aahhhhh....

it's been so stinkin long since i've been to my blog website. i feel like i have to wipe off dust and cob webs. life has been plenty busy since i last left off. for my own sake i must mention what i have been doing as this blog is to help me remember what goes on in my life as it is so fleeting.

there have been so many wonderful things that have taken place. we finally bought our very first house. thank you God!! i never thought it would really happen - then i found myself signing a gigantic stack of papers that i did not really understand comepletly. it was surreal. just for the record God was so there every step of the way. we put an offer on the house after 3 others. they stopped taking offers and then even though they had many good offers on the house including 1 cash offer - they chose our family. it was unexplainable - it was God & He granted us favor.

once we moved in we had so much to do on the house. i was 8 months pregnant and so tired. anything i did put me in contractions, contraction, contractions. still God kept that baby inside growing, growing. we got the house in some kind of order to the best of our ability and then it was time.....

it was tuesday and jesse needed to go to aspen to travel just overnight. just overnight! i knew that was not a good idea or good timing when i could have this baby any day. needless to say my water broke at 6:50am the next morning and jesse was 4 hours away of course! thank God for friends who came and sat with my kids for the day with out worry and for good new neighbors who had to drive my water leaking self to the hospital. God kept that baby in until jesse arrived at the hospital and as soon as he did i went from 3 cm. to 10 and had the baby with in the hour. (ya - the epidural never did work this time!!!)

in came baby number 3. i was instantly in love, but had forgotten about the sleepless nights! and this guy wanted to party all night long for the first month! did i mention that i also had my big guy start kindergarten. by the way why did no one tell me what a pain in the neck it is to drop off and pick up kids from school!!

all of those things lead me to the present. i feel as though i am finally getting a handle on life at least a little and at least for now. i have come to grips with the facts that i'm not even close to being a super-mom, my house is still a work in progress from the orange counter-tops to the daily mess from household stuff i can barely keep up with, i'm lucky to shower or to take a lone trip to the grocery store and the list goes on. bottom line is there's love in our house and we are surviving and that is good for me at least for now. :)

what if...

Do you ever stop and think what if?

What if my daughter had been born first....
- She would probably not have had a 2 year old dinosaur party
- She would probably not know the word torture.
- She would probably not say "we need to kill the bad guys" in pretend play.
- She would probably not be so good at wrestling, hitting and punching.
- She would probably not know about all the super heroes.
- She would probably not know how to play T-ball and soccer.
- She would probably not find farting and burping so darn funny.
- She would probably not flex her muscles after every bite of meat saying "i'm gonna have big muscles like daddy one day."

Then I think, on the flip side i guess she would miss the privilage of having a constant playmate from birth and she would not have a bodyguard to protect her and make her feel safe when she's scared. But, most importantly, she would not be shaped daily into the woman God has designed her to be. After all, may be she's gonna be a superhero ninja girl who saves the world from bad guys!!
.....well, what if??? :)

look up!

This last week has been really rough for me. I have faced disappointment after disappointment topped with bad nights of sleep with a little one who is sick with a cold. My husband has been far away for days and unavailable most of the time to even talk. I have struggled this week with self pity and letting myself get depressed.
These are the times that I really need to look up! These are the times that I need to let my heart sing praises to God so that in the midst of my small trials I can see our big God and the big plan He has for the world, which is so much bigger than me! It's when I focus on a God so magnificant that I can say who cares about the things of this week. This week and all it entails will pass, but the immeasurable love of a Savior that some of the world has not yet felt, is forever. There is too much for us to do in life, on behalf of God for people, to be focused inward. Tonight I'm reminding myself of this truth so I won't let the temporary things of the world take my joy, my hope, my purpose. Tonight I will look up until I see nothing but You!

a creative mind

My son is wired with great creativity. He always surprises me with different scenarios where I am left both puzzled and amazed. How on earth could he come up with this stuff???! One of his many favorite creative hobbies as of late are to frame his sister for something she did not do.... like drawing marker all over the kitchen floor and pouring cups of water out of the bath. The weird thing is that he does not ever draw on anything other than paper and may splash water, but not dumpings out of the tub so who would have suspected him?? A 2-year-old little girl is the obvious culprit for these things. BUT - NO! I only wonder how many time-outs my little girl has served on his behalf!!!
Another favorite hobby is to mix his food at every meal time in gross & weird ways. It usually drives me INSANE! You see I don't like wasted food, which is why I eat all my kids left-overs and am a huge pregnant woman!! Today, however; I sat back and watched as we are enforcing our new rule to his game. If he chooses to do crazy things with his food then he HAS to eat it. So he thinks twice before mixing even though he usually does it anyway and somehow he likes his crazy food combos. Come on haven't you tried hotdogs with applesauce and many random things stuffed in a peanut butter sandwich.
I'm learning there is a fine line of squashing a creative mind all together and balancing it with consequences for the negative creativity. This child of mine has and will always keep me on my toes, but I'm glad he is creative I only pray one day when he is older he will use this creativity for good!!

this 'n that...

