El Paso on September 15

 We had a really good Saturday with NO school and lots of free time today to play and enjoy each other. The children were up even earlier than they are on school days ... no sleeping in for this crew! They were up and ready to go, practically as soon as the sun crested the horizon around here. I love Matthew's happy smile in this picture.

 We kind of celebrated a very late 10th birthday for Emma this morning ... well, what I mean by that is, she finally got to open the present I shipped to her a few weeks ago. She was sweet enough to wait for my arrival before opening it. And she was hoping for exactly this gift! 

 This is the Friends series that LEGO has developed, mostly for girls I think. This is the veterinary clinic. For the last year or so, if Emma is asked what kind of job she would like as an adult, she says she would like to study to become a veterinarian. She was so excited to put this together ... so we got out the plans and built the whole clinic together this morning, which was very fun to do!

 I brought baby Kaity her very own little stuffed lamb because all of the kiddos have their own personal lamb to remind them that they are sheep and Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Now Kaity has one too, and we can tell her all about how Jesus will take care of her throughout her life as she learns to receive the love He freely offers to her.

 I also picked up some sidewalk chalk and 3-D glasses to play with. We had a lot of fun drawing cool pictures outside and viewing them through the 3-D glasses to see what would happen. We found that most of the dark colored chalk receded while the lighter colors kind of jumped out at you.

 This is baby Kaity's tiny hand wrapped around Jesse's thumb ... what a contrast in size! Sadly, Kaity still struggled today with kind of a croupy cough and sniffles.

 Christopher drawing some of his "blades" ...

And Matthew enjoyed his 3-D glasses too, running all over the yard looking for stuff that would jump out at him ... 

It was a little bit warmer today (thankfully), so we spent a nice time together outside. 

 This is the cool shark Emma designed ...

And the boys, wearing their 3-D glasses ... 

 Little Kaity this afternoon, one of the rare times she was awake and NOT eating or fussing because of her cold. She is a beautiful little one, isn't she?

 I taught Emma and Christopher how to play "WAR" today. We played quite a few games together and really had fun with this, mostly because it's a fast-moving game I think.

I am too tired tonight to do much of a narration. We had a very nice day, but most of it was just doing everyday stuff, hanging out together, and just enjoying life and I feel really thankful that we could do that today.