The First Hot Dog

 Time continues to fly by, faster than I can write about it- or even take pictures anymore!  So here are 2 big stories, a baby update and several shorter ones mixed in, with lots of pictures.

    

#1-

We celebrated Blaise's birthday (May 7th) with our dear friends in Indiana on a camping trip with "rabid raccoons."  

Random raccoon picture... the ones we actually saw were fat raccoons, apparently this campground keeps them nice and "healthy."

It was a blast, as usual.  The campground was very nice, but we discovered we weren't the only campers... the first night it wasn't as noticeable, all we saw were raccoon footprints all over our coolers and tablecloth in the morning when we got up and moving.  The 2nd night and the 3rd night... well, you really couldn't avoid them.  First mistake was putting the kiddos to bed and hanging out by the campfire without turning on the big spot-light we'd brought with us.  It was very relaxing and a nice end to the day.  Until I heard footsteps on the gravel behind us.  Expecting to see one of our sweet children, who were having a hard time going to sleep, I turned a flashlight on and was quite surprised to see- not more than 15 feet behind us and between us and the kids a raccoon investigating our biggest cooler.  This was just a little surprise and after some joking about it, I reassured my friend that, "If it comes back now, with the light on and all 4 of us sitting here not so quietly, it's probably rabid."  Famous last words... very soon after that we spotted another raccoon sneaking across the creek towards our campsite from another direction.  The evening quickly escalated into raccoon chasing excitement.  Armed with gravel, upon hearing the raccoon on the gravel behind us again, Cos turns with fury in his very being and runs (faster than I've seen him run in years) after the raccoon up the hill, yelling, "I'll get you buddy!"  He successfully cornered that particular raccoon up a tree, less than 10 feet from our tent.  We called it quits and turned in for an "early" night, hoping desperately not to have to get up in the night.

The next night our friends the rabid raccoons came back earlier to visit- so the kids even go to see one of them.  After it got fully dark and the kids were all in tents, I went to check on our little guys and remind them to lay down and go to sleep.  Cos went to check on their littlest too.  Cullen and Rachel were sitting by the picnic table (we'd switched campsites to avoid being flooded with the rain that was in the area).  Rachel saw something behind Cullen and figured it was either Cos or myself sneaking around trying to scare them.  Nope- it was a raccoon, close enough to Cullen he could have calmly put his hand down and patted it on the head.  Rachel was frantically pointing, "It's right there!!!"  Cullen is casually looking behind him, saying, "What?  What's right where?"  As he gets up and takes a few slow steps away.  Thus Raccoon hunting round 2 began.  Both of the guys armed themselves again with rocks and all the best flashlights and circled our campsite, occasionally shouting, throwing a few rocks and shining lights everywhere (the campground was empty by this point, which probably just drew the raccoons out more.)  Rachel and I are standing near our fire and I kept thinking, "Okay, guys over there, flashlights over there, these raccoons are totally going to come startle us..."  Finally we sat down- can only stand for so long you know, after spending the day camping, hiking, creek-walking, etc.  Sure enough, within seconds of us sitting down a raccoon was at my elbow, pawing at one of our bigger trunks full of gear.  Another early night and we didn't even get to play Settlers of Katan on this trip!  No sooner were all the adults zipped securely in tents than the raccoons started fighting one another outside of the tent!  I'm told they actually bumped into our friends tent and when they shined a light out at them to "chase" them away, there were at least 3 fighting by our fire over whatever scraps the kiddos dropped.  

#1a-

Of course, Blaise also wanted a birthday party at home, with a cool cake... we finally got around to organizing that nearly a month later and he had his friend Matthew over for a splash in the baby pool party.  I think they all had a great time.  The cool cake has a pool of Jello Jiggler in the middle with plenty of candy decorating it.

#1b-

We had field day with the local homeschool group on May 11th and called that our last day of school.  It was a great year and I am loving the homeschool life.  We are now enjoying our summer of reading and fun and also getting geared up to do 1st grade AND Kindergarten, oh AND nursing newborn in the fall.  Should be a fun and busy time.

