Tackle it Tuesday

Well, laundry is a problem in our house and since I spent over a week without a dryer it has really piled up. This is the living room right now.

And here is the kitchen.
This is my project for Tackle it Tuesday. I will post later and show you how well I did. :) For more Tackle It Tuesdays go to 5 Minutes for Mom.
2:19 p.m.- ALL DONE!!!! Here's the proof!!!

Yeah!! It's all done! Praise God! Now I can go back to one load a day. :)

Mondays really FEEL like Saturdays....only they aren't!

Today was Monday as I'm sure you know...however it is the one day a week, besides Sunday, that my husband has off. So we kinda treat it like a Saturday.
We totally overslept this morning until about 9:30. I'm not really sure how that happens cause my children wake up so early. But sleep we did. And it was glorious. Until we awoke to 3 very hungry children. They always wake up hungry, imagine that?
My dear husband was amazing today. He helped me clean the house up because our realtor was coming this afternoon. We his help we set the timer for 15 minutes and got the upstairs done, vaccumed and all. Then we went downstairs and did the same thing. 30 min and my house was looking pretty good.
Our house is now on the market, again. We have been struggling financially and feel that we need to investigate all our options to see what door the Lord opens up. We do love our house and we know that God specifically told us to buy it but now might be the time to sell it. We don't know. But we're praying and waiting. If it's not time then I will perpetually have a clean house for the next 6 months. :) Won't that be nice??
This afternoon we spent a fair amount of time working in our yard. It absolutely amazes me each year that all the leaves in the neighborhood blow onto our side of the street. But it's true. I keep telling Nathan that we should take all our leaves and dump them in our neighbor to the north's yard because every Monday he has a company come do his lawn with leaf blowers and the whole nine yards. Our neighbor would never know and then all our leaves would be taken care of. He didn't go for it. Darn! I tried.
I enjoyed reading all the posts about the Dallas blogger meeting. It's fun to get together with other girls. We enjoyed going to the MOPS convention.
It's late and we've decided that we really should start getting up before the children wake up. Maybe then we won't find toothpaste behind the bathtub and lotion under the rocking chair. I'm really not kidding about those last two!!

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things I Love About My House

1. The lead glass windows in the front room and the front door.
2. The hard wood floors downstairs that all have a different pattern.
3. The fenced in back yard with climbing trees.
4. The very old lilac tree in the back yard that blooms dark purple. (I foresee a WW this spring)
5. The funky stairway that goes to the office and to the kitchen.
6. The stained glass windows in the dining room and in the bathroom.
7. The enormous amount of closet space in a 116 year old house.
   
8. The wide front porch that will one day have a swing on it.
9. The ceiling fans in all the bedrooms and in the upstairs bathroom.
10. The full size attic that will hopefully one day be finished.
    
11. That the playroom is out of my sight in the front room.
12. It's a blast to decorate for Christmas.
13. The wonderful neighbors next door who collect cats and love my kids like grandkids.
    

Wordless Wednesday

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This is somewhat impressive

I found this surfing around You Tube. I just had to share. I just want to know if he won anything.

Toilet Trials Part 4

Last week I told you that I had taken down the wall paper in the upstairs bathroom. Well I left the chair that I had been standing on in the bathroom. The other morning my charming almost 4 year old son got up to go potty first thing. HOORAY!!! We've only had a couple of nighttime accidents unlike Boo Mama. However as you can see this is "Part 4" of the trials. I obviously didn't name it that cause we don't have an accidents, cause we do. Just ask Sarah about Mc Donald's on Sunday...or Sunday night for that matter. This one was no accident though, let me tell you.
The aforementioned chair had been in the bathroom for several days. On this morning however AJ decided to pull it over to the toilet and stand on it while he peed. In walks my sister-in-law Tabitha and GASPS!
She says, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
At that point the pee is no longer going in the toilet...it's going all over the floor, the wall, the chair, the rug, the toilet. Needless to say he must have drank a lot of water last night after dinner. That morning AJ learned how to clean up pee when it goes all over the place. Hopefully next time he will NOT use the chair, which by the way, is no longer in the bathroom. It got cleaned too.

