I warned you!

Well, I did warn you. I said in my first post of 2013 that I am a self proclaimed underachiever ( aka lazy). I also said I would try to post monthly and my last post was February ( why did I write that?). Obviously, I have missed the mark with the once a month thing but if you will forgive me, I will try to update you on the last four(yikes)months. We all finished our first year at Westlake Christian Academy, to God be the glory! Jack graduated from kindergarten and Cody turned four. We are celebrating one year at Gages Lake Bible Church. One year of love, blessings, tears, hope, changes, struggles, and unspeakable peace and joy. Oh yes, and one more thing, waiting. This last one has taken me by surprise. I thought that after taking over a year to figure out if God wanted us to move here, our waiting would be over. Well a year later I am waiting and God is chuckling. Not I a cruel chuckle, but more of "There's my daughter. Running around trying to arrange her own life. Crazy girl, but I love her anyway." kind of chuckle. I know I am rambling so I will try to get the point. We still have not found a place of our own...waiting. We do know that jay has a full time teaching position in the fall. Answers for my moms major health issues...waiting. God provided the perfect summer job for jay. Direction for some personal family choices this next year...waiting. God has specifically answered prayers for our church and is pouring a sweet ointment over our people. Back in February when I wrote my last post, we were still waiting on all of these things. In four months God has worked in three of these five situations. Just typing that I am getting blessed all over again! By the way, when you look back on it, the blessing IS the waiting. That is when we learn to lean and hopefully trust. It was while David was waiting to become king that he grew fom "Shepard boy" to "a man after Gods own heart". Hannah waited for a baby and God gave her one of Israel's greatest spiritual leaders. The disciples waited three years for a political king and God gave them a Saviour to take away the sins of the world. Waiting is sometimes a frustrating thing. Waiting is sometimes a depressing thing. Waiting, however, is never a bad thing, not when we are waiting on the Lord. Jeremiah 29:11 says, " I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you and a future and a hope.". I can continue to wait on these other areas in my life because I am not waiting on luck or some haphazard thing in the universe to go my way. I am waiting on God Almighty's divine plan. When I think about how some of His other plans have turned out (creating the universe, redeeming mankind)I'm like, oh yeah, I think he can manage to get our family moved into a house. :) One more thing, his plans always bring peace, always. So there it is, my life, my thoughts. If you are still reading, thanks for hanging in there while I aired out my brain. It was good for the soul! I apologize for not getting pictures on here. I am posting this from my iPad and have no idea how to do that yet. Blessings! P.S. on a random lighthearted note, does anyone else take great joy in scooping huge spoonfuls of their child's Mac and cheese into your mouth when they are not looking? Anyone? Anyone at all? No? Well in that case I was definately not doing that the entire time I was writing this post. :) Goodnight all!

All you need is love

Romans 5:8 "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Valentine's day is big deal to our family. I have always tried to make it a little extra special for the boys. I try to make an effort to do a couple of Valentine themed crafts, decorate the dining room, and make a cake. This year, we also gave them some Squinkies as a little "I love you" present. To whoever came up with the concept for these tiny creatures I have one question, why? Apparently, somebody thought it would be funny to make a toy that would take little boys five seconds to lose and mommies five hours to find! At least they were happy for the five seconds they had them.

Anyway, things have been busy around here as usual. I actually got a chance to take Cody with me to school the other day. He fit right in with all the other students like he had been going there all year. The next day, some of the children asked me where he was and if he was coming back. :) I realized a couple of things watching him in a classroom setting. One, he has incredible focus and follows direction very well. This was, quite a shock to me. At home, he kind of just does his own thing and never seems like he can stay put for more than five minutes. Second, while I have been teaching other kids to color, cut and glue, I have not devoted nearly enough time working with Cody on these skills. He was slightly behind the others in this area. However, like I said, he was very focused which put him way ahead of most of the children in this area. As a teacher, I know that skills and concepts are easily taught, teaching someone how to focus is alot more difficult. However,his biggest skill continues to be melting people with his smile and charm (when he feels like it). :)

Jack is as inquisitive as ever, asking the why and how behind everything. The other day, he asked Jay how the hot wheels cars stayed on the track while they were going through the loop. He wanted to know why gravity didn't pull them down. Jay proceeded to give the exact explanation, big words and all. The crazy thing is he actually got the general idea of what Jay was explaining. After a few moments he said "Oh, that's why the cars don't go very well on the carpet, there is too much friction. On hard floors there is not as much friction so they go faster". That's his daddy coming out in him.

