After the goodbye celebration, everyone went shopping. Evelyn and I stayed behind to take a nap at the hotel. After napping, we played and I got these adorable pictures of her!

After returning to Addis, we were able to go to the care center and bring our sweet girl back to the hotel. After returning to the hotel, we gave her a bath and her mommy enjoyed dressing her in some pink clothes.

So, for those of you who need a reminder of why we celebrate Easter, here’s Caleb the “Teacher”:

Caleb Tells the Easter Story from Casey on Vimeo.

BOY #1 (or Stud #1, as he likes to be called)

BOY #2

BOY #3

Even our dog, Boo, is a BOY (kind of)

Do you think I’m a little out-numbered?  It’s definitely becoming a problem.  We’ve got cars and trucks coming out of our ears (we even discovered the other morning that Doc Hudson, the car, had spent the night in our bed . . . creepy); we’ve got boy toys, boy clothes, boy noises, and boy smells everywhere!  But you know what we don’t have  a lot of around here?  Pink.  There is almost no pink in this house, no dolls, no little dresses, just boys, BOYS, BOYS!!  (Don’t be fooled, I’m in LOVE with my boys.)

Another problem that keeps popping up at the Picker House:  Ethiopia.  We can’t quit talking about, thinking about, and dreaming about this incredible country, beautiful people, and amazing work God has poured into our hearts.  We’re absolutely in love, and like love-sick teenagers we can’t get Ethiopia or the orphans there out of our heads.

So . . . two problems:  not enough pink, and not enough Ethiopia.  Hmmm . . . what would be a good solution?

After thinking on the matter for a while, we decided to come up with a “Behavior Chart.” For every day he is obedient, he can get up to two stickers on his chart: one for the morning and one for the afternoon. We let Caleb come up with what kind of reward he would get when he reached three stickers. Being my son, he decided on a reward involving food, specifically donuts.

Well, last night Caleb reached the ultimate goal: three stickers! Caleb requested to ride in daddy’s fast “race car” on the way to the donut shop. So, this morning we set out on a mission in my “fast race car” to find donuts. After unsuccessfully reaching two closed donut shops, we finally found one that was open and enjoyed our breakfast together.

I’m very proud of my boy for learning to be more patient and slow to anger. I pray that God will continue to work in his heart to someday become the man that God wants him to be. I’m so thankful to be his dad.

She made an interesting point about how TV can rob us from doing the things that God wants us to do with our time. We want our family to try and have a very balanced approach to our entertainment habits because we think God wants us to enjoy some time off every now and then, but He doesn’t want it to consume all of our time. What do you think?

Read more about this family’s struggle with their TV watching habits.

I cannot imagine a cuter kid. He makes us laugh all the time. His favorite things right now include playing soccer with Daddy, listening to “George music” (aka Jack Johnson’s Curious George soundtrack), and playing with his many stuffed animals (especially the Chip and Dale that Daddy bought him in Orlando, the Larry that Aunt Laura and AnnaBelle gave him, and, of couse, the old favorite, Curious George). He is talking our ears off now! He talks constantly about anything and everything. The other day he was walking around the house saying, “I’m going to work on the computer to build a website.” His vocabulary seems to have doubled lately; there is little that he can’t explain or ask for.

Over the last few weeks, he has started to pretend a lot more. He likes to pretend that he is Curious George, or Larry the Cucumber, or Christopher Robin, or Mickey Mouse. Of course, if he is George, or Larry, or Christoper Robin, or Mickey, then Casey and I have to fill the complementary rolls of “the man with the yellow hat,” or Bob the Tomato, or Winnie-the-Pooh, or Goofy. And, naturally, all of the actors have to be prepared to change character at a moment’s notice. One minute, I think that I am Minnie Mouse, and I am acting my heart out when I am suddenly informed that I am actually Junior Asparagus! I am certainly getting the chance to polish my nearly non-existent acting skills.

