beat the heat.

photos courtesy of sarah peeler

they say summer is officially here. well at least temperature wise. i am told it hit 90 degrees today. ugh! aubrey and i spent the afternoon with some friends at bell tavern park. they have a fun fountain that the kids can play in. aubrey wasn't to fond of the water, but we just had to run in every couple of minutes to cool off.

play clothes

i think at this age all clothes are play clothes. aubrey doesn't stay clean for very long these days. that's ok though. i feel as though i have somehow "arrived" as a mother, while standing over the washer applying "spray and wash" to the knees of kid jeans.

our little gardener

i thought "the constant gardener" would have been a little to cliche'. although, that is sometimes what it feels like. aubrey ALWAYS wants to be outside. i have heard her father did the same thing at the very same age. matt used to stand at the back door begging to go outside. well, hopefully it just means our very outdoorsy girl won't mind things like hiking, kayaking, spelunking, etc. as she grows up. (i just added spelunking for fun... we have only done that once. i am not sure i would want to do it again. i am not really into being in the dark.... with bats.)

she's aloud to love princesses, pink and ballerinas as long as she never looses that love for the outside.

grammy has taught aubrey how to water the flowers, how to pick the pansies so they don't go to seed, and how to pat the dirt when you plant something. her work has been greatly rewarded with a energetic "FLOWER" from aubrey every time they go outside. as well as aubrey taking little sniffs at all the flowers she sees.

summer missions trip to the dominican republic.

This summer our family will be heading down to the Dominican Republic for a work week. It has been a dream of ours to be able to go on a missions trip together as a family and this year is our first opportunity to do so. Melissa, Aubrey and I are heading down to the DR with a group of young adults and high school students. The team is scheduled to leave July 29th and we will be returning August 6th. Many of you know that we have had missions on our hearts for a long time. We attended “Next Steps” with Crossworld Missions in the spring of ’05 and felt God asking us to step out in prayer and faith to see where he may be leading us. God has given us an opportunity to not only minister to the hearts of the Dominicans this summer, but also effect the lives of our student teammates that we will be working with in preparation for this trip. The team will first go to Nagua and pass out school supplies and then work on a construction project in Santiago. We are excited to see where God is moving and join him wherever we can.

We would like to ask for your support. It will cost our family $2000 to make this trip and we need to have all our funds raised by the end of MAY! This is a huge step of faith for us, as we are trusting God to provide the finances to allow us to go. If you feel led to support us financially checks can be sent to:

Calvary Fellowship Church
Attn:Pastor Scott Pollock
95 W. Devon Dr. Downingtown, PA 19335

Checks should be payable to CALVARY FELLOWSHIP CHURCH with a small “post-it” stuck on them that says “DR TRIP: The O’Malley’s”. (The memo section of the checks are supposed to be left blank.)

Please pray as we prepare for the trip and while we are there. Pray for the language barriers as Melissa and I try to remember how to speak Spanish (by the way thanks mom-mom and granddad for the lessons). Pray for team unity and safety in travel and as we work. Pray that lives will be changed as a result of this trip. Pray that we will be able to trust the lord with our worries as we take our little girl to another part of the world. (This is slightly out of our parenting “comfort zone”.)

THANKS

MATT, MISSY, and little Aubrey too.

well at least we tried.

ok... well, there is one part of me who would like to maintain a "super-parent" identity and only show you the latter of these photos. but the other part of me wants you to know how insane and hilarious and FUN parenting is and can be.

saturday was a beautiful day and matt and i had decided a little while back that we wanted to try and go kayaking (with the baby) sometime soon. we got the stickers for the boats. we even got aubrey a toddler "off-shore" life-vest. we were ready to go.... and totally out of our minds.

we packed everything up on saturday morning and headed out to marsh creek. no one had had anything to eat yet. we were all a little cranky, but we had loaded everything up....we had driven everything over....we were going to do this. it was a fiasco. it was almost as bad as when matt and i kayaked on our anniversary in one of the two-seater kayaks (AKA "the divorce boat").

aubrey isn't really happy about anything new... she takes a little while to warm up to things, so she started bawling as soon as we put her in the boat. all i could think was, let's just make it to the next shore, we can have lunch and try again on the way back. i spent the entire 10 minute paddle singing "row, row, row your boat" and feeding her snacks so she would stop crying. it didn't work.

we pulled into the next little shore area. it was muck. we waded in and aubrey stopped crying.... and started throwing sand and eating pond scum, while matt and i stood there and bickered over whether it was a harder job to entertain the cranky kid or to pull in the boats and unload lunch. nobody won. we ate lunch..... and three different people got back into those boats. (obviously next time we are eating lunch before we try anything crazy like this again.)

the ride back was an entirely different experience. aubrey threw rocks in the water and when she ran out of rocks.... she was comfortable enough to start moving around. i don't really know which was worse, the crying child who stayed in one place or the happy child who was trying to capsize the boat.

we waded in back at the boat dock.... i pulled the boats up to the grass, and matt played with aubrey in the water. the whole day ended with aubrey bravely sticking her face toward the water and losing her balance....and basically going under. didn't anyone tell this kid there is NO SWIMMING at Marsh Creek, it's a reservoir. she went home in my t-shirt and a diaper.... super-mom forgot a change of clothes.

family days

we are kind of in a lull here.... (a very welcome lull). matt has cut back on hours at starbuck in order to prepare for "house stuff". we are not yet in our new home (Lord willing we settle on June 8th).... and it's a little to early to pack or do anything on this end yet. so we have embraced our free saturday and sunday afternoons and made sure to have some family time whenever we can. last sunday afternoon we spent the day at springton manor farm with aubrey. it was so much fun to have her see in person what she has only seen in books. we saw goats, sheep, horses and brand new baby piglets (like wilbur, aw, how cute!). we are looking forward to these next few FREE weekends before we become "home-owners".