Challenged

I'm reading a book that my mother-in-law purchased for me a couple months back. She's sweet. She was at a conference and felt that she was supposed to buy this book for me, but she's also smart. You don't just buy your daughter-in-law a parenting book . . . that's dangerous. She called me and asked if it was ok. Fortunately for her, I was in the market for a parenting book. She has a good ear to hear the Lord's voice.

Loving Our Kids On Purpose by Danny Silk. He's the Family Life pastor at Bethel Church in Redding, California.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through it and its challenging me and making me kind of cranky. I really, really want to be a great mom, but its really, really hard. How do you express self control when one (or all 4) of your kids is making your blood boil? I never really understood that phrase until becoming a mom.

It's making me cranky because I'm feeling really overwhelmed. Where can I muster up more patience and self control? Then I stop and realize that the enemy is really attacking me. The Lord is so good to provide. He will definitely supply me with all the patience and self control that I need. I don't think its a coincidence that I'm reading this at the exact time Caleb has asked me if we can home school him next year . . . to be continued.

A Sweet Moment and an Ewwww Moment

A thing to remember: yesterday Caleb came in from playing outside and said that he and Micah and Eva were all hungry and ready for lunch. He then proceeded to make them all sandwiches, going outside to ask his brother and sister what kind of jelly they wanted and how they would like their sandwiches cut. He made a face on each of their plates with their sandwich and chocolate chips. Once they were taken care of, he began making his own sandwich. Such a sweet boy.

Also happened yesterday: Micah's pants accidentally got pulled down while roughhousing in the living room. It was discovered that he wasn't wearing any underwear . . . it was also discovered that he was wearing Caleb's pants. Ewwww.

Love both my boys.

2 months

I know I haven't posted a thing about our sweet Elise. I'm trying to get on track with this blog thing and I haven't had a lot of time for back tracking . . .

Well, she'll be two months tomorrow . . . 26 hours from now. Andrew and I (and the three) are enjoying her so much. She is the sweetest, most content baby. We're in LOVE!

Christmastime

I love Christmas.

I love everything about it.

I love the atmosphere of people, expecting. I love the crowds, and the lines. I love the baking and the eating! I love the giving (and the receiving)! I love the music! I love that family finally finds time to get together.

I LOVE Eva's purple dress.

It's Christmas Eve. My house is full of sleeping people . . . my four babies, Andrew, his mom, and my brother. My parents are sleeping in a nearby hotel due to my mama's allergies to our pup. I can't sleep. I'm kind of taking in the quiet . . . it hasn't been quiet here in days. I'm staring at our beautiful tree that has way too many presents underneath it (thanks mom and thank you, God for blessing us with the ability to buy these things).

I'm enjoying the porcelain nativity set that my Grandma made so many years ago. When she downsized, she gave it to me. It's so special . . . and yes, there are a couple lego men visiting the baby Jesus.

I'm wishing we had done more to teach our kids about Jesus this season and I wish we would have taught them more about giving. We did have them go through their old toys and picked a couple things that another child would enjoy. Andrew and I called around and found some families that needed Christmas presents. That night we prayed for the little girl with kidney failure who would receive Eva's baby dolls and stroller. We also prayed for the family with the boys who would be getting a new Diego adventure set and a roaring T-Rex. We prayed that their dad would get work soon (and also explained to Eva that being fired doesn't literally mean you're burned up.)

I had really wanted the kids to get each other presents, to take a specific amount of money to the store, pick something out for one of their siblings, and wrap it themselves. I wanted them to experience the joy of giving, but we didn't get that far this year.


Thank you Jesus for an amazing year and an amazing life. Sometimes I feel like we have it too good. You are so good to us. I pray that Andrew and I would would have Your heart and that we'd never be ungrateful. I always want to look to Him and trust Him with everything . . . and not care what the world thinks of me. Thank you, Lord, for sending us your Son, because I am imperfect without Him.

Happy Birthday, Jesus.

Toothless

Caleb lost his other top front tooth this evening . . . rather Andrew pulled it out. Caleb was really brave because he was really scared it would hurt, but it didn't hurt.

