A funny

New readers are just too much fun I'm discovering!!

Alright, the background is, I wrapped all of the Christmas presents last night and put them under the tree. One of Quenton's (just turned 5) I labeled "Quentax" because that's a nickname I occasionally call him.

Fast forward to this morning.... All of the kids are gathered around the tree enjoying the view and wondering what's for who. You know the scene. Once I teach Quenton the "To: and From:" deal, he's set and goes about reading the labels. A little while later he walks up to me with a look of ultimate confusion and says "Mom, there's something weird. There's one over there that looks like it's for me. It starts with a Q. But it ends with an x .......????


I about died laughing!!!

My Sweet Boy

Well, I feel like I'm often ( I guess that depends on how you define 'often' *snort*) here exclaiming about what wonderful children I have. Hopefully y'all don't get tired of that. I certainly don't :) "Behold children are a blessing from the Lord"!!!
You see, if you make it on over here to read my blog, I'd LOVE for you to leave feeling refreshed, encouraged and smiling. These precious moments with my children that I blog about are my way of "pondering all of these things" in my heart, like Mary, the mother of Jesus, did. There are going to be hard times. There are going to be rough days, weeks and/or months. But we're not in it for the money ;D These precious little souls we've been entrusted with are ours to "train up in the way they should go." Now and then I get a glimpse of just what that looks like, particularly in Quenton, being our oldest.


Here's how it went: See, the other day Daddy came home from work and was noodling around on the computer. Quenton, who is swiftly becoming his little shadow, was at his side, watching every move Geoffrey made. All at once, out of the blue, Quenton turned to his Daddy and said "Dad, I don't want to do anything that bothers you or makes you mad, because I want to be just like you!" I thought "Well, what a wonderfully sweet thing to say!" It got better. You see, about 10 minutes later, Geoffrey was rallying to give Quenton his "nightly bop". It's a cute game he plays with the children, playfully bopping them on the head out of ritual. Quenton got quite serious and said "Please don't Dadda". When asked "why" he explained "I don't want you to do that because I'll want to punch you back and you don't like it when I punch you. I don't want to do things that you don't like." *jaw drop* This boy was SERIOUS!

Well, a little while later, I was in the kitchen finishing up cooking dinner. I attempted, and failed miserably at pouring boiling hot broth from my crockpot into a pan to make gravy. See, the hotpad slipped on me and I succeeded in spilling said chicken broth all down the front of me. In immense pain, I squeaked out a shocked "Ow!" Both Quen and Ari came running, and I could hear Geoffrey who was upstairs heading quickly down. One of the kids asked what was wrong and I said "I spilled hot broth all down me." Quenton was looking at me very worried, but he waited for a moment, and then in the kindest, most sensitive tone said simply "I'm sorry Mama." I could have cried right then and there out of sheer love for him. In his sweet little boy heart he knew I wasn't "alright" so he didn't even ask. He just sympathized in a way I very much needed right then.

Then, that night as I was putting him and his sister to bed, we were taking turns praying. He said a very simple, and even generic prayer, which I was a bit disappointed with. I have a tendency to want to correct when he's obviously not praying from his heart, but I felt like I needed to keep my mouth closed, so we just moved on to Ari's turn. As she was praying though, he checked as though he had something else he wanted to say. Once she was done he confirmed there was something else and went on to pray "And Jesus, please help Ari and me to obey our parents like it says to do in the Bible." *Happy grin* Praise God for helping me to keep my critical nature in check. I'm so glad for his sweet teachable spirit. Lord, please give me wisdom!

Bubbles!!!

Not a whole lot to say on this particular post, but enough cuteness to go around. Who doesn't enjoy watching their children playing with bubbles?

Even the cat had to get in on the action... in a manner of speaking.

Aha!

You know that feeling, or sometimes that rut you get in, where you're reading along in your Bible, and you come across something that simply does NOT make sense to you? I'm sure we've all been there. Well, I hit one of those spots this morning. I was reading Galatians 4 where Paul is talking about Hagar and Sarah and their two sons. One is born in the ordinary way, and is under the law, while the other is born of a promise and is part of the new covenant. Ok, so I got all of that. But then he starts talking about how :25 "Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is a slave with her children." Ok, I can get that too. She corresponds to Mt. Sinai, because that's where the 10 commandments came from, and thus the Law. Then :26 "But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. :27 For it is written:
'Be glad, O barren woman,
who bears no children;
break forth and cry aloud,
you who have no labor pains;
because more are the children of the
desolate woman
than of her who has a husband.' (Isaiah 54:1)"

I sat there looking at that for a bit, and then went back and read it another time thinking "Wha...?" Then it was like God just breathed the meaning of it into my mind, and it all made sense. And to me, it's something all of us mother's think about, worry about, and hopefully more than anything, PRAY about. See, he's saying: Be glad you ladies who don't have children, because more are the children who will be heirs of the law (unbelievers) than those who are heirs of the promise (Christians).

