Self-Portraits

Caleb's 1st "Self-Portrait"...
(9-3-2010)


And, his 2nd...
(9-3-2010)

Caleb's 3rd Birthday Party

We had a "golf" party for Caleb today. He, along with some of his little friends (and their mommas) started off the party with a round on the mini-putt course near our house. While we definitely did not follow the typical mini-putt rules while we played, everyone seemed to have fun!





After golfing, we came back to our house for lunch. I am not going to lie, I had a great time with the whole golf theme. I went a tad crazy with little golf flags and tees, and had a lot of fun thinking of names for all of the food that incorporated (at least somewhat!) a golf term. Caleb seemed to love that golf was everywhere, and that is what matters, right? =)

"Up to Par" PB&J


"Golf Club" Sandwiches


"Chip in" Chips


"Bogey"Bites


"Hole in One" Fruit Salad


"Tee Time" Treats


After lunch, and after the kids played for a bit, we had cake. Again, Caleb loved his golf cake, but was a little bit concerned about where the actual hole was, and why there were no golf clubs on the cake...I'll have to remember that for next time. And, in true Caleb fashion, he was super duper excited to eat the cake, but only actually ate a few bites!


(I did make this, but I can't take credit for the idea, which I got from parenting.com...thanks to my good friend, Lisa, for sending me the link months ago!)

Waiting patiently to blow out the candles...


Watching his friends sing...


He obviously takes this part very seriously...


After cake, we opened some presents. This was a little chaotic, and I am not sure how to better streamline the present-opening process for a 3 year old. Fortunately, Caleb would "relax" in between gifts (with some reminders) so that he could say "thank you" to the gift-giver. While it was a whirlwind of a process, it was wonderful to see my little guy so excited!





Before the kids went home, they were given a golf visor and some candy.


Here's Meredith showing off her visor...


Thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate our special boy's special day!

Photos with Elise

A few weeks ago, we had Elise take photos of our family. (Caleb - 3 years, Meredith - 1 year)

If you would like to take a look, you can go to her website, which is:

http://www.elisewphotography.com/

After you enter the site, click on the "Clients" tab, and then type in this password:

Johnson Family

Thank you Elise, you did a wonderful job!

Wordless Wednesday: Sweet Girl

Christian Children's Books

I was recently searching online for some good children's book ideas to read to the kids along with the Fall craft projects I have in mind to do with them (well, mostly with Caleb at this point) over these next months.

And, while it is very easy to find books about Fall, Autumn, pumpkins, Thanksgiving, leaves, etc...I was really hoping I could find some books on these topics that were written by Christian authors, with a Christian focus.

In my search, I came across this blog that so far, I am loving! It is called Christian Children's Book Review....written "for moms, by moms". Here's a quick tidbit from their profile:

We're Christian moms who not only love books, but love helping our kids learn to love books - and the Lord. This blog is our ministry, started because we couldn't find a comprehensive website of Christian children's picture book reviews. We hope you find it useful.

You can search for books by topic (ie: Autumn), by age (ie: preschoolers), or by author (ie: Max Lucado).

Each new Book Review gives you a picture and description of the book, along with the reviewer's likes/dislikes of the book, an overall rating, age appeal designation, and publisher information. And, while most books they review are Christian books, they do have some reviews for more "mainstream" books as well.

While I haven't spent a lot of time looking around the site yet, I am really liking what I see. I am not sure if it is the teacher in me, or the mother in me, or just the meghan in me, but I could spend all day looking through a site like this, concocting "lesson plans" in my head! I am really excited to use this as a resource from this point on. While there may be other (better?) such sites out there, I have not found anything quite like it. If you know of any other similar sites, please share...feed my habit! =)

Click here for their website:

Christian Children's Book Review

Labels

I recently attributed "labels" to each of my BLOG posts, which is just a way of categorizing them, for anyone who cares to read through posts of a similar nature.

So, if you look in my sidebar (to the right), you'll notice various labels...if you click on one of them, you'll be linked to that entire group of posts.

For example, if you just can't get enough of "Meredith", click on that label. =) Or, if you are really bored and want to read my posts on "pregnancy", click there!

Some are pretty general (ie: "kids"), where as some will be more specific (ie: "Monkey Joe's")!