3 years of first days

second grade

first grade

kindergarten

i LOVE it!

i love that God has allowed me to be a stay at home mom.
i love that my job is to take care of these guys all the time.
i love that i got to walk Dominic to school this morning and then stay there until he went to his class room instead of having to drop him off and head off to work.
 i know that not everyone gets this awesome opportunity. on paper...it doesnt look like its possible budget wise for us, things are tight, but God is good. and i know that when these guys are grown, i will be so, so glad that i bargain/thrift store shopped and ate out less and stretched every dollar for the opportunity to be with them every day.

bedtime, Buddy!

pj's-check
grey elephant toy-check
crinkly block-check
tired baby-check

although it doesnt show in this picture, i guarantee that he was quite tired. i did not put him to bed just so that i could enjoy Pizza Rolls and mens 100M dash finals.  really.

a surprise

this is the special lady that i drove a cumulative 18.5 hours with a 6 year old a 6 month old and no other adults to see.

my mom didnt tell her that i was coming.
 mom told me to that she would be at Grammy's at 6 pm friday night, mom didnt show until 20 after so she missed me surprising Grammy.
she first looked extremely confused, then really really happy. her facial expressions confused the baby and he started crying when she tried to touch him.
he got over that by the next day though and we were able to snap this picture.
there was SO much family there for the party on saturday and i got to see my mom's cousins form  minnesota and wisconsin. i love their northern accents, its the only accent i can copy impeccably.

yep, thats a sin

 this Chic-fil-a thinghas gotten blown so far out of proprotion. sadly, most of the people on the side of "get this guy, he hates gays" have not even read Chic-fil-a's statement of the sanctity of marriage, it seems most folks just heard that the guy hates gays and now refuse to eat his chicken. oh, and want to get as many other people as possible enraged enough to not eat his chicken.

Kids, this isnt post about chicken, its about my personal grief in knowing that a lot of people that i love are on the Jesus hating band wagon. i have heard statements like "i dont want to be part of a religion that doesnt allow you to love who ever you want"

you can love who ever you want!! in fact you SHOULD love everyone, just not in the way that God intended for a man and a woman within the bonds of marriage to love each other.

heres the part where you get to start hating me, hating my Lord and slamming me for my convictions.

it is a sin for two people who are not married to each other to have sexual relations.
man-woman
man-man
woman-woman

if they are not married, to each other,  in the biblical view of marriage then they are sinning.

now, many, many, many of us have committed this sin, i have committed this sin, i have also committed many other sins and so have you, i have gossiped, i have lied, i have been greedy, i have drank alcohol to excess, i have made my self image my idol, i have chased things that i thought would make me more happy, only to find myself less happy. whether or not you believe in God, whether or not you believe that Jesus Christ died to save you from you sins, you have still sinned

but in Christ i am a new creation, i no longer have to be a slave to my sin, i no longer have to join the gossiping crowd (although sometimes i still fall into that, and then i ask forgiveness and repent) i no longer want to drink to excess so that i can forget life for a short time (let me clarify, i like to have a drink or two, drinking is not the sin, drunkeness is the sin).

in posting this blog post, i can think of at the least 5 people who may not wish to speak to me any more, these 5 people are people that i love, people that i have eaten with, people that love my kids.

i cant take any more FB posts about hating people who "hate gays" Jesus doesnt hate gays, he hates sin. ALL SIN. the end

high anxiety

no, not the mel brooks classic.
real high anxiety.
you may have heard about the 2 girls, Lyric cook, age10 and Elizabeth collins age 8, who were abducted from  a small town park/lake area. Those girls lived down the street and around the corner from my mom and dad.
it has caused my anxiety level to go sky high, not just about child abduction, about a lot of other terrible things that COULD happen (but most likely wont)
especially as i prepared on wednesday night to visit my parents.
we could get a flat tire on the side of the highway.
we could get robbed while stopping at a gas station. the car could get stolen with the kids in it. the baby could choke in his sleep. dominic could fall off the swings, hit his head just right and die on impact.

well. you get the picture, im NOT that person, i dont prepare for the worst! i dont think of all the calamities that could befall me and my family.

the only solution is prayer, praying for God to protect us and also prayer that The Enemy will have no foot hold in my mind, he is really, really good at getting in and telling me all of the worst things that could happen. the more time i spend worrying, the less im depending on God, the less faith im having that he will protect me, that he has good plans for me and that he will give me rest.

also, i vow to NOT watch the news or read peoples FB links to news stories that are about crime and the decline of the human condition. the news is like food for my anxieties, was reminded of that last night, it meant tossing and turning all night contemplating how humans could be so disgusting and broken.

but lets conclude this with God is Good and will make all things new in his time. i cant wait

wood floors and the olympics.

busy day yesterday!! my friend Lori and her two teens helped me pull up our old ratty, dirty, juice stained, cat hair ridden carpet. this is what had been covered up for the last 25 years or so.

we pulled out carpet, padding, staples and tack strips from 9am until 6pm, swept up, dust mopped, and applied orange cleaner.

i wont go into the details of the dirt, dust and allergens we discovered under the carpet, suffice to say, i will not be someone who advocates carpeting anything, i would say for the rest of my life, but ...ya never know what the future will bring.

the less one makes declarative statements, the less one looks like a fool in the long run.

also big news. Ken bought me a digital antenna to hook up to my vintage 1990's tv so that i can watch the olympics and the world series.....i never knew i was a sports fan.