The Bigger House at Gallatin-burg

Three years ago, my dad's side of the family rented a big house in Gatlinburg and gathered to celebrate my Grandmother's 80th birthday. Travis and I planned a trivia game "about Grandma and her life" with one of the final bonus questions being, "How many great-grandchildren does Grandma have?" and only my savvy siblings figured out that we were announcing our pregnancy with Pax. This year, we gathered to celebrate Grandma again, with 4 more great-grandkids in tow than last time. I can hardly remember our family without these little ones with us!

When I told Paxon that we were going on a trip, he of course wanted all the details. He was so excited about all of us staying in a BIG house together and referred to the location of the big house as "Gallatin-burg" all weekend. 27 people in one house for 4 days could spell disaster in some families, but I'd say as for me and my house, we had a great time!

Who's excited about the mountains?

Posing with the family

How cute are these guys?

Have any of you played Wii Dance? I'm not much on video games, but this one is totally worth the wasted time. Note that the Girten blood line is participating...while our spouses giggle about being related only by marriage.

Gone, but not forgotten

I haven't forgotten about this blog. Just have had a couple of busy weeks with our project. It's a very different kind of interesting than my usual funny stories about Pax and our family, but feel free to check out what we've been up to the last week or so on our other blog: www.fivetofivethousand.wordpress.com.

I promise to come back here soon with pictures and funny stories... we've got a ton to share!

Monkeys

Paxon has been a monkey lately. As in monkey see, monkey do.

The other night I was brushing my teeth while he "brushed" his in his bathroom. I noticed him watching me, then tilting his head to the side at a funny angle. Then, I caught my reflection in the mirror and realized I was doing the same thing.

We've had an influx of ladybugs on the south side of our house. This is a story for another time, but if you have suggestions to get rid of them, I'm all ears. I've been sucking them up with the vacuum. Pax has been very into this process and has been helping me hunt them. Instead of dragging the vacuum in and out of the laundry room closet each time I need it (which is 40x daily), I just stashed in temporarily behind the curtain in the kitchen. When I got home on Sunday afternoon, Pax was napping, but I found his "vacuum" stashed on the other side of the window behind the curtain.

Today, Travis was working on his bike. He flipped his bike over onto the seat and handlebars and got out his box of wrenches. Pax wanted his "bike" out too, so we opened the garage door and got his tricycle out. A moment later, I heard a crash and saw that Pax had intentionally pushed his bike over in order to work on it like daddy. He even had to go inside to get his tools "yike Daddy."

Five to Five Thousand

After reading the book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years by Donald Miller, our minister has been talking about the story we write with our lives. Travis and I both happen to have read this book at the beginning of this year, and so it has spurred some conversation in our home about what kind of story we want to tell in the things we choose to DO in our lives. It's caused us to reflect on the sort of boring story we live through every day. Not to say that our life together does not have any meaning or purpose, but many days, we are going from alarm clock (or Paxon waking us up) to bedtime with the purpose of getting our work done, our house clean, our bills paid, our meals made, the laundry folded, some errands run, some TV watched, and on and on...We are existing within the confines of our daily responsibilities and habits. We've been discussing ways that we can write a better story for ourselves and for our family. What do we want Pax to see us doing? Are we really living intentionally?

Not to say that we don't find a lot of ways to love each other, laugh together, and do good things together, but if I'm honest, I see some room to make a much more interesting and meaningful story with my life and our life as a family. So Travis and I have been discussing this lately. Enter the Holy Spirit.

Last Sunday, our church gave out $25,000 in increments of $5, $10, and $20 and challenged us to think of ways we can use whatever we were given to write a better story for our lives. The only catch is that we couldn't give it back to our church in any way. We had 3 days to think/pray about it and then 2 weeks to do something with it.

We had some great ideas immediately, but decided to follow what was asked and think/pray for 3 days. Glad we did. We decided we wanted to build a well in Africa with an organization called Just Hope International-- this was not my original idea of what to do with it, but quickly became apparent that it was what we were supposed to try. It's well known that most diseases in the world come from a lack of access to clean drinking water, an issue that could easily be solved, and is being solved by different organizations who dig wells in third world countries. Typically, the cost of digging one of these wells is around $5,000. The problem is that Travis and I got $5 in our envelope. In order to build a well, we'd need to grow that money x1000. And I HATE asking for money... for any reason...My detailed oriented mind is telling me this is crazy... $5 to $5000 in two weeks... how is this going to happen? Still, the message was clear. BUILD A WELL. So, we are trying something crazy.

Within a few hours, we had put together a facebook group and a blog. We had an email address and people are JOINING US in this story. It's crazy and exciting. I am not sure what will come of this, maybe we'll just get a couple of hundred dollars, maybe we will build a well in 2 weeks, but even thinking about this sure beats folding laundry while catching up on the DVR.

Happy Valentine's Day

And give you... doughnuts!

We visited Krispy Kreme for the first time with Paxon recently, and thus, the doughnut has made it's grand debut in our family life. Mmmmm. Now, I prefer more doughy, bready style doughnuts, but Krispy Kreme has a great thing going, plus you can watch as the doughnuts are made in mass. It's an interesting process and the sweet goodness of the end result was not wasted on Paxon.

We end our night time routine with bedtime prayers and a blessing over Pax. As we prayed with him a few nights ago, we paused as we normally do at the end of our prayer to let him fill in the last word...

May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you...

Pax: (normally filling in "peace" here, instead enthusiastically shouted) DOUGHNUTS!

A few days later, this trend was still going on. We decided to continue on with the prayer without pause to the word "peace" and eliminate the opportunity for "doughnuts" to enter our nightly conversations with God. Pax's reaction?

Pax: I no yike (like) peace. I yike DOUGHNUTS!

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it SNOW!

We enjoyed a rare real snow of 4 to 6 inches here. Because snow here is so rare, it almost complete stops the hustle and bustle of daily life. We've loved being snowed in at home and relaxing the last few days. Pax wasn't crazy about walking in the snow, but he did really like our snowman.