For Liz......

I just read your post - I thought of this song for you:



I'll be praying for you.

A Sparkling Kitchen

http://posters.com/pv-389298_Water-Pump-with-Dishes.html

My kitchen is sparkling today. With the help of my oldest son, we tackled two projects that I was dreading, yet (like most things) took no time at all. Of course, the result is so worth the effort!

First, I took down all my pots and lids from my pot rack, and washed the pots and the rack (what a dust magnet!). I then took copper polish to polish the bottom of my pots. Then my helper took a rag and q-tips with some sudsy water and cleaned that grate at the bottom of our refrigerator.

The next thing I want to do with my pots is go get some rhubarb. I just saw on my new favorite show "How Clean is Your House" on BBC America, that you can boil rhubarb in stainless steel and it gets shiny! Speaking of that show, you learn such great cleaning tips. My kids have enjoyed watching it with me, and in fact, to make my son laugh as we were cleaning, I talked to him in the best British accent I could muster :)

It was great to get this done, but most importantly, it was great to bond with my son, while teaching him a valuable lesson on cleaning!

Now off to the pool for the day! I hope you're enjoying your hazy, lazy days of summer :)

Best Friends

The Best of Friends
© Jill Wolf

The best of friends,
Can change a frown,
Into a smile,
when you feel down.

The best of friends,
Will understand,
Your little trials,
And lend a hand.

The best of friends,
Will always share,
Your secret dreams,
Because they care.

The best of friends,
Worth more than gold,
Give all the love,
A heart can hold.

Today is a Big Day!

My oldest baby boy is all done with kindergarten today! I am so excited to have him home every day beginning tomorrow! I love this big boy!

In case you're wondering, his mouth is stuffed with cake and he was still trying to smile!

While most parents that I'm meeting are dreading having their kids home with them every day in the summer (actually most aren't even home, as the parents fill their days with day camps, day care, anything to get them out of the house :( ), for me this is glory. Honestly, I haven't talked about it much (except with my sweet husband), but we pray often about homeschooling. Come fall, my son will be away at school all.day.long - that just doesn't seem right to me. Who will have the most influence over him when he's with them more? We're praying and researching, and seeking the Lord's will for us. The Lord has a perfect plan, and I am confident that if I seek Him daily, through prayer and reading Scripture, He will show us His way.

But anyway, the bottom line is I'm super proud of my boy. He's so smart, and reading like a champ! I love you son!

What A Weekend!

What a wonderful (and scary) weekend!

It started out with a perfect Friday night. The kids and I met my husband at a yummy Mexican restaurant - the food was great, the kids were great, and it sure was fun to sit with my sweetheart on one side of the booth while the kids were on the other side. Usually we split up - my daughter in the highchair, me with one son on one side, and my husband on the other side with the other son. I'm not sure why we do it that way, because it was really fun to sit with my honey and hold his hand! Because we met my husband there, we had two cars - so he took the boys, and I took my daughter and we raced home - oh how the boys love that! Of course, all it takes is for Daddy to rev the engine and be the first one home, and they're convinced it was a race, even if we didn't break the speed limit (that much ;) ) We then sat on our deck while the kids played around us. We had the tiniest amount of rain, yet this appeared in the sky:

My daughter was so upset when the "bay-bo" disappeared. Little did we know then that on Sunday, we would need this wonderful reminder of God's promise to us.....but I'll get to that in a second.

On Saturday, my Mom, sister and brother and their families came over and we had lunch at our pool. We packed lunch meat, grapes, chips and drinks, and headed over for a nice afternoon. Its great to see how much all the children love the water....even when it is cold! After, we headed up to my parents as my Dad had picked up my grandmother who is up visiting from Florida. One can only hope they stay as healthy as she is - she is 77 years old, and 5 foot 9 inches! Can you imagine? She had not met any of the granddaughters yet, so as we had a BBQ at my parents, it was a great chance to not only catch up with her, but for her and the next generation to get to know each other.

Then on Sunday, my family came down for dinner (and can I add I have TOO much ziti leftover because a certain BROTHER did not stay for dinner - cough, cough, wink, wink). At about 5:00 p.m., my sister gathered her family to leave. Everyone just got completely soaked running 20 feet from the house to the car. The rain was coming down upside down and side ways. Right before my sister ran out to her car, it hailed the biggest I ever saw (about the size of grapes, but just last week golf ball sized hail came down nearby and completely dinged up my Dad's car, so that it looks, well, like a golf ball with all the dimples!). We had been sitting out on the front porch visiting, but had to run in when everyone was getting a little wet. It was hurricane type weather, yet we all just stood by our two sliding doors watching the crazy wind, rain, lightning and hail. When there was a pause in the thunder and lightning, my neighbor called to check on her daughter who had come to our house, and said they were in the basement. Later, we learned most of our neighbors were in the basement, as there was tornado warnings - our one neighbor said there was definite cyclonic activity, so he too was in the basement.......yet we, with all the kids, were just at the sliders with our noses pressed to the glass looking out - how foolish! But how would we know unless the TV or radio was on? I now completely understand how people can be caught off guard. We don't live in a tornado prone area of the country, so we have no sirens to warn us. Yesterday I learned to be a little more aware. It was reported that a trained National Weather Center spotter saw funnel clouds. The news said it would take a few days for the National Weather Center to determine if it was in fact a tornado. I've been thanking God frequently for His protection of us yesterday!