In honor of Valentine's day, I put Romans 5:8 at the beginning of my post. Lately, we have been trying to teach the boys that it is not enough to just "do the right thing". We want them to learn to be motivated by love to do these things. It was Christ's love for us that motivated him to sacrifice himself for our sins. We are praying they learn that the power of Christ's love can overflow from their hearts into acts of service for others. What a humbling lesson this has been for us as we try to demonstrate this to them in our own lives.

Here is a peek into our Valentine's week!

One of their sweeter moments this week. The cutest valentines ever!

We melted down out old broken crayons, and made heart shaped crayons.

Valentine plates from Gram and Gramps.

Our festive table

Squinkies!! (seriously, who came up with that name?)

My Valentine!!

Truth be Told

Truth be told, I would love to be on here blogging more often than I do. I really love it. It's such a welcome escape from whatever it is that I should be doing (laundry, lesson plans, laundry, laundry, cleaning, laundry, and laundry). However, I've been thinking it would be infinatly more fun if this were a "fictional" blog and I could carefully pick and choose my words and pictures to reflect the life that I think would look the most appealing to the general population (i.e would make me look like the coolest, hippest mom ever). It would include me explaing how the boys and I made our own fingerpaint and proceeded to make a mural on the fingerpaint paper taped to the walls of our dining room. I would have pictures of us strolling through museums and gardens soaking in the culture. We would also always get the chance to go the Library at least twice a week. Of course this would go without saying, but the boys would never, ever watch a cartoon or t.v. of any kind. I mean that is just a crutch for weak moms, right? I would also make sure I included pictures of all the wonderful vacations we were able to go on that year (surfing in hawaii, sking in colorado).

First of all, that would blog would be so incredibly annoying, I wouldn't be able read my own posts. Second of all, that is not my life. Well, some of that is my life, just not all the time. I do love doing things like making our own paint and doing art projects with the boys. To say that I did all these wonderful, creative crafts everyday would be stretching the truth. While I love museums and being exsposed to culture, I have yet to be able to take the kids to a museum (other than the chilren's), I don't think it is fair let Cody loose on that kind of an institution. Vacations are few and far between for us, but we do take day trips whenever we can. I guess what I am saying is, don't be like me. I sometimes get so caught up wanting to be "supermom" that I forget that just being "mom" is really all my kids want or need. So, even though I can't do everything and be everything all the time, it's okay. I'm doing my best with what God has entrusted me. Some days that might mean an awesome art project, other days it might be simply be getting dressed and keeping their faces clean.

My goal for this blog is that the truth will be told, and that it will be encouraging, and freeing for other mom's like me. Oh, and one more thing, my boys do watch t.v. on a fairly regular basis. Does that make them zombies? Maybe, but at least they are very, very cute zombies. :)

Here is what we have been up to:

We finally got snow last week. The boys were ready to shovel!

By this time there little cheeks and noses were starting to get very red.

When it got too cold, we brought the snow inside. We used food coloring and water. Notice Jack's "yellow snow". :)



I tried to make a car track for the boys on the floor using masing tape. It looked better in my head.


Crazy Jay shoveling the snow in his shorts!

Most of the snow has melted, but at least the boys got to go sledding once. They couldn't get enough of it.


Cody went down the hill yelling, "I'm sledding, baabyy!"


They would have stayed there forever.

By my God have I leaped over a wall!

I have learned two things this week. Number one, teaching 21 preschoolers is not the same as being the mother of two preschoolers. Number two, I am too old to be at a skating rink at twelve in the morning.
First of all, I made it through my first week of teaching. That is why I titled this post the way I did. Psalm 18:29 says, "For by thee I have run through a troop; and by my God have I leaped over a wall. Since having boys, this verse has always made me think about being a super hero. You know, charging through the enemies forces and making great leaps over walls. Who doesn't need that kind of energy and strength? It always makes me smile to think that with God we can posses certain super-hero type qualities. I tell my boys that God is the Super Hero of our lives. So whatever the wall is that we need to get over, God will help us leap over it in a single bound.
Second of all, even though I may have made it through my first week of school, I almost didn't make it through my first homecoming event. The 9-12 graders had their homecoming game Friday and Saturday they all went out for the night. Since Jay has his CDL he drove the bus and I was able to tag along. First we went to Medieval Times where I tried to keep my cool, but like always, I got emotionally involved in the show. I screamed, cheered, booed and even caught a flower from one of the knights. All of that was followed by ice skating at an indoor arena from ten to twelve. It's sad, but by ten-thirty I was imagining my pillow on the ice and almost laid right down a couple of times. The kids had fun though, and I was glad I got to know all of them better.
I hope you all have a great week and remember that with God you can leap any wall in a single bound!

