My Prayer on Paper (repost from 2007)

As I was looking for pictures for Mili's timeline of her life for school, I stumbled across this post from 2007 after Sadie was born. I thought I should share it again.

This is still my prayer for my life......


As Sadie Beth smiled at me while I was bathing her, all I could think of is how blessed I am and do I deserve it? The answer is NO! God has blessed us far more than we could ask or imagine Him to.I thought I would share my prayer to God today.....

Dear Heavenly Father,I come to you with a heavy heart and a happy heart. A heavy heart in that I feel so responsible for raising the two wonderful daughters you have so graciously loaned us. I want to show them how to love you with all of their hearts on a daily bases but I am afraid I don't everyday, for that I am sorry. Some days I feel like I am just surviving and actually teaching them something feels impossible. Please help me to show them your love anyway.

I also feel the responsibility of supporting Brian but when he arrives home most days I am still in Mommy mode. Please help me Lord to give Brian the time and attention he deserves without feeling like it is one more thing I NEED to do.

I also need some quiet time with you God. Please give me that time without screaming children (I know you still preform miracles so I am counting on it). Help me to retain your word so I can share you with others who have not yet found what it means to truly LIVE.

I have also come to you with a happy heart Lord. I am so thankful for my sweet family. Brian is wonderful with helping me get the girls ready to go places and ready for bed. He will even bathe the girls if I need him to. Thank you for the quiet time Brian and I had together the other day to just sit and talk with no interruptions. Thank you for two beautiful girls who have stolen my heart.

I feel so blessed, Lord, but please help me to live wisely for my family and others around me to see YOUR love shining through.

I ask all of these things in your mighty name, Jesus , Amen.

I felt like I needed to share my deep feelings today, so I did!

My Little Thing 2 and Fishies, Too

Today was Dr. Seuss Day at Mili's school and as you can see she was Thing 2. Mili has done so many fun things this year. Most of that is due to a really fun teacher, Mrs. Bloxom (and some really great parents). We love Mrs. Bloxom. She was a personal friend of mine before this school year (I used to babysit her children. I won't tell you how long ago that was, but her oldest daughter, is getting married this summer.....wow, I feel old). Mrs. Bloxom will receive a crown someday for the class she has this year. She is doing a fabulous job with them (believe me, I stayed a short 15 minutes with them on the 2nd day of school.....let's change that to she has performed a miricle).

Thing 1 in this picture is our neighbor, Layten. We feel like God sent us Layten. She is a great friend to Mili and they don't have to go far to have a play date, just across the street. We thank God for giving us this sweet friend for Mili.

IHop brought us Green Eggs and Ham! Mili is still smiling after trying the green eggs so I guess they were ok.

Here is my tag along for the day. Poor Sadie is always with me when I volunteer at the school if it is not a Tuesday or Thursday when she attends preschool. She was One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. She enjoyed the day as well.

It was a fun day of costumes, green eggs and ham, story time with blankies and pillows, games, and crafts.

I'm Back!!!!

It has been way too long since I have set down to blog. My last entry was July 4th, 2009. As I was searching franticly for a specific picture for Mili for her star week at school, I thought it may be on my blog and I could copy it from there. While looking for that picture I started seeing my girls’ whole life (up until July 2009) in pictures and writing…..WOW! It reminded me of why I started blogging in the first place……an outlet, to share with friends and family who lived miles away, and to record our wonderful days as a family. I want my children to see and read the things I thought about them at different stages of their lives (I may think differently when they are teenagers; maybe I will take another break at that point).

I am upset that I don’t have many pictures of Sadie and the cute things she did when she was little. It was very hard for me to manage, both girls, work part time and be a wife during that time in my life. I now feel things are a little easier and I may have a moment to reflect on life and the memories I want to record. I hope Sadie will forgive me for that later. (I always tease my mom about all the pictures she has of my older sister, Aimee….where are the pictures of me?).

Maybe this will also make me more accountable to take my camera with me. I forget it at home and get lazy because I have my iphone to snap a few.

What I don’t want to happen is for me to feel burdened with the blog and feel like I have to post something. For those of you who know me well, you know I am an ALL or NOTHING kind of girl. I feel like if I can’t do it to perfection then it is not worth doing. This has been good for many parts of my life but makes it difficult when I want to casually do something like blogging.

All this to say…..I am back for now and hope you ENJOY!

HAPPY 4TH

We spent the day as a family yesterday and it was amazing. Brian has not had a lot of time off work recently so the girls (including this girl) were excited to get some quality time with him. Yesterday morning we did some science (you know Brian's 2nd love....I better be his first). Brian got the girls some of those growing crystals. He is all about exposing them to as much science as possible during their early years. We played with that yesterday morning and then we ate an early lunch and were off to the movies.

