Some Family Fun

On Friday night, since it was Bree's official birthday we had some family time. We took the girls to Incredible Pizza to eat dinner and play some games. Since it was their birthdays last week they got to spin the birthday wheel at IP. They both won a free attraction, they could choose from putt putt, bowling or go-carts. They both wanted to drive the go-carts, but seeing that they weren't tall enough they had to settle with riding as Chris and I drove. Of course the race turned a little competitive...... but the best did win...as you can see.

Katie got a ribbon that said First Place...she was so excited.

Bree was just excited to be experiencing her first go-cart ride...she had a grin on her face the whole time.

After dinner and games we went to the stores so the girls could spend some of their birthday money they got. It was a great birthday week with the girls and I do believe they loved it all as well.

Somebody's 3 Today???

Happy 3rd Birthday Munchkin!!!! We love you!

Today is Bree's big day. She is turning 3...as hard as that is to believe for me. I still see her as the little baby to me. I guess it is hard to realize that the baby days are gone and I know I have a toddler on her way to becoming a little girl. So a little bragging time on Bree...again if you don't already know Bree is a very special little girl. She is full of life and LOVES to be silly and play. She has a giggle that will make you laugh no matter what mood you are in. She is such a sweetie too. She loves to come up to you and say " give you a kiss" she puckers up and will give you a kiss and a hug. She also loves to cuddle, which I am so thankful for. Every night I still get to rock her. I value that little bit of time I get with her each night to spend with her and love on her. She loves her big sister and looks up to her so much. She loves to color...she has a little table at home and pretty much any given time you can find here there coloring. Dora is her favorite thing right now....I always say if Dora was a real person Bree might be a stalker. :) I am so thankful for her and the privilege to be her mom. The picture above is Bree in her birthday outfit for the day. She seemed so excited about Katie getting an outfit for her birthday that I went back and got Bree something special for her to wear on her day.

Cuties in Tutu's

I had to put this on here, because not only are these tutu's wonderful but they were made especially for Katie and Bree by their Aunt Joy. The girls loved them. A big thanks to Aunt Joy for doing such a wonderful job on them and for finding them time to make them. We love you Aunt Joy!

Let's Party

Last night we had a joint birthday party for Katie and Bree. It was at Party Time, they have a an indoor play area and an inflatable for the kids to play on. We have been to two other birthday parties here and it is very clean and nice place, plus it is reasonable priced for a kids birthday party. We had a wonderful time with the girls. Katie and Bree both were so excited the whole time and were very gracious host. Neither of them had melt downs which I was totally planning on. Bree was really making me smile because all evening long Bree just had a smile on her face. She just seem so excited to be having her first real birthday party with her friends. It was so precious. So now for some pictures. More are posted on picasa, too many to put on here.



We let Katie and Bree pick out what they wanted for their decoration and cake. Katie had Littlest Pet Shop and Bree stuck with ole faithful Dora. I asked Reasors to split the decorations on the cake. I thought the cake looked awesome. Both of the girls loved it.

A few of the decorations we put up, balloons and such.

The girls giving each other birthday hugs. They both really impressed me on sharing their birthday party. I have some amazing little girls.

Time to eat some pizza!!!

Look at Katie's facial expression here....she just saw her Ms. Laurie walk through the door. It was priceless. She didn't know that I invited her to the party. Ms. Laurie was one of their favorite teachers at their old school. Katie and Bree haven't seen her since they left at the end of January.

Katie with her Ms. Laurie....I just can't say enough about how wonderful she is and how much Katie and Bree love her.
Bree talking with her Ms. Laurie.... I love how they both call her their Ms. Laurie as if they own her.

Bree blowing out her candles.

Katie blowing out her candles

The beautiful birthday girl

I love this photo...She looks like she wasn't supposed to be eating her cake. She wore her dora b-day hat all night.

There are more pics on Picasa and below is a link to the video we took from the party, well some of it. I had to edit it but it is still kind of long, about 14 minutes. Everyone is more than welcome to view it, but the grandparents may be the only ones who really appreciate it.

http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/view_shared?p=a6f0321c24ec929bf6a73f&skin_id=701

Who's 5 Now? This Cutie Is.

5 years ago today Katie came into this world to bless our family. She is truly a gift from God that we cherish each day and I thank Him for choosing Chris and I to be her parents. Katie is an amazing little girl, if you don't already know that about her. She is smart, sweet, compassionate towards others, loving, helpful, and the girl is into clothes and make-up. She loves to put together her own outfits. Some of them make me cringe a little, but I have learned to just let it go and let her wear what makes her feel good. Who knows maybe one day she will be on Project Runway designing her own clothes. She is very picky about what she wears. It is very rare that I can pick out clothes for her without her with me, but for her birthday I did pick her out an outfit to wear on her birthday, I just had my fingers crossed she would love it. So this morning I went in to wake her up, she wasn't quite ready to get up but then she hear the russeling of the paper of her gift and she popped straight up. She opened the gift and pulled out the outfit I picked for her. She looked at me and shouted " I LOVE IT", whew big relief for me. That was either going to be mean a good beginning of the day or a bad beginning. So here she is in her birthday outfit.

