i have a good friend who forbids his elementary-aged child from attending his parents’ church. he’s spent quite a few years working through what he feels like was a deceptive religious upbringing. now a church leader himself, he doesn’t want his child to be exposed to beliefs in a church setting that he views not only as wrong, but as his experience has proven, hurtful.

simply put, he fears a process of deprogramming with his child.

though i absolutely understand his feelings, i’ve felt like he was a little too overbearing with his probhibition.

now, though, i’m moving toward his point-of-view.

today, little olive becomes a little bigger as she turns 4 years old. it’s nearly impossible to avoid the clichés, but truly, i can’t believe 4 years have gone by so quickly. i’m not one of those parents who get sad about their kids growing up (i embrace it), but it’s still hard to believe another year has gone by. [...]

two years ago today, we welcomed to the byrd house our first little dude. max ryan byrd joined us on june 8, 2010 (the numerically nerdy 6/8/10) just after 1 p.m. at a whopping 9 lbs, 3 oz.

our little lucy lu is becoming less and less little by the day. it’s hard to believe, but today she turns 5. as cliché as it sounds, it really does seem like yesterday that we were driving to the hospital in paducah preparing to meet her for the first time.

[the above photo was taken a couple days ago at her birthday party. yes, it was an alice in wonderland party and yes, olive was alice. ]

today, our little olive becomes a little bigger olive as she turns 3 years old. as much as one might tend to say, “i can’t believe she’s already 3″, i almost can’t believe she’s only 3. i really can’t remember a time when olive wasn’t here. avoiding all cliché, my life is deeply incomplete without hers.

this past weekend, i had the privilege of spending the weekend at the arkansas juvenile detention center in alexander. i participated as the “spiritual director” for a ministry event called kairos torch (a part of an ongoing ministry called kairos).

there’s a number of stories i could share of young men (ranging from 14 to 17) who have great hearts and shared things with me that i would never expect to hear from someone twice their age. it was a humbling experience and i was glad to be a part of it once again.

but…that’s for another post.

as many of you know (and i’ve been meaning to blog about it for those who do not…), we moved into a new house a few weeks ago and we’re loving it. we have double the space, a big backyard and the house is just beautiful.

one of the not-so-great things is that the girls have had a hard time adjusting to bedtime in their new bedroom upstairs. it’s not really that they’re scared, but actually, that they love their room (and playroom) so much that they just don’t want to go to sleep every night. since being here, we’ve had a couple nights that we literally spent 2 hours from the time they got in bed until they were actually sleeping. it’s been incredibly frustrating.