Wintertime activities
Lily eating homemade chocolate chip cookies. There is nothing better!
We’ve all been fighting off a cold and on Wednesday Elijah stayed home from school because of his cough.It was nice having him home, I miss him when he is at school all day. It is a good kind of missing though. I think parents and kids need a break from each other as much as anyone else. Josiah also stayed home from his music class. He was dissappointed because he was supposed to go to a friend’s house. I was also feeling pretty bad, but we took it as easy as we could. The boys stayed busy with cartoons, computer games, coloring, and wrestling. Lily took a nice long nap which allowed me time to get some reading done. On Thursday I started the day with prayer and coffee, which helped me to press through the sickness. I started cleaning for a new customer and was very glad when she called to let me know everything looked great. John and I had a nice lunch together at the Indian restaurant. The food looked disgusting, but it tasted good. After this I went and taught Elijah’s class about Michaelangelo and Da Vinci. It was a long day, but I was greeted by my husband with a dozen roses and some beautiful pearl earrings. That’s what I call a great day! Friday night, my mom watched the kids for us and we were able to go hang out with some of our friends. It was great to have 3 hours of grown up talk! On Saturday, Valentine’s Day, we went out to dinner as a family. Lily is definitely at the age where she is loud and grabby. The boys were wound up. I was just glad not to have to cook. Today we celebrated Ryan’s birthday at his parents. Grandma Nell, Jay and Kat., and my mom also came. We had a nice meal and it was fun to all be together. Those are the highlights from our week. I know it all sounds upbeat and that is partly my goal in this blog. Sometimes I need to remind myself how good my life is and when I write it down on paper, that reality shows itself to be true. If it wasn’t for the Lord Jesus, my life would not be this good. I included some pictures from our week.
Small miracles
Okay, so once again God has shown himself faithful on our family’s behalf. This is the perfect example of how God has provided for Ryan and I our entire marriage. A couple of weeks ago Tracy and I were talking about the fact that our washer and dryer have been with us for between 7 and 10 years. The dryer, we actually got out of one of our friends yards when we lived in Tennessee. It had been in the yard for at least 6 months when we got it. We paid $20 for it. Our washer was a model that had been rebuilt on the inside. Anyways, we were saying that they probably would not last much longer. About a week later, Grandma Nell tells Tracy that Bart and Laurie are getting a new washer and dryer and wondered if we wanted their old ones. At the moment there was no need for them, but we said maybe. Sure enough, about 3 days ago our washer stopped working. Seek first the kingdom of God and the rest will be added to you….. Thank you God and thank you family. I know sometimes we think the thoughts we are thinking are ours, but sometimes they may be little whispers from the man upstairs who is intimately aquainted with our lives and those around us.
Friends and Fish
I thought I would highlight some of the things that went on during the week. On Monday night, Ryan and I had home group. We lead this home group and are currently studying the Song of Solomon. I personally love this book, but that is only after years of studying it and having others explain it to me. My dorky husband decided he wanted a picture of all of us together. Ryan gets this from his family. They all like to take pictures and they use to video everything. Love you guys, I hope you don’t mind me poking fun at you! I’ve included our picture.
Last week we bought 4 new pets. Can you guess what they were? I told the boys that if they were good for Grandma Tracy I would get them a special surprise. Needless to say, we ended up with pet fish as the surprise. Elijah got a kissing gouramis, which was kind of large. He died within a day. The other 3 are small goldfish. 1 of those died too. Ryan said that it may have had something to do with the small bowl that we bought. Sorry, I’m a cheap skate, it was only $8.00 from Walmart.Thankfully, the last two are still swimming.
On Wednesday, I dropped the boys off at Ryan’s office. Ryan took them sledding at Pasfield Park. He said that Josiah had a couple of “close encounters” with a fence, but other than that they had a lot of fun. Today Lily, Josiah, and I met up with some of our friends at the museum. Josiah was having a rough day though. He was not being very nice to the other kids and I could tell that if we didn’t leave soon things would get bad. Well, Josiah managed to hit his sister as we were getting ready to leave which required a spanking in the museum bathroom. Two things I hated about this outing: 1- It’s embarrasing when your kid is mean to other kids. 2- Nowadays it is a little scary to spank your kid in public. I don’t get as embarrassed as I used to when things like this happen, but it is still frustrating. Usually when one of my kids act the way Josiah was acting today, they are usually not feeling well. I hope it isn’t that. Ryan and I are going out this evening for dinner with some friends and then to a birthday party. I look forward to some time away. Thank you Grandma Tracy for watching the kids. I can’t imagine raising kids without grandparents. They are such a blessing.
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This is Us!
Hello everyone. If you were wondering what Selah was, it is a way for me to record and remember all that goes on in my life at home with the kids. Selah means to stop and calmly think about something. When I am in the midst of the chaos, called my life, it is hard to think calmly about anything. I want to be able to remember my last few years as a stay at home mom. I wish I would’ve started this at the beginning. It would have been interesting to compare it to how things are now. Anyways, I hope you enjoy it along with us!
For starters….. Elijah is in Kindergarten and he is 6 years old. He has matured so much this year. I am able to talk to him like my little buddy sometimes. He is very sensitive and gets his feelings hurt easily. He usually is not shy after he gets to know someone. He loves to hang out with his friends and he always asks me what we are doing next. The other day on the way to music class he told me that he doesn’t think he will live here when he gets older, he thinks he will live outside of town, like where grandma lives.(how does that sound grandma tracy?!) He also said that he changes his mind all the time about what he wants to be, ” Sometimes I want to be an army guy, and then a police guy, or work at LRS. But right now I think I want to be a bounty hunter! (We’ve been watching a lot of Star Wars this winter.)
Then there is my little Josiah boy. He just turned 4 years old. He goes to preschool twice a week. He is very outgoing and loves to hug and encourage everyone. You don’t want to hurt someone he likes though ,or he might come and hurt you. We had an incident at the Christmas party this year. I did tell him that God made him strong for a reason, so that he would help people. He has taken this very literal. He is a great helper. He likes to vaccuum and help with groceries. He is at kind of a frustrated age. Josiah wants to do all of the things that brother does and if mommy says no, we go into major melt down. It’s fun to watch Josiah with his siblings. He makes them both laugh, he is such a comedian. Other times, he likes to mess with them until they cry. Josiah’s favorite things to do is watch cartoons, color pictures, and eat candy.
Our sister girl, Lily. She was much needed in out testosterone-filled house. She is now almost 18 mos. She was the best baby: quiet, flexible, cute. As of lately some of those things are changing, especially the quiet part. Lily does this high pitched scream, which she used as a defense mechanism at first, until she realized that it made her brothers laugh. Now car rides are almost unbearable with her and Josiah screaming back and forth. Needless to say, I also end up screaming too, but not to make anybody laugh. Some of Lily’s interests are books(for about 30 seconds), telephones, which can actually be made of any toy that she puts up to her ear and pretends to talk into, and wrestling with her brothers and dad. Just like a third child, though, she will go and play by herself in the play room for long periods of time.Everyone said that she is going to be a tough little girl and I think they are right.
Well, that will at least get us started for right now.