Caleb also loves to read books, which, of course, is one of my greatest desires for my children. He will sit through as many books as we will read to him. For such an active and crazy almost-three-year-old, his attention span is really great when it comes to books. In the past we have mainly read picture books with plenty of bright colors to keep his focus, but just this past week I started reading to him The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne. There aren’t as many pictures in this book, and sometimes there will be two or three pages with no pictures at all, but he is still content to sit in my lap and listen to the stories, which are much longer, with more character development, than most little children’s books.

Some of my favorite childhood memories are of my daddy reading novels out loud to our whole family. Because I have two brothers, I was forced to sit through Kidnapped and Treasure Island, but he also read Silas Marner and others. There is something so beautiful about hearing the words of a story spoken out loud and imagining it in your mind instead of being fed someone else’s interpretation through their images.

I hope that Caleb will continue to develop his attention span and wonderful imagination. Casey and I already have a long list of books that we are eager to read aloud to him when he is ready. He is such a wonderful blessing; we are cherishing every moment of being his parents.

Just another little moment that I want to remember: Several nights ago I crept into his room while he was sleeping to pray for him. We had had a rough day, and, after he went to bed, I spent the evening flipping through parenting books, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. While I was praying by his bed, I was having one of those anxious parenting moments, wondering if he is going to grow up to know what is right and to love God, or if I am completely ruining him with my own flaws. As I prayed over his life and his future, in his sleep, Caleb began to sing out loud, “God of wonders, beyond our galaxy, You are holy! Holy!” Wow! It brought tears to my eyes and gave me peace over all my anxious thoughts. I felt like God was reminding me that Caleb’s soul and future are in His hands, and not mine. What a relief! What a blessing to get to watch this little soul fall in love with God!

To put it mildly, the last few weeks have been kind of tough. The Terrible Twos are definitely upon us. And before you (Momma) get defensive about the two-year-olds in your life, let me say, I love my two-year-old passionately; two is adorable, hilarious, and exciting, but it is also kicking my tail! I fall in bed mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted every night, and every morning I feel about the same. Perhaps everything seems a little worse right now because my free, always-available babysitter (my momma) left town for nearly two weeks, but nonetheless two is extremely challenging.

And I have to say that I’ve been pretty disappointed with myself lately. No one likes to see themselves yelling at their two-year-old, and every night I lay in bed with that one major meltdown of the day still weighing heavy on my heart. And I feel embarrassed. I hate for God to see that; I always want to show God my best, and I hate for Him to realize that I am a yeller, that I can, on occasion, lose my temper with a two-year-old child … my two-year-old child … the one He gave me to love and protect.

It’s easy to want to blame the circumstances. “Well, my child is particularly difficult … It’s not really my fault; the situation was unfair … If he weren’t so heavy, so hard to carry, so difficult to manage … If I weren’t so tired … If he would just hold still …” But I’m reminded of an analogy C.S. Lewis once used. If you go in the cellar in the dark and flip the light on, you may see all of the rats and bugs scurrying away. You can’t blame the light and say, “Well, if there had been more warning, there wouldn’t have been any rats … If I hadn’t switched on the light so quickly …” The truth is that the rats were scurrying away because they were in the cellar, not because the light was switched on. And the truth is, that yes, I can behave better in easier circumstances, but the reason I lose my temper is not because Caleb has misbehaved, but because I already have that sin in my heart. Who I am in the most trying circumstances, is, perhaps, who I really am. It’s not about the yelling or the anger and frustration, it’s about the ugliness that is and has always been in my heart.

I had breakfast with my dad this week, and something he said (I can’t remember it exactly, I had a toddler crawling on me at the time) eventually led me to this thought: God is not surprised by my sin; it never shocks Him. He, of course, already knew it was there, and perhaps, just perhaps, He allows me to lose it in these situations so that I can see what He has seen all along. And no, of course He doesn’t like my sin; He wants to get rid of it. But I have to recognize it for what it is before He can heal me. I have to see the ugly, dirtiness of my heart before He can clean it. I’ve prayed many times from Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart!” I guess I wasn’t really prepared for what that would look like.

