Valentine's Week Post 3

Like marshmallows and campfires we're better together. 

Happy Valentine's day to my man. 

Excited to spend the rest of my valentines with you.

#andyletterboard

Knucklehead

i have been doing the #shereadstruth bible study on Hosea and have really been enjoying it. todays study was on chapter 13. it was an exhausting chapter to read, after reading all of the other chapters prior to it.  the title of the study is 'Who are these knuckleheads?'  here is a quote from the study by Raechel Myers, "And still, thirteen chapters into the book of Hosea, no clanging cymbal or shockingly graphic simile is enough to shake them out of their sin and cause them to repent. And oh how He wants them to repent—to live in loving, covenant relationship with Him.
God gave them food and water in the wilderness, but just as soon as they were satisfied, they forgot why they needed Him in the first place.
God is angry with Israel. Shoot, by this point, I am angry with Israel."

ME TOO! I wanted to shout, until it dawned on me that, that is me. I cry out to God in times of need and then 'put Him in a box', as I am sure you have heard people say and as was quoted in this study.

I am struggling right now with my youngest and school.  I seemed like she was never going to get into the groove of school. She had some good day, some bad days and some ok days. there was a lot of teach and instructing and frustration about it all. I asked a dear friend of mine to please pray for her and I as we were navigating the waters of kindergarten and all that is required and all that needs to be. she was sweet and kind to not only pray for us but to also check in on how she was doing through it all. then Monday came around, my girl got in the car and was so excited about her smiley face sticker and proclaimed that she "stayed on white today!" I was excited for her and told her what a great job that she did. Tuesday happened and that same thing. I was thrilled, as was she.

as I sat down this morning and to read more of Hosea (which couldn't have come at a better day, I am pretty sure that I am a day off because I missed a day at some point in the last week or so, lets call that God thing, because I wouldn't have had this passage and this reading on this particular day had I not missed that day) I realized that this was totally me. it was very telling. I have found myself over that last two days no crying out to God as much or even praising Him that she is doing better and thanking Him for it. It reminded me that I need Him in every situation not just in the struggle. I am glad for friends that stand by us when we need them, lift us up in prayer when we ask and ask how we are doing thought it all.  I am also thankful for women who heard the calling for God and pour into other ladies, even ones that they may never meet this side of Heaven.

Feeling blessed to be doing this study and by the ladies that take the time to read and study Gods word and present it to us the way that they do.

13 years today

You're the cream in my coffee!
like campfires and marshmallows - we're better together!
I love chasing adventures with you!
I have found the one whom my soul loves.
Happy Anniversary! I love you!

Questions?

in Sunday school this last weekend we were all asked to share when was a time that we felt close to God? my brain immediately went to one thing and I stuck with it.

let me just say my introverted self hates questions like this. really, just group questions in general. I don't like speaking I groups (even our Sunday school class who I know practically everyone and is not overly large) that is my issues though.

I want to be able to think about it longer. I definitely had a good bit of time to think about my answer but my brain said its answer and instead of wording it well I soaked in everything else that everyone was saying, their answers, and I loved it all.

my answer went something like this. "missions trips. I went on a few when I was younger and one with this guy(as I pointed to my hubby.)"

I probably sounded like a dork. it is true......the times I've felt closest to God was on missions trips. meeting the people wherever we are, going to new places, building things needed to help others, VBS camps, medical/dental work, sharing God's word with others. most of the time stretching for me but always good and wonderful and life filling.

that was the big times for me. but as I listened to others speak I realized that I can daily experience His presence and usually do. in nature. the sun rise in the morning, the sunset at night, stars bright and shiny, puffy clouds, ocean waves (well that isn't a daily experience but that sure would be awesome.) mountains, wind. huge trees.

then there is my children's face, my husbands love. and the beauty I find around me. a picture, photograph, painting, song, words read, time spent, arms wrapped up and held.

I love that I can daily experience Him in what sometimes is called the little or small things but they are not. they are the big things in life and they are the important and they are some of the best experiences and ways to draw and be close to my Savior.

Meet.....

Golden boys new hearing aid molds.

 

 

we get new molds every 2-3months or so. this is nothing new for us. we used to pick orange and black stripes when he first got his hearing aids because he loved Tigger so much and we called them Tigger ears. there came a point where he started to choose the color himself. I wish I would have marked the date. we have all of his ear molds from the very beginning. I will have to gather them all up and get a picture of them. but back to these. when he deiced on gold/yellow and tan it was because he wanted the colors of his school mascot.  it is an eagle and his feathers are brown (I don't think brown was an options and his feet and beak are yellow)

he was very excited to be getting his new molds. when we pulled them out of the bag I was thinking, yikes the kind of look pinkish.