Happy 5th Birthday Katie Bear. We love you!

We had a joint birthday party for Katie and Bree tonight. I will post more about that later once I get all the pics and video uploaded.

Sitter Swap

Last month my friend Stef and I talked and decided that instead of paying for babysitters when we want a date night with our hubbys that we would just swap nights on babysitting each other kids. I am not sure why we didn't think of this sooner, plus our kids love to play together. It gets so expensive by the time you pay for the sitter, and then dinner and sometimes a movie. We thought we would do this once a month or every other month. We tried it out for Valentine's Day. The other Saturday Stef watched our kids and then this past Monday Chris and I watched their kids. We had a good time. I order some pizza for dinner and the kids were kid of tired so we just watched some movie and played around the house. I got some photos of the evening.

Dinner time...yummy pizza. Chris and I got 2 medium pizzas thinking that would be plenty to have so leftovers for the next day. When the kids were done eating the four of them ate a medium pizza plus a little of the second one. We had one slice left. Good eaters that night. Katie wasn't in this pic because she was having a minor melt down and was in her room composing herself. Braeden, Bree and Lydia enjoyed the dinner.


Well you can see what kind of mood Katie was still in. The other three were having a blast.


I thought this was a sweet photo. We were watching a movie and I looked over and saw Braeden and Bree in the bean bag together. Braeden was actually holding Bree's hand at one point. Braeden is such a sweet little boy.


We had fun that night letting the kids play and it is nice to have free babysitting so you can enjoy the an evening out without going broke.

What Momma Doesn't See

I meant to put this post on her the other week, but time just got away from me. I thought this was a funny story of the girls. I was told this story of what Katie and Bree did by the girls that were at our house for DNOW weekend.

On Saturday evening I had Katie and Bree sitting at a little table beside the big table the youth girls were at for dinner. Katie and Bree had just started eating dinner. They both had cucumbers on their plate, this is one of Katie's favorites. The girls told me they saw Katie ask Bree to close her eyes and count to ten. They said Bree wasn't sure what to do, so Katie showed her what to do. Bree then closed her eyes and started counting. While her eyes were closed Katie grabbed a few of her cucumbers off of Bree's plate and put them on her plate. She told Bree to open her eyes and then said " Good job Bree you can count to ten." Bree had no idea what she had done, but I guess she had a feeling she did something because a few minutes later Katie got up from the table to go to the bathroom. When she got up Bree, who had juice to drink for dinner, decided to steal a sip of Katie's sprite. Bree went over to Katie's seat, opened the lid on her sprite bottle took a drink and them put the lid back on and then went back to her seat as if she did nothing. At this point, all the youth girls busted out laughing at how sneaky both of my girls were being. They told me what they just saw and I started laughing. It was amazing to me that they both could be so conspiring towards each other at this age. This made me wonder, what else I don't see when I am busy getting dinner ready.

Another Long Night By Bill Huckaby

This post is courteous of Bill Huckaby. He is one of the kids that attend the DNOW weekend and wrote this note on Facebook the other day. I asked his permission to take this and post it on my blog. I thought what he wrote was very insightful for a 17 year old. It really spoke to me and I believe that we are to share what we feel God is telling us because we never know who needs to hear it at that point and time in their life. I hope you enjoy the read.

Since I posted the first one, I might as well post this one too.I went to Disciple Now at my church, which was a good move, but I didn’t think so at the time. I wasn’t really in the mood to hear the Spirit and it threw me off the whole time, making me notice all the little things that get to me. The theme was Inhabit, talking about being in the world but not of it. The examples were the story of Daniel and the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

I’ve heard both stories more times than I can count, but after the weekend was over I thought of a Shane And Shane song I used to know called Burn Us Up. It’s about the latter three and their run in with a king commanding them to worship an idol. Of course the whole song is mostly them saying we would rather be thrown into the furnace than give in to idolatry.

They knew God could protect them from this sin and that he could save them this pain. What did they have to fear?

But then I hit this one line of the song that I knew but never really thought about. It’s the simple phrase “Even if you don’t”.

As soon as I heard that I stopped and thought about it (and listened to the song twice more for good measure). I knew the scripture mentioned it, but it was the verse I guess I always just whizzed over.

