Big John

Tonight as I rubbed lotion on Meg after her bath, she whiled away the time perusing The Jesus Storybook Bible. About a third of the way through, she turned to a picture of an immense, glowering man in armor towering over a small boy with a slingshot. Meg looked at me, then pointed to the large fella.

"Big John," she said.

"Big John? Tha... is that Big John?" I asked, just to clarify.

"Yeah."

"That's Goliath," I said casually, stifling my internal laugh riot.

"Yeah," said Meg.

Six Months Close-Ups

Matthew will be six months old before most people wake up tomorrow morning (2:44 a.m.). Last night Dave and I amused ourselves by juxtaposing a couple of pictures: Meg circa six months and Matthew circa six months. These were the best pictures I could find for this purpose in terms of head position and facial expression...

Compare and contrast for yourself...

WAM

There are lots of good nights in every month, starting with any night that my husband gets to be home with us. Then there are date nights, care group nights, hang-out-with-Lena nights, an occasional movie-and-homemade-popcorn night... and so on and so forth. But there's a relatively new night that is rapidly moving up the list of my monthly favorites, and that is WAM night.

WAM. It stands for Wilcoxes, Averills and Marcantonios, these being the three families who come together each third Sunday of the month. (Except for this month and last month, when scheduling conflicts prompted us to bump it back to second Sundays.) Brandon and Annie Averill are a wonderful, servant-hearted couple in our care group. We also know them from Abbey days, when Annie was one of the girls who succeeded me in our single girls' household and Brandon was... well, the guy who liked Annie. (He was also the guy we'd never met who showed up for our superbowl party... before all of the other guests. And the guy who brought us a pineapple fresh from Hawaii.) Kris and Jess Marcantonio, our dear, longtime friends, are no doubt already familiar to regular readers of this blog. We continue to love building our friendship with them.

Each month we WAMers rotate our meeting location and meal contributions. This month was a little bit special, as you can see in the picture above. Brandon and Annie brought their electric fondue pot, and so we had cheese fondue for an appetizer, make-your-own-salads for our entree and scrumptious chocolate fondue for dessert. In other words, we ate alllllll night long. Yum!

Dave and I are really enjoying spending regular time with these two couples. It not only helps us to establish care and accountability in our lives, but it's a great time to laugh together, recount stories from our shared histories and play with each other's kids. Speaking of which, Meg just adores her Uncle Brandon and Aunt Annie and Uncle Kris and Aunt Jess. This is due, in large part, to Brandon and Annie's willingness to play with Meg and lavish her with their full attention--something about them that I so appreciate. It's gotten so that when Brandon and Annie show up at our front door, Meg immediately drags them into the living room so that they can begin reading storybooks to her. You should have seen her the other night when, after dinner, Dave went to take her up to bed. Meg's happy little world was totally shattered when she realized she had to say goodnight to her "Kiss, Jess, Ban-dun and An-nee." Not to mention "Jack-Jack."

Sidenote:

This extremely blurry self-portrait was taken by Jessica the other night in what I can only assume was an attempt to broadcast her family's news via our blog. That's right... this is a picture of Jess' tummy, wherein a teeny new Marc is now growing. Jack is going to be a big brother and Meg and Matthew will soon have another playmate. Yeaaaaaaa! We are so excited for our friends!

Averills and Marcs, we love you guys and are so grateful to God for placing you in our lives and making you willing to invest in our family. That's real grace! We look forward to making more memories with you in the months to come. Fire up that grill, Kris and Jess... next month we're meeting at your place.

Faces

Having some fun with Matthew and the camera today...