It's been a while since I've blogged. Life has become busy here as we continue to settle into new territory. Here's April's this 'n that's...


It's a BOY!!
So I had my ultrasound and we found out we are having another boy! The most exciting thing is always that he had all the right body parts in the right places and is looking healthy! :)
The only hard part about all this is what on earth to name him. I've decided boys names are way harder. I don't want a super common name, but you can't go too weird or, well, for a boy it's just weird. So we'll see??


T-Ball
Ok so if you ever read anything about my big little man playing Soccer, you're probably thinking - what?? you're signing him up for another sport. Yes, I had concluded after soccer that 4 years old was too young for sports...at least for boys....well, may be just mine, BUT (there's always a but) we just moved here and we needed to get him active in something outside of the house. Since we've started it has been great! No melt downs on the field, yet and he is actually enjoying it. It helps to have a really good coach that knows what he's doing and may be this is my son's sport more that soccer?? This weekend is his first game - Go Blue Claws!!


House Hunting
A lot of our time has also been devoted to looking for a house to buy. I know we were looking for rentals to get out of our allergy-pet mess, but God set up the perfect situation for us with a great realtor and ya never know we may be first time home owners soon. Exciting & scary!


Easter
We had a wonderful Easter out here. We read the Easter story, made Easter cookies, decorated eggs, and had our basket hunt. The day before we had a fun Easter Egg hunt at our friends house and the weather was perfect for an outdoor brunch and eggs. On Easter it rained, but we had the perfect church/ pizza/ movie day. We also spent the day in reflection of a beautiful Savior and His amazing love!


Peanut m&m's
As I am writing this, I just ate a peanut m&m that had like a burnt or rotten peanut in it. Super gross - had to rid that from my mouth!! Has that ever happened to you?

-----THE END----

our weekend

stairs

I have not lived in a 2-story house but 1 time in my college years and the truth is -I loathe them! First, remember we moved to higher altitude. Now imagine all the times we need to run up and down the stairs with my potty training toddler who is barely going to make it on the seat, doing laundry, putting kids to bed, breaking up constant kids fighting, you get it! Oh, wait there's more....did I also mention that my 4 year old fell head over heels, head over heels all the way down the stairs backwards! So yes, there are many reasons that stairs should remain my enemy. But, before all you 2-story housed fans get mad at me for hating please read on.
I am trying to see the positive in all situations so I wanted to mention that while my son did have a bad spill on the stairs, he did survive with out injury. Secondly, stairs are very helpful in getting me to and fro in a big house. And lastly, our staircase doubled as an art hall this weekend. So in conclusion, I will say stairs are alright after all, as they can be fun, too. :)


new work car

This weekend we got a new addition to our garage. Here is a sexy male model with his new work car. With all the weather he has to drive through, it had to be a Subaru!


let's go fly a kite!

The perfect to end to our weekend was trying out our new kites from Costco. My son picked out an airplane and my daughter wanted the elephant. The weather was perfect. It was in the high 70's and plenty of wind. Here's some park pics. This park has a handicap swing that my kids just love to ride in. They think it's like a rollar coaster.
She's even cute with wind-blown hair! (Another Allergy update: it does not look like cheese back in her diet is going to work after all. The rashes are coming back, but at least we can manage her skin now.)

cheese please

Allergy update for my precious little girl:
We went to a top allergist group here in Colorado, National Jewish Health. I honestly thought deep down it was going to be more of the same mystery for them as it has been for me with all her skin problems. Low and behold, we have improvement for the first time in ages!!!! Her skin has never looked better and it was just a few changes that we implemented with her, especially in bathing and a new lotion.
A little bad news is that she is now officially allergic to egg, which we did not know she could not have any part of the egg. So that's also helped to know.
The good news is great skin equals re-introducing some foods back in her diet. We decided to start with dairy because there are just too many good things about dairy. Last night we made her grilled cheese on her gluten-free bread. She enjoyed it soooo much it brought tears to my eyes. I know it's silly to shed a tear over your child eating some cheese, but it made me happy to at least be trying normal eating again! We'll see how it goes, but for now i love hearing my daughter say, "cheese please" because i can finally say, "yes!"