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. BUT EVEN IF HE DOES NOT, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Daniel 3:16-18

It made me think of how my prayers seem to go when I’m confronting God with my lack that fiery feeling. I keep saying things like “Give me some kinda sign, something I can’t miss, maybe even a run in with an angel”.

That was an actual prayer of mine once, and I see now that I’m in a similar slump as the bible characters. We all have our own set of temptations thrown at us that would appear to make our problems go away if we will just give in. I don't doubt that the Bible guys were slightly tempted, I mean it's a furnace, who wouldn't be scared?

But whats important about the example in the Bible. Is that they didn't give in, and neither should we. We have to be willing to go through trials in order to do anything worth mentioning. We have to have the faith to say “Even if you don’t make all the bad things go away, God, we’re STILL here to serve. We know that YOUR purpose will be done, and that all that matters. Because it’s not about us, it’s NEVER been about us, it’s always been about You.

"Jesus himself, while praying in the garden of Gethsemane before being taken away and crucified, said “Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus was God, but also human, and he knew what was coming was going to hurt in ways we can’t even fathom, and he also knew that if the Father wanted, it could all go away. But Jesus didn’t come to earth for a vacation. He didn’t come for comfort. He came with a mission that and he was willing to go through the pain to accomplish it.

“Even if you don’t”

How often do we ask for help to make the bad things go away? “Take this person out of my life” or “make this go better”. Maybe we’re missing the point.

What if we said “God, you CAN fix this, it’s nothing before you, but I know that there may be a bigger reason for it. So I ask that if it’s possible, make things better, but even if you don’t, please let this work for the bigger picture, that I can’t see.”

Think about your life right now. Think of all your problems. We all know what God COULD do, but what about what he WANTS to do? I’m not saying we should purposefully put ourselves in blatantly bad situations, but maybe we shouldn’t freak out so bad about what’s going on now. God has kept the world under control for a long time now, I think He knows what He’s doing, and he obviously has some pretty big plans.

Try thinking about what awesome ways your little or large trials could be used later.

I get the feeling that if we started doing that, and stopped only looking after our own comforts, we would get a lot more done, and in a much better name: Jesus.

DNOW

Well, I can say that we survived another DNOW weekend. In all honesty, it was a fun weekend and well worth the time and energy it took to host the awesome group of girls that stayed with us. This year we had our 11th and 12th grade girls. There were five of them and the group leader Katy that stayed in our home. Just in case you may not know what DNOW is, it stands for Disciple Now and it is a weekend retreat for our youth. All the youth stay in host homes for the weekend and they spend time in small groups throughout the weekend, go to the church for a big group worship time and they also have a afternoon of recreation, paintball or bowling. As a host home we allow the kids stay in our home and we get to spend time with them and of course feed them good food all weekend. This is our second year being a host for this event and I always get such a big blessing out of opening our home to the youth. The schedule for the weekend is a little crazy. Friday night we provide dinner for the group leader staying with us, the kids arrive at our house on Friday evening at 7pm. Saturay we provide breakfast, lunch and dinner. They kids are in and out of the house all day on Saturday either going to church or to play paintball or bowl. Sunday morning we wrap it up by giving the breakfast and getting them all out the door for church. On Saturday afternoon while the youth girls were at their activies, Chris and Katie were running some errands and Bree was taking a nap. I decided to make some cupcakes for dessert for dinner that night. When Bree woke up I decided to let her taste test the cupcakes to make sure they were good. She didn't turn down the opportunity.

She downed the cupcake in about two mintues so I guess they turn out okay.

After snack she wanted to watch a movie, I thought it was cute how she was laid out on the couch zoned in on her movie.

Hannah, Lindsey and Sarah, back from bowling.

Group photo: Lindsey, Hannah, Adrienne, Chris, me, Katy, Sarah and Lauren. Katy was the group leader for the weekend. Chris he looks like what a guy would look like that just had a house full of teenage girls and two toddlers. LOL.

I thought this picture was cute. The girls stayed upstairs in our bonus room. They were playing a game and Katie and Bree wanted to see what they were doing, so instead of opening the door they were trying to look under it. I snapped this photo of them trying to see.

I'd have to say the most amazing thing that came out of this weekend so far is that one of our boys that is in our sunday school class got saved this weekend at DNOW. We have been praying for him and he decided to make the decision to accept Christ as his savior. When I saw him this morning at church I went up to him and gave him a big hug. At the end of our morning worship he went up to the front of the church to make his decision known and when he announced it all of the youth stood up and clapped for him. It was an awesome moment for me and I know for others. There is nothing more powerful then to see a prayer answered and to know that the Holy Spirit is there working in our lives.