Sicklings.

It started with one.

The oldest boy. He got up one morning and was extra clingy, not a big deal, and then, he took a nap before lunch. That's practically unheard of these days. He woke up from his nap and I knew just why he was being that way.  FEVER.

Thee next day he was fine. I'm thinking great, this was just a one day thing, and we're done. We went to church that night and were around some sick kids, so... who knows...


Thursday morning, the baby wakes up with a snotty nose and a lowgrade fever.

And then the other two wake up... Coughs and snotty noses. More fever.  Oh boy, here we go.


Fast forward a week, and  we are STILL dealing with this cough and sinus mess. BLAH.  But my kids have been troopers... so... no new pics from me this week, and certainly not anything fun to share.  Tomorrow though, we're trying out a few things I've seen on pinterest, so hopefully I'll blog those soon!

11 months

Ok, so I'm a week late, I kept putting it off because I haven't been able to do any 11 month pictures yet, but I cannot put it off any longer. I need to make sure I get it in before he's a year old in THREE WEEKS!  These pictures were a week or so before he turned 11 months, but they will have to do. :)

Sooo....

At 11 months old.   Asher is taking up to 4-5 steps at a time (when he wants to). He will walk holding onto just about anything, and he stands constantly. He pulls up on everything and loves being up on the other kids 'level' 

He has two teeth now, and his eating has picked up considerably. It's like he realized HEY I have teeth, I can chew this!

That boy LOVES some food.

He sometimes will say "bububub" when he is yelling at Elijah.  And the other day he yelled KY at kyley to get her attention.  He's starting to recognize sounds and try to mimic them instead of just babbling.  So much fun!

He loves to give kisses now. So sweet. The best is when he's on the phone with Derek and he can see Derek's picture on the phone and kisses it over and over. 

He's also learned to squeal.  All of my kids have gone through this, and it's not fun, thankfully it's usually just a stage!

He eats mostly table food, but at home he loves to eat his bananas.  It's the only baby food he really cares for. He will eat apples sometimes (babyfood) but usually he wants bananas and if it isn't that, he will scream until you get bananas.   He is getting better and better at the sippy cup thing. He prefers the ones with a straw, which I'm perfectly ok with. He really doesn't like tipping the cup up to drink haha

He drinks juice and milk in his cup (cow's milk).   

I really cannot believe that in less than a month my sweet boy will be a year old.  He was JUST born!!!   We are planning his party already and I just know he's going to love it.  

52. Also known as my Valentine's Day gift to Derek.

This was so much fun for me. 

A sweet friend linked me to an idea similar to this on pinterest.  I searched and searched and found many ideas that I loved, and I put together my favorite aspects from each one and made it my own.

As most of you know, my husband enjoys card magic so this was just a natural fit for him. 

I started with a deck of cards

I chose this deck because of it's already vintage, rustic look. I really wanted this project to look 'aged' and fun at the same time.

You can buy your own deck just like it here   

Next I took a hole punch and made two holes in the cards.  I did the first card and used each new card as a guide for the next one because I didn't want my holes to be much off, but didn't want them to line up perfectly either.  If you want them to line up absolutely perfect, just use your first card as a guide for each other card. 

After the holes were punched, we took a square of sand paper and sanded the cards down to scratch them up and make them look even more vintage than they already were (and the glue sticks better I found)

Kyley helped me some with this, she thought it was a lot of fun.

Next I took a roll of brown shipping paper, I'd bought earlier and thought would look great with the teal and brown cards and I ripped it into small squarish looking pieces with rough edges that would fit onto the cards but without covering the holes. 

 

On each piece of paper I wrote one of 52 reasons I love him.  (there are many more yall, I just narrowed it down to my favorite 52 at the moment).

I used school glue to glue the paper to the cards because the wetness of the glue then mishaped the card a bit, which I wanted to add even more to the vintage look of this.

I did this one by one, and laid them out to dry 

This took me several days, mostly because of having 3 kids at home and other things to take care of, and also, having room to lay them out to dry. 

When they were dry, I put them all together with simple 1 inch binder rings, which you can buy here. 

I really love how it turned out!

I put it all together with some white tissue paper in this cute little bag to give to him on Valentine's day. 

If you want to read about HIS reaction to the gift, you can read it here  Also, he intends on writing a post a day with all 52 reasons in it, if you are interested in knowing what I wrote on them and the reasons behind it. 

.

I had so much fun putting all of this together, and I enjoyed even more the smile on his face watching him read them all.  Now, someone help me fast because to top this I'm going to have to work HARD for next year haha. 

In Real Life.

This is seriously so cool!

(in)courage is doing this cool 'conference' but from the comfort of your own home!

In Real Life

It'll focus on mini "meetups" that are networked together through the internet, via video and such!

What a great way for women to reach out to one another even though they can't travel to some of the far away places they are!

There will be live webcasts and it looks like tons of fun!

Here's an excerpt from their website.

A local meetup on a global scale; friends will gather to watch live webcasts of (in)courage contributors and community, connect with one another, and discover new friendships they didn't know were right around the corner!

It all kicks off April 27th!   You can go HERE to register!

On children. And church. and other things.

This is gonna get long. I'm sorry.

This post started out because I read this:

Nursing-in-Public

After reading it, I sent my husband a message and explained to him how angry it made me.  I've had similar experiences in churches and I hurt for this sweet woman's heart that was broken over this.