Back to the story.....My husband looked out front and hollered, "you have to come look at the road!!!!" Well, I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story!

While it was still raining. This picture is of our neighbor-across-the-street's garbage cans floating away!

Our neighbor (whose daughter was visiting). As you can see he was not in the deepest part of it.

Some mailboxes across the street.

These are my boys, nephew, niece and neighbor. Foolish, yes I know.

This man drove through at least three times - he was just having fun!

My husband (the civil engineer who designs roads and drainage!), inspecting everything. Yes, he thinks the road and drainage could be designed better!

This picture and the next are of some damage to our home - shingles came off, and our soffit (spelling??) got damaged. I'm thankful this was it - it could have been so much worse! My husband covered both quickly to protect the exposed wood from the elements (and good thing he did, as it rained more overnight!).
I'm so thankful for how my husband takes care of us!

And this last picture was the wonderful picture of the promise God gave to us that He would never flood the earth again. This was the biggest rainbow I have ever seen in my life! The rainbows I usually see are thin, like the first picture, but this rainbow was so thick and vibrant!

God is good, all the time. He protected us. I am so thankful today.

Mindless Fun for a Hot Afternoon :)

1. Jennifer 2. Mexican 3. Christian Heritage 4. cranberry red 5. I don't have a celebrity crush 6. water 7. Africa 8. double chocolate anything 9. grandmother 10. my family 11. scatterbrained 12. I don't have one

Thanks for the idea Hindsfeet!

The concept:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

Above is my Flickr mosaic. If you play along, be sure to link back to the photographers as I did above.

My "Mexican" picture is missing, but it took too long to do this, and I didn't want to go back to try and fix it - oh well, some mindless fun for a hot afternoon, while the kids nap, and I wait to go to the pool with them :)

In Case You Were Wondering :)

Nope, we don't have twins :) And I'm no further along than I thought.

It was so WONDERFUL to see our little baby, and to see the heartbeat! Is it too early to guess the gender based on heart rate? My kids all went by that old wives tale (is it a tale or is it scientific? - I don't even know) - both boys were always around 120-130 bpm, and my daughter was always 150-170. This baby was 170 :) But I seem to remember that when they are first developing, the heart rates are the same for both genders. Logistically, another girl would be great since we have 3 bedrooms, and right now my little girl is in a bedroom all by herself :)

And in case you are wondering, we probably won't find out the gender this time. It was fun finding out for our little girl, but I liked it MUCH better when we didn't find out with the boys until birth :)

Can you tell I'm smiling a lot today :)

Have a wonderful weekend!

Busy spring! Here Comes Summer!

A few weeks ago, my sweet little girl turned 2 years old! When asked, "How old are you?" She says "doh". She's so adorable! Here's a little picture of her big day:

Last year I did a post the day of my husband's and children's birthdays. Not this year, I'm letting myself off the hook :) Who knows, I may not post again until after the baby is born :)

Little O is playing T-ball and he LOVES it! He's so great at it, and the coach is now practicing pitching to them rather than using the T (although they still use the T during the game, next spring it is coach pitch). Here are some pictures of his first game (from April!). Okay, so I had some great close up shots, but it had our town's name plastered all over the front, and I do try to keep our privacy as much as possible:

My other son C is just a busy little boy. Monday is his last day of speech therapy! At Easter time we watched a video from last year and you couldn't understand anything. Now, there's nothing you don't understand! We're so pleased with his progress! He is my tender boy, although the last few months he's put on this grumpy/mean front. Thankfully the Lord is helping me train him out of this, but even from this grumpy boy comes regular comments like "Mama, you are so beautiful. You're eyes are beautiful. You're teeth are beautiful....." you get the idea. Here's some recent pictures of him:

The other children with Collin are my niece and nephew. These pictures were taken from our trip to see them in April.

As for baby news, I'm feeling the worst that I have ever felt during a pregnancy! I'm actually not as tired as I generally am, but I am so nauseous (I was a little nauseous when I was pregnant with my first son O, but eating always took that feeling away - I haven't found anything to relieve it so far - I may go buy some of those sea bands as I feel very dizzy as well)! My husband and I joke that maybe we're having twins :) Well, you never know, because yesterday at my first prenatal visit, the midwife said "either you have twins, or you are a lot further than 8 weeks!" So tomorrow I am going for an ultrasound to confirm that there is just one, and how far along I in fact am! That would be SO cool to cut off some time! I'll have to update my little ticker on the sidebar of my blog! I know it sounds crazy, but I have thought for sure that I've felt the baby move, but I'm only 8 weeks? That's impossible! Well, maybe I'm further along and that would explain a lot! Also, I'm a tummy sleeper, and I already am unable to do that. So tomorrow is the day that will answer those questions! I can hardly wait!

We're looking forward to summer! Our town pool is already opened, and we - I mean the kids - already enjoyed that on Memorial Day (FREEZING!) This weekend is supposed to be sweltering, so we are already planning our week so everything is done and all we have to do this weekend is swim and go to church!

I have been learning so much from the Lord. Someday I will write an entire post about that. Let's just say, the selfishness in my heart is being revealed, and when you start seeing yourself for who you really are, it really is painful. I'm learning that Christ is NOT the Master over EVERY SINGLE AREA OF MY LIFE. And that if He is not the Master over even one area, then He truly isn't the Master of my life at all. Ouch. Thanks be to God that He sent His Son to cover my sins, and in Christ, I am forgiven!

Praise Be to Him!