Saturday

Today has been a very interesting day. And its not over yet.
Let's start at the beginning. 2:00 a.m. My darling husband got up to go lead his part of the all night prayer watch our church had last night. He came back around 6, slept for an hour and then left to go to work.
I got up with the kids around 8:30 and we just had a laid back morning. The heating element in our dryer went out a couple days ago so I thought I would just run a load over to my mom's to dry it. There didn't seem to be anyone home, so I started the dryer and left.
My next stop was Drug Mart to buy a baby shower present for this afternoon. I ran into a friend from church and this is how our conversation went.
Me- "Hey! How are you?"
Her- "Good, how come you aren't at the race?"
Me- "The race isn't til this afternoon."
Her- "I thought your dad was running this morning at 9?"
Me- "MY DAD'S IN A RACE?????????"

Needless to say somehow in the last few weeks my mother had forgotten to tell me that my dad was in a 5K race this morning and I missed it. I would have been out there cheering dad!!! However he did get a gold medal for his age group. (Maybe I shouldn't mention that he was the only one in his age group to run. )

Move on to noon. Someone was coming at 12:30 or so to stay with the boys while I took the baby to a baby shower. (previously mentioned above) I went to open the fridge to get lunch ready for the boys and AJ had quite obviously been in there. The merischino (sp??) cherries fell out and exploded everywhere. It was a HUGE mess. I forgot to take a picture. It took Tabitha and I 20 min to get it all cleaned up. Now I'm running around in a tank top, Peanut was crying and I was trying to get ready before the sitter came. It was quite chaotic.
I did get out the door about 10 min late but the shower didn't start on time so all's well. The shower was lovely. It was for the daughter of a friend. She's due in three weeks and disguistingly amazingly small. They don't know if its a boy or girl, they want to be surprised but she got a lot of cute outfits.

I came home and let the sitter make a quick exit. Then I helped Tabitha finish getting ready for her night at the orchestra with Scott. They left in a flurry of activity and Blogger won't let me add my great pictures to my post. Don't worry Tabitha..that picture will get posted. Maybe I'll save it for Wordless Wednesday. :)

Now I'm just waiting for Nathan to come home and then this evening we're off to Leader Discipleship with our church leadership group. I'm sure it will be interesting cause it always is.

More Mops Notes

Awhile ago my sister asked my to blog a little bit about one of the seminars I attended at the MOPS convention in Nashville. I did a couple of posts about it here and here. The one that she was asking about was "Daily Discipleship: Intentional Spiritual Development of Your Child". So here are a few of my notes on the subject.
The speaker opened with a few statistics.

• 27% of churched youth have experienced either family devotions, prayer, or Bible readind in the home.
• 29 % of churched youth have experienced a family service project.
• 40% of churched youth view their mom as being "very religious".
• 28% of churched youth haved talked with their mom about faith.

"Most certainly father and mother are apostles, bishops, and priests to their children, for it is they who make them acquainted with the gospel." - Martian Luther. As moms we need to reinstate the home as the chief place where faith is to be nurtured. We are to model our faith to our children.Some practical ways we can do that is

• share your stories of faith with your children
• remember God's comfort
• celebrate God's coincidences
• discuss tangible examples of faith
• make your home a house of prayer
• pray around regular events, meals, bedtime, leaving for school, ect.
• let your children here your sponatneous prayers
• pray using the Bible as a guide.

There are lots of opportunities available to use as a spiritual lesson. Anytime you are in the car listen to praise music. When they are sick pray with them. At bed time ask them questions and even crawl in bed with them and talk. Use stuffed animals to tell stories from the Bible. Use your vacations to help others in need.

These were some of the suggestions that were shared as ways to help your child develop spiritually. I'll leave you with this verse from Deuteronomy 6:4 "Nurturing faith begins with the heart of the parent."