It's a battle, my friends. A battle for the hearts, minds and souls of our children. Teach them, train them, while they are young, for the Bible promises "... When they are old they will not depart from it."
Pray for your children to have a heart knowledge/belief in Jesus Christ. That they will have a personal relationship with Him. So many children grow up with only a head knowledge of God, and when that is tested, it is found lacking. By and large, their faith will not last if they're basing it ONLY on what you tell/have taught them. They must experience God for themselves.

What a guy!!

You know how sometimes you look at your kids and think "What am I missing? I've done SOMETHING to cause a rift between us, and I'm not quite sure what it is." You know those times, when they start misbehaving where they hadn't before. Well, I was seeing some new things sprout up in Quenton in the last month or so, and thinking those very thoughts. Instead of his usual cheerful, chipper self when asked to do something, I was getting a mellow "ok". Things that used to elicit an excited response, got little to none. My Mama heart knew something was "off". So, I started praying about it. God is SO good, and SO faithful! As I continued praying and seeking God's face, He reminded me of something I've read many times: For every one time you have to correct or rebuke your child, there should be 4 or 5 times that you are praising or speaking well of them.
As I started to reflect on my interactions with my children, and particularly Quenton, I had to admit to myself that I was/am really rather critical. Which, translates into me correcting/rebuking them a lot, and praising them only occasionally. It was causing my son to feel unappreciated, and probably bitter in some ways, among other things.

So, I began to pay closer attention to praising him, even for the little things. Within a day or two I noticed remarkable changes in him. He became more affectionate, showed a marked change in attitude, and seemed as though he was striving both to please me and the Lord.

One prime example of the change in him was: The other day we were sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch. He looked over at his little sister, who was drinking a green smoothie, and, as always, making quite a mess of her face. He started to laugh and say "Ari, you have a ....." He stopped mid-sentance and said "No, I shouldn't say that, that wouldn't be nice." I immediately knew what he'd been thinking of saying (she had a mustache) and my jaw nearly dropped while my heart nearly burst with pride. Even in the midst of finding amusement with something, he was taking time to listen to the Holy Spirit and reign in his tongue. He's four years old folks. Yet, he took time to think about and realize that perhaps saying that his sister had a mustache would not be a kind thing to say. My heart does and did rejoice with gladness at the maturity I saw/am seeing in Quenton. To God be the glory!!

A birthday fit for a one year old

I can't believe it's been a YEAR already!!! *shocked*
Yep, that's right. Caleb turned 1 this past Friday, June 5th.

We didn't do the standard birthday party as one normally thinks of birthday parties... but I think he enjoyed it none-the-less.

We started out by going to the park, and unfortunately I managed to forget my camera. Suffice it to say, they all had fun. That was followed by a trip to the thrift store to see if we could find anything that just called out "Caleb" to me. Not so much. We headed home for a nice long nap... I got Quenton up a little early and he and I got some good one on one time together searching out some toys and a cake for "Lubby".

All of the above made dinner late, so after dinner and cake there wasn't a whole lot of time left for anything but bed, so the gift opening came the next day. That's another post ;)

But, I do have plenty of cake pictures to share, so, that's got to be worth somethin' ;)

Quenton is picured here in an uncharacteristic show of "grubbiness" ... He's usually very precise and I was quite surprised to see him using his hands instead of his fork. :D



And even more to my surprise was Ari, who normally IS my grubby one, eating very delicate bites with her fork. Notice she's not wearing a bib (usually a very BAD thing), and there's nary a spot on her shirt.

This expression on Caleb's face begs the phrase "Pleased as punch".

There's MORE??!!!















Hooray for Cake!!!!! :)

Just for fun

I don't get a lot of pictures taken of me, but I was in a goofy mood the other day and took a few of myself just for the heck of it. A couple of them turned out alright, so I thought I'd share.


Hope your monitors are still intact :D

Adventures in Tortilla Making

Well, we go through a LOT of tortillas around these parts and based on the average 20 ingredient list of the store bought tortillas here, they're probably not the best for you. So, I figured it was high time I start making my own. I recently bought a little cast iron griddle which is ideal for frying up these little buggers, so here's how it went down:

My stove seems to run a little on the hot side, so I had to turn the dial to just barely past 4 to have the pan hot enough but not TOO hot.