Before he went to bed, we practiced his lines for the VCC Christmas play that's in a couple days . . . hahaha! His other top front tooth is growing back . . . its really hard to speak with only half a tooth up there. He's adorable.

He's going to do a great job as narrator 2, with only a little trouble with the word Jerusalem. 

Eva on Cleaning

Eva, "mommy, do we have home group?"
Me, "Not tonight."
Eva, "Then why are you cleaning?"

Tree

While decorating the tree in his room, Micah went to place another ornament on the same section of tree where all his other ornaments were hanging. I suggested he put the ornament on the other side because there were already so many so close together. He told me they were having a party.

Happy Birthday to Our Secret Agents

We celebrated the boys' birthdays this weekend. Micah's 6th birthday was at the end of September and Caleb's 8th birthday will be at the end of October; the day before our baby girl is due. We decided to do a joint birthday party for them, halfway between their birthdays. 

Micah is obsessed with spies and secret agents, so we went with it. Google is my friend and so were some amazing blogs with some great ideas. Here are our secret agents a couple days before the party in their spy getup.

Secret C

Spy M

 Andrew did so much work in preparation for this party. I decorated and took care of the food preparation and then took the kids out for lunch and a couple errands while Andrew and my mom put together a series of "missions." Our boys knew they were having a spy-themed party, but we kept most of the party planning a secret.

As the guests arrived, they were fingerprinted and filled our their spy badges with their chosen Secret Agent code name. They also chose a pair of spy sunglasses.

Our great team of Secret Agents

After eating some hot dogs, they were confronted with their mission -- SOMEONE HAD STOLEN THE BOYS' BIRTHDAY PRESENTS!

. . . and they had left a trap for our spies. Our master bedroom was full of bombs (black balloons) . . . about to blow up! The spies had to defuse them all, as fast as possible. One of the bombs contained a secret message with a map to the next mission, but many of them contained misleading messages of "POW" and "KABOOM!" 

Now, you may be asking where all the delightful pictures are of all this balloon popping chaos . . . I realized after the first three missions and about 100 pictures taken that I had forgotten to put an SD card in my camera and actually had no pictures of all this awesomeness. AHHHHH! I was so upset, but the mission had to go on!

After finding the map, the secret agents were led outside to the laser field.

 

After successfully maneuvering the precarious lasers, they were led to the backyard. Those pesky thieves had left messages on the side of our garage and the fence that read "SPIES STINK" and "YOU'LL NEVER SEE YOUR PRESENTS AGAIN!" Luckily they were written with sidewalk chalk and our agents were given two large water guns and took turns spraying down the evil words.

Sam finishing up the job

Andrew was then sent a message via bluetooth from Spy HQ with the coordinates of the missing presents!!! The thieves had dropped them in their hurry to get away. The boys used a handheld GPS to track down the exact location of the presents. They were in an empty lot near our house. Whew!

The presents have been found!

Micah was happy to find his gift!

 We finished up the party with an awesome spy cake. Sam's Club does an amazing job putting pictures on top of cakes. I LOVE THIS!

 Grammie did a great job helping prepare the food and getting extra things done for us. 

Happy Birthday Caleb and Micah! We love you so much! I'm glad we could spend such a special day celebrating YOU!

BTW - I am due in exactly three weeks . . . that's only 21 days from today! EEK! We're so ready to meet this little gal!

Button Monogram

I saw a picture on Pinterest. I pinned it, along with a million other people. I read the tutorial here and decided to go for it.

I searched around for buttons. Buttons are more expensive than I anticipated. I bought a couple different packages at Walmart. I printed out the outline of a capital "E" on an piece of cardstock. It wouldn't center right. I figured I could trim the edges as needed.

I also bought a heavy duty glue stick. I ended up using a combination of the glue stick and hot glue.

This is how it looked after gluing all the buttons. 

I felt it was missing something, so I went out in search of brads. They are much smaller and could fill in the holes in between the buttons. I ended up with some glittery ones and some very tiny solid colored ones. This was a little tedious punching them through the paper and all, but it definitely helped out.