I handed them to him and he looked at them and then looked at me. I said they look great buddy.

he said they aren't eagle ears and they are pink.

I held them up to his skin and showed him that they were tan.

he asked, "what am I going to call them?" (because they weren't what he was expecting and can't call them eagle ears)

I told him that we would show daddy and that maybe he could help us come up with something to call them. we got in the car to head to speech therapy and he was still looking at them and he was pretty quiet. then he sighed in frustration and said "I don't know what to call them." I let him know again that we could have daddy help us name them when we got home. he said, "I need to know now what to call them." I told him that I would try and think of something to call them. right as I had something in mind, he said, "I know what I can call them."

"what?" I said.

He said, "I can call them Goldie Treasure."

I told him how much I loved it and how creative he was to come up with that. the way his mind works.......I just love it. it didn't occur to me that he was sitting in the back of the van mulling over what it was that he wanted to name his hearing aid molds. sure we had named them from the beginning and it's our thing. I love our things. maybe no one else gets it but I love it.

here are the links to all the other hearing aid posts that I wrote when he first got his hearing aids. when we call them tigger ears. HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE

Back to School (or i should say starting school photos)

 it was just me, her and my camera. I wanted to get some back to school or going to school for the first time pictures of her. I am pretty happy with the way they came out. I am still learning my camera and all the details that come along with it.

 these two are seriously my favorites. I sent them to my sister and she asked my faves. I told her these two and she edited them for me. these two are the edited ones. she did an amazing job editing them.

 and last this one is a little blurry but out of all of the ones that I took with her holding up her four fingers for four years old this was my favorite, blurry and all.

Frozen Party

As always, pinterest is just overflowing with ideas for themed birthday parties. After seeing the movie Frozen this past winter I was sure that was the theme we would be doing for my daughters birthday party. Last year we did a combined Mickey and Minnie birthday party for my son and daughter. My hubby convinced me to do a combined one again this year. I didn't think Frozen would fly with my son who was turning 7 so I resigned myself to just going a simple pool party. sure I would probably cutesy it up some but I was going to go simple. Then one day while taking my son to school he asked me if he and little girl were having a birthday party together this year. I told him yeah that they were. he asked me what kind of birthday party? I told him a pool party. he said no mommy what kind? I said, like a theme? he said yeah. I asked him what would he like. he said, Frozen.  and so here is my attempt at a frozen birthday party.

The entrance to the party.

I saw this idea here.



 

Sven's Antlers (and snowballs)

found this idea here

and if you open up the link you will also see Kristoff's Ice. I had the blue jello all ready to go and left it at home.

 

Snowman noses were found here and we have cucumbers in our garden so I added those to the table as disc sleds  

 

 

we always have a form of lemonade at the kids birthday party (pink or yellow) I decided to sitck with the yellow and call it melted yellow snow to have a little bit of that boyish humor into the princessey party. 

 

 

these two cousins. glad they have so much fun toghether

 

is he not the cutest little guy every. he plays shy with me......a lot. but I think that he really likes me.

my awesome mom took come cute pictures of the cakes. really she took pretty much all of the pictures. my mother in law brought the kids their gifts in these reuseable bags(which are awesome) and mom set them behind the cakes as photo backgrounds. i love it.

I wish I had taken pictures of the insides of the cakes. this one is little girls and it looked like this on the inside.  i was trying to go somewhat with this look for the top. i am happy with the way it turned out.

 

for Golden boys cake I came across this pin and thought it was so cute. I got the figurine set on ebay. Kristoff's Ice was going to go in a bowl right next to him. (can you tell I am still a little sad that I forgot it?)

 

my sweet niece

 me and my girl

 

the party invites I found here and loved the way that they turned out.

and while we didn't do favors this year I saw this and thought that I would write it on the driveway as people were leaving. I am a terrible speller and my 2nd grade, super smart niece helped me when it came to spelling coming. (I had to m's in there, ugh)



I thought about making these magic wands

snowballs (white powdered donuts)

marshmellows

and  a back drop similar to this  or this

but in the end I kept telling my self simple and easy and that is they way it ended up. we had a great time and so did the kids.

 

 



The Library

I never claimed to be much of a writer. so that fact that I have a blog......I am not quite sure how that happened. but it did. a long time ago. before I had the two little people that reside in my home and in my heart. it was just me and my hubby and we were taking on the world (or so we though)
I am not eloquent in what I have to say, I don't always capitalize where I am suppose to or use punctuation where I should, I know that I spell works wrong all the time.......even though there is spell check.  all that being said I lay in bed last night thinking about this post this morning. a simple post about the library. my brain went through the whole process and the whole post on what I was going to say and last night as was constructing it, in my head, it sounded great. now here I am this morning and I have not clue what exactly my head was thinking last night. here goes though. at least an attempt on what I think I was going to say.

the library. I could walk the aisles of the library. browsing books. checking them out. oh how I love the library. Be still my heart. I mean really the next best thing to it is a book store. no particular book store either. really just anyone. so now I have these two little ones and I love reading and I hope to pass my love of reading to these two little people who live in my house and my heart. these two though........they are not me.......they are rarely like me.......I love that about them but it makes it hard on a trip to the library. a place of quiet and calm. those two words rarely go with my two. that's ok with me, usually.

I braved the library with them to hopefully get them some books that they like and that I could read to them. Golden boy started looking through the books right away and found a stack of them that he was interested in. it seemed like over half of them were about Christmas time, which I thought was funny. I went through them and added some readers to the sack too.

 little girl came with her stack. much smaller than his but it was all fine. in fact I think the only one she picked out was the Romeo and Juliet one. (we have the Pride & Prejudice one and she loves it. when I saw the Romeo and Juliet one I thought she may get it. there was also a Wuthering Heights one and many more) Golden boy handed her the Alice in Wonderland one and the Dr Seuss one and I got the Do you know which ones will grow one. she prefers roam. I try to make sure her roaming it close by and where I can see her. but she is constantly on the move and is back and fourth between the computes, book and puzzles. on top of getting all of these books for the kids I had two on hold for me and as we made our way into the kid section there was a book sitting on the end cap of an aisle and it looked familiar, like one that I had came across on pinterest as one that I wanted to read and pinned to my books worth reading board. 

 when we had picked out all the books that we were going to check out I handed each of them their stack and we headed to check them out. it was hard enough to get them to the check out station with the books and they didn't want to have to carry them anymore. so after checking them out I piled them all into my arms and we headed out the door. it was then that we ran into some of our friends headed into the library.  I probably looked like a crazy person ushering the kids out the door carrying all the books. I hope I just looked like a person that look like she loves books. As they were walking in she showed me a cute bag, that she bought on Etsy, for her oldest, that had a plastic badge holder on it to keep his library card. brilliant, genius. the next time I was I walmart I located the area that had the badge holders. they come in a pack of......well I don't really remember but way more than I needed. really I only needed two but a $1.88 for way more than I needed.......SOLD! (that being said local friends.....if you need a badge holder for your child's library card give me a shout out I have one for you.)  I knew that bag I would probably use for Golden boy but wasn't sure about Little girl until I got home and remembered this beauty. it was mine when I was a kid. my nanny painted it for me, my sister has a blue one that I think has balloons on it. I knew it would be perfect for Little girls library bag.

 I located the zip ties that I had left over from our Disney World trip and attached the library card to the bag. Yeah for library bags! Yeah for card holders! Yeah for friends with great ideas!

 Here is Golden boy's bag.  it is just a reusable grocery bag that he got from my mom......I mean Tinderbell. His Tinker-gifts in Disney showed up in this bag every morning.

Go to Library

Our Fourth of July Celebration

it is pretty nice when the fireworks that are shot off in the city is happing right across the street from the neighborhood that you live in. for the post three or four years we have walked up to the front of the neighborhood and sat in a parking lot there to watch the firework show.

 the darker it got the glow sticks came out. always a fun thing to have when it gets dark outside.

 then the magic happens

mesmerizing and spectacular

fireworks, one of my favorite things

 and of course another item that was on our 2014 summer list to check off

Fireworks

So.....

