The Photo Shoot

I wanted to go to the Botanical Gardens to take some pictures of the kids, but when we arrived, we only had 20 minutes before they closed. I decided it was not worth risking the automatic gate locking us in for the night, so we went to our land instead.

I am glad we did. The sun was starting to set and it was just beautiful. Not to mention it was great lighting for the pics!

Here are some highlights from our photo shoot.










This one of M and S was one of the first pics I took.




They were doing great sitting on this old limb when suddenly it rolled a little bit which scared M (even more so because she could not catch herself from falling because of her cast).

She also had on a skirt and the rolling limb scraped her leg. From that point on, she was upset and would not let me take any more pics of her. I felt terrible because she is always so cooperative with getting her picture taken and I did not have a single good shot of her from that day!

This is one of my favorites.

I wish M was in on the love, but instead she was doing this....

Just keeping it real....

I really want to get a great picture of all of them together in their blue and green. I guess we will try again in the next few days...maybe then, M won't get hurt!

The Concrete Has Been Poured!

As many of you know, we bought land over the summer and we are waiting for our house to sell before we start building our dream home.

We made the decision to go ahead and build a garage with a back storage room. This will help alleviate some crowding problems we have at the moment and allow us to start moving some of our things now.

Scot has been working on this for the past month. He has done the majority of the work by himself. I am so proud of the hard work that he has put into this project. He has sacrificed so much of himself to do it!

I think today was the first big pay off for him. He has spent many long hours getting the foundation ready for concrete and today the trucks rolled in at 7 am to pour!

You can check out pictures here to see the beautiful foundation.

Warning: It may only look like a slab to you, but it is Scot's baby and he is a proud papa!


We are all so excited because something is actually happening out on our land!!! I will be honest it is making me even more ready to start building our house. I have to constantly remind myself to be patient and wait for God's perfect timing. I am thankful I can rest in the fact that God will sell our house in HIS timing - my responsibility is to be faithfully trusting Him as I wait.

You can follow us in our journey to our dream home on our other blog at ourhomeoncountyroad39.blogspot.com I try to update it as new things happen, so be sure to check back.

Temptation

In our Bible time today, we talked about the devil tempting Jesus in the wilderness.

During math time, as S and B were doing their seatwork at the dining room table, I walked out of the room to help E with her math. When I came back a few minutes later, S was not in her seat.

I asked her why she was not at the table getting her school work done. She matter-of-factly said, "I guess I was tempted by the devil to go get something to drink."

Do They See Jesus in Me?

As I was making beds, emptying the dishwasher and doing all those mundane tasks us moms do day-after-day, I was listening to my daughter's mp3 player. A song came on that really spoke to my heart and really just convicted me again...Do the little faces that I spend my days and nights nurturing, do THEY see Jesus in me?

Here are the words...

Is the face that I see in the mirror
the one I want others to see
Do I show in the way that I walk in my life
The love that You've given to me
My heart's desire is to be like You
In all that I do, all I am

Do they see Jesus In Me
Do they recognize Your face
Do I communicate Your love, and Your grace
Do I reflect who You are
In the way I choose to be
Do they see Jesus In Me

It's amazing that you'd ever use me
But use me the way You will
Help me to hold out a heart of
compassionate grace
A heart that You're spirit fills
May I show forgiveness and mercy
The same way You've shown it to me

Do they see Jesus In Me
Do they recognize Your face
Do I communicate Your love, and Your grace
Do I reflect who You are
In the way I choose to be
Do they see Jesus In Me

Now I want to show all the world who You are
The reason I live and breathe
So You'll be the One that they see
When they see me

Do they see Jesus In Me
Do they recognize Your face
Do I communicate Your love, and Your grace
Do I reflect who You are
In the way I choose to be
Do they see Jesus In Me


~Joy Williams


My prayer is that in ALL I say and ALL I do, that my precious little ones see Jesus in me.

The Distraction

It has been hard the last few days to keep the kids attention on school when this is going on outside our windows.






Remember when they were doing this back in October? Well, they are FINALLY going to pave our road!

Trust me, I will endure the distraction to have a smooth road again!

It's Official

S has now lost both of her two front teeth!

Remember how she freaked out the first two times??? Well, this time she was soooo brave. She did not even cry..can you believe that??? I was so proud of her!

Now I have to get the perfect picture of her toothless grin. You know, I MUST have a favorite picture to remember how adorable she is without her two front teeth!

Remembering when....

Speaking of loosing a tooth, I thought I would show one of my (many, many, many) favorite pics of E.



How cute is she without her two front teeth! Love it!

Another one gone....

S lost another tooth, her 3rd so far. It has been ready to pull for a couple of weeks now, but she has refused to let us get anywhere near it. Today, she bumped it and made it bleed profusely. There was no choice, but to pull it. It was out in 3 seconds, for which I am thankful since she was upset at the amount of blood coming from it!

The one right next to it is also very loose. She won't let us go ahead and pull it. Maybe after a day or too she will. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Descriptive Reading

The last couple of days in language class, I have been teaching S the difference between simple and descriptive sentences. We start out with a simple phrase like red starfish and use it in a sentence. Then we see if we can make the sentence better by adding color words and/or answering the who, when, where questions. It has been a great activity preparing her for the stories that she will soon be writing.