#1c-

Scott and Blaise enjoyed another season with Victory Sports playing baseball this spring.  We played Blaise up, so they could be on the same team and I was the assistant coach... I didn't think head coach would be a good plan for someone in their 3rd trimester.  It's coach pitch/tee-ball and they both did great.  Blaise frequently refused to run the bases- if he hit the ball straight to one of the other teams players he would assume they would throw him out and not bother- nevermind that in this league at this level, it's kind of up to them whether or not they actually are "out," because the whole side bats every inning and they don't keep score.  

#1d-
My Uncle Todd came to Clemson for a family event and brought his family, so we had a nice day in Clemson visiting with my cousins and Uncle Todd and Aunt Kathy and Aunt Kathy's family.  Can't beat Clemson Ice Cream :) and my boys had a great time playing baseball with Uncle Todd, bet he was pretty tired when we left.

#2-

In early June we took our last big driving/visiting trip.  We headed up to NY for a weekend to see friends and family, with our usual stops in Maryland to break up the drive.  Conveniently we got to see LOTS of people, which of course, is the whole point :)  I'm going to go with less words, more pictures for this one...

We stayed with my Grandma Jill and her sister "Granny" Annie in NY.  Our first full day though, we headed upstate to meet up with some camp friends at Camp Pattersonville (shameless plug- if you have a 7-14 year old, it's the single BEST camp on the face of the planet, if at all possible, send them, http://www.camppattersonville.org/home/).  It was kind of a rainy day, but I figure I've survived that at camp before, so off we went.  We enjoyed a very short visit with some very good friends, who if they happen to read this will get a real kick out of where the title for this blog post comes from if they can mange to read that far.  Unfortunately, in wanting to visit and having 4 little ones and remembering suddenly how many mosquitoes are at camp early in the season, I totally forgot to get pictures.  But I was so thrilled with how comfortable my big boys were at camp- they ran off with DZ (who is the same age as Blaise) and played the whole time.  

Then we visited with Uncle Guy, Aunt Fran and my cousin Emily and her family.  What a great visit- it's been a while!  

Jessica was also in town so we finally got to see little Temperance again.  She's growing and cute as can be... also pretty stubborn and still looks exactly like her daddy, who she gets to meet in person VERY SOON!

Uncle Doc kindly threw a cookout party for the Snider family and we got to see many we hadn't seen in a long long time and many we'd seen fairly recently.  Uncle Rich looks a lot like my Dad (aside from his pony-tail)...  hadn't really noticed that before, though as my other cousin and I observed a year or so ago, all 5 of the Snider brothers are looking more alike as they age- it's kind of wild.  

On the drive back, we made a special stop at Cullen's Uncle Buddy's to see the family and Grandma in particular.  The boys wasted no time, after the dog jumped in the pool, getting soaked themselves.

#2a-
Ah... finally back home.  But we left Scott in Maryland with Cullen's parents for his annual solo visit.  Then had a crazy week ourselves, teaching afternoon swimming lessons and then literally running straight to an evening VBS and finally getting home around 9pm.  Blaise was up pretty late all week.  Michael was pretty offended we wouldn't let him come every night (he did get to come the night Cullen was out of town), he says, "I big."

#2b-
We survived and Cullen's parents brought Scott back.  They had a delightful 2 night boat trip, enjoyed all kinds of junk food, and hit the jackpot with foreign coins while sorting baby bottles for the Care Center Fundraiser.  Now to finish getting everything ready for Baby El and rest while we still can.

#3-
Baby El seems to be doing great... still very active.  I'm pretty much exactly the same size, shape, and everything else that I have been with the boys and this pregnancy has been most like Scott and Michael.  So... I'm guessing it's another boy.  Finally got out of Michael that he thinks it's a boy too, the rest are hoping for a girl, as is most of the rest of the family.   Although, the extended family on the Snider side seems to think a 5th boy wouldn't be that surprising.  I did mention that my dad was the oldest of 5 boys right?  Anyway... go make your guess, before I enter it for you ;)  http://expectnet.com/game.php the game name is ElephantKeen.  If you think you need to see me and you haven't recently, look at the pictures above... there are quite a few.

