My week

Welcome Company Girls, friends, and family. It has been a crazy week at our house and I'm trying to get some last minute chores finished this Friday afternoon.

I worked a few more hours than usual this week, but extra money is always helpful this time of year. I attended the staff Christmas party for the YMCA on Sunday evening and had a nice evening of food and fellowship. On Monday, my normal 3 hour night shift at the Y. Wed. the boys had their last day of preschool and on Thursday morning we attended their Christmas concert. It was their last day with their friends as we have removed them from that program. That is a very long story, but essentially we were very unhappy with some things going on at their preschool and decided they were better off not continuing there. I have since found out that we are not the only ones and no less than 5 other children from the two classes are also not returning after Christmas.

Last night Jared and I were able to attend a special sneak preview of the movie, Marley & Me. I recommend it to anyone except maybe small children. It was a very funny and heartwarming movie and not just for women, my husband also enjoyed the movie very much.

Today we found out that our middle child, Seth, will be having surgery on Tuesday morning. This summer he closed his hand in the back of the sliding door on our minivan and it froze the top joint of his thumb in a bent locked position. It is an outpatient surgery to release the tendon in his thumb, but it does require him to be put under anesthesia because of his age. If I might ask for your prayers for this surgery. None of my children have ever required surgery and the unknown and typical mother anxieties make me nervous.

My favorite small things this week were getting points for lighting a candle, something I love to do anyway, and today's small thing of getting points for doing something of my choosing, especially since this has been a very busy day/week. At least, I'll get some points for getting all of my laundry done today or was that scrubbing the bathtub.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I will update everyone next week on the outcome of Seth's surgery.

My wish for you this season.....

Many words come to my mind this time of year; joy, love, happiness, merry, wonder, and my favorite PEACE. This is my wish for my family and yours this holiday season. Christmas here is hectic: there are parties to attend, cookies to bake, cards to mail, presents to buy, and general mayhem. Peace is what God offered us with the birth of his Son. Maybe not peace meaning no wars or other problems, but peace within our own lives. The peace that comes from taking a moment to remember the real reason for this time of celebration. The peace that happens within our souls when we rest in Him instead of the worldly aspects of Christmas and the peace that comes with knowing and loving our Savior.

This Christmas I wish you all a season full of peace, love, and joy. May we all take a few moments to remember the real reason we celebrate Christmas. I wish you all a wonderful Christmas season.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Company Girl Coffee

It's Friday again and time for Company Girl Coffee. It's been a great week, and as always I was very excited to get the verse for the month. I love the artwork Rachel Anne puts with the verse and I love the new verse and the way it always seems to speak to me.

My favorite Small Thing this month was spending time with my baby. During this season of my life, spending time with each child individually is a challenge. I try my best to spend some time each day with each child, but with 3 kids with the ages of 4, 3, and 2, it is not an easy task. On Tuesday I was able to spend some great time one-on-one with Noah. While the younger two kids took their naps, Noah and I finished a Lite Brite picture and finished a puzzle. It's amazing how relaxing these activities were with only one 4 year old and not the whole gaggle that usually participates. We finished our time alone with a shared cup of hot chocolate, a great treat on a cold afternoon. It was a great afternoon and I loved having that time with my first baby.

Out of the mouths of babes

I coudn't resist posting a conversation I had with my 3 year-old son earlier this week. First a little background information for those who do not know us personally. I am 5'2" and am considerably shorter than everyone in my family of origin. My husband is 6'5" and the shortest of the three boys in his family, his mom is even 6'1". Our boys are tall and skinny and according to their doctor will be well over 6 foot, while our daughter will probably be closer to my height. Now that you know the details, the story...

Seth: Mommy, that's me when I was a baby (looking at a picture in our bedroom)

Me: Yes honey it is.

Seth: Mommy, God grew me to a big boy.

Me: Yes he did, but He started you as a baby.

Seth: But He grew me to a big boy now.

Me: You're right.

Seth: Mommy, when is God going to finish growing you?

Me: He already did honey, this is as tall as I'm going to be.

Seth: But you're little, God needs to finish growing you.

