News flash....

EVERYONE IS HEALTHY IN MY HOUSE RIGHT NOW!!!!

WE SEEM TO HAVE A BIT OF A REPRIEVE FROM THE MISERY OF TEETHING.

WILL PULLED HIMSELF TO A STAND FOR THE FIRST TIME TODAY!!!!

WE HAD THE BEST WEEKEND!!!

I'll share more later when I'm not so sleepy.

She wanted bangs...

 ...so she took matters into her own hands. It could have been so much worse!

Don't tell her I said this, but she actually did a pretty decent job. You can't even tell that it was a 4 year old who cut her hair. Thank God she didn't cut it right at her scalp, then this would be a different story.

The part that worries me, is that in hindsight I don't think I handled it well. I fussed at her about it but didn't really discipline her (I was too busy getting my camera...oh the life of a blogger). This is one of those offenses where the punishment should have been pretty serious and since it wasn't I'm worried she might try it again. Let's hope not!

Love the look...

He wasn't so sure about his party hat!

His Bible

Tonight when I went into Christian's room to put him to bed, he was sitting in bed reading his Bible. For the record, this is officially the first time I've ever found him in bed reading. He's not some angelic child that reads himself to sleep every night. Usually I have to ask him more than once to put his Legos down and get in bed.

When I sat down on the side of his bed he said, "Mom, listen to this." He proceeded to read several sentences to me about when Mary went to the tomb and found that it was empty. His toothless little mouth struggled with the word "tomb"...silly silent "b." But other than that his precious voice didn't stumble or waiver as he read the words. I was amazed and he was equally amazed that he could read a real book with thousands of words and chapters in it. 

As I've been cleaning up the kitchen tonight and getting ready to go to bed, I was thinking about how excited he was that he could read his Bible. When was the last time I wanted to keep reading my own Bible instead of turning out the light? When was the last time I couldn't wait to hear how the story turned out?

Do you have an age appropriate Bible your kids can read?? Do you have a Bible that actually makes sense to you?? I hope so! It's life changing!

P.S. This is totally unrelated but cute, so I wanted to put it on the blog somewhere. Over the last week we've been working on memorizing our home phone number. We've basically made up a song to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle and McKenna loves to practice it and will quickly declare that she knows it better than Christian. Well, tonight at dinner time I asked her to do a scripture and she started singing our phone number. She was very confused when we all laughed. She was convinced that anything we work to memorize qualifies as a scripture. ha! I guess I haven't done a very good job of actually explaining where the scriptures we memorize come from.

Our Story

Warning: bad pictures...I was taking pictures of pictures and then to top it off I had a smudge on my camera lens. Oh well...you get the idea.

 I used to scrapbook (funny how I scrapbooked until I had kids and then I stopped)! I have these two scrapbooks of my dating years with Ryan and they are two of my most treasured possessions! 

(1999)

This is the first picture of Ryan and I together. A few of you college friends of mine might even remember this era of my life. 

Ryan and I met at Liberty University. 

I was dating someone else (oh my!) and Ryan told one of my friends "Let me know when Judy breaks up with that clown so I can ask her out." 

 Pretty soon we were dating. And to make a long story short we broke up after just a few months of dating. But there were no hard feelings and we actually remained friends. I tried to get back together with Ryan once, but he was dating someone else. He asked me out on two other occasions, but I wasn't interested. Ha! If only we had known. The timing just was never right.

We both graduated and I moved to Virginia Beach and Ryan moved to Florida.

 One day out of the blue I was reading a book that made me think of him. I remember digging around to see if I still had his phone number. These were the pre-facebook days!!  I called him, he answered and the rest is history! We've been together since 2000. We were visiting Ryan's home in Illinois for the first time in this picture (it was early 2001).

 

Dating was fun because we both lived in great places at the time, but things got more serious when Ryan transferred with is company to Northern Va. Then we could actually see each other.

In 2003 we finally got married. We were only engaged for three months and I remember just wanting to get the wedding over with because I was ready to be married to the love of my life. One of the best feelings in my life was when we pulled away from the reception.

It's hard for me to believe that Ryan and I have been together for over a decade and that we have three kids. Wow! Time flies. There is NO ONE else I would rather spend my life with. On the day of our wedding I was blissfully unaware of what just what a good choice I had made in marrying Ryan. The grace of God for sure! I had no idea how hard he would work to provide for our family, or how much he would one day adore his little girl, or how many hours he would spend playing ball with his son or how he would sit a soda by my bed every morning while I was pregnant to help me not feel so nauseous or how he would turn on my heated mattress pad every night so my side of the bed would be toasty and warm when I crawled into bed. I had no idea how we would end up being on the same page when it came to finances, parenting and church. I was just in love and knew that he was a man of character, but he is so much more than that and he proves that to me every day.

Happy Valentine's Day Ryan! I know we usually make this day a fun family day, but I love you so much. More and more every day!

For Mimi:

 McKenna talking to Auntie Mimi on her birthday!

I just love her sweet face.

What would you do?

So I made a few snacks for Christian's class today. Pink heart rice krispie treats, cute Valentine Buttons and heart shaped Brownies. I didn't take any of those pictures above, they're from Pinterest. The brownies stressed me out a little. Last night around 11pm I cut out the hearts and realized that I could only get 16 brownies out of the pan. I needed 20. So this morning we went to the store, bought more brownie mix and made more heart brownies.

I had a big cupcake holder with handles that I layered all the goodies in and off we went to school.

I handed the goodies off to the school secretary and I have no idea what happened, but she dumped the entire thing on the floor. All my cute little brownies littered the floor of the school office.

So I helped her pick them all up and we put them back in the tray and she sent them down to the classroom. Now I'm feeling like I should have just thrown it all out and just run to the grocery store and bought something. ugh. What would you have done??? I guess a little dirt never hurt anyone, right?

The best day of his LIFE.....

You might want to sit down for this because this is shocking information. The best day of Christian's entire life (according to him) was Sunday! That might have been an ordinary day for you, but in Christian's life it was just amazing. This news flash was a little surprising to me, but it also showed me the depth of his love for his cousins.

After church on Sunday we all went to the Lego store at King of Prussia Mall. This was so exciting for Christian. We've been wanting to take him to a Lego stores since we went to Florida this fall and he was not disappointed. He LOVED that place. I think they all did. McKenna stood there for at least 30 minutes and built Lego mini figures. Christian and Nate both got to fill up a Lego cup with any Legos they wanted from the Lego wall!

As if the Lego store wasn't excitement enough, Mimi's (my sister Amy) house is also really, really cool. You're allowed to slide down the stairs in a sleeping bag, over and over again and no one makes you stop. And the kids at her house are allowed to put posters on their walls (apparently this is very important when determining just how cool a place is). And they eat pizza and ice cream cake at their house. It's amazing really, every kids dream :)

 

In all seriousness, the relationship these cousins share is priceless. Abby spent the entire weekend trying to give McKenna her stuff.

 "Oh look, these slippers don't fit me anymore. McKenna can have them."

"I don't really play with this anymore. McKenna do you want it?"

Abby is a precious girl and such a sweet friend to McKenna. Nathan and Christian were just wild every moment they were together. I don't think I've heard Christian laugh that hard ever.

Will stayed at home with Daddy, which was a first. I was so sad and missed him big time. But it was definitely the right decision. This trip would have been much more difficult if Will had been along for the ride.

I've been asked over and over again how many more "sleeps" until we see our cousins again. So Mimi, if you're reading this....you need to get back to me about that ASAP before I loose my mind with all their questioning!!