Raise Up Holy Hands

It's really great when your kid can say their abc's or count to 20 or even 100, or learn songs from the Veggie Tracks and Sesame Street, Little Einsteins, or Mickey Mouse Club House. You feel proud and you know they can learn and you think their cute when they repeat them on command for an audience of family and friends. But there is no pride in your child like that of when from the back seat he sings words to songs like Raise Up Holy Hands, At the Cross, Majesty, and others. Colin is a born Worshiper. He gets it. He gets it better than most adults. He is an example to the adults at Peak Praise as we learn to humbly approach the Throne of God and raise our hands. It could also be that he just loves to see his Daddy sing and play. And he doesn't always get the words exactly right. For example he thought a chorus went like this: at the cross you beckon me, draw me gently to my knees, and I am lost for words, so lost in love, my wrist is broken, I need some mustard. ...Yeah, definite born worship leader because now when I hear that worship song I sing about mustard on my broken wrist. Who knew?

Super Colin

Spiderman? Who's he? I guess my son is over his Spiderman craze. He had a perfectly good, new, Spiderman outfit for Halloween all ready to go. Even tried it on, and on Halloween wore his Spiderman gloves around town. However, when the rubber met the road my son acted like he had never heard of Spiderman, wanted nothing to do with the guy, wasn't about to pretend to be him but instead was and became "Super Colin"! Where he got the idea, I'm not sure but be it from me to talk him out of such a concept. Wish I'd thought of it. The problem was, I didn't have a Super Colin costume. At the last minute remembered some Superman PJs that were given to him by a friend complete with cape. I pulled those out of the drawer, made a comment of how cool this was going to be and dressed him in his Super Colin costume. Poor Spidey. Oh well. Super Colin reigns.

Providence

The winds, The Santa Ana Winds, blew four days straight. During that time the wind spread record fires in the Southern California areas. Thousands and thousands of acres burned. Over 1500 hundred houses gone. A few injuries. Not sure of any deaths. Ridiculous smoke in the air. Made an interesting effect and turned the sun red. The winds also broke trees and limbs of trees everywhere like toothpicks. Huge trees brought to the ground. God's way of letting the trees prune themselves and separating the weak from the strong.

On Saturday night I heard the winds howling outside the window and I heard the tree moaning from the strain against the relentless wind. I wondered at that moment, "If the tree breaks and lands on the car, does the car insurance pay for the damage or does the home owners insurance pay for the damage?" The thought passed and then I thought, "I guess we'll jump off that bridge if we come to it." and made a mental note that maybe we should park on the street but it wasn't a very serious mental note, more like a pencil doodle.

The next morning, Sunday, JD and I were singing a duet at church. The pastor is doing a marriage series, there was a song that was perfect for the message and it was going to require a husband and wife to sing it. As you know, JD is "Mr. Pull-it-out-of-his-butt." Therefore, we, JD and I, became the couple to sing the song. It was a nice song and fun to do. Anyway, on this rare Sunday morning the whole family and both cars were at the church all morning. When we left at 8:00 am, the tree was just fine.

When we came home at 1:00 pm, we found the tree in two. As I sat across the street and looked at what the wind had done, what God had done, I repeated the phrase, "Rarely conspicuous but always involved in the details of your life." Only God could've orchestrated such timing and perfection of a tree breaking in half. It broke on a Sunday morning that no one was home when normally we would've been. It broke when no cars were in the driveway, when normally one would've been. It broke when no person was standing in the way, when we very well could've been. It broke away from the house when it could've very well broke the other way and caused great damage. It broke away from the neighbor's cars when it could've landed on top of two cars always in the driveway next door on a Sunday morning. It landed perfectly in the driveway and not in the street. It couldn't have happened any better than if someone were to plan it's pruning. And because of the damage everywhere in the city, a tree surgeon was not available until Tuesay. Therefore, we were forced to park in the street. Not in the picture is the pruning that continued and another very large limb broke the next night. Our cars, of course, were parked across the street. Remarkable. Truly.

This That and The Other

September has turned into a bit of a travel month for Cunninghams. Colin and I went to New Mexico for our annual salsa making trip. Mom's garden was extremely productive and she had tomatoes and chilis to give away. She had already made 22 cases (12 jars/case) before I got there. I made 6 more cases and also canned tomatoes, green chili, jalepinos, and peach butter. We had quite the pantry in the back of the car. I was a little worried going back across the border. The patrolman asked me if I had any fruit, plants w/ seeds or pets and I just smiled and lied through my teeth. I think he would've had to shoot me to get me to leave my goods there so I weighed the opions: die or lie....I lied. Colin reaccainted w/ my side of the family and had a good time. The weather was perfect. The trip to and from was long but uneventful. Colin was a real trooper and lasted as long as any normal 3 year old would trapped in a seat looking at not much pass by for 900 miles at a time. At either end we were glad to get there. Very glad to finally get home. We missed Daddy.

Then, a few days later I went to Chigago to meet up with some friends for a girl's weekend. That was a nice break from my reality and good to see friends from Dallas. Chigago also had perfect weather. See Jen Smith's blog for all the details.

This week JD's parents are in town and this weekend JD and I are going on a short missions trip to Ensenada, Mexico. I'll take pictures and write an entry for that when we get back.