At this point I was out of answers but full of laughter. It's true, you never know what they are going to say, but in our house you will almost always get a laugh out of it.

Company Girl Coffee Dec. 5

Welcome. Sit down, enjoy a hot drink with me and we can talk about our weeks. It's been a relatively quiet week at our house, I know, I'll pay for that comment later.

I've done good this week at finishing the Small Things at Home Sanctuary every day this week, hopefully I'll be able to keep that up this month. I really enjoyed doing something for my Real Self on Tuesday and I happily went to my Mom to Mom group without one moment of guilt and enjoyed my evening of bible study and girl talk.

Today's Small Thing is to "Wipe the Slate Clean" be it a counter top or relationship, and while relationships can always be improved and I did clean off my buffet this morning, doing the "Small things" everyday is a kind of Clean Slate for me. If I didn't get the task done the previous day I get to start fresh each morning with a new Small Thing and every day I get to work at making our home a sanctuary for my family. I'm also trying to wipe the slate clean with myself, too often we beat ourselves up for not being good enough, not being perfect wives, daughters, friends, MOTHERS!!!!; but more often than not we are much harder on ourselves than our friends and families. Today I'm trying to let go of those things and just enjoy all of the many blessings in my life.

Pictures

The weather on Thanksgiving here was fantastic and since we were going to be at Jared's parents house we took the opportunity to get some great pictures of the kids. It was the best experience we have had so far in trying to get everyone's pictures (alone or together). Here are a few of my favorite pictures.

Noah, Seth, and Riley


Seth


Noah


Riley, this picture was taken at Seth's birthday party.


The next picture was taken at the beginning of October when my brother was visiting at my parents house from MT. I like the picture and thought I would share it with everyone.

Thankful

I love Thanksgiving, it is my favorite holiday, always has been. This year I thought I would list some of the many things I am most thankful for, in no particular order.

1. God and my Jesus who died for me.
2. Jared
3. Noah
4. Seth
5. Riley
6. The rest of my family, by blood or marriage
5. Health
6. Wonderful friends
7. A great church family
8. Our own home
9. Jared's good job, so I can be home with our kids.
10. My life and all of the many blessing that are apart of it.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that this is the start to a great holiday season for you all.

Broken Foot

Yes, you read that correctly. Last night I walked out the door to go work my 4 hours at the Y and 2 seconds later I was laying on the front porch crying. I stepped wrong, rolled my foot, heard a "pop" and could not walk. Thankfully Jared was home, heard me scream and came to my rescue. Any other day I would have been leaving the house with 3 preschoolers in tow.

After arranging for our neighbor to come watch the kids, Jared took me to the ER, where an hour later they confirmed that I had broken a bone in my right foot. The doctor called it a "ballet dancer's break", ironic since I was wearing ballet style flats when it happened.

How do you take care of a 2, 3, and 4 year old while on crutches for 2 weeks? That is a question I have yet to get answered. This morning the kids wanted oatmeal for breakfast, easy enough, except how do you get hot bowls of oatmeal to the table. The solution, offered by my dad, use the kids little shopping cart. Noah brought the shopping cart to the kitchen, I placed a bowl in the cart and then Noah pushed the cart to the table and put the bowls at each person's place. It worked out pretty good, although it was quite time consuming, but at least everyone was able to have a hot bowl of oatmeal for breakfast this morning.

I'll update later as to how we survived this time and I'll gladly take any suggestions from anyone.

Big Shoes to Fill

Riley has a fascination with shoes. ( I know we are in trouble!!!!) Yesterday she decided that Daddy's shoes were the best. Once the camera was spotted everyone wanted their pictures taken with the shoes on.


And in case those shoes look bigger than most, you're right, Daddy wears a 14.

Where have we been?

Everywhere!!!! Birthday parties, the zoo, the park, a pumpkin farm; we have been having a great time this fall.

Seth had his first friends birthday party this year. We had a great time and he loved playing with his friends. His favorite part of the day was when everyone sang Happy Birthday to him.

