Life.

My sweet girl helping me by bringing down the laundry from upstairs.  She is really starting to act "old".  I know this may seem kinda hilarious to those of you with older kids.  That I would refer to my 4 year old as being "old".  But since she's the first born, I haven't had to watch this transition before from toddler to child.  She wants to know the ins and outs of everything.  She has such a strong opinion of what she wants.  She loves to try and get a rise out of me by saying something she knows is silly.  Every once in awhile she'll look at me the right way and I'll catch a glimpse of that baby face and I'll wonder where my baby went.  I wouldn't trade one second of this time with her though getting "old". ;)

As for the rest of life..

We're just going with the flow these days.  We've had a ton of ups and downs.  Today I just made up my mind that "ups and downs" are just going to be a way of life for us, I suppose!  We have some big hopes for this year.  We "hope" that this year we will make more family time away from the home.  We haven't been good about taking vacations just the four of us.  We usually spend our extra time visiting family.  This year we "hope" to take some time just the four of us.  We "hope" that this year our family will grow  with another baby.  We "hope" that Randy will one day get a full time job leading worship.  We can go on and on with desires of our heart, but I'm thankful we have more then just "hopes and dreams". 

This morning as I was working on a lesson from my ladies Bible study at church, I was reading this verse that I have probably read a gazillion times:

James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.   

And even though I have read it often, it never gets old.  We can be sad about a situation, but yet joyful because we know that in the end it is going to work out for our benefit and God's glory.  My absolute favorite part of it is the end.  That we will be "mature and complete, not lacking anything."  I can't imagine how many trials, how many lessons-learned-the-hard-way it must take to finally be complete and lacking nothing, but I'm thankful that God is chiseling away at me little by little!

Mess

Being a mom is seriously not for the weak!! Sometimes I like to describe it as being on a treadmill all day.  It's like you're running and running, but some days you never actually get anywhere.  I notice this the most with house cleaning.  I like to have things put away where they go in the house, but in order to accomplish this, I must literally clean all. day. long.  No breaks.  Because one little break and it will all fall back to shambles!  This can be really exhausting and especially frustrating when you have a day where you just want to take it easy.  Like last Friday.  I was just feeling SO tired so I decided I wasn't going to stress over the house.  I had a great day, but it's now Tuesday and I am finally 90% caught back up from the mess my children made on that one day.  Any other moms feel my pain????  My kids are actually pretty darn good kids.  They don't even make that big of a mess and it is still really bad.

The only thing I have found to help is a corny little cleaning schedule I found online that gives you daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning tasks.  It doesn't help with the preschooler induced mess everywhere, but it has helped me to accomplish some "deep cleaning" in the midst of the normal-cleanup-treadmill-run.

But anyways....now that I've had my moment to pout and vent.  I was really going somewhere else with this post! In the evenings now that my kids are getting older, I typically put them in the tub at night to play get clean and while they are in there, I pick up around the upstairs.  Multi tasking at it's finest.  It's one of the luxuries I can enjoy now that they don't need constant supervision in the tub.  The bathroom is upstairs so I can hear them while I clean up the miscellaneous toys and such strung around.  The other night while I was doing this I had to run down stairs and grab my camera because I had one of those sweet mommy moments.  I think God gives us these as a way of saying "I know it's hard, but look closer and enjoy the sweet, simple, things that only a Mama can enjoy." And so I did.

See, as a whole, the little things here and there around the room just look like a mess.

 But as I started picking them up to put them away, I saw the signs of my creative, imaginative kiddos.

That love to make believe.

 All of the mess, just signs of an innocent day well spent.

 Playing and laughing in an imaginary world.

 and I suddenly wasn't so tired of picking up their toys.  

Refreshed enough to finish the bath. Put them to bed. And pray for another day spent with them.  

Picking up their toys.

Get Off the Bench!

