Happy Birthday To My AWESOME Husband!

He's someone I can have fun with...and he loves me...as weird as I may be...



He is the spiritual leader in our household...



He is a family man...



And a hard worker...



He is a man's man...



But still sensitive enough to paint his daughter's fingernails...



Or kiss all over his baby boy...



He is a godly man that my son can model his life after...



And a an example of a father and husband that my daughter can look for in her future husband...



He is a smokin' hot piece of man lovin'... (I couldn't help myself...)



He's the man God had for me...even before either one of us knew it...



He is my best friend...



Happy Birthday to the man who is more than I could have ever asked for...

I love you Randy...

My Pathetic Carrots...

Not sure if I picked them too early, or if, like the rest of my garden this year, they are a few fries short of a Happy Meal... I'm thinking the latter...

Productive Stalling...

I decided this morning to reorganize/de-clutter/get all the crap out of the back room. This poor room has been neglected for a while. Not as much as our bedroom. But that is for another day. So anyway, I started this morning and about an hour into it I realized I was completely overwhelmed but I am determined to have it finished by the time Randy gets home.
So why am I blogging right now? I was known as a child , especially by my dad, to be an expert staller. Right now I am just honing that skill. I am in the homestretch but I just needed a break. The kids were in melt-down central so I got them in bed for their naps (early, but they don't need to know that,) grabbed a handful of dark chocolate raisenets and plopped down in front of the computer to commence the stalling.
I figured I should make it worth while and productive so I shall tell of our week of VBS.
I LOVE VBS. It is possibly one of my favorite weeks of the year. I am on the dance team. Yeah. That's right. I barely have an ounce of rhythm in my body but somehow every year around VBS time I am able to pull that ounce together and get down with my bad self. It's for the kids... Oh, and can I just say the music this year is awesome!
I know it's not all about the numbers usually but can I just brag on God for a second? Okay, good. We have about 15 or so kids in our kid's ministry right now. 15. Last night at VBS we had 38 kids. THIRTY-EIGHT! And the majority of the kids we have had outside of our church are un-churched kids. God is awesome. We were kind of fretting over not having many kids and God just told us all to get out there and invite kids. We went to our neighborhoods and parks and just invited kids. It wasn't anything we did aside from just doing what God told us to.
This week has been such an encouragement to me. The kids have been so in to it. It's so cool so be up on the stage and see them singing at the top of their lungs and doing all the motions. They've been so in to the Bible stories and crafts and it's been so much fun to get to know new kids. Tonight's the last night and I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of sad it's over. But, my prayer is that we have made an impact on the kids lives and their parents and that God would continue to work in their little lives and that they would be open to His Word.

Some pictures for your viewing pleasure...

Me getting down with my bad self...


Game time...


Hailey concentrating hard on her craft...


Snack Team...


"But Jesus said, 'Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.'"
Matthew 19:14


I guess I will get back to operation back room now...

Elephant Walks, Loveys, and Sibling Rivalry

It's Been a while since I've shared about the kids so here ya go. I'll start with Caleb.

Oh, where to start...He's wild...I mean WILD! I love his craziness. He is usually jumping in his bed in the morning when I go get him. He's still eats like a champ...his new favorite foods being blueberries, chicken nuggets, froot loops and milk. My kids put away a ridiculous amount of milk. I have seriously considered investing in a cow. But who am I kidding? I would have no idea what to do with one if I had one.




He is finally walking. Yes, at over 14 months of age he is finally walking. Now, it isn't his main mode of transportation yet. He still enjoys the elephant walk (the hands and feet walk that Mogli does in the Jungle Book with the baby elephant.) That is his main mode. At any given time of day you will hear him doing the elephant walk through the house and squealing at the top of his lungs.

He loves to be outside. He loves to go swimming. He LOVES to play ball. He is such a good self-entertainer. I don't know if it's his personality or the fact that he's the second child or what but he could sit in the back room for an hour and play by himself. But, who could let something so stinkin' cute play by himself for that long?



He still smells like graham crackers when we check on him at night. I know he is eventually gonna smell like sweaty boy so I am enjoying it while I can. He loves his lovey. I had no intention of doing a lovey with him but he had other plans. He has this green bear blankey that he had become attached to and it is so incredibly cute how he will pull it out from the slats of his crib and sit in the floor during play time and just snuggle it. SO CUTE!



