blessed beyond measure

This post is a few weeks late. We plant a garden every year, and this year we had extra help! Sort of. Trey did great playing by himself while Brandon and I planted, and then we tried to get him to plant some seeds. Though he was more interested in holding onto the seeds than dropping them on the ground. It actually took two plantings to get everything in. But the garden looks pretty good now. Some of the corn has even started to show. We are looking forward to teaching Trey all about the garden and how the Lord makes things grow. And after a very dry season last year, we're praying for good rain this summer, so we can have lots of good food to eat!

So Mother's Day was not the celebration it was intended to be. Trey got sick on Friday night with a cold, which lasted through Saturday, when he developed a fever. Other than for one of his vaccinations, this was his first sustained fever. It was pretty scary for me, and Trey was understandably pretty upset. We were up through much of two nights with him, which exhausted us to the point of missing church on Sunday. And Sunday found me getting sick as well. So we have no dressed-up pictures of the family to show. But Daddy, Aunt Whitney, and the grandparents have taken very good care of us, and everyone seems to be feeling better now. We're experiencing some growing pains, I guess you could say. Trey seems to be going through an angry or unhappy phase. I know he's been sick, and that has contributed to it. And he is working on some teeth. But for over a week now, at least around me, he has been whining or crying more often than not. The books say separation anxiety, teething...

Trey has been through a lot of changes this month. The strange thing about all these changes is that he has become camera shy for many of them. So we did the best we could with this blog. Anyway, in addition to what you see below, Trey is working hard on a third tooth, just beginning to eat grownup food (Jello is quite popular), and taking occasional wobbly steps by himself. Home measurements are about 21 pounds and 30 inches long. After a long illness, Trey finally has his Nana back. And thanks to all of you who prayed for her through that time. Welcome back, Nana, we love you!! This was the month for our first professional haircut, and despite Trey's protests, it went quite well. He looks even more grown up now. Like mother, like son...Trey is a bookworm. We sit at his bookshelf, and one by one, he pulls a book off the shelf and we read it. Then he throws it in the floor and goes back for another book. He is very good at turning pages, and even knows when I'm reading the last...

One of joys of being a parent is to pass on the things you enjoy to your children. You hope that they develop the same passions that you have so that they can experience the joy you have in whatever it is you like to do. The other benefit is that maybe you can share these experiences together as your children grow up. One of my passions is obviously sports. Besides coaching and playing, I watch mostly sports on TV. If they stopped showing sports on TV, I would watch very little. In March, I had to start teaching Trey about the NCAA tournament and filling out his bracket....yes...HIS bracket. Trey was entered into our "pool" which consists of the guys in the improv group, Ashley, Scott's son Tobi, and a few of the kids on the basketball team. The winner gets a grand total of $0. Trey decided to use the "pick dad's hand for a team method". After the first round, he was ranked #250 in the country out of around 3 million. His bracket did take a beating (like Ash...