Yesterday, Randy had the opportunity to speak at our church.  Our church has three core values that we try to live out.  They are Deepen, Do, Develop and Randy spoke on "Do".  Do something to serve others using your talents and gifts.  He did such a good job.  He made so many great points about how good our intentions often are to help and serve others, but most of the time we don't put any action into them.  When we are just sitting on the bench watching we aren't any help, but the "game changes" when we put action into our words and go DO something.  It changes when we let Christ take control and start living for Him and Do-ing for him.  He challenged people to get into action and do something that matters for the Kingdom of God.  It was a great message and I really think people were challenged and inspired by it.  I think Randy enjoyed it, too, but I know he is so relieved that it's behind him now.  There is so much preparation and stress trying to make sure you are saying the right things that God wants you to say.  I have been SO nervous for him!!!!!  I have so much respect for our Pastor, Jason and my sweet friend Lora, his wife.  She does such a wonderful job at supporting him and after having a tiny glimpse into the pressure she experiences weekly, I am happy to hand the job back over!  I'm looking forward to having Randy back behind the guitar where he is comfortable and it comes easily to him :)) Still, I am beyond proud of what an awesome job he did.  If you get a chance, you should definitely stop and listen to it.  This is the live recording so the video quality is pretty poor.  I'll post the better one when they get done with it, but I was too anxious to wait.  

His actual message starts about 18 minutes in...

It's YOU!

Proverbs 2:1 (MSG)

1 Good friend, take heart what I'm telling you; collect my counsels and guard them with your life. 2 Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom; set your heart on a life of Understanding. 3 That's right- if you make insight your priority, and won't take no for an answer, 4 Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold, like an adventurer on a treasure hunt, 5 Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours; you'll have come upon the Knowledge of God.

6 And here's why: God gives out Wisdom free, is plain spoken in Knowledge and Understanding. 7 He's a rich mine of Common Sense for those who live well, a personal bodyguard to the candid and sincere. 8 He keeps his eye on all who live honestly, and pays special attention to his loyally committed ones.

I was just reading this verse earlier and loved the reminder that God wants us to have His Wisdom.  He's ready to hand it out to us if only we would ask for it and be willing to listen for it!  So so SO often I get in the same rut of trying to handle everything myself and figure out all of the details.  When I can't make it work on my own then I start asking God to help.  I'm sure every time God is just shaking His head at me again.  I can imagine He may be thinking "when will she finally learn?!?"  I'd love to say I'm getting better, but I'm not.  Surrendering is hard for me.  Asking for Wisdom is hard for me.  Maybe because I know God will most likely pull me out of my comfort zone once again.  But it is the desire of my heart.  

"All I want in this world is more of YOU and less of ME"

Jesus>Religion

The Letter N Story

This is a little story that Ella's class put together about the Letter N.  Each child was allowed to add to the story on their turn.  The result is too cute.

The Letter N Story by Miss Angela and Miss Pat's Class

Tori: Letter N was at home and was eating breakfast.  N then went to the grocery store

Ella: He bought some juice and groceries, and he bought fruit and apples. And he bought some crayons.

Kaden: Letter N went to the gas station. Then, he went back to the grocery store.

Ayden: He got bananas and apples, a pear, an orange, and glasses.  He got stairs, tables, wheels for his car, and hair.  

Parker: Letter N had a nose.

Mateo: Letter N lived in a nest and he lived in a nose. Eggs lived in the nest.

Dominick: Letter N is at my home. He played with me and called friends.

Jaxson: The letter N had crayons in his shirt.  A baby bird put the eggs in the nest.

Adi: I love Cheetos.  The letter N loved Cheetos, too.  I have crazy hair in the night.

Maesie: N loves Cheetos.  N loves friends.  N loves his heart.

Kaylee: I like Doritos.  N likes Doritos, too. 

Clair Medwick: There are eggs in the nest.  A bird feeds it worms.  The eggs hatch.  The letter N gave them food.

Clair Mallet: The letter N likes big trucks.  He likes birds.  He likes his friends.  He likes his fire truck.

Peyton:  The letter N likes his car.  He goes into his fire truck, then sees a fire.

Anh: Letter N keeps cars.  We wash it. 

Matthew: Birds have N's on their back while they are flying in the wind.

