Drastic Measures

I can't believe I did it, but I did. Whenever Caitlin gets her hair brushed, she always cries and complains over the smallest little tug. "It hurts!" she'll yell out, even before I hit the tangles! Though it's down right cold today, it has been getting warmer, so I asked if she wanted it cut. "YES!" was her enthusiastic response. Boy... here's hoping that Daddy takes the news well.

Before:


After:


All those beautiful locks are all gone. It's not the first time we've done this. A little more than a year ago we had done the same thing. Her hair grows pretty quickly.

As to other matters, I'm sorry to say Johnathan most certainly did not have a good day Friday. In his notebook one teacher explained some of his actions and then followed it with an "I don't know what to do". I so join her in that statement. I think we're all tired and feeling worn out of fighting with this boy.

Anyhow, we didn't get home from my Children's ministry meeting last night till 10. I was so hoping the kids would sleep in, but nope, bright and early, just before seven I was being woke up. So I'm a bit tired today. I'm trying so hard to not be a grump. As for our day, I've gotta clean up some things, get ready for tomorrow and I have a scrapbook layout that's coming along nicely.

Memory Lane

When my friend Lisa was here, she told me a bit about snapfish. I had heard of that website before, I was just never so sure on if their prints were actually of good quality. Now that I heard from someone I know and trust, I thought it wouldn't be such a bad idea to use them. In the day and age of digital photos, I never print out my photos anymore. Which means lots of family and friends don't get to see them. So I thought this way, family could go to my album and print any pictures they want to actually have. And even if no one wants them in their hands, this way I have another place my pictures are kept. When we moved back stateside, my hard drive in my computer had quit and for a good week it looked like I had lost all my beloved family pictures. I was a total wreck man! Thankfully my computer savvy husband messed around with it and saved my pics. I never want to feel like that again!

So anyhow, the other night I grabbed my digital photos and thought I'd start uploading them, year by year. We got our first digital camera back in 2004! Looking back through these old pictures had me reminiscing. At the time I thought my kids were getting big already. Now, five years later, I see how little they really were. I miss them!!

So I'm warning you, some of my favorite old pictures will be making their way to my blog. It is so incredibly hard to pick just one favorite picture of my kids out of a whole year's worth, but I tried....

My favorite 2004 pic of Caitlin:

Caitlin was born in March of 2004. This is later in the year, when she had begun to try to feed herself. I just love her chubby cheeks.

My favorite 2004 pic of Johnathan:

Every now and then God blesses me with a gem like this. I am no photographer, (unlike my hubby's cousin who has talent oozing out of her ears!), but I love the expression on his face as he's gazing out the windows of our house on the third floor. I have no idea what he was looking at, but it's just a great soft picture.

My favorite 2004 pic of Kirsten:

Though this pic seems a little grainy, I love the action in it as she looks over her shoulder. It reminds me of the sweet little spirit she always had as she played carefree. Always one to show her big brother she could do anything he could, she was on the go a lot!

And finally, my favorite 2004 pic of Michael:

Even though he's holding his new little sister, he truly is the focus of this picture. His big brown eyes, and that wide little grin. You can see the goofy looking boy he's about to become, but he still has so much baby in him!

Okay... I'm like officially home sick now. Why do we allow time to go by so quickly? Life seems like it's filled with trouble after trouble, and indeed it sometimes is. This has been my reminder to slow down, don't fret the small stuff, and enjoy my kids while I have them.

It's begining to smell a lot like Christmas

Anyone who knows me, knows usually my Christmas decorations are going up before all the Thanksgiving dishes are washed. This year has been unusual for me, the outside of our house still has no lights, and my tree has been in my living room for one week, all it has is lights and garland.

Friday evenings in our house are known as "Family Night". It's the one night that there is no where to go, nothing to do, I love it! Tonight we're making my famous Chocolate Chip Cookies (what do you mean you never heard of them?) and hanging ornaments on the tree. I decided to get just a small amount of baking out of the way this morning. Caitlin and I made Spritz cookies together. It was my first time doing them, as my friend gave me her Pampered Chef Cookie press when she moved to California in June. I love it!

Anyhow, something that's been bugging me lately is that there are nearly no pictures of me with my kids. As I make their scrapbooks it seems I'm not even in their lives! So I bugged my hubby to sit and take some pictures, boy am I glad I did!

I won't share them all here, but there's a few I just have to.

Caitlin of course is given the job of pouring the already measured ingredients into the bowl, keeping the mixing bowl steady, and decorating the cookies. She had done some snowflakes with blue sugar, some wreathes with green. Then we did some squares of which I gave her my big Christmas Mix to decorate with.



I had the side with holes opened, so I knew she couldn't dump them out, however this quickly led to "It's too heavy for me!" So I put some in a dish and instructed her to use her fingers and sprinkle them on. While I turned to tend to something else, she promptly picked up that little dish and dumped all the Christmas goodies on one cookie. While I missed it, thankfully her Daddy did not.