I mixed the ingredients: (Recipe from Hillbilly Housewife) 4 Cups Whole Wheat Flour, 1.5 tsp salt, 1.5 tsp baking powder, 1/3 cup coconut oil or lard, 1-1.25 cups of water (I used a bit more than that).
Then: Stir the dough with a fork until it makes a cohesive ball. Add more water if it's too dry. Be careful not to add too much though. Kneed dough approx. 20 times and then let it rest for about 10 min in the bowl. Then form into 10-12 equal balls of dough. Roll each ball into a bit of flour.


Place dough onto wax paper or well-floured surface. Roll each ball into a 6-7 inch in circle getting them as thin as possible.











Loosen tortilla from surface and flop into a dry hot skillet.








Cook about 30 seconds until the underside is dry and has a few brown spots. Repeat on the other side and then transfer to plate.











Not long later you've got a hot plate full of delicious, healthy tortillas. It truly doesn't take long at all, and it's pretty easy, even as a beginner!!

I wanna help too!!

How many kids does it take to cook spaghetti? How many stools can you fit side by side in front of a stove?
Oh how empty my kitchen will be years from now when all my sweet little ones are grown and have homes of their own. Lord, let me enjoy every minute of their growing up years!!

Interesting Find

So, thanks to a couple of people on some forums I frequent (can we say that 3 times fast?), I found a site called swagbucks.com. It's pretty cool!! If you haven't heard the word, here's the fifty cent tour, if you will.

Basically, the idea is that you do all of your searches off of their system, instead of going to google or yahoo, or that sort of thing. Their search engine is based off of google, so it's just as powerful and quick, but by using theirs, you get rewarded *big grin*. Here and there as you do searches, you will get awarded "swagbucks" which you can save up and trade in on "stuff" or gift cards to a variety of different places (common places), like Amazon, to name just one. Also, if you use their links to go to their support sites (like Walmart and Amazon and a zillion others) and you make a purchase, you get 1 swagbuck for every $5 you spend. 40 Swagbucks will get you a $5 giftcard to Amazon. I've only had an account for a week and have only done a minimal amount of searches and I already have 11 swagbucks ;) Pretty easy. Most of us stay at home Mom types do a lot of searches for this and that, so this is an easy way to get a little extra somethin' once in a while.

So... if you read this and it strikes your fancy, if you'd be so kind as to click the link that is to follow, you'll help me along in my swagbuck collecting by using me as a referal.
http://swagbucks.com/?cmd=sb-register&rb=478212

Happy shopping!!

A Visit Made in Branson

It's funny how you can go to such extremes to try and pack EVERY.THING. that you could possibly need for a trip. And yet, somehow, almost as though by some cruel twist of fate, you always manage to forget something of utmost importance.

What then, you ask, did you manage to forget this time? My camera. Of all things. My camera. I really need to just stick the thing in my purse and carry it everywhere. It's small enough, and it'd sure be nice to have it around all those times that I think to myself "Oh! I wish I'd brought my camera."

But anyway, thankfully my dear friend, Jenica, who was the soul intent and purpose of the trip, brought her camera, and was kind enough to shoot some pictures of my little ones.

The first day we got there it was raining and quite cold. But, praise the Lord, day two turned out warm and sunny. These were all taken at a park there in Branson. It was BEAUTIFUL.

There was a lovely river running down along the path that led to the play area, and the
play area itself was huge.

All three kids had a blast.
Even Caleb, who enjoyed
his crawling moments on the bridge.






Here's Quenton enjoying himself on a big slide, and Ari's hamming it up to the "new to her" friend behind the camera :)









Later we got to meet up with her son, who'd been visiting with his Grandparents. We all went and got some lunch and then the older three went running and playing freestyle on the yard of a random church (Thanks church!!)...



We'd wandered around a fair amount of time in a foreign town, looking for another park and came up empty when we stumbled across this church. Playground or not, all the kids enjoyed it :) Even Caleb, though you wouldn't necessarily know it by this picture ;)

Life is so precious!

Time slips by so quickly doesn't it. It seems like yesterday I was snapping pictures of Arianna and Quenton at the pond near our house.

Seriously, every time I drive by the pond I think of that summer and go, REALLY?!!?! Could it really be a year ago, already? How does that happen???

I mean, couldn't they just stay that size forever? Please?

But, then again, I wouldn't want to put this one back for all the world either. So if growing up means adding more of these, maybe it's not SO bad :)

Always a time to praise Him

You know, there are SO many ups and downs to life. It's dizzying really. Life being what it is just has this habit of constantly throwing you for a loop.

