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"How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!"

Psalm 119:103

Hunter is 4 years, 0 months old

Park Pictures

We went to the park, as well as an indoor play place, with Hunter's great Grandma today.

It was relatively nice out - in the upper 40's - but the park was too windy so we only stayed for a little while before deciding to head to an indoor play place a few minutes away.

He had a lot of fun and it was nice to get to see Gramma. We need to do things like this more often!

Physical movement is a vital part of intellectual development. Here Hunter works his way down the slide, which is not quite as simple as it looks!

Hunter getting brave and walking across the net bridge. He was somewhat stumped by it at first, later working up the courage to cautiously scoot across on his bottom, then finally the bravery to make the trip standing.

"But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob..."

Genesis 49:24

Hunter is 4 years, 0 months old

The "Farm"

Today we had another one of those "spontaneous field trips" when, while we were visiting a friend, we were invited to go over to the neighbor's house to visit their animals.

What Hunter was calling "the farm" was a backyard filled with all sorts of interesting animals that you would have never known were there by just looking at the front area of the property.

He got to feed goats (which he kept calling "baby lambs"), play with some dogs, chickens, and then feed a herd of ponies. And then to top it all off, he got to drive a tractor!

It wasn't that big of a piece of property, but he had so much fun. At one point, when he was by the goats, he called, "Hey, farmer!" to the owner, which everyone thought was pretty funny.

"For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine."

Psalm 50:10-11

Hunter is 4 years, 0 months old

Look Out!

There's a new driver on the road!

No, not really, there are many things that I will be teaching him "early", but that is one thing that he will not be learning for a while.

But he DID have a blast today driving on a "real" road (gravel) almost all by himself. For a whole 20 feet. He was thrilled, to say the least.

"He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints."

Proverbs 2:8

Hunter is 4 years, 0 months old

St. Patrick's Day

Today Hunter went to a St. Patrick's day parade.

His favorite part? The Irish Setters (dogs), and the candy of course.

It's not a big holiday on our list, but we learned a little history about it anyway. We read the book "St. Patrick's Day" by Dorothy Rhodes Freeman, which was pretty interesting and gave us a general idea of who he was and what he did, and how certain traditions came to be associated with him (like leprechauns, heavy drinking, and clovers).

The holiday wasn't a huge focus of ours but he had a fun day anyway.

"O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people, when thou didst march through the wilderness... The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God..."

Psalm 68:7-8

Hunter is 4 years, 0 months old

Nothing Short of a Miracle

If spring came but once a century instead of once a year, or
burst forth with the sound of an earthquake and not in
silence, what wonder and expectation there would be
in all the hearts to behold the miraculous change.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers
appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come..."

Song of Solomon 2:11-12

Look Who's Four!

Hunter had his much anticipated birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese today.

We had been planning it since November (when his cousin Anthony's Chuck-E-Cheese party got canceled) and it was a big hit.

Started kind of early - at 10 am - because the kids get double tokens if you reserve it at that time. And the hidden benefit? WAY less crowded.

Even with almost exclusively family (and we only invited part of them) there were a lot of people and a lot of presents.

This birthday's theme was trains. Last year we did the theme of jungles and monkeys, the year before it was Tonka trucks. He is really into his train set so I thought that would be a good theme, although by the content of his presents you would have thought that the theme was cars and Spiderman (almost every gift he got had to do with these things). But those are two things that he likes equally well, so he was really happy with all of his gifts.

I got him the Eyewitness book, "Train", which will be a great resource. I ended up ordering it online because the bookstore didn't have any good books about trains, and I am really happy with it. Eyewitness makes some really good books on all sorts of subjects, and I really like all the pictures they have (often dozens of various pictures on each page) with information that is exciting and interesting. The train book has 63 pages of information about everything train from the first trains to how railroads are operated to diesels, subways, and future trains, facts about royal trains to mail trains to track-making to model trains. It is loaded with fun history, and I know Hunter is going to enjoy it a lot.











These are the birthday cakes he had, I made the vanilla one and Katie made the chocolate one.

Hunter loved the Chuck-E and was very eager to get his picture taken with him. He had a lot of fun playing all the games and climbing in the tunnels. We will have to go back sometime on a day that is not as busy.

All in all, Hunter handled the whole thing really well. I will have to say that he was a bit overwhelmed while we were opening presents - and who can blame him? - but he nonetheless smiled the whole way through, posed for a great many pictures and gave dozens of hugs and thank-you's (even though he really wanted to get back to those games).

It was a fun day. A little bit hectic and slightly (but not extremely) expensive, but something he will remember for a long time to come.

Pictures of the big day, with Hunter and all of his guests (only one of the group pictures is a non-family member! And we only invited a small portion of our family):

"And my soul shall be joyful in the LORD: it shall rejoice in his salvation."

Psalm 35:9

Hunter is 4 years, 0 months old

First Time Bowling

Hunter went bowling for the first time today. It was one of those spontaneous trips - his 11-year-old cousin came over to spend the night and we thought it would be a fun way to spend the evening.

The place had shoes to fit little kids, but no balls that he could actually handle. The smallest size (a six) was pretty heavy and bulky for the little guy, although he did surprisingly good anyway.

Using the bumpers, he was actually ahead of some of us for a little while! I tried various techniques to help him to get the ball down the lane (since it was too heavy for him to throw it the proper way), including rolling it between the legs, rolling it from the side of his body, or doing a sort of sideways "toss". None worked all that great (the ball rolled very slowly down the lane), but by the end of the night he seemed to have figured out his own technique for getting it down there.

A few times I was afraid that with his "tossing" technique he was going to accidentally toss it into our neighbors lane (which he actually intentionally tried to bowl on at one point), which I don't think would have been viewed as humorous since our neighbors on both sides were pretty good, and pretty serious about their game.

All in all, he really enjoyed the game. At first he was pretty antsy waiting for his next turn (see picture above, of him staring at the screen waiting for his name to pop up). But after a while he was fine with rolling his ball, watching it go down the lane, and then happily skipping back to his seat for a piece of pizza.

He didn't learn all that much this night about how to bowl properly, but he did have a really fun time and learned some rules of the game (like the goal of the game [getting the ball down the lane to knock over the pins], how many points a strike is worth [which he got one time, by the way!], and courtesy rules [i.e., don't bowl in your neighbors lane, stay off the floor when it's someone elses turn, etc.]). I wish that they would have had smaller balls, so he could really learn how to play, but I'm not too worried about it since we have enough on our plates right now of things to learn! Perhaps one day, when he's a bit older and more fitted to the ball, he will be able to take up this fun game!

"And he took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd's bag which he had...And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine..."

1 Samuel 17:40,49

Hunter is 3 years, 11 months old

Friends

"there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother."

Proverbs 18:24

Hunter is 3 years, 11 months old

Pajama Day

Hunter had pajama day at his library story hour today.

All morning he was going around with this funny grin on his face, telling everyone that he was going to get to wear his pajamas to the library, and isn't that funny?

He was supposed to bring a teddy bear but he brought monkey instead (which, apparently a lot of the other kids didn't feel the need to bring teddies because most had various stuffed animals as well).

They read books relating to bedtime and watched a little video too. He liked the craft, which involved gluing popped popcorn to a piece of paper with a pan on it.

This is one of his last story hours for this season, he sure has been doing great this time around, he's so much more socially competent and doesn't even get the slightest bit nervous anymore going into the classroom without me. I'm so proud of him.

"Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty; open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread."

Proverbs 20:13

Hunter is 3 years, 11 months old