we think this one is really fun

Roll Tide. He is well on his way.

He now takes pictures on the SLR.

Loves to build incredible train tracks and then ask for hours on end "Will you run the trains with me?"

Every night we wake him up before we go to sleep to go potty one more time. He is so out of it every single time. This was at Mimi's house. I sent him to walk back to his bed and he fell asleep on the way!

The chameleon we caught... Tucker picked this up himself after chasing it through our living room. We made this "natural habitat" for it and then released it back to it's family the next day. It was actually gorgeous. Bright green with blue eyes, but on the oven it turned dark brown, etc.

"Tucker Time" (i.e. nap time) often is entertaining for me. On this day, Tucker brought his red chair up on his own for a little big man reading time!

I put the chair back down but that night we came in and found him like this.

Cousins!

A long, long time ago (in April! :)) Casey & Betsy & Cia came to visit us! We had a fantastic time swimming and beaching a bunch...

and learning how to share...

Fishing...

Going to the park together...

Mac slept a lot (being his adaptable self below)

... and we played so hard we were VERY sleepy at night.

Cia now calls her cousin "Tucker Poppins" because of his love of his umbrella! Casey asked her yesterday what her cousins' names were and she said "Baby Mac and Tucker Poppins." Adorable.

What do you do when.....

After receiving some "integrity advice" from Libby about making good & bad choices when no one is watching (Tucker had just made a "bad choice" and was caught trying to hide the evidence), Tucker says, "Mama, God still loves us when we make a bad choice...He loves us no matter what we do...but Jesus loves us when we make good choices too." That is verbatim, I promise.

Always thinking

TER: "I know one song we can't sing anymore."
me: "What's that?"
TER: "Seek Ye First"
me: (not expecting that one) "Why is that?"
TER: "Because it says a bad word. Dumb. Seek ye first the kingDUMB of God"

Tucker bites Mac's shoulder as he is dressed in his twice used Halloween tiger costume.
I tell him it is totally inappropriate. We don't bite anything or anyone.
He responds: "Well we do bite food."

Another quirk

To know my sweet 3 1/2 year old is to know his "things." Much like his father, he has many "things" -- like obsession with car washes or Mary Poppins or the Jack Johnson Curious George CD, his total hatred of balloons, pinatas & ... tattoos. The temporary kind. His LOVING Mimi sent him these fun Easter tattoos in his Easter card this year. As soon as the child opened them he said in his most serious voice "I don't like tattoos."
So I tried to use this as a learning experience. Counseling him through these bizarre fears... So I gave one to Mac. The pictures below show him desperately trying to SAVE Mac from the tattoo. He literally threw his body on top of Mac's so that I wouldn't touch him with the tattoo. We're such good parents.

He never got a tattoo himself. Shocker. But we were amused in the process.

Easter...Finally

If there is one thing Kyle & I differ on it is how to handle fictional holiday characters. I'm a realist and have a hard time trying to CONVINCE my children that a large man in a red suit comes in to our house on Christmas Eve and delivers presents. If that isn't weird enough, how about a large walking bunny??? Kyle loves holidays and the magic of them and doesn't think it is damaging their sense of reality in the least :) We certainly see eye-to-eye on the FOCUS of both Christmas and Easter obviously being Christ and his redemptive work and thankfully Tucker is already able to at the very least vocalize the real meaning of both. He did one art project in school where they did a picture of the empty tomb and he came home and told us the FULL story of the resurrection. Pretty cool. So as long as he's got it on some level, why not throw in a few egg hunts??
We had a really special Easter this year. We went on Palm Sunday to our friends' church -- they are in the choir and did a special Resurrection music program. It was amazing. Then on Easter morning we had a little hunt OUTSIDE (didn't want to have the Easter Bunny in our house :))

We dressed in our favorite Easter clothes. I love the sweet outfit both Tucker and Mac have been able to wear (thank goodness Mac is significantly bigger than Tucker was to close the gap on the 6 month size difference!) We went to our church. Below is our dear friend Emily "Kjell-baby" (as Tuck calls her). She is a favorite of Tuck's and ours!

Then we headed to Ponte Vedra for their 5,000 egg hunt. That's right. 5,000 eggs. It was chaos.

...But always gorgeous.

... and Tucker was so overwhelmed by the 40 seconds of craziness that he ended up with THREE eggs. I literally don't know how Kyle even got this picture with eggs on the ground. It was that fast.

Random pics of Mac waiting for us to get finished with the Hunt. Forever in his car seat.

And almost always this happy.

Then we headed to Mimi's where Sandy and Joe (Sandy was Mimi's best high school friend in Dallas) were visiting. We ate and watched the Masters. It was just a fantastic day!

*Thank goodness Mimi no longer needs the cane after a successful back surgery!! YEAH!

Mimster and her baby JMR.

Tuckerisms

Tucker has started asking why I don't want him to go with me places.

I went to a meeting the other night and left him with Kyle. When I got back, he asked "Why did you not want me to come to your meeting?"

Or he asked why Sally & I didn't want he and Tucker Sharp at work with us. He was satisfied with my explanation that we knew they'd have more fun having a play date, but then I later heard him tell someone on the phone "Mama went to work. She didn't want me to come."

He's quick!!

__________
The other day at breakfast he says:

"Remember those pancake rolls we had in Hilton Head?"

Yes.

"They are $50 chocolatey. That means REALLY chocolately. Because $50 is a lot."

Makes sense to me.

baby blue eyes

JMR... bringing us SO much joy.

Easter Parade & Hunt at SUMP

Yet again, Jacksonville's finest "Easter Dog" made an appearance. This costume has been following us for years.
Tucker leads the parade. The boys wore ties. Ms. Jennifer made Tucker's extra special. It says "Hi Mom!" and has a sweet framed picture of him on the bottom.

Meaghan, Susie & Tucker waiting for the Hunt!

Tucker's class. They are pumped about this picture!

Each kid was supposed to end up with 8 eggs. Tucker had about 20.

Tucker, John M & Nicolas post-hunt.

sweet bedtime

We love this Bible "The Jesus Storybook." Tucker always asks Kyle to read the story of "Joliath."