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!!