There have been two white shadow boxes hanging in Eva's room since she was born. I was pretty much done with what had been hanging in them for the past four years. I took one of the frames and my button E and headed to Hobby Lobby hoping to find a matte in a perfect shade of pink, in a pre-cut size. No such luck. I picked out a perfect shade of pink in a large matte, and had it custom made. The girl told me it would only cost a couple dollars, plus I could use my 40% off coupon. Wow. What a deal. She filled out an invoice, which I didn't actually look at, and I left the store.

A couple days later, the store called me. Something made me check the invoice before I left the house. I hadn't realized that although the matte was not very expensive, I was also being charged for the labor of cutting it and assembling the frame. That pushed the price of the matte up to about $13. That was more than I wanted to pay, but I was kinda stuck at this point. Also, you can't use the coupon on the labor part of framing and matting (apparently).

I was pretty thrilled with how it looked. It's a bit uneven due to the buttons and the fact that it didn't print centered in the first place. I maybe should have used a white matte so it wouldn't be so obvious, but it looks really cute in Eva's room now. It was finished the night before her 4th birthday party, so I displayed it on the hutch next to the food table.

I should also take a better picture of the finished product. But its after midnight right now. I'm 35 weeks pregnant and I'm pretty happy that I'm even posting this much. Now I'm obsessed with buttons, especially button monograms. I've bought a bunch of pale pink ones and hopefully will have another E for Baby Elise finished before her arrival . . . keep you posted.

Cheap Summer Fun

We recently spent an afternoon in The Woodlands. Market Street is about 15 minutes from our house in Conroe, so it makes for a nice, cost-efficient trip.

We first partook in the fountains at the newly constructed "Waterway Square." There are also some fun, kid friendly fountains on Market Street, but we've played in those and wanted to try out the new ones.

Dangerous, my sons.

We drove over to Market Street and headed over to The Cupcakery. Wonderfully delicious stuff here. The cupcakes come out to $3.50 each. It's a little pricey for a cupcake, but it brought the total for our afternoon to $10.50, which isn't bad.

 

 

We ended our little outing with a trip on the free trolley. They drive around Market Street, past the library, along the Waterway, passing the Cynthia Woods Pavilion, over by the mall, and back to Market Street.

Around and around. 

Photo courtesy http://www.thewoodlandscvb.com/trolley/

Good times. Only cost us $10.50. Do you have any other cheap summer ideas?

A room for a girl

I fell in love with this picture.

 It's from a great blog called The Idea Room.

I have become obsessed with a turquoise and pink theme for Eva's room.  I want to paint the walls turquoise, pop a light pink blanket on the bed with funky pillows, and add a white dresser with cute pink glass knobs.

Check out my pinterest with my ideas.

Here's a couple colors on the wall so far.

 I definitely don't like the bottom one.  The kids like the top one (Caleb actually asked me to paint it in his room. Uh, no).

Eva is getting Caleb's full sized bed since the boys are sharing a room now. A friend gave me this awesome comforter and matching sham.

I really love it. Unfortunately its a twin and too small to cover her entire bed so I'm thinking of folding it over the end of the bed on top of a soft pink blanket. You know, layering Pottery Barn style.

Eva sleeps on top of everything, she doesn't cover up, so I don't know why I'm making such a big deal about it anyway. lol.


What do you think? Is this wall color too much? Should I find a better way to incorporate this color scheme?

Comparatively

I am getting completely carried away with internet blogs these days.  I'm reading these blogs and looking at pictures of people I don't know anything about. I just found a link to a new one. This girl is beautiful, her husband looks like Ashton Kutcher (trucker hat and all), kids are cuties, she wears the coolest, funkiest clothes . . . I could go on, but I won't.

As I'm browsing her blog, my heart turns really ugly. I want to find at least one fault with her and this perfect looking family. Does she not love the Lord? Does she feed her kids unhealthy food? Does she make bad parenting choices? Seriously, I'm pouring over her blog entries trying to find something wrong with her.

I don't.