We are on down to our last month-ish until we meet this new little one.  It's funny, in the past I've always figured the baby would come around a week after the due date, but after Daniel came almost 2 weeks early, I don't even know what to guess.  I wouldn't mind an August baby though, so everyone has their own month- though I think 8 days late might be a stretch.

Anyone local reading this... if you're interested in bringing meals after the baby comes that would be fabulous!  Also, if you are going to be in town and wouldn't mind suddenly having 4 extra boys in your home for about 24 hours (or if you'd like to come here and hang with them-kind of complicated since I know no one really has space for 4 extra car seats, so you'd totally be pinned down) we'll be looking for someone to call when labor happens if it happens before 9am on July 18th.

#3a-
A couple of weeks, okay, maybe more than a month ago now, I said, "Last one in their PJ's is a rotten corn dog."  It's an old phrase from Camp Patt.  Guess I wasn't really thinking, because boy did these boys latch onto that phrase.  Now they race to be the First Hot Dog instead of the Rotten Corn Dog.  There are worse things right :)  I have to admit it totally makes me laugh every time... which is pretty much at least twice a day.

I'm tired... all that updating.  I'll add captions tomorrow- if I remember, otherwise, enjoy it as it is and just guess what the captions should be.

Church

Lately we've been struggling some with our home church... it's a strong church for the most part, but as it's made up of sinners, as all churches are, there have been some minor imperfections.  In thinking things through we've been looking at what are the critical aspects of a church home, both in general and for us specifically.  And yes, we have started attending a church much closer to our home, though we will terribly miss our church family we've been with for the past 5 years.


The Gospel, of course comes to mind quickly as the number one requirement of any church.  By the Gospel, I mean that the teaching of the church emphasizes, consistently, that All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23), but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8).  I could throw in a few other points to the Gospel that I believe to be very foundational, but those two Scriptures sum it up quite well.  I honestly don't think it matters in the least whether you believe you'll meet your dog who passed away last year in heaven or not, or whether you were baptized as an infant, by sprinkling or immersion, if you believe in a literal 6-day creation (as I do) or some other length of a day not defined version of the story- I really don't think these kinds of things have anything to do with your eternal destination and once we arrive in heaven, well- I really don't think we'll even care what the answers to any of these questions are.  For the record, we've been in the PCA denomination since college, though that's not where either of us were raised, and we mostly subscribe to the Westminster Confession and Shorter Catechism, although we don't participate in infant baptism (but this isn't about that.)


The other things that define a church these days, well, it's a little more vague how important or not they are.  But here are a few of the things we consider important...


The worship and music.  We look for a church whose worship music really sings the praises of God.  There has to be depth.  I love old hymns for the depth, but there are plenty of contemporary songs that have depth as well.  We do find it a little annoying to be singing contemporary praise songs that grab one line and repeat it over and over and over and over again though.  We all enjoy a praise band with drums and guitars- the boys especially, but I don't think that's necessarily critical.  It is critical that the praise band isn't there to put on a show for the congregation and be applauded after every song.  They should be there to worship God Almighty, not draw attention to themselves.


The feeding of ourselves and our children of the Word comes to mind as another important role of the church in our lives.  This is one we've been struggling most with lately.  I grew up with Sunday School for all ages, between worship services.  The trend now seems to be "Children's Church" for kids through 2nd, or 5th, or whatever grade- DURING the worship service.  This is a huge problem for me.  My boys NEED to be in worship with us, regularly- and I firmly believe all children do, though I can see why many prefer to send them off to Children's Church.  There is a new book coming out on this topic, titled Children in Church, published by Great Waters Press http://childreninchurch.com/... I just got my pre-reading copy and can't wait to hear what they have to say about the topic and making it work practically.   For us, we would also like to be able to have our kids in a Sunday School class, studying the Word with their peers and participating in the fellowship of being around other believers just as we do.  


Aside from the kids, we want this combined fellowship and study time for ourselves on a regular weekly basis as well, which makes adult Sunday School also critical to us.  