And, at 14 months of age, he is becoming a master at pestering his sister. Now, she is a little on the sensitive side anyway, but he definitely knows how to push her buttons. They usually spend the first 40 minutes or so after breakfast and after lunch fighting. I have done pretty much everything I know possible to get them to play nicely together during that time but I think they just need to get the "I need to do everything to irritate my sibling" out of their system and then they are usually good for the rest of playtime. So I just turn the music up and let them have at it. Don't judge me =)

He gets loopy at bedtime. He loves to play blocks. He likes being thrown in the air and wrestled with. He likes to sing in the car. He's such a sweet boy.

Life Lessons From an Ice Cream Cone

Yesterday Hailey, Caleb, Jeannie (our roomie/daughter/sister) and I went to Chick-fil-A before we did our insane Wal-Mart trip. Hailey had gotten a coupon for a free ice cream cone through her summer reading program. So after she finished eating I took her up to the register and let her order her ice cream. She was so excited. She got her ice cream and took it back to her seat and ate about half of it when I noticed her doing the "pee-pee dance." You know what I'm talking about.
Anyway, if you don't know, she has this incredible fear of automatic flushing toilets. So I went to the bathroom to scope it out and see what kind of toilets they had. I knew Wal-Mart, which was our next stop, definitely had automatic flushers. And to my surprise they had regular potties. So I went back and gave Hailey the good news and she went with me to the bathroom. Well...when we got in there she started FREAKING out. Like "who is this child and what happened to my Hailey" freaking out.
She WOULD NOT let me pull her panties down to let her go potty. I'm sure if people could hear us outside they would think I was beating her up or something. I finally got her on the potty..I mean I am fighting her...and she peed and I MANUALLY flushed the potty like I told her I was going to. We washed hands. I squatted down eye-to-eye with her and explained to her that she needed to trust mommy. That mommy knew what was best for her and mommy knew the potty wouldn't flush on her.
She continued to cry. Not the weeping and wailing from before but this like whiney kind of whimper. I told her she needed to calm down. She didn't. She wasn't freaking out anymore. Just whining. It was a "cry"" I knew she could stop on her own. She wasn't upset anymore. She was just being stubborn at this point.
We got back to our seat and she continued to whine. Seriously... I told her that if she did not quit whining I was going to take her ice cream from her. She continued to whine. I took her ice cream away. She continued to whine. I told her if she didn't stop whining I was going to throw her ice cream away. I really didn't want to throw her ice cream away. She contiued to whine. I reminded her that if she didn't stop whining and have a good attitude I was going to throw her ice cream away. I still did not want to throw her ice cream away. She still continued to whine. I threw her ice cream away. She fell apart. We left Chick-fil-A.
We got out to the car and she finally calmed down. I buckled her in and that's when the heart to heart started. I told her that I love her very much. I told her that I did not want to throw her ice cream away. I told her that I really wanted her to have her ice cream cone. But, because she chose to disobey mommy and continue to whine after I told her she needed to stop I had to throw it away. I did it so she would learn to obey and have a good attitude. I felt like the talk went pretty well. I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me. We hugged it out.
The night before I found/God gave me a passage in Hosea that popped in my head sometime after this whole ordeal. It's Hosea 6:1-3
"Come, let us return to the Lord! He has torn us in pieces; now he will heal us. He has injured us; now he will bandage our wounds. In just a short time, he will restore us so we can live in his presence. Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him! Then he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of the dawn or the coming of rains in early spring."
God doesn't want to take away our ice cream cones either. He loves us and he wants us to have good things. Sometimes he has to take away our ice cream cones....aka a job, a friendship, a loved one, a security, an "idol"...so that we can come back in a right relationship with Him. Not that these things are bad...well, the idols are, but really an idol is anything we place above God and our relationship with Him. I took Hailey's ice cream cone away from her for her, not for me. I don't want just an awesomely behaved kid. If I wanted that I would have let her keep the ice cream cone. I took it away so she would learn to be obedient and learn that when I say something she needs to trust me...whether it's that the flusher won't flush on her or that I will take her ice cream cone if she doesn't obey me. God is concerned about where our heart is, just as I am with Hailey. He wants us to want Him more than anything else. My desire for Hailey is that she would understand God's love (Eph 3:14-19) and that she would want to obey Him because of that love. God does the same thing for me. He "takes" things from me sometimes so that I will dig deeper in His Word and long for His principles. So that I would obey Him because of the love I have for Him and the love He has for me. "The suffering you sent was good for me, for it taught me to pay attention to your principles" (Ps 119:71.)
My encouragement to you is: What is God doing in your life? Is he taking things away. Does life seem kind of crappy right now? Run to God. Embrace Him. Throw out your idols. Desire His Word. Let it live in your heart. Let it not depart from your mouth (Joshua 1:8.)