We have also spent a lot of time playing at the zoo and the playground as usual, but special this month was a visit to a local pumpkin farm. The kids had a great time picking out their first pumpkins, playing in the corn field, and seeing the animals. It was a great afternoon with our good friends Analayne and Leeanne.

We have been having a great time and November looks like it might be more of the same. I will try and be better about posting, especially pictures as we move into the holiday season.

Pizza

Last week we decided to have an adventure with pizza. Our grocery store has started selling pizza dough, for about $2 you get get a ball of pizza dough big enough to make a 12" pizza or several individual pizzas. Jared helped the kids roll out their dough, I helped them spread out the pizza sauce and then they were able to put any of the several different toppings on their pizza however they wished.

The finished pizzas were great and it was a fun way to have dinner one evening. We will definitely do this again as it was inexpensive, fun, and the pizzas tasted great. Plus, the kids had a fantastic time playing in the flour (which ended up all over the dining room).

Easy Cheap Entertainment

On Saturday the boys went to a birthday party for a friend from church. They had a great time and when they left they each received a goodie bag. The bags only lasted to the car, as they both unpacked everything in the bags as soon as they were buckled in. Their favorite thing in the bag were the punch balloons. You know what I'm talking about, those balloons that have the rubber band on one end and after they have been blown up you can punch them. A favorite of mine growing up and my kids seem to enjoy them also.

By the time we got home Seth had lost his balloon, I know seems hard to do when they did not get out of the car, but it happened. Jared started blowing up Noah's balloon and it popped after a couple of breaths. Luckily, I had a $1.00 bag of 3 punch balloons in the closet (gotta love The Dollar Tree) and two of them were the same colors as the missing and popped balloons. This meant that all 3 kids now had their own balloons and our house was a happy punchy place to be on Saturday night.

My Favorite....

I couldn't resist sharing this picture of Jared and the kids. This is a daily ritual at our house, reading to the kids. Jared and I share this time, but I had to get a picture of him and the kids together, my favorite people and picture subjects.

Cherry Pie

This week I attempted my first pie. I love to bake; cookies, cakes, bread, but pies have always seemed harder and more scary.

I decided to go for it this week when on of the Small Things on the Home Sanctuary blog was to make something from scratch. We have a few bags of fresh cherries we picked this summer, which we froze, that were just sitting there waiting to be used for something. While, I will admit that the pie was not the prettiest pie ever made it tasted great, and once it is paired with some vanilla ice cream who cares what it looked like in the pie plate anyway.

For those of you interested in what it did look like here is a picture for your viewing pleasure.


Also, while the pie was not as hard as I thought it might be, I think that I will stick to the cookies, cakes, and breads for awhile and maybe try again later.

Watermelon

If you know our family, you know that watermelon is a favorite treat at our house. We eat watermelon all summer and rarely go a day without watermelon available for a snack, with lunch, or for desert. Yes, I said desert. Watermelon is such a favorite for my son, Noah, that he turns down cookies, ice cream, brownies, and any other sugary treat you can think of for desert.

This picture was taken on Sunday after a birthday party in the backyard. I was putting away the food after everyone had gone home and Riley caught me with watermelon in my hand. This is Riley enjoying her 4th piece of watermelon for the day and I think she would have eaten more if we would have let her.

Company Girl Coffee

For several months now I have been reading a blog called Home Sanctuary. This blog focuses on doing "Small Things" around your home to help make it a sanctuary for you and your family. I try to do the posted "assignment" each day, it helps make me feel like I'm accomplishing at least one thing every day. This week she started "Company Girl Coffee" where we can share each week, I love this idea, although we'll see how good I am at participating.

This week my favorite small thing was working on my bookcase. This is something that I have been putting on my To-Do List almost every day for the past couple of weeks, but never actually completed. This week I did.....

Before


After


Contrary to what it looks like, I took about 30 books off of the shelves and as much as I would like to put decorative objects in with the books, my kids are still too little for that to be an option right now.

If you are wondering about my classification system, the book are arranged by subject and then my size within the subject.

