happy days

Guess what's totally thriving?!

That's right -- my lemon tree! It's covered in blossoms now and it smells soooo goood when I walk past the dining room (it's current indoor location right in front of the south-facing window).

Check out this awesome D.I. find.

To most of you this is just a weird looking cookie jar shaped like a squirrel with an unusually happy look on it's face. But to those of you "in the know" you'll recognize this as a Wiley family heirloom. Check out what's peeking out in the background of this picture from Thanksgiving (you might need to enlarge it to get the full effect):

This exact same cookie jar has sat in a place of honor on the counter in the Wiley's kitchen for as long as Scott can remember, and now we have one too! And of course a new cookie jar calls for a fresh batch of cookies, so that's always a happy day.

We're not sure why, but lately Oliver spends most of his leisure time

up-side-down

Guess it's time to sign him up for gymnastics!

Do you recognize this look? It's something we haven't seen June do in her whole 22 months on earth:


She actually sat still for a full 20 minutes and watched TV. She was completely mesmerized and engaged and so excited. We've searched for months for something to catch her attention. Brenden's old favorite Teletubbies, Oliver's old standby Max & Ruby, new girly shows like Carebears and Strawberry shortcake -- nothing worked. What was it finally that caught her eye?


Yo Gabba Gabba. What a weird show. But also somewhat endearing. I know it's weird or backwards to be excited for your kids to watch TV, and I guess when she grows up to be a couch potato I'll look back and eat my words, but I have to say for now it's quite nice to get a 20 minute break every once in a while.

Which is all a long winded round-about way to announce our happiest news of all:

Baby #4 will join our family in August

See there's payoff in reading all the way through the post!

We were a little nervous about telling the boys, so put it off for a while, but finally today while we were hanging out before church we broke the news. They were playing and Brenden stopped and turned around and exclaimed, "What?!" and then turned back around and continued playing. That's the last we've heard about it from him all day. Oliver did an audible "hmmm" and then went about playing his game, but then came back a while later to say, "it's just that babies are so much work!" But Oliver is actually pretty baby crazy, so even though he tried to hide behind complaints and protests, we know he's actually very excited.