Wordless Wednesday

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Cedar Point

This past weekend of friend of mine from way back when and his new wife came for a visit. Their names are Joe and Amanda. We had a blast getting to know Amanda and it was great to be around another young married couple.
On Saturday we went to Cedar Point in Sandusky. Nathan and I have never been together. It was soo much fun. We left the kids, including my little peanut , with my parents. She did beautifully, didn't miss me at all. :) This is Mike and Sarah...Sarah is one of the two girls living with us...we love her. The lines were long and it was a bit crowded with college kids but over all we had a blast. It was fun riding the roller coasters and puke rides as my sister calls them. We rode the Raptor, the Mantis, the Iron Dragon, Ocean Motion, Disaster Transport, the Sky Needle, the Millennium Force, and the all important Swings. :) I've been waiting to ride the swings since the county fair. It was a very cold day and riding those coasters at over 50 mph sure made it colder. It was nice to get out with my husband. This is the view from the Space Needle. On the left, way up high, is the Millennium Force. Congratulations Sarah on your first time!!! Hope it was worth it. :)

Thirteen Random Things about Today (Thursday)

1. Only two days until I get to go to Cedar Point!!
2. White out on a computer monitor is hard to get off.
3. It started snowing outside just a little while ago.
4. There isn't any wallpaper on the walls in my upstairs bathroom anymore. :)
5. I've done 2 loads of laundry.
6. I've changed 3 poopy diapers.
7. Made macaroni and cheese for lunch.
8. Cleaned macaroni and cheese off the floor after lunch today.
9. My upstairs bathroom floor is covered with wallpaper. :)
10. Speghetti is on the menu for tonight.
11. I've read three blogs and not posted a comment.
12. My husband has yet to have lunch and it's after 2:30.
13. I'm looking forward to watching Survivor Cook Islands tonight.

Wordless Wednesday

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WHAT???

Can you believe this, I just saw on a news bulletin on television that there is a possibillity of SNOW!!!!!!

Wow, what a weekend!! I can't believe that it's already Monday. Thursday was a colosal laundry day because Friday morning I hauled my family, kit and kaboddle, over to my sister's house. She was leaving for a retreat with some other members of our church and I was looking after all 7 of her kids. Wow!!! There were 10 children in the house, count them. DA, Belle, JR, Thadeuss, Doodle Bug, Puk Puk, AJ, JM, Little Buddy, and baby Peanut. Boy did I have my hands full. I swear I vaccumed the family room twice in one day. :)
The older ones stayed up and I let them rent a movie and have friends over. I was told by a family friend that I was a 'cool aunt'. While watching the movie I pet the cat for awhile and forgot to wash my hands. For those of you that know me well you can imagine what happened. My eyes swelled up, got red and watery, and all kinds of loveliness. As a result DA decided that poor Fuzzy, the aforementioned feline, would get a bath...right then. He tried to wrangle some help from JR's friend DW but he said, "No way!" DA and JR were attempting to do it alone, with the rest of us watching in great amusement, when I had sympathy on Fuzzy and made my husband help hold him. It was really funny to watch. You'll have to wait until Wordless Wednesday to see the great pictures. :)
Saturday at Mama Lily's house is truely a logistical wonder. Everyone running here and there was tiring for me and I didn't even have to do the driving. After preparing the biggest quantity of food that I ever have for one meal that night I was ready to pack it all in and go home to my nice kingsize bed. :)
They were all great and did well together and apparently I got good reviews. It definitely gives you admiration for Mama Lily and all she does. And yes, I still would like a large family even after all that. So does Nathan. The only time they were all together in one room was during dinner on Sat. night. And now you know why it was Monday afternoon before I posted.

Wordless Wednesday

This was last summer before our move.

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Forever Family

Today it was finalized!!! AJ's name is now AJ Webb. He now "legally" is the son of Nathan. Both sides of our family are so excited. Here they are at the courthouse waiting for our hearing.
Thank you to all who prayed for this day. We are now a forever family.