Jesus diapered all the babies

After bath time, Ava, Chad and I usually sing a couple of songs, read or tell stories, and pray before bedtime. Here are a couple of my favorite Ava bed time stories:

As I was singing songs with Ava, I asked her, "What song do you want to sing now?" Ava's response was, "Jesus put diapers on babies." Not sure about this one, so I asked her to sing it. Ava started to sing, "Jesus loves the little babies, all the babies of the world, every color dark and light, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little babies of the world." This song I am familiar with. We sing "babies" instead of "children," and "every color dark and light" instead of "red, and yellow, black and white," but still I was confused about the diapers. Then she proceeded to verse two. "Jesus diapered all the babies, all the babies of the world. . . " Somewhere along the way, I had sung, "Jesus died for all the babies. . ." Ava has no frame of reference for the word "died," but she certainly knows a diaper, so in her mind, Jesus diapered all those babies. He must be one tired guy!

Last week, we were reading from Ava's picture Bible, and we were on the story of Abraham (which in her version is a very short poem about Abraham leaving his homeland to be father of all. It makes no mention of Sarah or Isaac.) Ava pointed to the picture of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac to the left and said, "Who's that?" I told her, "This is Abraham and his baby Isaac and this is Isaac's mommy." Her response was, "Sarah!" Stunned, I looked at Chad, who had a similar expression on his face. Neither of us could remember the last time we had read this particular story and pointed out and named Sarah. It was sweet to know that she is soaking in so much of God's word, and a little bit scary to think how much of everything else she is soaking in too! She copies everything we do and say!

Ava sees Jesus in everything! Any photo of a man with unfamiliar attire and some facial hair is Jesus to her. Recently she has seen Jesus in a drawing of Shakespeare, an American Indian carved into wood at a local museum, and a photo of a man from the middle east. I'm glad that she's got Jesus on her radar!

4th of July Fun!

This is Ava watching the fireworks at Nelson Park. She made this face almost the whole night. The lights and sounds surprised and excited her every time! I loved experiencing fireworks for the first time again through her eyes!

Watching fireworks with Daddy!

Loaded this picture before I saw it up close and realized

how rough I look in it with my eyes half shut. Don't know

how to delete one without losing them all. Oh well.

We spent the 4th of July weekend with the Thompson side of the family in Brownwood. We ate great food, played games, and hung out on the lake all weekend! In this picture, Ava fell asleep on the boat ride. You can barely see her under her life jacket.

Pretending to drive the boat!

Can you believe how blond she's getting?

Swinging with Great-Grandpa at the Lake. Ava stood by the door all weekend talking whoever walked by into taking her outside to either "Swing high,""Go see the lake," "See the dog," or "Go in the boat."

That's me and Ava tubing (very slowly) behind the boat. She said,

"Whee. I like it!" as soon as she realized we were moving.

Ava and me floating in the lake!

This is a cousins dog paddling contest. Jenny and Joe won with an impressive 1 hour and 20 minutes. I was out after a long and painstaking 12 minutes. I'm obviously not a swimmer. . .

P.S. Dad is safely back from Israel, and recovering from jet lag. He has great stories and cool souveniers-- I got a 4,000 year old pottery shard from the dig and a tooth dug up from an animal that was probably sacrificied around the same time! Thanks for your prayers for his safe return.