This week also turned cool here. We've had the doors and windows open letting in the fresh air. It rained here for two days, gave everything a good drink and a good bath. It needed both desperately. It actually felt like fall in the air, which is good because fall is here, I know it is because football is playing on the TV again. I'll have to have any serious conversations with my husband in Feburary....just kidding. TiVo is a beautiful beautiful thing.

Things going well. The weather is perfect....come visit.

Spiderman 3

Colin has been telling me and anyone else who cared to or dared to ask, "My birthday is Spiderman". And before any of you question my ability to filter good from bad, my child has never even seen a Spiderman cartoon much less a movie. I don't know how he knows that Spiderman is cool, is a hero, or is something that you can plan a party around but he does. He's a boy. He knows. So, being a good mom I wasn't going to let down his expectation of a Spiderman birthday. However, you know that I'm also a closet "slacker mom" and I'm not going to rent a Spiderman actor for the party I don't care how close to Hollywood we are. What I did do was rent a Spiderman bounce house that included a slide. Needless to say, it took up the ENTIRE back yard. The cool thing about that was when it went away we said, "wow, look how big the yard is now." I digress. We bought the Spiderman plates, cups, napkins, etc. from Party City. Luckily, they were all 50% off. When I saw that, I thought my son was brilliant for wanting Spiderman. He did have a small moment of stupidity as he suddenly stopped when he saw Dora and said, "hey this is cool." I sternly said, "Keep moving buddy. Keep movin'." We also ordered the cake with the Spidy action figure and balloons to match the theme. I happend to also sneek a Spiderman action figure into the shopping basket at Target as a gift to top it all off. The action figure is still not wrapped and now, I don't think it's going to have the same "cool" factor it might've at the party. Oh well....slacker mom strikes again.

My son is three. Spiderman came to the party. All is well with the world.

Slip Sliddin'

We finally got grass covering the whole back yard and today JD and Colin took full advantage of the soft foundation to play in the sun. After reading the warnings, "not for children over 7" JD became a big kid and was a great teacher of the slip and slide methods and tricks. Colin slowly and cautiously tried more and more. In the end when the grass was extemely water logged Colin reluctantly agreed to turn it off until tomorrow. Lots of fun and entertainment.

All Shook Up

So we've experienced our first earthquake in the middle of the night, around 12:58AM on Wednesday. JD and I were shook awake out of a dead sleep. It took only a moment to register that our bed wasn't shaking because we were having "sleepy sex" but instead our house was shaking due to a 4.5 earthquake. It didn't last very long but was rather exciting for us Southwesterners who only are familiar with tornados, hurricanes, flash floods, and twisters. Colin, by the way, slept through the whole thing. The next morning we noticed that the pictures over our bed were slightly crooked but other than that there wasn't any evidence or damage.

In his excitment from the event, JD went to work talking about our first earthquake, he was reminded that earthquakes are not cool and once you've lived through something like the quake in '94, you don't really talk so much about it, instead you are grateful everything is still standing and move along. Also, we were told to take the pictures over our bed off the wall before they fall off the wall and bust our heads open. Duely noted. But....cool right? I guess we are real Californians now...or will be as soon as we get our Driver's Licenses anyway.

Still loving Disneyland. Getting all we can out of our season passes.

Hey Mom, the salt is STINGING my owweee!!!

Little note to all you people planning to visit the beach this summer...don't let your kid take a face plant, skin their knee and expect the next day at the beach to be a picnic. Salt stings we've learned. But also, after the initial pain and screaming, it also heals. Colin is just letting me know, as he's trying to play with his friend Lizzie, that he's not liking the stinging part so much. But I just love that my kid spends at least one day a week at the beach every week regardless of whatever "owee" we might be suffering - that includes me too.

Flew The Coop

Remember in my first update how I mentioned we have wildlife in the backyard. Well, our little family of birds, layed, hatched and raised 4 chicks to flying freedom. The picture is of the morning when Mamma Bird (in the middle) is giving encouragement to her babies and letting them know it's time to leave. It was a great moment to watch and fun to be the guardian angel over their little nest while they were here. Farewell. We'll miss the song.

Colin and the Princess

When Andi was planning her recent trip, I suggested that she bring Calleigh so that Colin would have a playmate and we could visit better. My suggestion worked out great. What I didn’t calculate was the amount of estrogen Colin would be exposed to and how very girly everything would become. Let’s just say that Colin experienced Disneyland in a way he will probably never do again – through the eyes of a four-year-old princess, a very serious princess who loves pink and loves Aurora (Sleeping Beauty for those of you who don’t know). Colin saw parts of Disneyland that we didn’t even know existed: Princess Land. He waited patiently for about 30 minutes for what I'm sure he expected to be a ride of sorts. However, to his suprise he rounded the corner to personally meet Aurora, Snow White, and Pocahontas. Oh the delight from Calleigh was palatable. The confusion from Colin, just as palatable. However, he quickly got into the scene greeted each princess with caution, wonder and, in general, refused to get too close. He then proceeded to hear Cinderella’s story from Cinderella herself, and colored at the craft table while we waited for the big event. Soon it was time for the Coronation Ball. Oh the colors and music were fabulous and Colin, against his better judgement, learned to bow and curtsy and dance. Shortly after that we watched the Parade of Dreams where all the beautiful princesses waved and smiled at him. He did all of this with the lovely Calleigh Bell as his side, holding his hand, leading him along with the greatest enthusiasm you can imagine. For Calleigh, it was a dream come true. For Colin, I think it was just a dream – good or bad – who knows? Truly, it was an experience none of us are soon to forget.