First Day of School

On Wednesday the boys started "school", this is a relative term since at our house this means Mother's Day Out for Seth and Preshool for Noah. Seth is only going 1 day/week this year, but he could not be happier. He keeps telling me, "Mommy, I big to go to school!" He has never had separation issues, but I was a little bit bummed when he pretty much ran through the door of his classroom without slowing down to say good-bye or give me a hug.

Noah was excited to be on the preschool side this year and walked right into his class, although he did stop long enough for me to give him a hug.

I'm not sure if Riley was happy or sad that day. She likes having me all to herself all day, but I think she missed having her brothers around to play with. While we didn't get to do anything exciting our first day together; we spent the entire day at home with a plumber fixing the bathtub and running new pipes under the house; I'm looking forward to the next few Wed. hopefully we can do some fun things, just the 2 of us.

Here are a few pictures of the first day of school.

Seth

Noah

Happy Birthday Noah!!!!!

I know this is a couple of days late, but I still wanted to wish Noah a very Happy Birthday! I can't believe that it has already been 4 years since his birth, where does the time go?

He is such a joy to us and brings a lot of laughter to our house. He also is very much the oldest child and likes to tell Seth and Riley what to do, along with trying to convince everyone he is in charge. Noah loves to run, play games, go to preschool, read books, paint, just about anything that requires movement and creativity. He is a great kid and one of the loves of my life; I can't wait to see what the next 4 years and beyond brings us.

I have loved every minute of being his mother and I pray that God will grant me many, many more years of this journey.


Sept. 2004

New Design

Hope you enjoy the new look for the blog. I found a site with free templates and could not resist the change. I hope you enjoy it and if you are looking for a new look for your own blog, I highly recommend LeeLou designs.

More pictures

I thought I'd post a few more pictures from this past weekend. These are all of the kids with my parents and grandmother.

Labor Day Weekend

We had a great Labor Day weekend, complete with a family birthday party for Noah. My parents arrived on Friday afternoon and fun started. On Friday night after dinner Jared and I took Noah on a special outing with us by himself; if you know our family dynamics, you know it is a very rare occasion when 1 child gets to go with both parents by themselves. On our outing we took Noah to pick out his Scooter, the birthday present from Jared and myself. We had a lot of fun at Toys R' Us letting him try out a couple of different styles of Scooters until he decided on which one he wanted. He did stay true to the last month of asking and picked out the Spiderman scooter.

Saturday was mainly spent in the driveway riding his scooter while Seth and Riley rode their tricycles or big wheels. On Sunday we went to Jared's parents house to swim and enjoy a cookout for Noah's family party. He received many great gifts of which his parents at least are very grateful including clothes for this fall, I know the gift every 4 year old wants more than anything. While I enjoyed the clothes, Noah enjoyed getting a helmet and knee and elbow pads from Jared's parents and Candyland and Hungry Hungry Hippo from my parents.

Needless to say, since Sunday we have played multiple games of Candyland and Hungry, Hungry Hippo and he has ridden his scooter every chance he gets. On Monday night, after it had cooled down to 90 degrees, we all went to the park to ride the scooter, tricycle and walk, it was a great night.

Flipping

The kids are obsessed with flipping. This is a skill they all discovered taking a Parent and Tot gymnastics class at the Y. The Parent and Tot class is something I do with all of the kids when they are around 2. Riley has not yet taken this class, but has learned all about it watching the boys. Flipping is something that Seth is a master of, he loves to flip and will flip anytime anywhere, all he needs is something to hold onto. He no longer needs to even "climb" up to flip over, just something to grab, ie your hands, a bar, the ropes on the hammock, anything. Lately, every night before bed we have 15 minutes of flipping, it's exhausting for us, but they love every second of it.

I thought you might enjoy seeing some pictures of everyone flipping. And in case you can not tell who they are upside down, they are in order Seth, Noah, and lastly Riley.

More Vacation Pictures

Here are a few more pictures from our trip to Oklahoma. Hope you enjoy.


Noah(sad to be leaving) and Lane


Seth and Noah at the OKC zoo

Seth trying out an airplane cockpit at the Children's Science Museum in OKC