Happy 1st Birthday Zeke!

I can't believe my baby boy is one today. I tell him every day to stop growing up, but he doesn't listen =(
He got his present today - giraffe made by mommy, but we will celebrate with family, friends and cake on Sunday.
Love ya sweet guy!

Happy 6th Birthday Genevieve!!!!

Can't believe my little girl is 6 today!




We celebrated by taking Genevieve & 3 friends, and her brothers to the county fair for the day. They had a great time riding rides, and more rides, and MORE rides! They enjoyed cotton candy, lemonade, popcorn, and cupcakes.
Thanks for celebrating with us Grace, Victoria & Ella!

Need to revamp this blog

I'm tired of this brown template that I got from blogger. I want one of those cool custom ones that everybody has nowadays (who says nowadays anymore?). But I don't even know where to begin. Do I need to know html? I have no clue when it comes to this stuff. Why do I continue to ask questions on this blog when nobody reads it? I don't know. It's kind of like my "Wilson" (from Castaway) I guess. And a picture, just because posts without pictures are blah.

Amy Gholson 1976

This was my 1 year photo. My mom just brought it out to me. She wanted to show me that although Luke has strong genes and the kids look like him, that I had a little something to do with it. Do you see any resemblance?

An old one

This is a picture of me and Dane at the Mommy & Me Tea his preschool puts on for Mother's Day. They bring us a rose and we watch a little slideshow in the chapel. It's very sweet. He is very sweet. My rough and tumble boy has such a tender side to him, and for that I am very grateful.

Best quote of the day

Genevieve:

"Can we have ice cream mondays tonight?"

(today is monday by the way)




.

P-Town babies

We decided to enjoy the beautiful weather this evening and walked downtown for dinner at "The Quesadilla Shop", as my kids call it (AKA High Tech Burrito). As we were sitting outside eating, another family walks up with a little guy that looked about Zeke's age. He was making the same noises and gestures that Zeke does too. The mom went in to order, and I asked the dad how old the baby was. He said that he was going to be one on the 27th of this month. I said "you're kidding, so is he" pointing to Zeke. Then he asked me where he was born, which I answered Kaiser Walnut Creek. He said, "no way, so was he" pointing to his baby. So then I had to ask what time. Their baby was born at like 4 in the morning, about 3 hours after Zeke. So then he says, I gotta tell my wife this. She comes out of the restaurant and he calls "Hey Aimee", and I interrupt and say "what is her name....Amy?????!!!", and he says "yah, what is your name?" - we are all laughing by this point - except the wife who hasn't heard our whole conversation.

On the corner of Main St, two Amy's (Amy & Aimee) who have both given birth on June 27, 2007 at Kaiser Walnut Creek, meet.

So here's a shout out to Eric, Aimee & Peyton, should you ever stumble across this blog!

The cherry on top was that during the conversation with this other family, I meet another mom of 10 week old twins. Guess what her name was..... =)



.

Amazing Conversation

All Genevieve's (almost 6 yrs old) deep conversations happen when we're in the car. That's when she asks how babies get here, how did we all get different last names if there was just Adam & Eve, who made God, etc. So today our conversation went like this.

G: Mom, this girl in The Wave (Sunday School) told me that her mom's friend had a baby and she isn't married.

Me: Yep, sometimes that happens. But it's not what God wants us to do. He wants us to be married when we have babies.

G: Well actually she was married, but then the dad moved away, so they aren't parents together anymore.

Me: Well, that happens a lot of times. And that's not what God wants us to do either. He wants us to be married forever.

G: Yah! Like you and dad are going to be together forever!

Me: That's right, forever and ever.

G: Well, not really forEVER and ever.

Me: Yes we will.

G: Well not really, because daddy is going to die before you.

Me: We don't know that.

G: Daddy is older than you, so he is going to die first. So you won't really be together forever. Except maybe in your hearts you will be.


Love it!





.

The Great Bambino

I got an interesting "compliment" the other day. I was told that Zeke is the spitting image of Babe Ruth. Me, being the baseball NONfanatic that I am, took the "compliment" in stride, as I really didn't know what Babe Ruth looked like. I told the observant guy that I hadn't heard that one before, but that I had been told he looked like John Goodman (remember my old post?). Then someone else pointed out that John Goodman played babe Ruth in the movie (What movie I don't know. As I said, I'm not a huge organized sports fan).

So what do you think? Great Bambino? Yay or nay?




I need to capture a pic of Zeke with his furrowed brow. But for now this will have to do.



.

The cutest baby EVER.

Zeke at 9 3/4 months.

