Photo Mural

Working on a little project for the house.

We like the television show "Lie to Me" where the main character has built his business on being able to get to the truth of a situation by looking solely at the facial expressions of the people he is interrogating.

In the show, as you walk into his office, there is a huge wall full of black & white photos of various different people, some famous, some ordinary.

We thought it was a really neat concept and got the idea to do something similar with our family.

Each of the pictures below (48 of them total) will be individually framed and hung in a giant mural in our family room:

Lapsus Linguae

It was one of those "From the mouths of babes" moments.  If only he understood just how funny it was...

So, we were driving around Saturday and we got to talking about about the make-up of our family.  How old we were.  The difference in our ages. 

This inevitably led to us talking about how old we were at certain critical moments in our lives.  Sean immediately pointed out that when Mike was 16, Kerri was only 8.  Yuck!

So Mike brings up that on the day he and Kerri were married, Sean was just over one year old.

Zach says "So, when you were at the funeral..."

The Learning Curve

There are some things you you can't prepare yourself for. 

There are situations you just have to deal with the best you can on the spot.  There are things that make you realize your life will never be the same again.  There are things you miss, and there are things you never thought you'd appreciate.

Taking care of a child is the biggest one.

We know we're new to all this, but here are eleven things we've learned very quickly, in no particular order:

• Half a Pizza Hut P'Zone and a salad does not a meal make for a 9-yr-old.
• "Sharing" is a relative term.
• Schedule?  What schedule??
• Laundry: it's not just for the weekend anymore!
• Whoever invented OxyClean and Shout deserve a Nobel Prize.
• 7:00 am IS sleeping in.
• The desire to spend someone else's money is inversely proportional to the amount of money that someone else actually has to spend.
• We now know why people wipe off the chairs after a meal.
• Packing for a trip out of town is a whole new experience.
• Mike thought he was done with homework.
• Small children are made entirely of elbows, knees and other assorted sharp objects.  Especially at 2:00 in the morning after a bad dream.

[On a side note, Mike has also learned to be careful what radio station you have on in the car.  Rihanna's singing "Whips and Chains Excite Me" can lead to an interesting conversation...]

Sean is hard-headed!

And we're glad he's hard-headed - we made our second trip to the Emergency Room on last Saturday.

We were invited to a friend's home to watch the Alabama football game.  After the game their two boys and ours were going to make use of their pool.

Well, they also have a trampoline and so all four of the boys climbed aboard and set about having a great time.  They had been on and off the trampoline several different times during and after the game with no problems - until the last time.

Literally as Mike was taking a breath to tell them it was time to go we saw Sean go dashing into the house with the other three on his heels.  As we get to the door one of the boys announces that "Sean split his head open!"  Yikes!!

Turns out there was a basketball hoop nearby and the last time he bounced up, he came in under the hoop and smacked into one of the hooks that hold the net in place.

After evaluating the situation we saw that he did indeed have a bloody spot on the top of his head:

So, we dropped Kerri off at home and Mike took both the boys to the ER (Zach wanted an adventure).

When we were called back to triage the nurse asked if Sean had been in recently - she recognized him from his first visit four weeks earlier!  Mike informed Sean that being on a first-name basis with the nurse at the ER was NOT a good thing.

The best part for Mike was when they began poking around the boo-boo, Sean quickly asked him to come over so he could squeeze his hand so it wouldn't hurt as much.  Sean told Mike that he was going to squeeze hard enough so he would know how bad it was hurting, so that he could feel the same thing.  LOL!!

The next stop was the treatment area for an evaluation of possible stitches, staples and a concussion.  After everything was cleaned up it turned out that he did not split his scalp, it only took a shallow gouge.  (So, yes, Sean scalped himself!)

Well, by the next day of this adventure Sean's scalp had healed incredibly quickly:

And by Monday:

We are thankful to God that Sean had only a minor injury and that he heals so quickly.  It seems he is our little crash-test dummy: he has cuts and bruises all over and nothing seems to slow him down.

On a lighter note, we want you all to know how very blessed we feel for all the prayers you send our way every day.  There are so many little things about this process that defy earthly expectation and, as a good friend of ours said, the only way to "explain it is through prayers and the power of the Holy Spirit."

Praise God!