Easter Egg Hunt 2011

A family in our church organizes a large Easter egg hunt every year. There are over 3,000 eggs that the college students stuff with candy the night before. It was a beautiful day. The first day this year where there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the temperature hit 70.

Here is Jaron and Josiah putting eggs into the basket.

Daddy and the boys with their loot.

Here is mommy helping get the candy out of the eggs afterwards. Josiah found one of the eggs that had paper in it, so he won a prize. They didn't have anymore boy prizes left, so he got to pick four toys from the Bracht boys' room. He picked out two toy planes, a motorcycle, and little skateboard. That was his favorite part of the day.

The whole family together.

Papa Darrell and Grandma Nancy's visit

I know it has been a long time since I last blogged. I lost my camera and found it just the other day. I am going to try to catch everyone up on what has been going on.

In February Auntie Pam came to visit. I can't find any pictures of the trip (I think they are on the camera Jason has a work) but it was nice visit. The boys warmed right up to her. We kept the visit pretty low key since Pam is pregnant and we didn't want to wear her out, but we did take a trip over to Newport to the Hatfield Marine Science Center. It is free and very well done. The kids had fun watch the octopus swim around and touching the animals in the tide pools.

A week after Pam came to visit, my parents came to keep me company while Jason was in San Fransisco for the spring break mission trip. Below are some pictures of their visit. I am having trouble with loading pictures today so the pictures are out of order and some turned the wrong way. Hope you enjoy them anyway.

On my parents' last day here we went to the Gilbert House in Salem. It is a village of houses that have fun activities for the kids. They had a 0-2 section and Jaron enjoyed practicing going up and down the stairs.

We went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory one of the days. Here is mom and the boys in the Mini Loaf Van.

Here is another picture from the Gilbert House. They had a room dedicated to bubbles.

Dad brought several projects for the boys to work on. Here they are making an airplane. Unfortunately a couple of the planes never made it off the production line due to "Jaron the Destroyer". (That is what Josiah calls him as Jaron enjoys tearing things a part.) But one plane made it and Josiah enjoyed taking it outside to fly it.

Snow Day

We have been getting snow flurries off and on this winter, but nothing ever stuck. Finally Wednesday night it snowed about 3 inches. So Thursday morning while the babies were still sleeping, I woke Josiah up and we went to play in the snow before it melted. We had a snowball fight and made a snowman

Josiah has been asking to make a snowman all winter. Here is his friend "Frosty." Frosty melted before the day was out.

Later that day I took Jaron out, too. Here they are on a sled ride.

Jaron did not want his picture taken. I finally got this picture as he was moving his head. Jaron liked the snow, but he did not like his snow suit. He can't walk in his snow suit and that really frustrated him.

He finally got frustrated enough with me trying to take his picture that he crawled away.

Josiah my big helper

It can get crazy around the house when you have two babies that our a year old or younger. I don't know what I would do without Josiah. He loves babies and he usually takes care of one of them while I am attending to the other. However, when he just playing with Jaron, Josiah is not as giving. He likes to take whatever toy Jaron is playing with and he likes to try to wrestle him (but Jaron likes to take Josiah's toys so they both need to learn).

We are continuing to do school time at least 3 days a week. He loves school time. He loves doing the worksheets. He likes to write but doesn’t really like to color (doesn’t hae the patience for it). I have been focusing on writing his letters and number recognition. He is able to recognize most of the numbers 1-9. We've practice letter writing A-H. We continue to do that but I want to add learning about important character traits along with academic stuff. I know Josiah will learn his numbers and letters at school, but they won't teach him how to be encouraging and hard-working. That is not the teachers' responsibility. So I am working on how I am going to introduce those ideas.

During devotional time at home he is doing the song leading. His favorite song is still "Awesome God." He also leads "Firm Foundation," "Ain't No Rock," and "This Little Light of Mine." I am memorizing the book of Colossians as my spiritual goal for the year. He is memorizing parts with me. He has Colossians 3:1 memorized and then he has most of Colossians chapter 1 memorized as well since he listens to me recite it. He is very smart kid.

Below are some fun pictures of Josiah.

Sailing in a boat

Josiah tells people that Jaron is mommy's baby and Khalil is his.

Josiah Kung Fu Fighting

Helping make Christmas ornaments

What's new with Jaron

Since I last posted about Jaron he has hit a huge growth spurt. He is finally healthy after several months of being sick off and on. I measured him the other day and he is 30.5 inches long. That is two inches longer in 1.5 months. I guess he is making up for not growing for 6 months. He also eats a crazy amount of food. For instance, his breakfast consists of 8 oz of milk with 3/4 of cup of baby oatmeal in it. It literally fills up a whole adult size bowl.

He is almost walking on his own. He walks by himself between furniture and between people but hasn't decided to make walking a full time thing. It takes a lot of courage to break and walk on your own when you have a 3 year old brother that could come along and topple you over at any moment (which happens a lot).

As usual he always has a smile on his face. He is a very happy little guy despite the molars he is getting. He is starting to become more social. He likes to play peek-a-boo with people. He bows his head so he can't see you than brings it back up with a big smile on his face. He has three words: more, ball, and book.

Below is a video of Jaron.

Mommy can you teach me?

This post is a little different than what I normally write, but it shows the heart of Josiah and I wanted to share that with his family.

Being a Christian in American society is hard. Not hard in the sense that the life that God calls us to is full of burdens, but that there are so many distractions that get in the way. We have a busy schedule and it is busy watching my two kids and babysitting a third. And also want a clean house. And I also want to exercise. So I have gotten lazy and have not sought what after God and His amazing plans for my life. I just coast, going from task to task, day to day and try not to think about it. But the truth is the Holy Spirit just didn't all me do that for very long.


I felt the tugging a month ago. I ignored it for a couple of weeks but finally I called a friend and she helped me out. But I was still struggling with how this was going to work with Jason's busy schedule and me taking care of 3 kids. Ideas started coming to my head. More ideas were "randomly" showing up in other places. But I wasn't committing to anything. Just flopping around. Then one day as I was reading one article on scripture memorization, my sweet three year old comes up to me, snuggles in and looks up at with me with his beauitful innocent eyes and says, "Mommy, I want to be like Jesus. Can you show me how?"

The challenge had been issued. It was as if God himself said, "Are you going to follow or not?" The tears began to fall and I choked out, "I will try little man. I will try." His response, "Thank you, mommy." That was all God was asking, was for me to start trying.

So this past week Josiah and I have been working together to be like Jesus. We made muffins for the neighbors. I am memorizing Colossians and he is memorizing certain passages with me. He listens as I recite the words through out the day. We made prayer cards that we hung around the house to help us make the day full of prayer instead of just 15 minutes in the morning. Whenever I see a prayer card I pray aloud and he then takes his chair over to the card and "reads" the prayer also. I have a friend who is in the hospital and he decided to make her a card to cheer her up. Together we are journeying to discover what it means to be like Jesus.

And through all of this we sing together:

May our steps be worship, may our thoughts be praise
May our words bring honor to your name

Pictures

I was going to give details about what has been going on in our family lately but blogger is not being cooperative this evening and it is taking forever to get stuff on here and it is late. So here are some random pictures from the last month.

The three boys hanging out.

Josiah reading Jaron a book.

Josiah painting Christmas ornaments.

Josiah riding his big boy bike.

Brothers playing together.