When did we stop holding ourselves accountable for our own sin?  At what point did we decide to blame a woman FEEDING her baby on our impure thoughts?   And at what point did we decide that it was OK to feed our kid in the BATHROOM?   Hello??? Anyone hearing me?   Would you eat your breakfast in the bathroom??? I sure wouldn't!

I don't want to stop there though. I want to talk a little about WHY people feel that this ok. 

I followed a few rabbit holes and stumbled upon this little gem. (please note the sarcasm in calling it a gem)

Shut that kid up

Ok, now I'm all for children's ministry. Y'all lets be real. My husband and I are children's PASTORS.  But this made me MAD.   Not necessarily the incident itself. But the comments. The responses this got. HOLY COW!

It appears by reading this, that most people believe that children have no place in an adult service. PERIOD.

How can we expect our kids to model our behavior if we aren't showing them?   If we are wanting to teach kids to worship God, then why NOT let them watch us do it.  (Disregarding the fact that we SHOULD be teaching our children these things at home.)

Why is everyone so quick to point out that kids don't belong in church?

Funny, my babies when they were young ALWAYS went to service with me.  I loved our nursery staff, still do, but I just won't leave my babies. And to this day, I get comments on how well my children behave in big church.  DO YOU KNOW WHY???? Because they experienced it and we trained them to be respectful and to participate in a non-distracting way.

It is NOT the children's pastors responsibility to teach your children to worship. It's YOURS.  Don't get me wrong, we love what we do, and I love watching children grow in Christ. But it starts at home. It starts in watching YOU.   It starts by being a part of church and learning how to belong in a church. 

It's sad to me when I see older kids and teenagers who have no idea how to act in church once they graduate from the children's church age because they've never been exposed!

In our ministry, when we took over, we made it a point to let our pastor know that we wanted our kids to be involved in big church ever so often, and thankfully we serve with a great man of God who understands that desire and supports it and even encourages it while still encouraging our ministry.

Kids mimic what adults do.  Let's tie this all together here.   If you don't want kids in big church, do you think they're going to want to be there when they are no longer kids?   I doubt it. I highly doubt it.

Oh and if we make a big deal about someone feeding their baby in church... guess what, our kids will too. I think it's about time we step up and teach our kids about sin and being accountable.  We are each accountable for our own sin.

If we are teaching our kids that sin lies in our own heart and no one else can MAKE us sin. We're giving them tools to walk with Christ and SUCCEED for the rest of their lives.

My babies

Snuggle time with sissy. 
Asher LOVES to give kisses now, so cute!



Elijah being all silly. Right after this, he said :All done.

One more of Asher.


Kyley last night caught Derek kissing me in the kitchen, she said "You know, if daddy was a frog, then this would be ok."   Boy that kid is silly.

I'm spending my days playing with these cuties, and keeping up with housework, and today, working on Derek's valentine gift. I can't wait to blog about it after he sees it!

Teefies!

Look at these!

Abigail

Ok, so Kelly over at Kelly's Korner is doing Show Us Your Life Singles this week.

She's done it several times before and I've thought of doing this for Abi, but never acted on it. One day I mentioned it to her, and she said something to the effect of, well why haven't you already?  So. Here I am.  Here she is.

Meet Abigail.  Also known as Abi.

 


Abi is 29 (30 in October), lives in central Alabama, and is way taller than me (ok she's right at 6 ft)

Abi has a passion for youth and college age ministry. She has a beautiful heart to see these kids (and young adults) see Jesus in a real and passionate way.  I think this is one of my favorite things about her.

Beyond that, Abi loves to read, and she loves to write.  I don't think a day has gone by in the MANY years I've known her that she doesn't have a journal in hand with a pen, or a book. ALWAYS.


Abi has been a part of our family for many years, and she loves my kids like her own. She is loyal, trustworthy, and an amazing friend. 

(this is me and Abi and another friend of ours.)

Other things you should know about Abi:

She also enjoys music and going to the movies.
She makes a MEAN shrimp alfredo (YUM!)
She owns her own home
She loves kids
She works hard at whatever she does

I'm so very blessed to have Abi in my life, she is the bestest best friend I could ever ask for.

I can't do this all on my own... no, I'm no superman!

*kudos if you get the title reference*



Look at my sweet family (minus me behind the camera obviously)

I just love this crew. They make life so much fun!

A few new things.  Yesterday Asher woke up in a great mood, and guess what mommy found... ANOTHER tooth.  I wasn't even expecting this one. The other tooth, his gums were really swollen and you could feel the bump, but this one showed no signs until it showed up!  So now he has his left center tooth, and then the tooth to the right of his right center. Somehow he skipped the one in between.  The kid has been different than my others in so many ways though that is for sure!

And in other related news. Asher took two steps in a row yesterday as well. We were outside playing at dance and he tried to walk toward Elijah who was playing ball with his friends.  YIKES! He's going to be walking before I know it!

We had dinner with sweet friends last night. We are so grateful for all of the wonderful friends God has given us. I just love it. Thank you God!

I'm in the middle of planning not one, but TWO birthday parties.   Asher turns 1 in March and Elijah 4 in April (2 weeks apart to be exact) so I'm working hard trying to get my act together and not be a last minute planner. I'll let ya know how that works out when the parties roll around.  So far, I've ordered cake (Kim is AMAZING and I have to book with her a few months early lol) and picked themes, and I've already gotten all of Elijah's gift, and part of Asher's.   Now I just need to make invites, and start picking up party supplies here and there. yay!

So there you have it. What's new around here. :)