Stranded.

I feel stranded! We finally sold my car on Saturday and here I am with a bazillion things to do and no way to get around! What I *need* to be doing is cleaning my house instead... Which I plan to do... Eventually. Lol in the mean time I thought I'd update a bit. This was a crazy busy weekend complete with allergies for the whole family.

We're looking for a new van tonight when Jay gets off work, so I'm going to start packing for our Ohio trip. I sure hope we can go, we already decided on what we're willing to spend on what kind of van so I hope its out there! The market stinks down here for vehicle sales so I'm hoping to play that to our advantage and get a good deal on something.

Anyway! Not too much going on aside from that, we bought lizzys new car seat last week which goes up to 65 lbs with the 5 point safety harness. That makes me feel better about her safety. If the van we buy doesn't have a built in DVD player I'm going to invest in one of those dual screen ones so I can face one towards Maddy too as she is all about the movies right now. So cute! Lizzy and Maddy are sitting here watching Chronicles of Narnia as I type and both of them are glued to the TV.

Speaking of Maddy, she is a little fatty these days! She eats about a 1/4th cup of cereal every night and I swear it goes straight to her chubby little legs! My used to be tiny peanut is now a little marshmellow! I need to upload some pictures of her soon.

I've been searching for clothes for the girls on craigslist as all of lizzys old nine month items are summertime so I have no winter clothes for maddy, and lizzys legs are so long that she's in 4T jeans now. I found a gal last week selling 6 pairs of pants and 11 shirts for $20. They were all gymboree, childrens place and old navy so I was super excited about that find! I picked up another box of 3's and 4's fall/winter items for $15, there were several play outfits and preschool items in that lot. So Liz has a great head start on fall now. Thank goodness, the older she gets the more expensive her clothes get as well! I refuse to pay $20 for kids jeans, especially when she'll outgrow them in a couple months. Crazy!

I haven't had any luck with 9 - 12 month winter clothes for Maddy yet. But maybe I'll find some good deals while we're in Ohio.

This was a completely boring update but there you have it. I'll try to get some new pictures of the girls up soon! Maddy will be 5 months tomorrow!

VBS

Every church has one, every kid loves going and every adult realizes that to volunteer during VBS (vacation bible school) week means submitting yourself to cleaning glitter out of your hair for weeks to come. And alas, this is our week for VBS. I admit I was hesitant to volunteer this week. I took a backseat when the sign up sheet went around and kept telling the director "if you need me, I'll come. If you don't, I won't." My reasoning for being so flakey is that I have 2 small kids who were too young to participate (its 4 & up) and didn't want to put them in childcare for a week. I thought that sounded like a fairly good argument but by the end of day one I was recruited, and now I'm so glad that I was. We showed up on day 2 and were blown away. Seacoast rarely does things half way and this was no exception. I walked into our sanctuary filled with 100+ kids praising God and having the time of their lives. The theme is Power Lab and the kids have been learning about how God gives us the power to be thankful, brave, strong, live forever, etc. (Aha!) the lessons have been fun and creative (the kids got to walk on water! Done that lately?) and lizzys had a blast. Oh wait did I forget to mention that? Staff kid privledge, she got to participate after all. Yes Lizzy has made goo, walked on water, learned what mentos do to diet coke (6 foot volcano of exploding soda all over the leaders... Did I mention I'm a leader?) and somehow we've brought it all back to the lessons of God giving kids the power to be ___ (fill in the blank with a different power each day)

Tonight is the final day and I'm both looking forward to it and sad that I didn't play a bigger role this year as its been a fantastic week. Its obvious that for some of these kids this is the first time they've ever heard about Jesus and to be apart of sharing that discovery with these kids has been amazing. So VBS rocks. Which reminds me, I need to go wash my hair before tonight, I keep getting sparkles in my eyes.

Depth perception.

Most of what I post on here are blanket updates on my kids, which is what I intended this blog to be about. But there's so much more to our lives than milestones and growth charts so I plan on posting a bit more on what God is doing in our lives and some of the neat things we're up to.


One of the things I'm most excited about is the opportunity to begin mentoring one of the girls from our highschool youth group. The staff at Seacoast was presented with a challenge. 98% of all teens actively involved in church while in highschool go on to leave the church in college. But nearly 100% of teens who had a mentor while in highschool continued to be actively involved in church on through college and their adult lives. That is incredible, and touched me in a profound way. There are two girls I'm working with currently. One of them was "assigned" to me and the other is one of my nursery volunteers who isn't really involved in the youth group due to transportation issues. Both girls are awesome and I love talking with them. I'm only just getting to know them both well but am very excited about this opportunity. I wish I'd have had someone older when I first came to SC. In a way I did have an older friend take me under her wing but she passed away 5 years ago which proved to be the single most faith testing thing I'd ever gone through. However she made a lasting impression on my life and I can only pray that God works through me to these girls like He did through her to me.

Anyway, I'd like to see my blog take on a more personal level. Just a warning to any friends out there who read this.:)

God is doing some incredible things right now with our church, my marriage, and my kids lives.

little me?

So yesterday we're sitting in the nursery before church started and Lizzy picks up a toy cell phone and proceeds to ask the 5 adults in the room to "be quiet please, lizzys on the phone" at first we all laughed and thought it was cute but then she takes it a step further and says "daddy scoot over by mommy and smile! I take your picture!" she hold up the cell phone and proceeds to "take our picture" at this point we're rolling. Is there anything this kid doesn't pick up?