Monday was, well, a Monday. You know what I'm talking about. One of those days you'd just rather stay in bed for. The first half of it went just fine. We did some work around the house (we being the kids and I), then later drove out to a place we're looking at for my Dad to possibly buy. Yep, it's a decent place, excellent price, nothing doing. THEN, Mama decides to go to Goodwill. Oddly enough, looking back on it now, I debated back and forth, almost to the point of driving 3/4's of the way home, about whether to go. In the end, the lure of cute little dresses for Ari and storage ideas for small toe- stubbing toes won out. First off, I should probably have taken my cue to head home when Ari said "Momma, I have to go potty." In my head I'm processing this, thinking, "Hmm.. don't think they have a bathroom, we just got in here, don't really want to leave right now.. WHY RIGHT NOW??" So I opened my mouth to say, "Well, can you wait honey?" And that's when I noticed her stance... You know it, if you're a mother, you know it. Legs wide apart, almost bow-legged, arms slightly out and raised, head tilted down staring in horror. "Ari, NO, please, no, not... AWW, man!!" Oh but doesn't yellow stand out so nicely on the white tile floor. I look around frantically, find a baby blanket that will shortly be making its way home with me, plus some toddler urine and clean the mess up. And so, Ari has now earned herself a place in the back of the cart. Again, why I didn't leave RIGHT THEN, I don't know. So, we wandered around the store and even made it 90% of the way through the store before "the event". Disaster struck in the form of 3 small children and a very poorly made shopping cart. You see, Caleb was up in the front section of the cart, enjoying the ride. Arianna was sitting moistley.. err, nicely in the back, also enjoying the ride, and Quenton was walking along with me.
I stopped to look through some pants for my hubby and Quenton, wanting to look at something a bit further away, pushed the cart along with him. All fine and good except when what he was looking for wasn't there, he put his feet up on the bars of the cart (like any child would if they were going to ride on the side while Mom was pushing) and accidentally overbalanced the cart, bringing it crashing down on himself/the floor. PLEASE Lord, let me never again hear that chorus of three little voices all crying out in pain at the same time. :( Caleb and Quenton both took really hard hits to their heads. Ari seemed to take the least of it, I suppose from being inside the basket part. Quenton recovered quickly and was up and jumping around like always after about 3 minutes. Caleb, however, did not seem ok at all. Though he was already a couple of hours past due for a nap, he started acting overly tired, in a way that he doesn't normally act at all. He was nearly falling asleep sitting up. In fact, when I put him in his carseat hoping to be able to head home I could see he would fall asleep in about 15 seconds, so I got him right back out of it and lightly bounced and talked and tickled him, wanting him to stay awake for fear of a concussion. I eventually had to call my hubby and ask him to come help because I knew I couldn't get home without Caleb falling asleep and I just didn't see that as being a good idea. We got him home awake (barely) and after really examining him and checking his eye movement and such, we decided I'd nurse him and let him go to sleep.

That was NOT a good 1.5 hours for me. But even in the midst of a very nerve-wracking situation, I could still feel the presence of the Lord and His hand on me. I knew/know that He was there tending to us.

As it turns out, Caleb woke up completely fine. Barely even worse for the wear. I did go ahead and take him to our chiropractor, as he did seem to be having some neck pain which was giving him some fits while nursing. But since then he's been right as rain. He's enjoying life and crawling like a champ.

So, even in the midst of trouble, YET will I praise Him. Over and over through all that I kept thinking of the verse "You have redeemed my life from the pit." I just felt so strongly that the Lord redeemed the life of my son, and brought me up from the pit of despair. He gave me back the gift of my precious boy. I'm so thankful for His mercy.

Happy March!!

Well, things have been going very well here in MO.. albeit VERY busy! I was blessed to have my Dad come an visit in the first couple of weeks of March. We all enjoyed his visit very much. We now have a new roof, new kitchen sink and faucet *Hallelujah Chorus* and all of our doors shut better ;) Grandpa is

Very good at fixing things!! So, now that we've got a bunch of things fixed up on the house *eyeroll* we're hoping the Lord will let us sell it. We've found a place a tiny bit out of town that we're VERY interested in. It's a smaller house but has nearly 10 acres!!! We're praying hard for the Lord's guidance. We'd really like to move toward a more self-sufficient way of life, re: Big garden, butchering animals, fruit trees and so on. The place we're eyeing is in just about the perfect setting, already has a barn, has a HUGE basement with a great big root cellar area (actually 2 places for it), and in fact has TONS of empty canning jars that will go with the house. There are a couple of fruit trees there, apple we think, as well as some walnut trees, and possibly some other things. When our whole family went out there to look at it, I watched Quenton's face just light up and I thought "This is IT!"
How my heart yearns for a place that he can run around outside and enjoy the sunshine and the animals and have a puppy and and and and :) I love the house that we're in now, EXCEPT that it's in a housing development (read: small yard) and it's not fenced, nor does it have a window in the kitchen where I can see my little ones if they want to go outside to play.

