It's Wednesday.

For the Gerlt House, Wednesday means that it's Alias Night. Yep. And what does that mean? It means that sweet Jamie comes over and for 1 hour we watch "our show". We typically have dinner (mmm....) and visit a little bit before hand. But then the visiting stops. The kids are banished to the playroom (yeah, you heard me.), and we are sucked in for an hour as we discover the answers to the questions that have been nagging us since the previous episode. It's a good time.
Before I get any tacky comments about what a loser I am for watching Alias, or looking forward to it each week, or anything else that might come to mind...let me just say that I'm not interested. I don't want to hear it. It's my show. It's my time with Jamie. And I like it.

Here's to Alias.

So it's no secret...

...that we live in the Barrio. Everyone knows that. Everyday there are things that remind us. But yesterday was the day to end all days. Look closely at the picture. See them? Between the mini-van and the tree. The group with cowboy hats and pink shirts?

That's right. You got it. A real live Mariachi Band. Playing loudly. LOUDLY. I know I should have sat back and enjoyed it, but the truth is it annoyed me to no end. I called Jamie who walked down to join the fun. We sat on the porch and just laughed. What do you do?
If only I could have been as cheerful as Anna Kate about the whole situation. She, whose favorite color is pink, was simply delighted by a group of men wearing pink shirts. Like they were doing it just for her. 

Glory Be!

Something amazing happened today. Anna Kate turned on the bathroom light all by herself! You maybe saying, "So what. Big deal." But let me assure you that this is a big deal. This new ability of her means several things:

1. Our little Anna Kate is not so little anymore. She's getting bigger and bigger.
2. We no longer have to stop what we're doing to go turn on the light for her when she needs to go potty. Hooray!
3. Do you remember how cool it was when you could finally turn on the light all by yourself?

Congratulations, Anna Kate Gerlt. Soon you'll be able to jump and touch the top of the door frame! That's the ultimate. 

At Jamie's Prompting...

I read a thoughtful new post from my sweet Jamie this morning. Check it out here. In it, she prompts us bloggers to post our thoughts on disciplining ourselves. It could be about disciplining ourselves in general or how the spiritual disciplines play out in our lives. Tough, Miss Moore.
The truth is, I have an embarrassing lack of discipline in all areas of my life. I have fought and struggled with that my entire life. If I am completely honest, which I don't want to be, I would say the "discipline" I work hardest at is making sure that I appear disciplined. What do I mean by that? It means that, as a wife and a mother and a follower of Jesus Christ, I have expectations and ideas of what my daily life should look like. The truth is, it doesn't look like that most days. But when I see people or talk to people I (sinfully) try to come off as having it all together. That's the honest truth.
What do I strive for, though? As I daily fight my flesh and strive "never to give over or in the least slacken in my fight with corruption," as Spurgeon says, what do I fight to do? It's good for me to sit and reevaluate that on this quiet morning. My three main areas are my spiritual life, my life as a wife and my life as a mother. The tricky part is that they are all very intertwined. As I work on one area I am, in turn, working on the other two. It's actually pretty cool. As I spend time in the Word I am learning and growing into a better wife and mom. As I work at home with my children each day, teaching them and even just playing with them, I am fulfilling my role as a wife and being sanctified. As I serve Chad, I am teaching my children and honoring the Lord.
It's hard in this stage of life that I'm in not to feel like a complete failure in the area of spiritual discipline. I look back on times in my life that I was able to spend hours each day reading and journaling. The "glory days". Do you know what I'm talking about? The days that you can look back on (or maybe you live there...I don't) and you always had something to share about what you were learning and what the Lord was showing you. When someone asked what your Bible study was on that day, or what Scripture you were memorizing, or what book you were reading...no matter what, you always had an answer. It's hard, sitting where I sit right now, to look back on those days and compare them with the time I'm in now. And I shouldn't compare. But I do. I see those times...and then I look at what fills my days now. Sometimes I don't get anything more accomplished during the day than playing with Anna Kate, reading her and Max 50 books, watching them ride their bicycles outside, and making everyone another sandwich for supper. And it's hard not feel like a spiritual discipline "flunky". But what I do each day is pleasing to the Lord. Wait. I don't mean to say that everything I do each day is pleasing to the Lord. There is plenty of laziness, plenty of bad choices with my time. Plenty. I don't mean to excuse that. But as I go through my day as "Mommy" and "Erin Wife" I have to resist the temptation to feel like a failure at the "spiritual part" of my life...because these things are spiritual. I am grateful to be in a church where I am encouraged as a wife and a mom. They talk often of "the high calling of motherhood." The more I understand what a high calling it is, the more I feel intimidated/sobered by the task of being a mom and wife.
Wow. That was probably way more than what Jamie bargained for. I'm not sure I even answered the question. But those are my thoughts...and there is lots more to say. Your thoughts, please? I'd love to hear them.

The Picture Story of Max Man's #7

Here's the day in pictures from Max Man's Party.

Max Man's Birthday

Our Max Man turned SEVEN yesterday! Happy birthday, Max! A few weeks ago we began planning his party and counting down the days. Here are the plans that he came up with:

First, he said that he wanted us to get him 10 presents. I numbered 1-10 and this is what he listed off:
1. A gun
2. A snowman
3. A police costume
4. A bicycle
5. Eggs
6. A police car (blue with flashing lights)
7. A baby brother
8. A Cinderella car (for Anna Kate)
9. A yellow cup in a yellow box
10. Butterfly wings (for Anna Kate)

Second, he developed a guest list. Congrats to those of you who made the cut:
Ms. Nutt (his teacher), Michael and Julie Stone (of StoneLife), Jamie (of Embracing My Lot), Dustin (the Once Dead Poet), Mom, Dad and Anna Kate, Papa and Granna, Papa and Momma D, Slade (of cozart.org), Laura Tunnell, Mindy, James (the other birthday boy and the source of Max's love for all things police), Leslie Woods, the Lyrene family, the Crisler family, and Kathlyn Fowler. (Hope these links work. I'll get my hot, computer saavy husband to show me how to do that later. If they don't, see the links on the side of this page!)