Well today as B was reading during his language time, S piped in and said that if he would just add some description to what he was reading, then it would be sooo much more interesting to hear him read.

Gotta love it!

The Scooter

I never thought I would have a crawler again, but....




this is one of the ways she is getting around these days.

The Plates

I have been looking for some plates like this for several years now.



I first saw them in an antiques store, but was not willing to pay the high prices they were asking per plate. (Over the years, I have seen them priced between 8 - 10 dollars per plate!)

While at a local junk store, I found 3 of them to start my collection and the best part was that I only paid $1.00 each! I was thrilled to find them and even more thrilled at the price!

How perfect are they for a tea party, baby shower, or a brunch! E has already requested to use them when her birthday rolls around.

So now the hunt to add to the collection begins...but only if they are priced reasonably.

Another Family Favorite

Our family loves to play games. Several months ago, my cousin, Billy, and our friend, Blair, came over for game night and they brought the game Apples to Apples. We had so much fun playing it, that E asked for one for Christmas.

On New Year's, when our family came over, we played for several hours. It was a lot of fun to have so many cousins (both young and old) and aunts and uncles sitting down together playing and laughing together..what fun memories!

It's Pink!

What little girl can break her leg and not get a pink cast, right????

And look, it matches her toes!

So Polite

M was crying out in pain with her leg so I gave her some pain medicine that the ER prescribed.

Normally when I give her medicine, she dips her tongue in the cup before drinking it. This time was no different, she took the cup, dipped her tongue and shivered with disgust!

She handed the cup back to me and said, "No, thank you!"

It was hilarious. You could tell she was in so much pain, and yet she would rather be in pain than drink the disgusting medicine.....she was so sweet about it and had such good manners!

The Broken Leg

2009 has started out with a bang! My sweet little, two-year old M has a broken leg.





It is just so sad. My heart aches for her. She, like any two year old, is SO active and now to be confined to the couch...oh my! It is going to be a long 4 -6 weeks!


I know you are all wondering how this happened....


My mom, the girls and I were at the a mall making some exchanges and using gift cards from Christmas. As E and I were checking out at J*P**ny, my mom took S and M to go sit in the chairs just inside the mall.

E and I finished and were walking towards to mall entrance. My mom was frantically walking towards me holding M in her arms. I figured she must have fallen and gotten hurt. The closer we got towards each other, I could see the horror on my mom's face. She said we need to go to the ER right now.

I grabbed M and could see a huge bruise on her face and she was not acting right AT ALL!

My mom said, M was running right in front of her, tripped and fell on the ceramic tile in the store. She was so close in front of my mom that when she fell, it tripped my mom and she fell top of her!

We were worried that she had a major head injury hitting the ceramic tile when she fell and then again when my mom fell on her!

As we were walking out of the mall, I called Scot, who had B and was working out at the land, and told him what was going on and to meet us at the hospital.

When we finally made it to our car, I tried to put M down so I could get everything in the car. She wouldn't stand and just started crying. That is when I knew something was wrong with her leg. Momma said that must be why she would not stand up when they were trying to help both of them up off the floor.

Of course, my mom felt TERRIBLE. I reassured her that there was NOTHING she could have done to avoid falling on M. She actually hurt her wrist breaking her fall. Her knee and ankle are banged up pretty bad too. Those of you who know my mom, know she was not allowing any focus to be on herself. She was just worried about her baby!

I called the ER to let them know we were coming. When we got there, it was packed! They got our info and then we had to wait. Thankfully, not as long as some of the people there had already been waiting. They took us back after 20 minutes or so, I guess mainly because they suspected a head injury.

Once back, we waited more....did I mention they were packed??!! M was wanting to go to sleep and I had to try to keep her awake which just made her more upset! It was terrible. I finally talked to the nurse and she said let her sleep.

After what seemed like FOREVER, the nurse finally came and did an assessment. They said we need to get her to CT and they will be here in just a second to get her! I asked about her leg and they bluntly said if it is broken, we will deal with it later. We are worried about her head and need to take care of that first. Honestly, fear set in me at this point!

A scared two year old having to be still while getting a CT scan??? Yeah, right! It was not an easy task. Just when she would calm down, she would see the tech and start crying again. We finally just put her on the table and tried to comfort her with our words. She wanted me to hold her, of course, and all I could do was hold her down. It broke my heart!

Finally, we got the scans we needed and PRAISE THE LORD everything was OK. No head injury and no facial fractures!

The sweetest doctor came to talk to us. I am so thankful that the Lord brings just who we need in the midst of stressful situations! She was so kind and so patient with all our questions and fears - being a mom herself, she understood!

The doctor examined her leg as I explained how she would cry out in pain just sitting on the table.

She sent us to get an x-ray. This time it was a much easier test...thankfully! She cried a little, but overall did a great job laying still for the x-ray.


The doctor came back in and informed us that sure enough it was broke....a spiral fracture.


Having gone through this with B just a few months ago, we knew what to expect. They would put a temporary cast on her until Monday when we could see a specialist. (Why do these things always happen on the weekend??)

Our doctor got the other kids involved by having them help hold the different things she needed to wrap M's leg. Again, seeing the kindness and compassion of this doctor was so refreshing!





Within a few minutes, her entire leg was wrapped and we were on our way. Just in time too. The severe thunderstorm rolled in just as we got in the car! All in all about 4 hours in the ER - not too bad considering how busy they were.