But I have been so comforted by the birth of Christ this Christmas because it is such a beautiful picture of what God is willing to do for us. You see, God is not scared of dirtiness and ugliness. He embraces it. When Jesus, God Himself, God With Us, was born, He didn’t choose to be born in a beautiful hotel suite or even a modern, sterile hospital, He chose a dirty, ugly stable. A stable with cow manure and mud, a stable that was cold and dark . . . just like my heart. But Jesus moved in there, and the beautiful thing about Jesus is that when He dwells in the ugliest, dirtiest of places, He makes them holy. He shines His overpowering grace and truth on the dark places, and suddenly they are not dirty or ugly anymore, they are beautiful. He can turn a dirty, ugly stable into a Holy Temple where worshipers gather, and He can turn my dirty, ugly heart into a dwelling place for the King of Kings.

Last night I was searching my Bible, needing something more than coffee to sustain me, and I found this verse in Philippians, already underlined and starred: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). What a great relief that God is the one doing a good work in me, not me fixing myself, and it is a work which He intends to complete. Which reminds me of one of my favorite verses, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).

And perhaps that is one of the greatest Christmas presents of all … my heart that God is continually renewing and softening and the work in me that He will complete at the day of Christ. Glory to God in the Highest and Merry Christmas!

Caleb and Daddy started the day by reading a book about cars and trucks and traffic rules. They talked about how even Mommy and Daddy have to obey rules when they drive the car. They talked about how there were rules about how fast to go and when to stop and that obeying the rules is what keeps us safe when we drive.

Then after breakfast we played a game called “Mommy Says,” which is a lot like “Simon Says” only Mommy says it and there is no tricking. With a little help from Daddy, Caleb thought this was pretty fun. We then went on a drive to look for stop signs. We talked about how good Daddy was at obeying the rules when he drives and how it makes God happy when we obey.

After Caleb’s nap, we tried a little obedience practice during snack time. I put three cookies on the table in front of him and said, “Caleb, Mommy wants you to eat this cookie first,” and I pointed to a cookie. Well, Caleb didn’t appreciate being told which cookie to eat, so after thinking about it for a minute he reached for that cookie and threw it on the ground! This exercise made it pretty clear that Caleb is strong-willed; he would rather not eat a cookie than eat the one that Mommy said to eat. This is something I will be praying for wisdom about.

After the cookie incident, we moved out to the driveway. We drew with the sidewalk chalk, and Mommy and Daddy drew roads and stop signs to let Caleb practice driving his car and obeying the signs. Caleb thought this was pretty fun, but it bothered him that the stop signs were pink instead of red (we didn’t have any red chalk; do they even make that?). After driving the car for a while, we went to the back yard and played Red Light/Green Light. This was probably Caleb’s favorite game; he got all sweaty running back and forth.

Later we read the story of the Battle of Jericho in Caleb’s Jesus Storybook Bible. We talked about how the Israelites had to obey God’s instructions exactly and how God protected them because they obeyed. We pretended to march around Jericho (the coffee table) and made as much noise as possible.

For supper, Caleb helped Mommy make pancakes. We talked about how we had to obey the instructions in the recipe or the pancakes wouldn’t taste good. After supper, we finished our family day by watching the Veggie Tales Jonah movie. Caleb loved this so much that he cried when it was over. Veggie Tales are his new favorite, though he still loves Curious George. We talked about how sad it was that Jonah decided to disobey God and how he got in trouble for not obeying. I think Caleb understood this pretty well; this morning when I asked him about Jonah he said, “Jonah not obey.”

We really had a fun family day. I hope we can try to do this again soon, maybe monthly. I know that Caleb really enjoyed all the special attention and games, and we felt good that we were all having fun while teaching something very important. I don’t know if this will help with Caleb’s obedience or not, but it has certainly given us more opportunities to talk about obeying.

See more pictures from our family day.