Because I cleaned videos from my phone

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This post may only interest our family and particularly the Grandmothers and Aunties. I dumped some videos from my phone tonight and thought I'd share some of the things our kids are up to these days.

Rebekah learned about North and South America last week in preschool. She came home one day with an American flag she made and began to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I am so amazed at how well she remembers things. I'm also amazed at how she tells me she doesn't know what happened at school. I've learned to listen more carefully to what she sings and pretends because that is usually how I figure out, from her, what she's learning. Thankfully she has a great teacher who sends home info on what the kids are learning that week. Anyway, Rebekah often makes Sam and I take turns being the flag holder and if Caleb is the lucky one the flag is taped to his highchair. Sam made the mistake of saying the pledge to Rebekah in Spanish once. She laughed so hard the vein in her neck started popping out... that's a pretty hard laugh. So, now every time she says the pledge, Sam has to say it in Spanish. 

Just for fun and because it's so funny, here's a little reminder of how hard she laughs when that vein to pops out:

Caleb is quite serious about food. He's into a good routine during the day now that we know what we can give him and what I can eat. Sometimes his eating times are also around nap times and the following happened because he's so tired that he doesn't know if he's hungry or tired or happy. 

Caleb is also trying his hardest to move around. The problem? He does a full body inch worm maneuver and only inches backwards. Bummer. He still prefers to stand up over sitting since Sam taught Caleb to stand up and balance on his hand. Maybe he will skip crawling all together.

Spring 2012 in Pictures

While trying to figure out how to share so many of our pictures from this spring I decided a slideshow would be best. I found a website that would allow me to upload the pictures and choose music to go along with it. I was happy! Well, I just realized that the music part is allowed if I want to pay $45/mo. No thanks! So, here's the slideshow and if you're interested in the music I selected you can listen to it here and here. I recommend clicking on the links and minimizing the window so you can watch the video and hear the music at the same time. The music is by Elizabeth Mitchell. Rebekah and I both like her music and that's saying something because it's not so easy to get kids' music that I like. 


Kizoa slideshow: Spring 2012 Slideshow - Slideshow

A New Song...

Well, Rebekah's recovery is going much better than we had expected. I am pretty sure the worst is yet to come but we're going to take what we can get for now and just be thankful. Here's a video of her new singing voice. After surgery her voice changed and is now a higher pitch. Every time she talks Sam and I get tickled at how different she sounds. 


Don't worry, we know she shouldn't sing like this much while she's recovering and we don't encourage it, but sometimes it's just hard to keep her quiet.

P.S. I'm pretty sure my favorite part is the change of imaginary instruments. When I asked her to play the fiddle (which she learned from our friend Riley), she put her guitar down and picked up the fiddle. She's something else!

No Singing In Our House Today

Rebekah had her tonsils and adenoids out this morning. She woke up from surgery a bit sad, and really didn't like the nurse taking her blood pressure, but other than that she has done well. As I write this, she is laying on the couch watching the movies we stocked up on last week at the $5 bin at Walmart and drinking an Icee out of the largest cup we could find at the gas station. The nurses were pretty over the top about dehydration and kept saying that if she didn't drink all the time her throat would feel bad and she'd end up back in the hospital. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm enjoying the quiet while I can.


The hospital staff said Rebekah won't be back to her normal, loud and wild, self while she's recovering. So, to let you know what we're getting a break from, I've posted two videos (spliced together) of her singing. The first is something she made up and the second video (starting at the 1:45 mark) is of her singing the song, "Jesus, Thank You." Please take note that when she gets to the line "the Father's wrath completely satisfied" her versions is "the Father's wrath can pee pee satisfied."


My girl LOVES to sing. We have to get on to her often because she sings so deep and loud and often in places where loud singing isn't appropriate. Even her Sunday school teacher says that Rebekah's preferred free time activity is to get her friends to hold up their books, pretending they're hymnals, and leading them in song. She has also commented on Rebekah's deep singing voice. We've heard voice can change with the surgery she just had... we'll see.

