Today

Wow! I'm so thankful for all the responses to my parenting question--I feel much better equipped and much more encouraged than I did a few days ago. I had to put this first picture on here of Sterling in one of his temper tantrums just because I thought it was funny. So far, I feel like I've been able to utilize some of the things everyone has said- consistency with the discipline, spanking with love and explanation, and we've also been doing the "time out" place. (My sister in law Amy is trying this with Blake too!) It seems to work pretty well with Sterling since spankings are only minor upsets to him--he's not a kid that feels a lot of pain, so spanking isn't always the "threat" that I would like it to be. But if I make him sit on the bed and not get up, that really upsets him and he changes his tune pretty quickly when he has to do a time out...So we'll see. I know I'm no where near the conclusion of this stubborn and independent stage, so your prayers and advice are always welcome! And I will definitely say prayers for all of you other moms out there with little ones this age!

Today we went on another walk to the store. While we were there we ate at "Convenience Kitchen Restaurant"--again, another funny English name for something. It was a burger/hotdog place. Sterling had a plain cheeseburger but I tried the bacon egg burger, which was pretty good. It had a fried egg, bacon, tartar sauce, ketchup and the burger. You also got to choose what flavor you of french fries you wanted- I couldn't tell what all the flavors were because it was in Japanese, but I ended up with cheese, which was just powder spread over them. Interesting, and actually not too bad.

These steps are by the lake I put in the last post. Sterling climbed up and down them 15 times today before I finally just had to drag him away. He was pretty proud of himself for being so big. I bought him a little koala bear that he is holding in his hand.

Luke finally got a bike last night! We are all very happy to be a little bit more mobile now. Sterling LOVES riding on the bike. He just sits there and holds on and looks around. Tonight we rode over to Mike and Erin's house to have a prayer meeting, and I took this picture of the boys in front of "Daiso" which is similar to a dollar store/wal-mart kind of place.