On the way to 1 Year!

This week Caleb is 11 months old. Hard to believe, but it's true. :) He is so close to walking. In fact, he took two steps on his own yesterday. He is learning so much all the time. It is as if during the day his little mind is downloading all this information, then at night when he sleeps it is all installed and when he wakes up, he's an updated version. For example, a couple of days ago Joye and I were trying to get him to understand who mama is. He can identify "ball" and "Abu" (Aladdin monkey), but he says "mama" to everything. So we spent some time working on that with him and you could tell he was thinking about it, but then he wanted "ball."

Well, yesterday morning after I fed him, he was sitting on my lap and started to say "mama." This time though, he was looking around as if he was trying to identify mama looking for her. He looked at me and said "mama" as if he was asking me a question - "mama?" It was so cool to see the 'click' happen in his mind.

We're keeping busy around here and this time of year is when things really begin to roll for us. This week is graduation week and there has been a graduation every night. We have 9 high schools represented in our youth ministry, and that's in a 20 mile radius. So, we've been busy celebrating with our seniors in the youth ministry - it has been good, but it is also hard to see them go. Many of them will be staying close by to go to college, so that helps a little.

Next week summer officially begins for us and that means life gets a little more full. I like to think of it as "controlled chaos."

Hard to believe that a year ago right now, I was getting ready to leave for a mission trip with Joye being 8 months pregnant. Man, our lives were totally different then. Honestly, I wouldn't go back.

We love you all and hope to hear from you soon!
Peace and Love,
JJC

Enjoy the plethora of pictures...

He cruises up the stairs. It's the getting down part we're worried about!

One of his new favorite things to do is to take the magnet off, and put it back on, off, on, off, on...simple things amuse simple minds.

Caleb helped put the flag up on Memorial Day.

All smiles at the door.

Below are pictures of a recent bath time. He LOVES the water. And that is a good thing since our neighborhood pool just opened for the summer!