Training Wheels

My silly little Ella.  She is SO my daughter.  For the last month she has been asking on and off to have the training wheels taken off her bike.  Before we moved, we really didn't have many opportunities for the kids to ride their bikes since our neighborhood didn't have side walks and we didn't feel safe having them on the road while they were still so unpredictable. (think car coming and oblivious preschooler riding right towards it.) Our new neighborhood has sidewalks and is really kid friendly so the kids have been riding all over the place on their outside toys.  But anyways, back to my story and the reason for this post.  The weekend before last, Ella was asking again about taking her training wheels off so Randy granted her wish and took them off.  She was really nervous, but she was pretty determined, too.  It took her a couple of wobbly tries and in no time she was riding really well on her own.  Randy and I were so proud!  She needed help getting started, but was riding for a pretty long distance before she would get scared and turn towards the grass to jump off.  We thought training wheels were a thing of her past until completely out of nowhere....she just bursted into tears.  She said it was too hard and she wasn't good at it and that she wanted her training wheels back on.  She was SO upset.  Randy was sort of baffled, but he put her training wheels back on and she was back on her way.

I'm sure to most guys, girls and their emotions just don't make sense.  She probably doesn't make sense to some girls, too.  But she makes perfect sense to me.  Because she is a little mini version of me.  It's the same reason I can't play guitar.  Or why I had a sewing machine for almost a year before I made anything.  It's this strange OCD complex where I don't want to be "bad" at anything.  It keeps me from doing things that are "too hard" or that I'm "not good" at.  And unfortunately it has poor Ella back to riding on training wheels.  I'm proud to say that the last two years one of my "resolutions" was to not do anything I didn't want to.  That may sound selfish to some, but for someone with an acts of service love language like myself, it's a big deal.  See in my attempts to show love to people I care about, I tend to turn into a door mat.  I love to help people out and serve, but sometimes people take advantage or other times I haven't been taken advantage of, but yet I'm stuck doing something that doesn't make me happy because I said yes to something I didn't really want to do.  Saying "no" to things has given me time to work on the things I'm "not good at" that I want to be good at.  I'm still a work in progress though.  It's also a hard transition to go from the person who always smiles and does what people tell you to...to the person that speaks the way they really feel.  It's still really hard for me, but I'm making progress.  I try to take every opportunity individually to pray and think on it before I commit.  Since making these changes, I can truly say I am SO happy with my life right now!  I enjoy the ministries I serve in.  I am enjoying being a stay at home mom to my kids and being home to support my husband.  I'm constantly re-evaluating and adjusting my schedule to meet the needs of myself and my family.  

Taking the training wheels off is easy for some....but a longer process for others.  The key is to keep trying!!

and yes.....she is wearing knee pads.  She had on tights that we didn't want to rip....and I've become one of those parents that is scared for their kid to bleed.  Just my girl.  Because she's breakable.  ;)

Fire + Friends = FUN!

Did I seriously just give this post the corniest title ever?  Um. Yep.  I couldn't resist.

This past Saturday we had the most amazing weather!  This has been such a mild Winter so far.  I'm so glad.  I enjoy the change of seasons and getting to wear "Fall" clothes, but I hate when the coldest part of Winter hits.  It's so hard to get motivated and it makes me want to wrap up in a blanket on the couch and drink coffee all day.  SO, you can imagine how wonderful it was to have temps in the 70s in January!  It was amazing.  Ella and I spent the morning off together running a couple of errands and finished up with lunch together.  We had the best time.  I really need to be more intentional about giving her one on one time so that's why I decided to take her out by herself.  Noah and I get time together every week when Ella is at school, so it's nice for her to have some time.  Randy and Noah spent the day washing cars and poking around in the yard.  They played some soccer and did boy stuff so by the time we got home they had decided we should cook hotdogs on the fire together for dinner.  We ended up inviting our friends Chris and Jessica over and had a great night!  The weather was perfect for a fire and one of the neighbors was setting off fireworks so we got to enjoy that, too!  Definitely a great weekend.

Our New Year is off to a great start.  I'm glad 2011 is over.  I'm looking forward to lots of big changes and new blessings in 2012.  Can't believe this will be the year that Ella starts Kindergarten!  Wow.  That's insane. And sad. And a whooooooole 'nother blog post!  Oh my.  But other than that...really looking forward to this year.  Happy about some of the goals and challenges the hubby and I have set for ourselves and our family.  Feeling optimistic and enjoying the usual "New Year High" that has my house all organized, my meals all planned, and spirits all high.  I know it wears off.  I know I wont keep all the "goals" I've set.  But I'm going to enjoy the boost while it lasts!

Here are a few pics from the fire and there are some more posted on Chris and Jessica's blog if you want to click on their names and go check them out, too. Enjoy!