An American Hero

Recently, Jacob's 1st grade class was given an assignment to do a report on a famous American. Each student was to design a poster board display. Once done, the room was set up like a museum so that each report could be displayed and the children could then review each masterpiece to learn about these famous Americans.

A list of ideas was provided to the children that included a list of impactful citizens that have lived among us (Lincoln, MLK, Ben Franklin, Jackie Robinson, Amelia Earhart, Oprah (just kidding)...you get the picture). The list of names must have included 40 different people most of whom should be easily identified by a high school graduate. Nonetheless, Jacob's teacher allowed the students to drift from the list if they wanted in order to get a wider variety...let's just say she got a wider variety.

Jacob ran with that freedom and picked a true American hero who had been curiously left off of the teacher's list. Jacob selected a key contributor to the formation of our culture, a legendary icon that cannot be left out of any reputable American anthology, a defender of freedom and a champion of the people....Dale Earnhardt Jr.

One Year Ago...

Today marks the 1st anniversary of Janie's heart surgery. In some ways, it feels like that was last week, yet in other ways it feels like a lifetime ago. Our girl who went from this...

is now this...

We're blessed beyond measure to have Janie Grace with us each day simply because of who she is. However, who she is today would hardly be possible but for the repair her heart received a year ago. The memory of those hours in the waiting room and the subsequent days in the hospital as she recovered will never escape our minds. She's a constant reminder of all that is beautiful about the creativity of our Creator.

Here's a couple recent pics...

JG's Bear Crawl

For a while, Janie has been moving rather quickly to her intended destination using an army crawl that employs a lot of elbow and belly. Recently, her army crawl has morphed into a hybrid of army crawling and traditional crawling. Essentially, she uses 2 arms and a knee to move with decent speed. However, we've never seen her make successive movements across a room that would allow us to say "she's crawling".

While she's sitting upright, we love to watch her pivot around on her bottom as her eyes try to keep up with her siblings zooming around a room. She can basically do a 360 in just 3 movements.

Her latest attempt at "crawling" could arguably be more challenging a feat than a traditional crawl. Now, she's pulling out a bear crawl with greater regularity that gives us all a smile as she motors around up on all fours with her little bottom straight up in the air. Here's a picture...

Jacob's Bracket

Here's a look at a pretty decent set of picks. One that, without any assistance, qualified him to finish in the 99.2 percentile on ESPN.com. I've advised Jacob that he may go the rest of his life without another set of picks that yields this few slash marks!



And Jensen's picks that all made complete sense in her mind...

Timber!

Watching some large, old trees be taken down across the street the past couple weekends has provided plenty of entertainment. Jacob has been particularly fascinated.