Instead I find out that they love Jesus and she has weekly posts that are encouraging and beautiful and real.

She even has this post about comparing yourself to others. Read it here.

Ouch.

She writes:

"Our responsibility (as salt) is to make men & women thirsty (for God) because of our lives."

Are you making people thirsty?

 Or are you threatened? Jealous? 

Yucky heart stuff here.

Obedience is tough.

I am apparently threatened and jealous or I wouldn't be looking for flaws in people all the time. 

Lord, I just ask that you would help me to love people for who they are and to not want to compare and make sure that I'm doing better than they are.  That is so gross and ugly. Please change that part of me. Help me to celebrate others' successes and to help love them through their tough times. I desperately need to be more like you and less like me . . . because just me without you is not a pretty sight. 


And thank you for loving me as I am and for being proud of me and encouraging me. You're so good to me and I am so thankful that you gently speak and correct your children . . . that you don't abandon us when we're not at our best.  


Much love,
amanda

Mr. Yuck

A while back, M had some sort of poison control guest speaker visit his PreK class at FBA.  He came home with a nice bag full of poison literature, coloring pages, and a sheet of those infamous, green Mr. Yuck stickers.  I remember them from when I was a kid. You put them on things that are poisonous so that kids know not to eat them.

M took these little green guys very seriously.  His first one ended up on the kids' jar of vitamins. I told him that they weren't actually poisonous and he pointed out that they're only supposed to eat two . . . no more. Apparently that warranted a poison sticker. BAM!

After that, I opened the cabinet under the kitchen sink for him.  It has one of those child safe locks on it that all the kids can easily open, but I have a hard time undoing.  I showed him the plethora of dangerous cleaners housed there.  I was thinking, JACKPOT! He was very disinterested. He put one sticker on the Bar Keepers Friend and moved on.

I decided that he was on his own mission and that he didn't need my opinion on what was dangerous.  I left him to it and pretty much forgot about it.

Quite a while later, I entered our mater bathroom. I glanced around and realized that the Poison Police had paid us a visit. It appeared that the bathroom held much greater danger than the cabinet under the sink. 

Andrew's hair-styling products (I love me some spiky hair) each earned a Mr. Yuck.

*Note our awful viney wallpaper. This is the last room of the house that still contains the pink and green wallpaper from the previous owners. That deserves a Mr. Yuck sticker. He should have put it right on the wall.
 

My pretty perfumey (spell check says that's not a word. ha!) bottles also made the list.

But I really had to laugh when I got to the bathtub.  M must have spent some time standing in our tub sticking green yucky faces on all our bottles. From shaving creams to foot scrub and don't forget the face wash . . .  they all got marked. I've felt much safer in the shower knowing which things are safe for me to consume and which ones I should just wash with.

I'm glad to know that my boy has such a strong concern for his family's well being. Is your house properly marked?

Faulty

I was recently involved in a discussion about requesting teachers at my son's elementary school. One mom pointed out how important it is to get a teacher that's not a yeller.  Another mom, who knows me more personally, admitted that she's a yeller and pointed out that I am also a yeller. She gave me a quick side hug and laughed about how she loves me because of it.

I laughed with them.  But, I don't like people pointing out  my faults, especially in front of other people.  I really like people to think that I'm perfect. Seriously, I don't yell at my  kids that much.

I started paying attention.  Shoot.  That darn friend was right.  I yell at my kids all the time.  They don't deserve that.  They deserve to be encouraged and respected.  I don't like to be yelled at, why would I do something to them that I hate? I'm trying really hard to change this about myself; to find a better way to communicate to them, when I would normally be screaming.

As I went to sleep last night, God really reminded me of how great my kids are.  I spent a good deal of time praying for them; that God would grow them in their strengths, and also to break down the areas where they each struggle.  I also prayed that I would be a better mom; enjoy them, listen to them, and build them up. 

It is, after all, a heart issue. What comes out of my mouth is really an outpouring of my heart.  God brought me to this verse this morning.  (I NEVER have quiet times anymore, this was super rare today.)  Psalm 51:10 - Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Yes, please.