Happy, Happy Birthday!

On Monday Bethany turned 2, and yesterday was my birthday. Time goes by way too fast. This scripture from James 4 is so true, "...what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away." It's been such a joy to watch each of my children grow and change, but oh how I would love to have them each back at different stages of their life for just a little while. Here are some recent pictures of the kids....

My mom with the kids.

My Girls

Jadon riding Garfield at the Outlet Mall

Savannah - AWANA Crazy Hair Night

Amaris - AWANA Crazy Hair Night

Bethany's 2nd Birthday

Life as a Stay at Home mom....

is never dull. Silence is rare and most often, chaos and noise abound. As I am typing this, my 4 little blessings are playing AWANA with shouts of "everyone get your Bible." Now Savannah is asking Jadon to tell her his name, and he is saying over and over again in typical Jadon fashion (loudly) "J-A-D-O-N." Next she is asking if he has his Bible, handbook, and uniform. She must be signing him in. Sweet little Bethany is saying she has her Bible too. They are going all out with pledges, AWANA song, prayer and everything. It is so precious when they play like that together. And although there are many times I yearn for quiet, I am honestly so grateful that I rarely have it.

For your convenience.

I'm excited to offer a new feature to my blog that allows you to subscribe to it. If you subscribe, then you will receive an email letting you know that I've updated my blog. At least I'm pretty sure that's what should happen. So, please subscribe and then you will always have the latest happenings from our world. The subscribe link is on the left and all you have to do is type in your email and click subscribe........so why wait, subscribe today - and did I mention it's FREE! :)

You can also sign up as one of my "followers" down at the bottom left where it says followers. That doesn't send you an email though to let you know when I've made a new post, but I would like to know who is "following" me, so sign up for that too.

Better get off the computer and get some things done. Adios.

Jadon's Big Night....and other stuff.

Sweet little Jadon has been asking for the longest time to stay the night at my parents house. We tried a while back, but he decided to let Savannah and Amaris stay and he ended up coming back home. Well, last night he stayed the whole night at my parents. He was so excited and said he had lots of fun. Savannah and Amaris stayed too at Jadon's request. Now he keeps asking when we can go back to Granny's house.

He's also been going pee pee in the toilet for the last few days. He actually started doing that last summer, but has not been consistent at all. Well, he's decided again to try and be a big boy. Hopefully this time it will stick. He even wore underwear all day yesterday and today while we ran errands, and he didn't have any accidents. He's totally capable of being completely potty trained, it's just a matter of him deciding to do it. He will bring me a diaper to put on him whenever he needs to pooh. :)

Little Bethany will be two on Monday. I can't believe how fast time goes by. She is such a cutie and talks a lot. Her litte voice is so sweet. She thinks she wants to use the potty too, but all she does is run into the bathroom, hop onto the potty, strains real hard (sometimes tooting in the process), jumps off with a big grin, and yells, "Did It." It's the cutest thing. She has managed a couple of times to pee pee, but it has been a while. She even peed at church once when she was in the nursery. It was about two months ago and she told the teacher she needed to potty, and she actually did.

Savannah and Amaris have two weeks of school left. They have both done so great this year and learn so easily. I'm not sure if we will take a whole 3 months off or not. They like doing school so much that we might start early.

Better get to bed. I think we are going to try and go to the Red Poppy Festival in Georgetown tomorrow. Andy's friend's husband is going to be in the parade and we haven't seen them in years. Thought we might take the kids to watch the parade and do some catching up. Good Night.

God's Wonderful Works

Thought I would test myself and see how easy it is to post a picture and I came across these. About a month ago we were about to head out the door for AWANA when we got a call that it had been cancelled. Storms had just rolled through ~ lots of wind, rain, and some hail. Well, since the storm had already passed through our area, and since we were all ready to go, we decided to just go into town and get some ice cream with the kids. This is what we saw on the way home. Thought it was pretty neat. It looked like a rainbow shining through the clouds.

Psalm 145:4-6 (New International Version)

One generation will commend your works to another;

they will tell of your mighty acts.
They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty,

and I will meditate on your wonderful works.