Waay too Long!

Hey everybody! As most of you know, I am a self proclaimed underachiever/procrastinator. I started a blog in 2010, posted 4 times, and did nothing with it after that. I could say that I got busy, life got too complicated, but the truth is, I really just got lazy (I can hear those of you who know me best gasping in surprise). Well, thanks to my mom consistently nudging me to start blogging again, I have decided to give it another try and I thought New Years eve an appropriate time to start. Now, being an underachiever, I am not going to set the bar super high and make promises that I know I won't keep. However, I will try to keep up with it at least on monthly basis.

On to other things, our lives are about to get a littler busier and crazier as I have taken the pre-k teaching position at Westlake Christian Academy. This is the school that my husband teaches at and my oldest son attends. We really love this school. I have seen many Christian schools and the kind of of attitude and spirit that the student body has at Westlake is hard to come by. It is one of the reasons I am honored to be apart of this ministry. I am excited and apprehensive but I know the Lord will guide us each step of the way on this journey.

I am excited to be back sharing our lives with our friends and family. Keep us in your prayers as we continue to keep you in ours. Have a happy and blessed New Year!!

Random glimpses of craziness!

Let's see, 1.wake up and get cereal, 2.get chocolate milk, 3.clean up spilled chocolate milk, 4.pick cereal out of Cody's hair, 5.tell Jack to calm down when Cody starts eating his cereal. Repeat the above steps for lunch and dinner, throw in a few toy fights, some laundry and lots of hugs, and you are caught up on what has been going on with us! I joke, kind of. :) We really have been busy and are overjoyed that Jay is done with his school year because it means he gets to slow down a little and spend more time with us. This picture of the boys was taken at an antebellum plantation here in NC.

Hippity, Hoppity, Happy Easter Day!

We were so thrilled to be able to go up to my parents house for spring break, which this year included Easter. Jack and Cody got to have a total of three Easter Egg hunts and went way over their jellybean quota. The first egg hunt they had was at my Aunt Sharon's house. She had all six of her grandkids there, plus my two. The two oldest hid the eggs for the rest of the kids. Jack and Cody loved it. Everytime I turned around though, Cody was sneaking candy out of everybody's baskets! The next day, was Easter Sunday which we spent at my parents church. They had a breakfast for everybody and then during children's church, the kids got to get more eggs, candy and some toys. Right after church, we went home and did our easter hunt with the boys and my parents. We hid all the eggs that they had actually dyed a few days earlier. Most of them were pretty damaged because, of course, Cody the Barbarian had been rifling through the basket and kept saying they were balls and throwing them across the room. Neither one of them seemed to mind the cracked and shattered eggs and had so much fun finding them in Gram and Gramps yard. We did so many fun things with the kids while we were up there and they made some very special memories with their Gram and Gramps. Jay and I got to get away and spend a night in Chicago while my parents watched the boys. They had so much fun going to the park, the mall, and at night they all camped out on the living room floor with Gramps. The next morning my parents met us at Navy Pier and we took the kids on the huge ferris wheel and to the children's museum. It really was a great trip. Cody really started to burst out with his talking and communication skills. I thought being the second child he would not talk as much but I think I am going to be proven wrong. He can now say too many words to even list and says lots of prahses and short sentences too. Some of my favorites are: I some too,I ready, my shoes? here are! ceal pease!, and when he thinks Jay is home he says daddy here! and when he realizes he was wrong, he says, it not daddy:(. Jack is growing up so fast and getting to be way too mature for his age. He loves to talk and make up stories. He is always saying, Mommy I want to say something to you! This usually means at least a 10 min one sided conversation about pirates, monsters, cowboys, ghosts, or a combination of any of the above. His stories always involve a "problem" as he says, and he is always the one who saves the day as "super Jack". He loves books and I am getting ready to start trying to read some chapter books to him just to challenge him a little and stretch his imagination even farther (if that is even possible). We will see how it goes. I love them and I can't wait for summer and all the wonderful adventures we will get to go on this summer. Hopefully, that will include a trip to see Gram and Gramps!