The organic bandwagon

Buying organic is totally en vogue these days. I think buying organic is great. Less chemicals in our food is a good thing. Now my information on all things organic is a little out of date. But waaaaaay back in my college nutrition class this is how it was explained to me. At that point in time, the jury was still out on if pesticides were harmful to consumers. There was no scientific proof that the amount we consumed was harming our health. BUT, the farmers and their families were the ones suffering from being exposed to large amounts of airborn pesticides. It was them getting diagnosed with leukemia and other types of cancer at disproportional rates. So for the sake of the farmers, it was a good thing to buy organic and support organic farming. If their health is at risk, why don't more farmers go organic you ask? It costs more to farm organically. The government gives subsidies for pesticides, but does not give subsidies for alternative methods (whatever those may be - I don't know). So if we are willing to pay higher prices for organic products, farmers will be more willing to farm organically. So my initial push to buy organic was to save the farmers and their kids. Now it just seems like a smart thing to do. There are so many more cases of cancer, ADD, ADHD, autism, etc, that you have to wonder how much of it is affected by environmental changes in the last couple of decades. Who's to say whether it's pesticides, preservatives, immunizations, microwaves, or the fact that we live in a plastic society. So my thought is to eliminate as much of all that crap as possible. There have been so many new products and inventions that were supposed to make our lives simpler, easier, & just plain better. But some where along the way we lost sight of health. And Earth. Everything is disposable. Are our lives so much better since we don't have to wash things anymore?

Oh back to organic. My main reason for even starting this post. I think it's good that people buy organic. But it's getting annoying how it's becoming some kind of status symbol. Like when you ask for a recipe and the person lists "organic" in front of each item. It's not like organic food tastes better. And it's not like because it's organic it's healthy. An organic candy bar is still a candy bar, only no crop dusters flew over the cocoa beans. People act like organic food has some special ingredient. It doesn't. It's just got less chemicals that supposedly don't hurt us anyway. Remember, the jury is still out on this.

Now go eat your organic ice cream.

Family of 6 adopts twins from Sierra Leone

I've been following their blog for the last 2 weeks or so. I'm so touched by their open arms, and willingness to make their lives a little bit (or a lot) harder for the sake of giving two orphans a family.


http://jodyrlanders.com/

Abandoned blog

This blog died because I was having problems uploading pics to my computer. And even when I was able to, it was taking forever to upload them to blogger. And what's a blog without pictures? Finally when I got the photo thing worked out, so much time had passed that I didn't know where to begin again. I have this weird problem where if I can't do something right, I just don't do it all. Like I can't send out thank you cards for Dane's birthday until I get the Christmas ones out first. And those can't go out until the Dedication thank you's...which can't go out until Genevieve's birthday thank you's..... And before you know it you have 4 years of thank you cards piled up on the to-do list. (so if you were wondering where your thank you card was, it got stuck behind the "DANE'S BABY GIFT THANK YOU'S" !!!!!! - no joke). Isn't that lame? It really is a problem for me.

Anyhow, here's to resurrecting this blog AGAIN!

And because I AM my anal self, only some backwards procrastinating way, I'm going to try to catch up with some missing photos over the last few months. Because what would happen in this blog world if I just skipped March, April & May? Who knows, and we don't want to go there.

I'm also going to try to link to some other cool blogs that I find along the way. That has become my new past-time, reading blogs. Luke thinks I have an internet addiction, as I CAN whittle away a couple hours on the computer in the evenings- no problem. I was starting to think I had a problem too, until I thought of it in a new light. It's more like I am reading...a book, that just hasn't been published. Seriously. It's not all just about families & pictures of their adorable kids. I like those too, but what really intrigues me are the people with "stories". I've been following the journeys of some different families as they go through the international adoption process - African adoptions actually. It's like I am reading their memoirs, only in real time. And when I stumble across a new one, sometimes I have a years worth of blogging to catch me up - or lot's of "chapters" if you will. So I guess you could say I'm getting a lot of reading done lately.

And heres some photos to bring us through May ;)

Snow Day

We went up to Twain Harte with Luke's family over New Years Eve. The kids had a blast sledding. It fell into Zeke's naptime, so we just put him to bed and pulled him around. I felt like some sort of native. I want to say Eskimo, but now I hear that's not the PC term.

Oh Happy Day

Tonight on the way home from rock climbing Genevieve told Luke she wanted to ask God to come be in her heart. He told her they would pray together when they got home (as we were in separate cars and he wanted me to be there too).

It was so exciting to hear her explain to us what she wanted to do without us leading her at all. She really seems to get it. She told us she wanted God to be in her heart so she could be with him in Heaven. She also said that she wanted our whole family to go to heaven to be with him right now. The excitement on her face was precious. We talked about how God could be with all the time, and she could ask him to help her make good decisions, to which she replied "I know".

Oh happy day.....