Which got me thinking. If my 2 year old is reflecting the things she sees in me then why doesn't she pick up a random book and tell us Bible stories? Or tell people she loves them, often? I know why... Because she doesn't see me do those things nearly enough. She sees mommy on the phone, taking pictures and that's all fine and dandy, but I want my girls to see more than that. So today I vow to be less phone happy and more example worthy to my kids.

Just my random thought for the day.

My little character.

Scene: Lizzy drying my arms off after we got out of the pool the other day.

Lizzy: mommy it won't come off!
Me: what won't come off baby?
Lizzy: dis!
Me: honey that is a freckle, those don't come off they're marks on mommys skin. Look you have one on your hand.
Lizzy: ohhhh (pause with thinking look on her face) speckles no come off mommy?
Me: (trying not to giggle) no baby speckles no come off.

Later that night when jay got home, very dirty and was about to climb in the shower.

Lizzy: Daddys speckles stink.
Me:*snort*


Scene: today while Lizzy was watching nanny mcphee she runs into Maddys room while I'm rocking the baby.

Lizzy: (yells angrily) You nebber listen!!
Me:excuse me?
Lizzy: (yells even louder) You nebber listen!!
Me:what are you talking about? I don't listen?
Lizzy: (perfectly calm now) dat boy just yelled at his daddy in dat movie.
Me: oh, was that a very nice thing to do? yell at mommy?
Lizzy: I jus kidding mommy sheesh. (rolls her eyes and walks away)

Scene:today at lunch.
Me:how old will you be on your birthday Lizzy?
Lizzy:(thinks for a minute) I be 23 mommy.
Me:*laughs* oh will you now? I don't think you'll be quite that old baby.
Lizzy: okay I be 21.
Me:*sigh* 2 going on 21 oh dear Lord save me.


What am I going to do with this child? She makes me laugh so hard.

Well it's been a month...

I know, I'm terrible at this these days! Maddy has come so far and I haven't been on here forever! She's now rolling like crazy! She's eating a *little* (as in less than a teaspoon) of cereal before bed and getting so big! I wanted to wait on the cereal but she just hit a point where she was drinking 8 oz and still hungry so that little bit of cereal seems to help fill her up and hold her off. She sleeps on average 8-9 hours before waking up, eating, and going back to sleep for another 4 or 5 hours. She's up to 13 lbs 8 oz now at 4 months... she's 25% all the way around which is SO weird. Liz was always so big but Maddy is just a peanut. Lizzy will be 3 next month so we're starting our birthday plans now. Elizabeth is completely potty trained now! (Well, we still have some #2 accidents, but she is 100% day time, night time and nap trained!) That is very nice. We started the week before last and within 3 days she had it down. She was obviously ready, and didn't have any problems getting in there and just getting it done! She loves going by herself. (such a big girl!) And it was fun getting to pick out all her big girl panties which she thinks is just the coolest thing ever... and has to show them to anyone who will give her the time of day including all her uncles - which is pretty funny. We're working on being a lady. ;) Lizzys manners are getting better all the time, she still sasses me some times but on the whole she's good about saying "yes mommy" or "please and thank you" without being prompted. We haven't really done the whole ma'am, sir thing yet as she's still pretty young and I'm from the north so that still feels weird to me... but as long as she says the person's name (eg: Yes Mommy, Yes Aunt Angela, etc.) I'm okay with it.

Madeline is such a ham these days - Dani from small group nicknamed her Smiley. Maddy just grins and giggles at everything and everyone! Well... everything but the camera... the second the camera comes out she tries to figure out what that box is that's flashing in her face... but if it's a person she's looking at (or herself in the mirror) she is ear to ear grins.

Life is good, and crazy and amazing. My girls are the highlight of my life and completely draining. But in a good way... I go to bed exhausted every night but loving my life. Jay and I are doing really well. I'm blessed, he's such an amazing man. We have come so far in the last couple years and I'm so glad we came through together. Our 5 year anniversary is coming up in September! Crazy! I would never EVER have thought 5 years ago that I would be married with 2 children in just 5 short years...

Our business is growing by leaps and bounds, we've recently added 2 major pieces of equipment to our company which has made Jays life (and his guys that work with him) a thousand times easier. We're hoping to have our tree farm up and running in the next year and a half which will mean less danger for Jay. I'm all for that... in the mean time my car is up for sale. (I want a van, I know I know we just bought the Volvo but it drives me ape wall and is not enough room for our family so we're getting another van) Hmmmm... what else is knew... we're going to Ohio in August! YAY! I miss my family! Then Lizzy's birthday is right after we get back, Jay's turns 29 in September, then our anniversary is on the 20th, October Jay and I are taking a cruise with just the two of us... I'm looking forward to that, November is back to Ohio for Thanksgiving and December is Disney for Christmas with my whole family and then January is Disney for the marathon with our small group! *WHEW* That's a lot of craziness!

Lizzy starts school the second week of August, so we'll be doing her school shopping here soon. I bought some preschool work books from Target today. She loves them. I want her to have her letters down by the time she starts back... that gives us about a month to keep working on them. She's getting there slowly.

Madeline loves her blankies... she cuddles them close to her face so my mom bought her a mini one that she can keep in the crib with her... Oh yeah! Maddy's officially in her crib now! Once she started rolling really well it became very obvious that she'd moved past the cradle. She was getting stuck in the corners of the cradle where the crib presents miles (well miles to a 4 month old) of space to move around... and move she does! LOL It's so funny, she starts out in the middle on her back but ends up glued to one side with her face pressed up against the bumper every morning. She's so silly.

Anyway, this is my monthly update. LOL I'll try to post again sooner!

Madeline at 4 months...

Here's a sweet slideshow of some of Maddy's latest pictures... thanks Abbie.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook