A week in photos

Today I'm sorting through photos for one of the girls from Kita's Freundebuch or Yearbook. I'll explain more about the Freundebuch on my next post, but in the mean time I found a lot of photos that didn't work for the Freundebuch but were too good not to share:

Kinder Kaffee Time

With Carmen it was hard to pick just one Freunde Buch photo, I mean:

Seen here wearing Hugo's new school backpack. He won't need it for a year. But when Paul spotted this at a garage sale for a tenth of the price of Crosby's bag, we had to jump.

Seen here napping in the box bike. She started nodding off uncomfortably when we realized that not all kids are Hugo, and a little bed is better for her.

Hugo on the other hand, is still the reigning "nap on the go" champ.

He found our first bikepool a snooze fest. Ella's mom, Diana, rides with Crosby and Ella in the morning. Ella and Crosby ride behind me in the box bike on the way home. This first day I figured I could take the long-tail bike because Ella and Crosby wouldn't be on the bike. This proved to not be the best plan as Hugo fell asleep on the bike seat while I was waiting at a stop sign:

Thankfully we were close to home so I could bring Hugo in and then ride Ella home.

On Fridays Ella stays at school later so I ride home with just Crosby. As Crosby doesn't love riding, I thought I would do him a solid and load his bike in. Hugo managed to fall asleep while Crosby held his bike and supported Hugo's head:

Hugo was not happy once his headrest started slacking:

Even Hugo has limits to his nap anywhere abilities.

However, we are committed to building character and not using Russian oil. Hugo is also getting in on the anti-war effort.

We are trying to not use our drier, so the boys are helping hanging and sorting clothes. Yes, we know Hugo's hair was as awful, so we did this:

And this:

Both boys were much happier with their hair cuts this time because we let them keep it long. 

I needed to build up the "bank of goodwill" before introducing my new Mother's Day tradition: family photos. This tradition, like many of Team Biggs', is a mash-up of Biggs and Beckley traditions. The Beckley tradition of Mother's Day is doing something that mom likes but the kids don't ie. a walk through the Rhododendron park in Eugene. Whenever you're with the Biggs, you better be ready for photos. And so, I present to you:

Recently injured Hugo at 4:30 pm after a warm afternoon at the park. This photo is also an in memoriam to Hugo's lobster shirt which was destroyed in a very predictably unsafe go-cart chariot mishap. Thankfully the shirt took most of the beating and I think we can agree it was worth it.

This mother's day was especially bitter sweet as we said our goodbye to our church in Charlottenburg. We were thankful we had the community during corona and while our kids were too little for Sunday School without mommy. However, the Sunday evening two-hour round trip bike ride was too rough a start to our week. Monday mornings for Crosby were just awful, and even worse now that he doesn't love the twenty minute ride to school. This was my last kids' message at our church home for the last 3+ years. 

Intro: Who knows what today is? Someone: Mother's Day!

For some of us, Mother's Day is happy holiday where we snuggle our mom and have all these happy memories. For some of us though, it's also a sad day - we miss our moms because they don't live near-by, or they are no longer living. Honestly, maybe we are sad we never had a close connection with our moms. However we are feeling today, the good news is that God hears us, God cares, and God loves us. 

In the two years or so we were able to meet in the church building, most of the real "learning" at Sunday school happens here at the beginning of big church. The rest of the hour we run around and eat Rebecca's delicious baked goods - hopefully not at the same time. As most of you know, today is Team Biggs' last Sunday here. As I look back on Sunday school, we never know what seeds we will plant with little or big kids. But, my hope for these kids and adults is that they will always know that God listens to them, God cares about them, and God loves us more than we can ever imagine. 

As we know, I'm a big "movement helps us learn" person, so we're going to sing our Sunday school song with the biggest hand movements: Peace Like a River

Song: Peace Like a River

Prayer: God, thank you that you hear our prayers and care about our lives. We pray that we would always remember how much you love us.

 

xo