Ah Hail!

I have a very distinct memory from my childhood of a day when I was in elementary school and my grandmother picked me up from school. We were on the way to her house when all of a sudden one of those summer afternoon rain showers started coming down (the kind that comes every afternoon in Florida and only lasts about 15 minutes). The next thing I remember is hearing the little thuds from the balls of ice slamming against the roof and windshield of Grandma's tan Cadillac. I also distinctly remember the following words coming out of my grandmother's mouth, "Ah hail!". I didn't know what hail was and in my elementary aged brain my sweet grandmother had just cursed. I think I laughed! I'm not sure what my reaction was, but Grandma caught on and told me she wasn't cursing. What I am sure of is that from that minute on I started saying, "ah hail!" all the way to her house. I knew I wasn't cursing, because Grandma just told me she wasn't. My grandmother thought that it was funny that I was now repeating that phrase and laughing, and she began to laugh too. I now knew I could get away with "almost cursing" for the rest of the day while I was with her because she thought I was so funny. From that day on, every time I see hail falling from the sky, I think of my grandmother and our drive from Ft. Caroline Elementary School to her house with the both of us yelling out, "ah hail!", being so silly, and laughing really hard. I miss her.

Last week a pretty nasty hail storm came through and the hailstones left our vehicles covered in dents. We were really fortunate though because some of our neighbors vehicles had the windshields, back glass, and sunroofs shattered in their cars.

Here are a few pictures and a video of the storm and hail if your interested. Some of the stones were as large as golf balls!

The white spots in the street and yard are the hail.

Hail from the front yard:

Rebekah was so excited to hold it. She also began yelling at the storm to stop and go away. We later had a discussion about how only God can control the storms.


Hail from the backyard:

I found this piece next to my car. If it weren't chipped it would have almost covered the palm of my hand.

Here's some of the video I took. Sam covered the lens at the end because the wind was blowing so hard that hail was coming onto the porch.

Things I Love: Friends, Stories About Jesus, and Her Laugh

Warning: If you don't love videos of children singing, being silly, and doing things that their parents make them perform for videos, you may not care for this post. If you think my kid is cute when she does those things, you'll love these!

This is the Life of Jesus story that we taught Rebekah a while ago. It's been a few months since we've reviewed it and she had clearly forgotten some of the story and added in a few extra things too. This was just before Easter and she seems to get the birth and death of Jesus confused (note the Santa Clause laugh and Hosanna in the highest both mentioned near each other). Click here to compare last year's video to this year. I'm amazed at how much she's grown!

   

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Our good friends from Virginia have been visiting for the last few days while they were in town for a conference and that means that Rebekah has had the opportunity to play with her friend Lillian. She's had a built in playmate for days and they are both worn out at nap time and bedtime. Since Aunt Kate and Sam's parents bought Rebekah a pint sized piano for her birthday we thought we'd break it out and let them put on a show. It was definitely a show! If you would like to actually understand the words to this song you can click here. It's a song we taught Rebekah a long time ago and that we sing every day before her nap and at bedtime.

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This one pretty much speaks for itself. Rebekah was so silly at lunch the other day that I just had to get it on camera. I LOVE her laugh... it's so contagious and genuine!

Side note: I don't normally let her pick her nose and the vein in her neck that sticks out when she laughs hard or cries really hard freaks me out. I keep waiting for her to have an injury where it bursts or is cut and she bleeds everywhere. AH!

The Life of Jesus

*****Disclaimer*****

This may only interest grandparents, great grandparents, and people who really love Rebekah.

 Rebekah has been learning about the life of Jesus in Sunday school and I thought that since this weekend is celebrating the culmination of his life and work here on Earth I would post the videos we have of her telling the story.

There are two different videos of the same story but I love them both because of how she perks up in the 1st one at the end of the story and gives up early in the 2nd video.   

Happy Resurrection Day!