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| Chase, Gabe, and Jacob (Chase's friend across the street) colored eggs for Easter. |
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| Recognize this place? This was as close as I could get without crossing the double fences (and risk being arrested, LOL) |
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| Chase's new smile without his top, front teeth and Gabe's classic smile |
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| Family Picture around our Japanese Cherry Blossom Tree (in honor of Connor) |
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| An attempt at a close-up with the boys and I, but Gabe wouldn't stay still and we were zoomed in too far. |
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| Tim and his mini me at Morgart's Beach (we were at our neighbor's wedding) |
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| Beautiful view of the James River...beautiful, sunny spring day as you can tell by Gabe shading his face. |
Happy Spring to everyone!
April showers bring May flowers, but apparently, the word “showers” even
applies to snow! We had a brief snow
shower at our first soccer game this season.
Within the same week, we also had temperatures above 70 degrees. The
weather in Hampton Roads is always a rollercoaster, isn't it?! Usually
accompanying the drastic weather changes are seasonal allergies and whatever
other nasty viruses are floating around. My family has suffered a few bouts of
the dreadful "stomach flu" (yes, I'm well aware it's really a virus
and not the actual flu). Some of us were
unfortunate enough to get the stomach bug twice! I got it again just a week and a half after I
had it the first time, or perhaps I never fully shook it the first time. If you’re not into bathroom humor and
sarcasm, please spare yourself and stop reading now.
Lucky me, the second bout of the stomach bug occurred during
a business trip to Washington
DC Wash-your-hands
Monument
April is a big birthday month in our family. “Papa” Breeden led off the birthdays this
month. I won’t tell you how old he is,
but Tim has been jokingly calling him an “old fart” long before he ever
qualified as one. Papa and Grammie
Breeden also have an anniversary this month, so Happy Anniversary to the two
lovebirds who are well on their way to that golden one. There are other family members with April
birthdays too: Uncle Dennis, Robert Coffey, Bert Griggs. I’m sure there are
others I’ve missed, but the two that stand out the most to me belong to Chase
and Gabe. Chase will turn 7 years old on
April 22nd and Gabriel will turn 4 years old on April 21st. I can hardly believe the baby in my Facebook
profile picture will be 4 years old…unreal!
Happy, Happy Birthday to my back-to-back birthday boys! I’m so thankful for them and remain proud of
them for all of their accomplishments.
Chase continues to make the honor roll as Gabriel continues to improve
his speech and learn new things in preschool.
Both boys are learning so many new things.
Chase is reading all sorts of books now and completed his
very first book fair project for school last month (got a perfect score on it
too!). Beyond schoolwork, he also experienced
a wonderful lesson at the dentist last month.
He had several baby teeth that just wouldn’t give up the fight, but the
permanent ones were already growing in and leaving his mouth too crowded. As a result, we scheduled for the dentist to
intervene by pulling out the baby ones.
He was able to lose one on his own first, but the dentist still had to
pull the other three. He was so panicked
when I picked him up from school the morning of his appointment. I felt so bad for him as I had to wipe his
tears and try to reassure him everything was going to be alright. When we arrived at the dentist office, we
said a prayer in the parking lot. We
specifically asked God to help ease his nerves, to help the dentist to do a
good job pulling his teeth and to give him a brief and easy recovery time. Chase immediately calmed down as soon as we
walked in the dentist office and everything went better than expected. He was quite the trooper and ended up being a
comedian with the laughing gas. Even the
dentist was laughing as he kept repeating, “I really like this stuff,” (referring
to the laughing gas). So, the lesson
learned from all of that was for Chase to always ask God to help him whenever
he’s feeling anxious. No prayer request
is too big or too small for our awesome God!
As a reward for being such a trooper, I took Chase bowling right after
his appointment.
In total, Chase has lost 6 teeth in less than a month from
the 3 teeth pulled by the dentist and 3 more lost on his own. The Tooth Fairy may have to take out a loan
at the rate this is going! Chase has no
top front teeth right now, but you can just barely see the buds of the
permanent ones starting to poke through his gum. While losing teeth has been Chase’s big news
over the past month, Gabe’s big news is that he’s FINALLY pooping in the
potty. There was one particular moment
when Gabe refused to go poop in the potty and he ended up doing it in his pants
after I had repeatedly asked him for the past hour if he would go to the
potty. I was so frustrated with his
stubbornness and the mess that he had made that I’m sure he could sense my
disappointment. It seemed like that was
finally the breaking point for him. The
very next day he voluntarily pooped in the potty all by himself and he’s been doing
it ever since then. He still has an
occasional accident, but we’re moving in the right direction. Praise the Lord!
Speaking of praising the Lord, there’s nothing cuter than
hearing a 3 year-old singing the praise song that goes, “Here I am to
Worship.” The part of the song that
goes, “You’re altogether lovely, altogether worthy…” is the best, because Gabe
says “wormy” instead of “worthy.”
Although I’ll be thankful for the day when he can fully annunciate words
on his own and not need speech classes anymore, I have to admit that it’s cute
to hear him say some words the wrong way.
Our almost 4 year-old can be very stubborn at times, but he’s still a
happy child with a big sense of humor.
He’s always dancing and singing.
We attended a wedding for our neighbor yesterday afternoon and he was
quite a hoot dancing along to the music.
As for cute/silly things said by Chase, you may have already
seen Tim’s Facebook post about their walk on the Windsor Castle
Park
Our God is so worthy (not “wormy”) of praise! We had a
wonderful Easter weekend with Tim’s parents in Hopewell .
It was too cold and damp outside for an Easter egg hunt on Easter
Sunday, but that didn’t stop us from having the hunt indoors. The kids always love their time with Grammie
and Papa Breeden. They also love being
with cousins from both sides of the family.
Even though they didn’t see cousins from the Breeden side on Easter
Sunday, Aunt Laurie took Chase, Gabe, and Bella to the circus as the boys’
birthday gift during their spring break.
That was Gabe’s first time at the circus and he seemed to really enjoy
seeing all of the animals and stunts.
We’ve had two soccer games so far this season. Although we
enjoy soccer, sometimes soccer games can feel like being at a circus too. However, we seem to have a great team this season
with good chemistry. Our team name this
season is “Riptide,” (of course we stuck with another nautical name). During our first game, we were up by a point
until the last quarter and then our team lost momentum and the other team
scored twice during the last few minutes.
We couldn’t have asked for our players to try any harder especially
since we were down three players the entire game and the other team had all
eleven players. I still think we won the
game in talent with the eight players we had in spite of what the final score
said. Plus, we got snowed on during that game; that goes back to that good ole Hampton
Roads weather I was referring to earlier.
Our second game was much better than the first with warmer weather and a
win for Team Riptide!
Hats off to Tim for sacrificing time to coach in spite of
his busy work schedule. Tim usually
works 11 or 12-hour days during the workweek and he often works weekends
too. He’s normally heading to Thursday
practices after a long day of work; and, he typically has already logged in
half a day of work before our Saturday morning games even begin (in other
words, he has already worked 2-3 hours or more before most of you are even out
of the bed). One thing is for sure; Tim
and I both log in plenty of hours of work, whether it’s at a machine shop, at
the shipyard, on the soccer field, or just right here in the comfort of our own
home (keeping up a home and raising a family is a full-time job in itself).
It doesn’t look like our schedule is slowing down any time
soon. Aside from work, the next few
weeks entail several soccer games, a baby shower for our neighbor, the boys’
birthday party here at our house, a Monster Truck show to attend, and hopefully
our first trip to Busch
Gardens
“Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know
nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.” 1 Corinthians 15:58
