song. The absolutely only time you are quiet is when you are asleep and even then you mumble. 😉 So so so much to say! You are a great conversationalist. You can talk to anyone about anything at any time. You are very good at listening to adult conversation and learning from it. Sometimes too good. 😉

Seeing a firefighter or a policeman or a man wearing a cowboy hat is the absolute highlight of your entire week! You LOVE firefighters especially and you often tell me that when you grow up, you are going to be a firefighter. Or Spider-Man. I need to figure out how to make a nice, quiet, safe desk job sound exciting. 😉

This year has been a year of educational explosion. You are starting to recognize letters and words and it is just SO exciting to watch! You still love, love, love to read. You would pick reading over almost everything else except maybe playing outside or working in the yard with Dad. You are super into rhyming right now or changing the first letter of a word and seeing how many different words you can come up with.

 You LOVE to work with Dad. Love it. There is nothing that you love better than a big project in the yard.You will work from sun up to sun down with us and I love your hard work ethic!

You had so many things this year that were firsts – you went to Cubbies for the first time, you went to BSF for the first time, you were the ring bearer in both of your uncles’ weddings and you finally got your little sibling that you had wanted for so long. Such a packed full year! God has blessed you so much, my sweet baby!

You are one zillion percent BOY. You love running and jumping and rarely do you ever just walk anywhere. You love to pretend you are Dash from The Incredibles and race us wherever we go. You love to play with your buddies (your stuffed animals) and you love to create these amazing stories for your action figures. You love movie and pizza night, swimming, playing with friends, eating popsicles on the porch and you can get excited about pretty much anything. And I love that about you. 🙂

You adore your brother. Adore your brother. I am constantly telling you to be gentle with Parker because you cannot stay away from him. And Parker loves you with all his heart. It makes me so very happy to watch you two love each other!

You are just the happiest, craziest, smiley-est, most exhausting and incredibly smart little four-year-old boy I know. And Dad and I can’t even put into words how much we absolutely, one zillion million percent love you to pieces. We pray for you constantly. You are one of the best blessings in our life, bean, and I just can’t wait to see what God has planned for you!

I love you so so sooo so sooo much! Happy fourth birthday, my sweet boy!

Mama

One year ago today, I took a pregnancy test.

Over the previous almost two and a half years, I’d taken tons and tons of tests. Ovulation tests, more pregnancy tests, blood tests, other tests that our fertility doctor had run. All had been normal, all had shown things were working as they were supposed to, all the pregnancy tests had been negative.

After some very expensive attempts to get pregnant and failing, we’d decided to just take the summer off and regroup in the fall after saving up a little bit. And during that time, God worked big time on my heart. I finally surrendered. After years of waiting and hoping, I was at peace. I was ready for whatever was coming. Even if it was nothing.

Nathan had been praying every night for almost a year for a baby brother or sister. In June, he told me that he had asked Jesus for a “Bruber Sister” for his birthday and that Jesus had said yes. Starting the first part of July, he would walk past me, pat my stomach and say, “There’s a baby in there, Mom.”

By that point, I was so past thinking it was anything other than just wishful thinking on Nathan’s part. But I threw a cheap pregnancy test in my cart at Walmart one year ago today and when Nathan went down for rest time, I took the test, more to just to be able to tell Nathan it wasn’t happening and Jesus had other plans for us.

A faint line showed up.

I just stared at the test, decided it was probably a false positive since I had never used that brand before and took the other test in the box. And it also had a faint line. I got Nathan up from rest time, drove to the closest store, bought a name brand test, came right back home and tested again. And the line was immediate and very dark.

I just started bawling. I was shaking and crying and I immediately called our fertility doctor since he was the last doctor I’d seen and they put in orders for blood work that day. Jon was going to be home in an hour, so I just paced and cried and hugged Nathan and prayed and prayed and prayed. Nathan thought I had completely lost my mind. 😉

I kept watching out the window so as soon as Jon pulled into the driveway and got out of his truck, I met him at the door, started sobbing again and just said, “Guess what?” And he started crying.

And that’s when the panic set in. I was scared of another miscarriage, terrified of all of the what ifs. What if I lost this one too? What if something happened? The peace that I had just hours before was completely shattered.

Slowly, sometimes gently, sometimes not so gently (as is His way sometimes) over those next nine months and especially during those first thirteen weeks, God taught me all over again about how to be content. No matter what happened. Parker’s pregnancy was not necessarily easy – I had some spotting at nine weeks which completely paralyzed me with fear, we had an umbilical cord issue that required lots of ultrasounds, I went into early labor. Each time, God specifically reminded me that He loved me, He loved this baby and He had a plan for the two of us.

And now, holding my precious, smiley, adorable baby in my arms two days before my precious, smiley, adorable big boy’s fourth birthday, my heart is filled to overflowing. God is good. Even when we don’t see it at the time.

With Caleb and Nicole leaving, we spent basically every free minute over at the house with them. In the meantime, here are a few fun things that happened:

This smiley boy loves his uncle!!

Brotherly love. These two adore each other.

One day during Parker’s nap, Nathan pretended it was Halloween for awhile and trick-or-treated for his felt kitchen food. It was hilarious.

Happy 4th of July!! Love these boys. Nathan was SO EXCITED that it was America’s birthday! 😉

And we had an amazing time celebrating!! My dear friend Melanie and her family moved last summer and they came back this last weekend for a visit. SO much fun. We have missed them so much! Loved getting to chat with her and let the kids go crazy at the park. And especially loved catching up with her the next morning for some much needed girl time over breakfast.