Please let this house sell Father God!!

Oh, and as an aside

Is this not just about THE cutest picture you've ever seen?

The Trip Home

Well, after the getting stuck episode, we wizened up and got some better tires, then waited for the first clear day and made a run for it. Did I mention by this time Seattle had a good 18inches-2feet worth of snow?? SHOCK!! NOT GOOD!!

The first day wasn't too bad at all. It was so nice to have dh with me :)

The second day, I got it in my head that I wanted to drive, and it, of course, turned out to be the worst driving day we had. Pictures barren plains and then hollow canyons winding around in good ole Oregon, where apparently they don't feel the need to salt or otherwise "de-slick" the road in any way. Then add to that WIND... and LOTS of it. I'm fairly sure our steering wheel has some new ridges in it where I left finger indentations. Fish tailing at 65 mph is NOT ideal. I must say it was amusing to hear Quenton in the back going "WEEEEE!!" while we were fish tailing. Poor innocent child.

So, because we wound up stuck in Seattle longer than intended, we ended up being on the road Christmas day. Guess what we had for dinner?

Not ideal certainly, but at least it filled our bellies. Or somethin. :)

Anything can be enjoyed if you're a little cheeseball though, right?

Continuing on ..

Ok, so I figured I'd better continue the story of my long journey to Idaho (and back).

Let it be known, that one should not have one's wisdom tooth pulled as their very first experience seeing a dentist. Shudder. Oh, and ideally, don't do it on vacation when you are visiting somewhere that you want to enjoy the foody places.... On the bright side, it's gone now... on the not so bright side, I will never get those hours of sleep I missed back ;)

So, I go to leave my Dad's house to head over to Seattle and my In-law's house, only to get halfway there and here a discouraging pass report. It'd been snowing off the whole time, and when the crackling radio informed me that the pass was currently closed and would "probably" be opened in an hour or two I thought better of waiting in the 10+ mile line of cars that would be accumulating before the pass opened again. As much as I wanted to go over the pass at 8-9 pm after being in the car 9+ hours with 3 little kids, with 2000 other Seattle drivers on snow covered roads. I, uh, went back.






I did eventually make it over the pass about 3 days later, free of chains, praise the Lord. Ironically several days later as snow fell with a vengeance on Seattle, my poor hubby got stuck one night while he was out getting me a milkshake. Now that's LOVE!!

Just thought I'd share

There's not really a story behind this picture, other than I took it while we were on our way to North Idaho from Missouri (all 2000+ miles of it). Yes, me, a woman, driving by myself with three kids under 4 :) Yes we made it, and yes I still have all of my hair. Well, minus the bit that my friend cut off to make it more stylish (Thank you LeAnn). Hmm, maybe I took this picture as proof that my kids were actually happy and congenial on the trip. Who knows? But is sure is cute, no?

Welcome Home!

First off, Happy New Year!! Praise God, I know He has so much in store for us this year. Things are changing around here, and I'm curious to see what God is doing.

For starters, we just got back from a month, yes, that's right, a full MONTH of vacation. What a blessing. Geoffrey's parents blessed us with this trip as our Christmas present. And Geoffrey blessed us by allowing us to go and be away from him for nearly three weeks before he could fly up himself. I can't even tell how wonderful it was to see all of my wonderful family and friends after nearly a year. Absence certainly makes the heart grow fonder. Oh and how my heart did swell driving over the crest of the hill into Spokane and seeing all of my old favorite sites. Can you tell I miss my old home? Quenton and Arianna certainly enjoyed seeing everyone as well.


It was such a joy to see how Ari bonded (again) with her two cousins, Colton and Hailey. She absolutely loved sitting in Colton's (8) lap, and would do so whenever he sat down. He seemed slightly embarrassed, but flattered as well.






We stayed at my Dad's while we were there. Poor guy. He's used to living alone. I'm pretty sure it was culture shock for him to have 3 young kids in his house for more than two weeks. He took it well though, and was a wonderful gymnasium for the kids ;)
We actually started to leave his house once, and made it all the way to Moses Lake, Wa., which is about halfway between North Idaho and Seattle. Unfortunately, there was a huge storm traveling over the mountains at that time and they closed the pass for a while. So, back to Grandpa Bill's we went. We waited a couple more days and then made the trip for real.