Ice Age : Dawn of the Dinosaurs was excellent.....even better in 3D. The glasses were so big that I couldn't stop laughing at how Mili and Sadie looked in them. I SO wished I had brought my camera for that event. The girls LOVED it so much they are already asking to go again. It was expensive so we will not be doing that outing often (especially after Sadie turns 2 at the end of August because then we have to pay for her too....YIKES).

Our day ended with grocery shopping for Mommy and then a nice walk around the pond close to our house and up to a huge hill to see the sunset. WOW!!! What a nice end to a GREAT day!!! We love us some Daddy time!!!!

Now I have to run and get ready to go to a party. We are going to join some friends and family at a friends house for a fun and relaxing evening.

Love to ALL. Hug a solider today!!!!

If you want to see the pictures closer you can just click on it.

Just thought I would let you all see my monkeys in the bathtub. They are so much fun at this age. Mili just turned 4 and Sadie will be 2 in August.

We have been a sick family recently and are hoping that we are all getting better. Mili is the only one still on antibiotics for an ear infection (only the second one in her whole 4 years, but it was a big one). Mommy is feeling much better. Thanks for all the prayers for our family. It is always nice to know that people are praying for us. We hope to be able to enjoy some of our summer now.

We have plans to check out some IMAX movies, swim in Nanny and Poppy's pool (pictures to come on that one), play in the park (when the heat index is less than 110), go to the library (our girls favorite place in the whole world), go to The Children's Museum, and go visit our friends in Maryland.

Somewhere in there we are going to have Mili's 4th birthday party. Her friends have been sick too and with all the activities we had going on at the church there was no time for us to have it. Maybe next weekend.

We love you all!!!

Sadie At Her Best!

I have not posted in a while and it has been a long time since I have just posted about one of the girls. It is usually a duel post on both of them.

Here are some recent photos of my sweet Sadie Beth at her best. She is my rounder, never stops, into everything, keeps me on my toes kind of girl. These are photos of when our house is a little less noisy and actually down right pleasant.

Sadie is so sweet when she sleeps (yes, quiet.....but more than that). She's starting to loose the baby fat and I am going to miss it so much. I am having a hard time with "loosing" my baby since we are not planning to have any more in our future. She is growing up WAY too fast for me.

I have very few pictures of Sadie sleeping because, unlike Mili, she would wake up every time I took her picture. At some point, VERY early on in her life, I decided it was not worth the Kodak moment to wake her up. Enjoy the pics!!!

Sadie is a LOVER of books (both girls are)!!! She even wants to sleep with her books. We have a fit every night because she wants a huge book in the crib with her when she goes to sleep. I bought her some tiny books to sleep with. She ask for the tiny book every night (crazy I know). There are worse things she could be attached to. I love that she is using a box as her chair.

I hope to have more pictures up later. I am not doing a good job at keeping this thing updated. If I would ever get all of my SD cards clear then I would probably take more pictures. My children live in facebook land and blog world. I almost never get them developed any more......pitiful, just pitiful!!!

Love to ALL!!!!

Where is my MD......

and I don't mean Maryland this time!

I think I deserve a MD for all the nursing back to health in my household this last week. I am happy to say that I "think" we are getting back to some kind of normalcy around here but I am scared to say that out loud so I chose to type it.

Recap of our sick little family......

We returned home from vacation last Sunday night. Brian was nursing an inflamed, very painful lower leg but everyone else seemed to be fine. We went about our normal weekly routines during the first of the week but Brian's leg continued to get worse and more swollen. We tried to get an appointment for him on Tuesday but had to wait until Wednesday afternoon. It turned out to be what we "think" is a blood clot. So his instructions were to have it propped up as much as possible (in Brian's terms....he is a Doctor but NOT that kind). He should have had it up from that moment on. Anyway, he has battled with it all week and it is still giving him some trouble.

Wednesday morning Sadie woke up with a fever. I thought it was another fever virus but soon found out it was MUCH more. We soon had vomiting and many, many, many dirty (soaking through clothes) diapers. I was feeding ice chips to her to keep some kind of fluid in her. Dehydration scares me so I will do whatever it takes to stay out of the ER. This went on for days and the first day she ate regular food was Saturday. She is back to 100% full force now (I am happy but also very busy with her while trying to take care of yet another sick child).