Small Groups- we love our small group and getting together in homes with other families.  We feel like this is important for our whole family and something we all look forward to.  Again, back to that fellowship thing.


Outreach- so far most of my points have been about us and what we need from the church.  Well, it's true, we believe the main purpose of the church is to support the membership.  Then it becomes the responsibility of the membership to reach out to the community and everyone they interact with on a daily basis, fulfilling the great commission of Matthew 28.  If you haven't been well-fed it's pretty challenging to attempt to reach anyone else.  I am constantly reminded of a Children's Sermon that Pastor Kazen gave when I was in Kindergarten (yes, I remember it distinctly, even though it was that long ago and I was that young.)  He had a basin of water and a sponge.  The sponge was us, we showed up in church, at Sunday School, etc and soaked up all the water and then gradually squeezed it out on everyone we came in contact with during the week... but then the sponge was empty again.  Not perfect, but a good illustration- if you don't have it, you can't share it.  This is not to overlook that it is the calling of the church body to reach out to the community, so we like to look at what we are doing as a church body to actively reach out to the community... it's been a struggle for us, living in a different community than where our church is located to be actively involved in much of what they do for outreach- though we do some of our own outreach (admittedly, not enough) in our community.


Other things... organization, church structure/leadership which varies between denominations, communication, fellowship- because you can't mention it enough times.


That's probably enough words from me for now... what are some important ones I missed?  Thoughts?

Reading Party!

Okay, so what if it's 2 weeks later... we had our Reading Party.  I guess you could say it was our version of Kindergarten graduation.  Scott completed his reading program- we used The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, by Jessie Wise.  I really liked how thorough/complete it is and I appreciated the fact that the whole thing is scripted, even though I didn't always use the script.  It took Scott about 2 years to go through the whole thing, with breaks as needed.  He is definitely a reader now!

So what does a reading party look like?  First people have to show up... in our case we planned it for a day when Grandma and Grandpa would be here from Maryland and then Aunt Jesse and Temperance were also available to come.  Then it's all about food, Scott's a boy you know.  We did pizza and I let them make their own this time.  No pictures of that, because, well there's 4 of them and I kind of had to be helping them the whole time.  Daniel didn't quite get it though, he just wanted to eat the toppings.

While the pizzas were cooking, Scott read us a story.  He chose one of our library books that we had out that week- Pilot Pups.  It's a good one for little kids as there are relatively few words and the story line is cute.  I think he noticed the "few" words and decided it was easy... not exactly, some of those words were on the challenging side, but he did a great job sounding things out and read us the whole book, by himself.

Grandpa and Blaise listening.

Aunt Jesse and Temperance listening, or maybe sleeping?

Well... not everyone was listening, Daniel had other things in mind.

After he read to us, we gave him his new Bible and a certificate of Achievement for his hard work learning to read.  The Bible:  We had decided, actually a long time ago, that when the boys learn to read we would get them their first real Bible (meaning an adult translation of the entire text of the Bible, rather than a story Bible, reader's version, or mini-testament.)  With the changing of the NIV last year, I wondered if that was still the "best" option out there and asked around a little bit.  My main thought being either get the NIV 1984 (which was pre-liberal-revision, sorry if that's too strong for anyone) or the ESV.  I have heard such good things about the ESV, but never read it myself, so I couldn't really compare yet.  I asked a few friends- okay basically a huge percentage of everyone I know, thank you Facebook, now go away and stop sucking up all my time!  If you responded to my inquiries there, thank you for the input :)  In the end we decided on the NIV 1984, because... first of all, most of the Scripture I have memorized is from that version and therefore most of the Scripture Scott already has memorized is also from that version, and then because I decided to get myself an ESV Bible, so next time I'll be able to compare for myself.  So far, I think I still prefer the NIV.  I would really love to learn the original languages and read it in it's true wording someday.  For now, I'll continue to remind the boys- all of them- that the Bible wasn't written in English and so we have lots of different translations to consider.  Thankfully, God speaks through them all.  

Back to our party.  By that time, our pizza was ready.  We enjoyed it and then got to the good stuff.  ICE CREAM.  Ice cream beats out any other dessert in Scott's book.  When asked what he wanted for his special dessert that was it, hands down.  I DO have pictures of that... 