They will tell of the power of your awesome works,

and I will proclaim your great deeds.

I'm a Booger......I mean Goober.

I told you I was HTML illiterate. I figured out why I couldn't get the background color under the text to change colors. It's because the text is on top of the entire background. When you scroll down I thought the center part of the page was moving too, but cleverly discoverd today that the background doesn't move at all, just the text. I solved my problem by choosing a different background. Still not sure it looks how I envisioned, but it will have to do for now since I'm tired of searching through backgrounds. Anyway, slowly but surely I'm getting things figured out.

Tonight we have AWANA. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a club for kids ages 3 through senior in high school that teaches scripture memory. Our AWANA club meets every Wednesday night during the school year. Everyone arrives and meets together for pledges and the AWANA song. Then the kids all go off to their classes where they have study time and then they say their scripture to their leader. The kids all have handbooks they go through during the year. They also have uniforms (a vest or shirt depending on what age group). Savannah and Amaris wear a vest. They earn patches, pins, and things for their vest as they learn their scriptures. They also have game time, snack, and a devotion. At the end of every meeting they have award time where the kids get their patches or whatever they have earned.

They also earn "AWANA BUCKS" during the year by memorizing scripture, wearing their uniform, bringing their Bible and handbook, and participating in the theme for the night (crazy hair night, egyptian night, western night, purple night etc.). Twice a year they have an AWANA Store and the kids get to "buy" things with their AWNANA bucks. It's a lot of fun and the girls always come home with TONS of stuff!

Savannah and Amaris really enjoy AWANA. This is their third year. They started out as Cubbies and now the are both in the Sparks class. There is also a Puggles class for 2-3 year olds. Andy and I teach that class. Jadon LOVES it. He always makes sure to wear his Puggles shirt. At that age they don't memorize scripture, but we have a little Bible lesson for them. We have four boys in our class - all age 3. They really don't sit still for much, so we do their lesson during snack time. That's the only time they will sit still and quiet. :) FYI - a puggle is a baby platypus!

If it sounds like something you want to check out for your own kids go to www.awana.org, click on about us, and then find Awana near you. I think it is only at Baptist church's, but anyone can join AWANA.

Excited

Well, I'm excited about the few things I've figured out. One thing that I am really proud of managing to do is change my format from two columns to three columns. I had complete instructions in doing it, but since it involved changing the HTML I was not so sure I could do it. And I actually didn't do it right the first time, so then I was really proud when I figured out what I did wrong and was able to fix it!

There is still more I want to change/add. The biggest thing that is driving me nuts right now is that I want to put a color behind my text instead of it being transparent. I can't seem to figure out how to change it. Any advice?

The kids and I had a good time playing outside this evening - swinging and jumping on the trampoline. The other day we worked on clearing some trees to put in a horseshoe pit and a permanent place for a campfire. It will be kind of our "entertainment oasis". I think it will be really nice when we get it all done. I also want to add a hammock or two between some nice big trees in that area. I've ALWAYS wanted a nice hammock - maybe my dream is finally going to come true. :)

Out with the old and in with the new!

I've been trying to figure out for a few days how to customize my blog to look different and have features that I think would be neat. Well, since I am so illiterate in that department I decided to start a whole new blog that is more user friendly. I think I will be better able to customize this blog than I would have my old one. I guess time will tell. Hopefully with help from others I will eventually get there.

I came across the website http://www.cutestblogontheblock.com/ that has lots of neat things I can add and from what I could tell it was designed for blogspot, so here I am. I tried to get the URL http://www.myheartsdesire.blogspot.com/, but that one was already taken. Frustratingly (is that a word?) by a person who only made one post back in 2004.

Well after trying different variations I came up with http://www.desiremyheart.blogspot.com/. It immediately spoke to me as a comment from God to me, "Desire my heart". I pray it will be a reminder to me to strive to have a heart like Christ.

I hope to spend some time in the next few days getting my appearance where I want it and then I can start adding posts about what's going on in our life these days.

Blessings,

April