The newest addition to the manhood of the berrytribe is a nut job.

Yep…. he’s a goof. He’s smart as whip. But he’s a total goof. Here’s my proof, God help us 🙂

• “There are ten.” This is the answer to any question about how many of an item there are that is beyond what he can count. It is the perfect substitute for the word “lots”. There are “ten.” When you see planet earth showing you thousands of bugs and he screams, “There are ten”…. it’s funny.
• DEEP SCRATCHY voice. When he really wants to tell you something intense, he lowers his chin and says it in this deep scratchy voice. It’s super funny. When he says, “There are ten” in this voice, it’s even funnier.
• Dancing. The kid dances like a crazy goon and shakes the tiniest buns on the planet in the funniest of formations.
• Running. He is not so fast. Like he is ridiculously slow and he runs all hunched over. We did not adopt a future million dollar athlete. He is a goofy runner.
• Laugh. He laughs funny. I don’t know how to type it. It’s like Haaaahaaaahooo haaaaa heeee hooo hhaaaaa. Or something like that. But it makes me laugh just thinking about it.
• He is deathly afraid of the dog. Watching him begin to not get deathly afraid of the dog by showing you how the dog yawns, licks, or scratches by demonstration is super duper funny. Good news, he no longer jumps on the table or screams when the dog comes around and the other day he actually touched him. Oh.. and the revelation that the dog did not eat people was a REVELATION.
• “Zues eat food in bowl. He no eat Becky. He no eat Billy.”
• “Yes. that is right. Zeus does not eat people.”
• “Zeus no eat Billy.”
• “Right.” (glad you discovered we did not go 20,000 miles to get you to feed you to the dog)
• He can pitch a fit with the best of them when things don’t go his way if he forgets this does not get him jack squat in the berry house. This is not funny. But it is so overrided by the other funny stuff, that he is still super duper funny.

here’s the funny man at work:

• Dancing at the pool:

• Showing me his first pair of shoes and socks he’s ever owned:

• overlooking the Nile with his big ol grin

• Dancing to the beat:

I have long wondered what it would be like to have a daughter. After 3 good old fashion births that produced boys, my wife was convinced that there were evidently no girls swimming in the race at all. So we formed a pact and agreed that if a girl was coming to the berrytribe, she’d have to come via adoption.

So we waited for the right timing. For years it turns out. And when we went to Uganda to get a daughter and another son (who we had no idea God had in mind too), I was nervous and excited. I’m so thankful we did though, on both accounts.

As a father of a 5 year old little girl right out of the starting gate, here’s what I’m learning so far:

• The idea that boys are made of snails and puppy dog tails might be true. However my girl is not made of sugar and spice. She is made of flowers and clothes.
• Everything made for little girls that we own has either a flower or a cupcake on it. Sometimes a cupcake with a flower.
• Hair is a big deal. Putting things in your hair is also a big deal.
• When you go to bed, you should get lots of furry friends, all your dolls, and then you cuddle. This is why in high school, 12 of them will sleep in one queen size bed if you let them.
• She has a HUGE conscience and is not a fan of being in trouble. She learns fast.
• She loves tomatoes.
• She LOVES flowers.
• She HATES being messy or dirty.
• The little brown cabbage patch doll she was given by her brothers must get up and get dressed like she does. When headed to bed, she also needs a change of clothes and ALL the doo-dads out of her hair too. This not negotiable.
• When she says, “I want kiss you” it is may be the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.
• I love my boys. I’m gonna train them to be men of character as best I can. Then I’m gonna train them to circle up and fend off boys who don’t make the cut from getting anywhere near the only little girl around here.

oh.. and by request, here’s my favorite 3 pics for you amy 🙂

If you are one of the 4 youth pastors that read my blog, you need to know the joys of Coroplast.

For over a decade I’ve been doing some kinda set design…. some elaborate. Some simple. But almost always it has involved making something out of cardboard and then painting it.

Well, for the last 4 years I have not touched a piece of cardboard. Thanks to the beautiful and wonderous gift the sign industry calls coroplast- which is basically a plastic cardboard of sorts.

It’s about 10 bucks per 4 x 8 sheet, it comes in a grip of colors… even one that is clear so that you can backlight it if you want. You can cut it with a basic utility knife or a table saw or whatever your heart desires. We have used it for everything from life size silhouettes to cutting out letters to basic decor changes.

It pretty much rocks.

In our current series, I used the table saw for the first time to cut a black sheet into strips and then the students hot glued them onto a white sheet and we hung them from the ceiling to give the walls some pop for fun.

You just can’t be the transformational possibilities of coroplast. You can even get it in at least two thicknesses, one that is about a 1/4 inch thick that we use most often and occasionally we use the thicker one that is about twice that thick.

When I took our kids to the children’s museum, they had made an entire igloo and some trees out of it. You gotta love coroplast. The sign industry already does. You should get some and have some fun. I buy mine through our local plastics dealer, but you can also get it from wholesale sign supply shops.

We have basically been electronic free with Becky and Billy.  No wii, no tv, no movies, really not much at all.  Our other 3 boys have done great with it and it’s helped us get to know Becky and Billy as a family and play with them and let them get acclimated to our culture without being baptized into commercials and so much more too.

Truth be told, it’s probably good for all of us. 

However the one thing that has become somewhat of a tradition already in spite of this technology free world is sitting around our front room letting everyone be mesmerized by the crazy amazing video footage of plants and animals of Planet Earth.  It’s so fun to hear them announce names of things they know, call out colors, and ask questions about everything.  My boys and I already loved planet earth, but now we are indoctrinating the twins.  So far, we’ve made it through almost one of the 5 disks in our 20 minute stints before bed.  So fun.

Here’s the crew pondering the craziness of fungus’ that kill bugs before heading to bed.

When in Uganda, we bought 4 paintings for our home from 3 different artists.  The local artists paint them on canvas and then -so you can get them home easily- they pull the painting off the frame and roll it up in a cardboard tube.  You then take it home, rebuild the frame, stretch the art again, staple it, and hang it in your house. 

Today I spent a few hours and cleaned up my garage a little and then made the frames for all 4 paintings and hung them.  Here’s the end product.

TWO FROM ANGELO:

This one for our front room.  It was originally 2 big giraffe’s, but we changed our mind and got this one instead at the last minute.  It is the only one that didn’t ship well.  Not sure what happened… if it was rolled wrong or too soon after painting it or what, but if you look close it has quite a few cracks and stuff in it.  Oh well.  It’s still kinda fun to have and from a distance, it looks great.

This one for our kids “play room”.  It was originally for Becky’s room, but we changed our minds.

ONE FROM GERALD for Jake and Billy’s Room. 

ONE FROM JAFFER for Becky’s Room… with my self portrait as a bonus 🙂

 

 

We also hung a name plate that Auntie Erica sent us for Becky’s room.  She loves it.