Amazingly neat about it, because they don't want to lose any.

Very confused about the whole cone thing and he wouldn't touch it til we gave him a spoon.  It's definitely a unique technique.

Focused... until he bit the bottom and it started dripping in his lap. 

Certainly happy about it in the end!

 After that it was baths and bedtime... here are a few other recent pictures as bonus.  

Scott reading the bedtime Bible story one night.

Michael built a tower with all the blocks.  It was very neatly stacked.  His brothers decided they wanted to be in his picture too.  

Baby Temperance... she's just too cute not to put a picture of her here.  We are enjoying every moment we get with her.

Since his party, Scott has really become much more comfortable reading.  Instead of reading lessons, he just reads for a little while everyday to me and lots to his brothers, when he doesn't think I notice.  He's been reading "The Dragons of Blueland" a sequel to My Father's Dragon and today he read 3 Chapters by himself, while I got dinner ready.  I think we're on a roll now.  

It's Official...

We're a mini-van family.

Wait, no... we got a mini-van in our first 6 months of marriage, long before we had any children.  We liked our mini-van.  Can you tell, I've been very amused in the past year or so as many of our friends have reluctantly become mini-van families with the arrival of their 3rd baby?  At any rate, we've had ours for awhile and with the amount of long distance travel we do, we'd rather have a vehicle with fewer miles on it.  Plus, it was looking like it would be quite a challenge to fit 3 carseats across the back seat.  So...

It's official we're a full-size passenger van family!  We traded in the Caravan for a 12-passenger on Monday.  The boys love it.  It's a truck!  Definitely more spacious.  Cullen, is just not thrilled with the white, which is apparently pretty much all you can find slightly used.  He's taking ideas for how to enhance the paint job.  A couple of Tiger Paws will be added as soon as possible.

Other news in pictures...

We celebrated Easter, not sure why the camera was blurry. 

Scott- 6 yrs old

Blaise, the camera "shy" goofball- almost 5 yrs old

Michael- 2 1/2 yrs old

Daniel- 17 months

All of us, even a noticeable Baby El.

The hunt is on...

They were so fast it was hard to get pictures at all.

He stopped to eat some beans.

"Michael, go get the last one."  He goes to the wall and looks blankly everywhere except where the egg is, so Scott and Blaise helped by pointing it out.  It took quite a bit of pointing!

Easter dinner with my sister... who was in (early) labor!

My newest niece Temperance and my sister, who heroically delivered med-free after many hours of labor (19 in the hospital, including some pitocin, plus essentially a whole day before that.)  

Interestingly enough, and not so much surprising... I seem to be able to take fewer pictures than I used to.

So even though there are only pictures from Sunday, we did do a lot of Easter celebrating over the weekend, including turning off the lights Friday afternoon to better "experience" the Easter story.  That was in addition to the same Easter basket devotion we do during Holy Week every year- the big boys were very excited about it... Daniel just wanted to grab everything out of everyone else's hands, and we also made the same "Resurrection" Cookies we make every year to put in the oven overnight (we had to lock the oven this year, they've never noticed that part of the directions before... but now we have a reader, hopefully I'll post about that in a couple of days.)

While I did bring the camera with me to meet baby Temperance, I also brought 4 little boys who were through the roof excited to meet their new baby cousin.  They each took 2 turns holding her during our 20 minute visit- somehow I can't help a 2 yr old hold a newborn and take a picture of them at the same time!   Even Daniel wanted to hold her and he somehow intuitively knew to be gentle... leaning his head close to hers to give her hugs (he mostly head bangs us, and is very into smacking and throwing things lately... we spend a lot of time lately reminding him to be "gentle".)  Blaise is totally captivated by her- they came by to visit yesterday and he would just sit and watch her and wait patiently, after being sent off to wash his hands, to hold her.  Scott was more aloof, but would suddenly stop what he was doing to come check on her and hug her.  Fortunately, Jessica had her video camera at the hospital, so somewhere there is video of them meeting her.