Mili woke up Saturday morning vomiting (on her big egg hunt day). She broke me and Brian's hearts with this statement shortly after a vomiting episode....."I hope I don't throw up on the egg hunt...." I had to break the terrible news to her that she would not be able to attend. However, Mommy was the one in charge of the egg hunt so Mommy had to go and leave my sick baby at home with a recovering sister (who was still not well enough to go) and a propped up leg Daddy. Mili's fever soon spiked and by Sunday night it was over 104 and I was sponge bathing her in the bath tub. Every time we tried to give her medicine for the fever she would throw it up again. She was hard to keep hydrated because she is my "milk only" kid. She does not drink anything but milk and we all know that that is not a good idea for an upset tummy. We fought her many times a day to get her to drink something and it was normally water. Today has been the first almost fever free and vomit free day (so far). Mili has eaten some solid food today.

Brian's leg seems to be doing better after having it up all weekend. I hope it will be well soon.

I am not sick, just tired!!! I have done my share of poopie and vomit soaked laundry. Don't you think I at least earned an honorary MD for administering all the meds at the right time to the right person. Mommy needs some Alice time (time to be Alice and not mommy or wife).

The good news is.....we had two incredibly sick children and we did not have to take them to the ER. I feel like that is a blessing straight from God above.

We are hoping that by Thursday we will be back to normal and on a schedule again.
Love to ALL!!!!

Vacation Moments

We went on vacation to Branson, MO. We had originally planned to take the girls to Silver Dollar City but it was rainy (and snowy) so we just did inside activities most of the time we were away.

We arrived on Thursday and decided to take advantage of the slightly warmer weather and go to the Branson Landing Mall. They had a playground there. My children can sniff out a playground miles away.

Mili and Sadie both enjoyed the playground. It was for small children (although there are always the ones that break the rules) but they had a great time.

Mili is slow to warm up with many things. She likes to scope everything out before she tries anything.

Sadie on the sidelines for the first little bit. It did not last for long.

Mili warmed up fast and was soon zooming down the slide (with her arms high in the air). So carefree!!!

Mili is still Maryland at heart. She picked the crab to play on first. I LOVE it!!! She also picked out a crab decoration for her Crocs.

Sadie finally made it on site and I am not so sure Mili is happy about it.

Mili was blinded by the glare off the clouds.

At the Bass Pro Shop store. There are fish behind her.

Mili in the same spot.

At Branson Landing we did Build-A-Bear Workshop. Mili has been asking me to do this since we moved back to AR since there is one in the mall here.

This is Mili 's bear pre-suffing.

Mili pushing the pedal to fill her bear with stuffing.

Making sure it has enough stuffing.

Picking out the heart for her bear.

Sadie's bear getting it's stuffing.

Sadie putting in her bear's heart.

I think this is my FAVORITE picture of the whole vacation. Mili is too cute letting her true emotions out in this photo. She is giving her and Sadie's bears a "bath" (blowing all the excess fur off).

Sadie with her bear "Fluffy".


Mili with her bear "Cinderella" wearing a ballerina outfit.

We brought the tent for the girls to sleep in BUT that did not work. So Sadie slept with me and Mili with Brian. They did enjoy it while it was up.

We went to the new NOAH Musical and it was worth every penny. It was a great play with ginormous sets and lots of live animals. The cast and animals go up and down the aisles. It was a terrific show for the girls. They stayed engaged the whole 2 1/2 hours. It has a great message comparing the story of the flood to accepting Jesus as your Savior. It was GREAT and the set was HUGE (did I already say that?). We could not take pictures during the production so I hope you enjoy the pictures I got of the lobby and outside.

This is the screen it covers the whole stage and is used to describe some of the story prior to Noah.

This was above the box office.

Inside the lobby.

This is a small replica of the stage. We were in the left section, aisle seats on the 12th row.

Outside the Noah Musical (Sight and Sound Theater)

We went to a dinosaur museum. I did not think it was worth the money but we got our time in at the fossil dig. Both girls would have stayed there for hours if we let them.

Our little DINO!

At the IMAX theater we saw an under the sea movie. The girls really LOVED this. Mili and Sadie both enjoyed the other activties offered in the lobby of the IMAX. We did this going into the theater and coming out.

Sadie is ready for the AR mosseyers. I have been so frustrated with AR drivers since returning from MD.

Mili wanted to sit in this LOVE seat. We didn't turn it on but the outcome is very predictable.

The outcome was defiantly true some of the time. They had their moments but if we consider they had no nap or very little nap most days they were very good little girls.

Mili and Mommy enjoyed some fingernail pampering at the hotel. I bought these before we left AR and surprised Mili with them. We had fun doing this.

Hope you enjoyed the recap of our vacation. We made memories for a lifetime. Memories are my favorite part of vacations as a family.

Hope this helps you Aunt Norma. Hope it makes you miss us enough to come back and visit soon.