Third, he came up with a tasty menu to please the crowd:
1. Cake
2. Cookies
3. Grapes
4. Sandwiches
5. Chips

Here's what actually went down: We wanted to do a Policeman party but you can't find stuff at Party City for a Policeman party. Bummer. Second choice was The Incredibles. Way fun. We even ordered a cake! Our sweet friends joined us last night for the party of a lifetime. No, Max didn't get a snowman...but he got tons of fun stuff. He can now dress the part of a policeman and, armed with his six-shooters, light sabre, ax, handcuffs, fire extinguisher and baseball bat, he's ready to encounter anything that might come his way.

He had the time of his life. He spent the rest of the evening fighting the bad-guys and keeping peace in the streets.

Here's a picture of our "Incredible" family!

Plug

Sweet Jamie Moore now has her own blog. Woohoo!!! Check it out.

Embracing My Lot

How Cool is This?

Cool story number one:
We took our kids to the park to hide Easter Eggs today. We hid the eggs and the kids found them (no big news there). They were really cute (again, no big news there). We then let Max and Anna Kate hide the eggs so Mom and Dad could find them. They were thrilled. Erin found more than me because Anna Kate hid 8 eggs in a clump all together. Afterword, we all decided to go to Subway to get our grub on. We sat down to eat and then in comes this family of three. The parents were deaf, so naturally we got their attention and started a conversation. They were so neat. Their daughter was Max's age and she was hearing, and they adopted her. We're hearing and adopted a deaf boy in need - They're deaf and adopted a hearing girl in need. How ironic is that. (Hopefully, Erin will blog about our conversation with them later, pretty cool stuff.)

But here's the best part. We visited with them for probably a half hour, and obviously hit it off. After we learned their names, they asked for ours. We told them our names but told them we didn't have sign names. They decided to give me a sign name!!! This is a HUGE honor. For some reason I got one, but Erin didn't. Don't know why.

If you don't know much about Deaf Culture you need to understand that deaf people love to visit with each other for hours, are very proud of their culture, and are not disabled. You cannot give yourself a sign name, only a deaf person can give you a sign name. Max has given only a select few people sign names, but you can't force him to do that. The select few who have sign names from Max include Slade Cozart, Laura Tunnell, Mindy Francisco, James Dawson and a few others.

Now onto cool story number two:
Yesterday, while I was bagging and in the middle of lunch rush at Chick-fil-A, I hear these words from the front counter behind me: "Chad, is that Chad? Chad Gerlt?" So, naturally, I turn around. Who do I see? Josh Garred! Those of you who did not attend Hardin-Simmons University will not remember Josh (it's sort of hard to remember someone you've never met), but I spent a lot of time with Josh in college. First of all, he was in LoveCo. (where Erin and I met), and second of all he was on many of my intramural basketball teams. This guy had the worst, most terrible form to a shot that looked rediculous - but somehow an unbelievable number of his attempts went in the basket. (He's the guy you don't want on your team because he takes terrible shots, but you don't want him on the other team because he makes those terrible shots.) I got to meet his wife and his two kiddos. They were on their way from Tyler to Abilene and just stopped to grab some grub. Crazy! How often does something like that happen? That was Thursday.

Today is Friday. When I was looking for the next customer to help at lunch today, I greeted two friendly people - Ronnie and Sabrina Casey - A.K.A. our next door neighbors in Crane. Two days in a row! nuts!!! Erin got to catch up with them too. It's neat having a store right off I-20.

Today was a pretty cool day.

Her Favorite Song

Click here to listen to Anna Kate sing her favorite song. In 15 years or so, this will be priceless.

Baby Jake

I have so much to say about Baby Jake that I don't know where to begin. First, HOORAY!!! Second...um...HOORAY!!! Third, here's some funny stuff from the doctor. Erin and I definitely wanted to find out whether we're having a boy or girl, but I had to work so I couldn't go to the doctor's office for the appointment. So we were going to have the doctor just write down whether it was a boy or girl on a piece of paper and stick it in an envelope. Turns out he had to tell Erin (sigh) because he had to explain some detail stuff to her about having Jake. But he still put a note on paper and sealed it for us. Thought you might like to see.

Long awaited NEWS!!!

Well, after almost 20 weeks of waiting and wondering we finally got the word today that Baby G is:

A BOY!!!!!!!

That's right! You heard it here first! We're having a boy. We think that he will be named Jacob Lane. We'll call him Jake. We're so excited! I have so much to do this afternoon. I'm leaving town to spend time with some girls at Sunfish (thrilled out of my mind!) but I don't want to do laundry and straighten the house and get packed up. I want to go buy tiny blue clothes and sweet socks with cars and tractors and puppy dogs on them. But that will have to wait...but I can dream about sweet little boys all afternoon while I work.

The doctor said that everything looks perfect. Two hands, two feet, ten fingers and toes, four-chambered heart, two kidneys, a stomach, a perfectly formed spine and brain, a cute little nose and lips. The best news in the world! What a great day. We are so grateful.