This Is Trouble

Today Kathee, Gideon, and I were eating lunch at the dining room table. After the second discipline for the same thing, Gideon was removed from the table and put in his pack-n-play in the other room (from the dining room I saw toy after toy being thrown over Kathee's shoulder so Gideon wouldn't think it play time). When she went in to get him (a few minutes later), this is what we happened on.



It's official, he's pulling himself up on things now.
Just a few minutes ago we were cleaning up for Adam and Maharah and the kids to stop over. Gideon crawled out into the porch and was pulling himself up on the tv stand to grab the much-coveted-never-held tv clicker.
This is great. We are in to a new phase in life with Gideon, and today we've already said, "This is just such a fun time with Gideon. We love this phase with him."
What an absolute joy parenting is for us. We love every minute of it!

Supper At The Whitman's

Tonight our children's pastor and family and Kathee, Gideon, and I headed down towards Galesburg, IL, to have supper with Cal and Janet Whitman. They own 35 acres outside of Rio, IL, and drive the 40 minutes to church each Sunday... rain, snow, or shine. This summer Rusty (our children's pastor) is ending the VBS with a family day at the Whitman residence. And I am looking at doing our 7th grade kidnapping/Catalyst initiation at their property.
So they invited us down for supper and to take a good look at the place. They have made hiking trails on their densely wooded property. As we walked, Cal asked where I wanted the camp sites to be placed (and then he'll take care of clearing the land for us to use it at the end of the summer). On their property they have chickens, peacocks, pheasants, and dogs. Oh yeah, AND THE TRACTOR!!!!
Cal started that tractor up and gave Mariah, Christian, and Gideon rides. When we hoisted Gideon up on the tractor and into Cal's lap, the kid grabbed the steering wheel on his own! Great kid, and tons of fun!

Stowaway Found On Ethiopian Air Flight From Addis to Washington DC

This is the airlines and flight pattern we took when returning from Ethiopia!

CHANTILLY, Va. — Federal authorities say they've discovered a stowaway who arrived at a Washington-area airport in the cargo hold of a flight from Ethiopia.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Steve Sapp says ground personnel at Dulles International Airport were pulling baggage from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 500 when they noticed an arm sticking out.

Sapp says the stowaway was an Ethiopian man who was exhausted and dehydrated. He was taken to Reston Hospital Center and is now being held at a federal detention center.

Sapp says the man has been charged with being a stowaway and will be deported, but is not a security threat.

He says the flight departed from Addis Ababa and stopped in Rome before landing at Dulles shortly after 9 a.m. Saturday.

Getting His Graduation On!

Gideon has now experienced the graduation ceremonies at Riverdale High School and United Township High School. He has gone to the graduation party of Ryan Sivertsen, a former youth who graduated with high honors from the Air Force Academy. He has gone to Nic Mizeur's high school graduation party at Nic's home, and Leah Borycz, Elizabeth Dokas, Kayla Ferguson, and Sydney Quandt's graduation party that was hosted at church. He did very well at all.
The picture below is from high in our loft at United Township High School for Elizabeth's graduation. He enjoyed going, probably more so for the end when he was able to see and be held by Elizabeth.

Gideon Opens a Can on the Target Box!

I have to say, I'm less than pleased with our timing. Gideon had 4 diapers left yesterday. So, breaking with the notion that we don't purchase or go into businesses on Sundays (not a hard and fast rule, just a general guideline), I made the trek to Moline's WalMart for a box of diapers. They were out (is that coincidence or God teaching me a lesson?). So Kathee went to Target last night and bought Target's Brand-X. THEY HAVE POLKA-DOTS ON THEM! AND ONE OF THE COLORS IS PURPLE! SERIOUSLY?!
So evidently Kathee told Gideon that his diapers have purple polk-dots on them (I pray she wasn't ridiculing him). I'm just filling in the pieces here, but it looks like she just grabbed the camera in time to catch his reaction to Target and their diapers.

A New Tradition

I came up with a new idea at church yesterday. Our church owns some property about 15 minutes from here. It's actually where we have youth group in the summers. It's a big field with a screened-in pavilion in it. Each week one of many faithful servants (who have signed up) in our church mow this large property, only to be used once a week all summer. So I actually had a synapse connect and a great idea came out. A few months ago we started the tradition of having breakfast food for Sunday night supper. So my great plan is... let's head home from church, quickly change, grab the breakfast food (eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, OJ, etc) and head out to Bailey Retreat for a quick picnic. The pavilion has electricity, so we're able to use the griddle. We loaded up the dogs, too, and headed out to Bailey. Here are a few of the pictures.

Riely hasn't really ridden in the car since Gideon has been home with us, so he wasn't really sure where to sit. So naturally he decided to lie across Gideon's legs. Neither Gideon nor Riely really knew what to do, so we had to stop the car and get Riely into the correct position.


We also had Gideon's blanket loaded with toys. However, when we looked he had thrown all the toys off the blanket, holding on to only my keys that has the Husker lanyard on it (okay, so that's an outright lie, but it makes for a great story).


We've also come to find that Gideon HATES grass. He hates sitting in it. So we put a blanket down and he won't leave it. He crawls all over the blanket, but never off it. We even put my keys (that he loves) just out of reach off the blanket, and he wouldn't go and get them. The kid is hilarious!


He's really motoring around now. Kathee said he crawled all the way across the living room today. He's army crawling all over the place. This is such a fun phase.

Gideon's New Firetruck!

Gideon's Sweet Ride

Gideon received this fire truck from a family in the church when we first brought him home. HE'S NOW ABLE TO RIDE IT! And he loves it. He just chills in it and is hours from moving all over the house with it. So fun!