I just love the distressed look on her face. It's priceless. These are the memories I'll cherish when she's all grown up with little ones of her own.

We will be making more tonight, so the others aren't left out of the baking fun, so beware there might be more pictures tomorrow. So, as I conclude this post, I'll share just one more.



A happy little girl feeding a happy daddy Cookie Dough. :)

It's coming...

Today has been a frantic day. Not in the chaotic sense of the word, as I'm glad I've gotten a bit more organized with my tasks lately. But it's been busy busy busy. Tuesday morning is my youngest's speech class, so I spend near an hour bringing the kids to school, and various things. Then we head out to do errands. I had to bring my new wedding ring to the jeweler for it's six month check up. Gosh that sounds really goofy, but I have to bring it in to keep it's warranty in tact. Anyhow, they cleaned it, and wow it's shiny. Who knew it had gotten so dirty!

Anyhow, then it was off to the library for story time for my youngest. Then to hobby lobby for searching for supplies. I couldn't find anything that was a clincher, so I got one of everything and figured this way I could play around with them at home and come up with something then go get enough supplies to do all of my project. Naturally that took waaaaay too long. lol

Then off to walmart for the typical items needed all the time. I got home a good hour later than what I had planned, so there was little time before driving to the school and picking up the kids since it was pouring rain. We were home less than two hours before I headed out with my youngest two, leaving the older two at home. We had taekwando and women's bible study, I didn't get home till 9pm. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I feel like I don't get to see my kids. I got to see them a whole two hours today. It's what I don't like about public school, the kids spend more and more time away from family, it's only a matter of time before the family bond isn't so strong. This is one of the reasons I've struggled lately with all my church responsibilities. I took on half of the admin, then a couple months later the sunday school got added on, then a couple months later I got the rest of the admin added. I've been so buried down with extra activities when my kids don't have school, I'm busy with church stuff. Yes, we are to put our God first, but it goes, God, family, church. I can't be the jack of all trades, I'm practically a single mom right now, I can't sacrifice my kids for the church.

So, I prayed, and Sunday I told our pastor that I need to pass on the admin duties to someone else by the end of the month. If I had it my way, I'd be passing on the Sunday School responsibility, but God has made it obvious that wasn't what he wanted. Today I found out that someone else has stepped up to take over the admin, and I'm sooooo looking forward to it. The next two weeks are going to be laden with extra duties as I need to train the new person in all the ins and outs of the paperwork and financial aspects of it, but once it's done, I will feel like I am getting my priorities in line. Just in time for the hubby to come home. :)

Wow... lookie there, I've gone on and on. I'm not even going to go back through and spell check it... too much to do, too little time. So I'm just going to finish with, God is sooooooooooooooooooo good!

Wacky Wednesday

Hola big world! I'm sitting here on my couch with Backyardigans on the tv and seeing our puppy go to town licking my daughter's feet and legs. It's almost as if Nahla thinks she's the mom and Caitlin's the pup. Should I be offended that Nahla is telling me my daughter is dirty? lol It's funny though.

Yesterday I visited with Johnathan's teachers after school. (You can see the reason why two posts down.) I still don't know exactly what the solution will look like, but it became painfully obvious to me, that part of the problem was the lack of communication between the teachers and I. They had to go so far as to put him on a special plan where he tries to earn rewards for good behavior, and I wasn't told about it! So I approached them asking for what types of things they've done in the past to keep better communication with parents when needs like this arise. So now he has a notebook that he has to bring to every class he goes to. The teachers will write just a little note on if he's had a good day or not, and he'll bring it home to me. I'm hopeful. Part of the issue is he knows they don't have any real consequences to give him. He leaves school and leaves his problems. Now he'll be held accountable for his behavior at school at home. I'm hoping this will help him make better decisions. This morning I had him stand in front of my bathroom mirror and I used styling cream to make his bangs stand up/out. He liked the extra attention and then I held his hands and prayed for him. It seemed to have given him a new confidence as I asked him if he was going to have a good day at school he shook his head yes and pointed up and said "Because of God." I am so thankful that Jesus is real in their lives. I don't know for sure if he's believed in Christ with a saving faith, but at least he's getting a decent foundation. Who knows, maybe this is why God has allowed this to go so far, maybe Johnathan needs more discipling.

Any how, Caitlin and I will be heading to the library today to do story time. I haven't done a story time at a library since my first two were itty bitty things. I'm hoping this will become a weekly thing for us, something special between Caitlin and I.

Hubby called this morning. It's official he's reenlisting this Friday! Woo-hoo! And God's fingerprints are all over it. He's likely to even be promoted come November. Double woo-hoo! God is good. So very, very good.