Silly kids. 🙂 These two have always been just trouble together. Most of these pictures are courtesy of Melanie – I was awful getting my camera out all weekend. Thanks friend!!

The whole crew!! Loved it!! Including the newest little Lunch Buncher, June.

Cutest patriotic boy I’ve ever seen. 😉

We are slightly taken with this baby. Just in case you couldn’t tell. 😉

And THEN – to make the weekend even better, our wonderful friends from Colorado Springs came down for the weekend as well! Such a fantastic visit!

These two were bestest buds this weekend. LOVED seeing them bonding.

Jen and Parker Bear. Adore this picture. Baby Emma is exactly a month younger than Parker and Noah is almost exactly six months older than Nathan. Those kids have been prayed for like nothing else between the two of us – I can’t imagine life without my dear, dear friend!! Their visit here was precious and far too short.

It’s semi-impossible to get a good picture of four children four and under. 😉

Parker soaked in some time with his Aunt Nicole before they left. Love this.

Sleepy boy. Showing off for Emma wore him out.

I woke up one morning and looked over in Parker’s pack n play right beside my bed and saw this sweet face smiling at me. There is no better way to wake up. 🙂

Caleb gave Nathan a little play dough dental set and he was yelling, “Look, Mom! I’m going to be a dentist like Uncle Caleb!” Praying Uncle Caleb doesn’t massacre his patients like this one did. 😉

We are at three days until a certain someone turns four years old. I can’t even believe it. Where does the time go??

 Last Sunday was filled with many tears as we said see you later to these two precious people.

My
boys will miss them so much! I’m so excited for Caleb and Nicole as
they start their California adventure and so proud of Caleb for getting
into dental school! But, I’m still so so sad that we won’t see them
every weekend. A family is such a blessing – a family where everyone is
best friends is priceless.

Love them both SO much!! Praying, praying for them – now and always.

Ah, Mr. Darcy. 😉

I have actually been able to sit down a read a little bit over the last couple of weeks (summer goals work!! Ha!). It has been SO nice. I think I sometimes get sucked into the craziness that is life right now and I forget to stop and sit occasionally. 😉

I had downloaded Susan May Warren’s It Had to be You on Kindle when it was free a month or two back and so it was my first choice. It was good! She has such a trademark style and it was fun to just get lost in a book for a few hours. My problem with novels is that once I start reading, I can do basically nothing else until I finish the novel. We all suffered here that day. 😉

Since Parker has been sleeping so good, I’ve been getting up early after he nurses around 6AM and then staying up and soaking in the hour or so that I then have by myself. One of the books I’ve been reading during my quiet time is Beth Moore’s Breaking Free Day by Day. It’s nice because it doesn’t take anytime to read, so I have more time to read my Bible, but it does give me things to think about the rest of the day.

And now my two questions for YOU! 🙂

What are you reading lately??

If we were to maybe start a little monthly or bi-monthly book club on here, what would be your suggestions for books for us to all read together??

And around here….

This little guy was my kitchen helper yesterday and he was VERY excited about it. 😉 Though he’s pretty excited about everything. Love that little smiley bug.

Someone was doing tummy time this week and just out of the blue did this four times in a row:

Rolling Over from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

I can’t even stand it. Obviously I am not swaddling him tightly enough because he is just growing up on double time over here. And isn’t his hair hilarious?? That one dark patch has been there since he was born and hasn’t grown at all or fallen out. So weird. 😉

We spent a good chunk of Jon’s weekend off redoing our front yard and so Jon took Nathan to the dump to throw away the branches we trimmed off our front bushes. Nathan LOVED the dump. He hasn’t stopped talking about it since. Such a boy. 😉 We are hoping to lay sod in the backyard sometime soon and I know a little boy who is going to want to help the whole time. He lives to work outside with his daddy.

We heart summer time.

Part of the issues Nathan has been having lately is not staying in his room for rest time and early in the morning when it’s still too early for him to be out of bed. So we got one of those little alarm clocks that glows green when it’s okay for him to get up. It has a nightlight function as well. So far, it seems to work for him some of the time but the first day it was such a novelty that he stayed in his room and took a two hour nap.

When Nathan was a baby, he never took a bottle and while it was fine overall, there were a few days where it would have been nice if he would have taken one so we could have gone on a date or done something for longer than a few hours. So the other day I had pumped and we finally tried it with Parker. And he took it! So thankful. Nathan thought it was so cool to feed his little brother. Love these pictures. 🙂

Family movie night and we’re watching…what else? The Incredibles.

Sleepy boy napping in my old room at Gammy’s house after an afternoon by the pool. 🙂

I love these!! We all went and played at the pool for our belated Father’s Day celebration for my dad on Sunday. So much fun – we played volleyball and Nathan got his popsicle in the pool with Pops. Perfect summer day!

Jon is a special education teacher and so during the summer when he’s not working on his Master’s program, he works for a landscaper. Long, hot days especially yesterday because it was over a hundred degrees. I came out of the bedroom after he’d gotten home and showered and found him and Nathan chilling out, eating snacks and watching America’s Funniest Videos. 😉

Caleb and Nicole are moving this coming week to California for dental school. I’m so excited for them and so sad for us. I know some little boys who are going to miss their aunt and uncle very much. This little one adores his Auntie Nicole.

Such a fun, busy, exciting and sad summer all at the same time!