.....I have this pretty amazing kid.
on the blog I call him golden boy and that he is.
he is my oldest.
a boy.
did I mention he is pretty amazing.

our small group went through the study The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. it goes through the five ways people give and receive love. after figuring out mine (which I am not sure changed much in the 12 years we have been married) I was eager to figure out what my kids were.

the love languages are: quality time, acts of service, gift giving, physical touch and words of encouragement. thinking through them and observing my son I leaned over to my hubby one day and said, "I think his number one love language is physical touch." he agreed. the kids loves hugs. sometimes a hug is all he needs to get him over a rough spell. in fact one day during the school year I was sitting down doing homework with him and he was having a melt down about something that had to do with the school work and my daughter happened to walk into the room and simply said, "mommy, just hug him." I scooped him up and wrapped my arms around him and hugged him and things got a bit better. the kid will be in the back of the van and say "mommy will you hold my hand" or sometimes he just says "I want some loving hugs."

Physical touch.....for sure number one for my golden boy. figuring out what is the next one can be more difficult. the kid is a culmination of all of the them it seems. he loves getting gifts as well as giving them, he thrives on words of encouragement, sitting down and reading to him, playing legos, putting together puzzles(all good things to him, quality time). so I my head I thought "well, at least I know what is the last thing on his list of love languages. Acts of service."

just yesterday he proved that theory wrong. I was out in the kitchen doing something and here he comes into the kitchen carrying the laundry basket from our room. I asked him what he was doing with it and he said that he was bringing it to the laundry room to help out because he saw that I was doing some laundry. I gave him a big hug and told him how much I appreciated it but that I was not planning on doing our laundry any time soon. he brought it back to our room but let me know that he picked up the pile of laundry that was in the hallway bathroom and put it in the laundry room for me. (this was much appreciated because it was beginning to pile up and I was needing to get to the laundry room) big hugs again and praise for how thoughtful he was to think of that. by this time I am getting my daughter out of her room from her failed attempt at a nap and make my way into the hallway and by our bedroom when I notice golden boy on our bed and he is making it (no I do not make my bed every morning.....deep down I wish that I did but I just don't)  I couldn't help myself. I walked into the room with great big smile on my face and gave him the biggest hug and the told him how much I love him and how wonderful of a boy he was. he just wanted to do something nice for us and bless us and just be loving.

how in the world do I even rank these love languages with this kid. he is all encompassing when it comes to them. I am just awed and overwhelmed and blessed at the kid God has blessed me with in this little boy. my prayer is that I can daily see the good in this amazing boy that God has given me and how wonderfully I am blessed to have him in my life.

My Men

 I am one pretty lucky girl. I have two pretty awesome men that live right here in my very house. My husband and father of my children, who is my compete opposite in almost every way, except the ways that are important and I am grateful for that. he is wonderful dad and loves our kids fiercely. and my sweet little man (golden boy). he isn't a dad but I pray that one day he will be. I occasionally pray for his future wife. that wile she may be his complete opposite that she is the same where it matters. that she is a God fearing lady who loves family and embraces our family and molds well into a life with him and us as in laws.

  aside from the two that live in my house there are three others in my life that are a huge blessing and love like no other. my dad......he loves big, the supports strong, he provided and provides like no other. he only wanted girls when it was time to have children (no snot nose little boys, he said.) but he ended up with three grandsons that are, I am pretty sure, quite precious to him. they call him "Bear" then there is my grandfather......he is strong but can be gentle, he and my grandmother have been married for 60 year, (that says a lot) he loves like you can't imagine, even though sometimes he can be rough around the edges. he loves Jesus and has shown me that the verse "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength" is possible. and finally my father in law.......he was half of who raised my husband, he made him into the man he is today (which sometimes can be frustrating, but ultimately I am grateful for) he can fix just about anything. he has a big heart and an even bigger sweet tooth than me. he loves adventure but equally loves to curl up at home and rest (we are alike that way) he loves my family and I love him for it. my kids call him "Papa"

this is the card that golden boy made for his daddy for fathers day. we found the idea on pinterest of course. here is the link to the site.

 this one I found a clip art for and printed for my daughter to give him. we added this recipe for homemade bbq sauce
once the crafting starts my son usually can't stop. he wanted to make another minion card for his daddy. he asked me to draw a purple minion and then he colored it in and added words to it.

bear has a lake house. we visit often. my son made the foot and my daughter the hand. it is just prefect. got the idea from pinerest! where else? here is the pin.

papa has a goat farm so we made this card for him for fathers day. the tractor is golden boys foot and the goat is little girls hand. I found quite a few pins for the tractor and goat. here are some of the links
tractor
tractor and cow
tractor
sheep

we added a cute little disc photo album to his bbq sauce and I took a picture of the kids that I found here and made it our desktop wall paper and email it to him so that he could make it his desk top wall paper at work.