Which reminds me, I have card kits to put together. During Calvary Kids Club the kids of the church are going to be working on getting packages together for Operation Christmas Child. Their leader wants the kids to make cards to go in them, so I volunteered to put kits together for them. Hey any reason to stop by Hobby Lobby is a good one for me. :)

It's gonna be one of those days...

It's gonna be one of those days where I have to keep prayin all day to not loose my mind. My youngest is driving me crazy. The thing with Caitlin is she has a sensitive tummy. When she skips a meal, she gets nauseous and if she skips two meals, she's definitely throwing up. The rule in this house is if you don't like the meal I cooked for you, then you don't eat. Otherwise I'd be making four different meals to accommodate everyone. Well, Caitlin does not like anything resembling spaghetti sauce. Last night I cooked Italian Chicken and sure enough little miss thing didn't like it. So at 4am she's up complaining she thinks she's going to throw up. Now she has breakfast sitting in front of her, and she doesn't want to eat it! Who in the world doesn't like Cinnamon Grahams?? I mean really it's not like I gave her shredded wheat or something! I must go shopping today, I have supplies I need for Sunday School, and there's no doubt, if she doesn't start eating her cereal, she will be throwing up on me. Oh Lord, please give me patience!!

Good news is, I got a call from hubby this morning. He did fantastic at his board review yesterday. He scored 149 out of a possible 150. So he'll be reenlisting. And it appears that nearly everyone in his unit wants to leave the area, so we should be able to stay here several more years! That's a good thing, because we live in a wonderful little town, the kids' school is top notch, and we have a house that would be hard to sell in today's market.

Anywhoo... I gots to get going. It's just about time to walk with the kids to school and get a small amount of energy out of crazy dog. Thankfully she's no longer peeing continually!

*gah*!! Yup, sure enough, as I was checking this post for spelling errors, she threw up all over the place. *sigh*

Leaves, Knees, and God things

I warn ya ahead of time, I feel this will be rather rambly.

These last few days have been buh-seee. (busy, emphasized!) My hubby no longer has Internet, and my moms on vacation, so I haven't unloaded on any one.

Lets start with leaves! The calendar says tomorrow is the first day of fall, but our trees have been shedding their leaves for over a week. And when you have nine trees in your backyard, plus at least five around the perimeter. All those trees leave a ton of leaves! And we're only at the beginning of the season! I love how pretty the landscape gets this time of year. I grew up in the desert where there is no such thing as four seasons. There's winter and summer, that's it. Oh wait, I forgot the monsoon season! But all those leaves are a lot of work. Thankfully I have three kids that are getting bigger and want to earn some money. So they spent a good part of the afternoon raking up leaves at $1 a bag. Meanwhile I'm inside trying to fix up a scrap area. A good portion of our basement was dedicated to homeschooling. Now that I'm not doing that anymore I think it's time to make some room for my crafts stuff! I really do love creating things, and it's been so long since I've done it. I figure if I can get my stuff out of the giant heap it was in I may get more opportunities. So, you just might be seeing some craft corner snap shots coming soon. :)

As for the Knees... my poor baby girl! I swear, that little girl's knees will be permanently scabbed till she becomes a teenager! And it always seems to happen at church. Wednesday she fell down in the parking lot and scraped up her knee. Ever since then she's had more falls. While they've been rather small falls, her scab keeps breaking open, making it bleed all over again. Then tonight at church she falls again, this time scraping the other one. And it bleeds, and bleeds, and bleeds and bleeds. The poor girl has two knees all bloodied up.

As for the God things... my Lord is so good. You know, he just blows me away when He decides to show me his Mercy and Grace. Our church is rather small, barely more than a year old. I teach the Sunday School, which is for ages between 6 - 12. We have five kids that are regulars, and two that come and go. So we average six kids, three of them are mine! Anyway, we started a new curriculum today that focuses on the Bible. Along with our studies, we launched a "Change that can change the world." fund campaign. Basically we're asking that people put a few coins in a container. The money we raise will be going to the Wycliff organization to help fund missionaries that are working on getting the Bible Translated into languages that don't have a Bible in their own language. Anyhow, this morning I gave a short presentation to the congregation about it. In one day someone brought in $70 worth of change they've been saving up, and another has told me that they will match what ever funds the children raise! God's just blowing me away. I had set a goal of $200 for the kids. I figured we only have three families represented in our little class, that that was a decent goal. But if we have $140 in one day, man, God has a waaaaaaay bigger goal than I ever could think of.

He also got me up singing worship tonight. I haven't been able to sing with the worship team since we moved buildings last March because I'm the only Sunday School teacher. Tonight when I walked in our worship leader let me know I was singing. lol I just love to sing out to my Lord. It's funny, when I sing regular old songs, my voice isn't all that great. But when I sing from my heart, adoring my Maker, it's just such a sweet song. It felt great to be able to do that.

This coming week will be busy, but I'll be around. :)