Edge Games VII, and more!

It's time for the Edge Games! You'll recall my posts in previous years about working with the middle-schoolers at the Edge Games (2009; 2010, the photos have been moved from this second post, but I can't remember why I did that... anywho...). It's a whole bunch of fun and a fantastic outreach for the ministry. Last year we were on Fiji and we were the big winners in the end because two of our guys went crazy on the photo contests turning in a bunch of photos that ran us from 4th to 1st on the last day. This year they've limited the number of points a team can get from photos, and because our team is one of the smallest, the likelihood that we'll win this year is slim, but it's crazy fun playing the games anyway. We're also on a new team, Togo, with new colors, red. But we made the move with one of the girl's small groups that was on Fiji with us last year, so there's some familiarity. And Todd's brief messages at the end of each evening are very poignant. He and Jonathan do a great job setting up the whole event.This week's games involved wrestling innertubes away from other teams, finding one's shoes in the middle of a pile of about 400 shoes, and a wheelbarrow relay race where the wheelbarrow had to eat Spam before running back to the team. It was great!

Yesterday Jenn and I both had to work and we were very thankful that our friends, Andy and Courtney Ucker, could come and take care of Lincoln and Lydia while we were away. It's a blessing to have good, close, reliable friends and we are so grateful for Andy and Courtney!

Last Wednesday, Lincoln asked if he could take photos of my tools. He really gets into

1. tools
2. looking into the camera's view-finder
3. seeing the photo on the back of the camera after it's taken

So that's what we did for a while, and it was funny to see him pile up the tools and look into the camera at what he'd done.
Jenn and I recently went back in our blog archives to see what Lincoln was doing at the age that Lydia is currently. To our surprise he was further along in his sleep development! Lydia naps much more easily during the daytime, but at night, Lincoln was sleeping 11+ hours without a swaddle. Lydia can't put more than about 40 minutes of sleep together wihtout a swaddle and part of this is probably because she's not yet a consistent thumb-sucker. She's found her thumb on many occasions, but she doesn't reach for it as a calmin g influence when she's tired. One more small example of how each kid is different.

Finally, the cute puppy slippers that Larry and Marti gave Lincoln for Christmas arrived from LL Bean. (Lincoln's feet were bigger than we thought and he needed a bigger size.) We weren't anticipating that he'd want to wear them because when Jenn purchased a pair of duck slippers on clearance from Pottery Barn he did not want to wear them. But when I told them that some people call their feet "dogs" and that he could use is new "dogs" to keep his "dogs" warm, he put them on and he's loved them from the start. He was wearing his "Muddy Paws Band" morning-pajamas this morning and it was a perfect opportunity to show off his Dog Slippers. Thanks Parkinsons!