Aunt Sue Comes to visit!!

One of our favorite things as a family is to have guests stay in our home!  God has blessed us with fabulous family and friends, so it is always a treat!  This week we got a visit from Aunt Sue!!!  Although she calls Alaska home, she loves to travel and we were her latest stop.  We had a lot of fun picking apples, playing ball and I even hit the golf course.  Yeah, it wasn't pretty, but we had a lot of fun!!  

I have only golfed a handful of times, so needless to say golfing with my athletically gifted aunt seemed a daunting task.  The bad news... 8 was the highest the automatic score card would allow and on the first 5 holes I maxed it out.  The good news... I finally beat her on the last hole (number 9 since I wouldn't let myself be humiliated any further than 1/2 the course).  Well I'm back on the golf wagon if anybody is up for a little ego boost (believe me you'll feel pretty good about your golf skills after 9 holes with me...)

Later,

Jen

"Peace" in this storm...

Since last May our MOPS (Mothers Of Preschoolers) group has planned to have a light hearted November meeting.  A fun speaker on a light topic with a cool craft.  I hadn't thought much of it until I was preparing for our Steering meeting last Monday.  Something didn't feel right - it could have been that I was listening to talk radio and basically they made it sound like the sky was falling (or in this case the DOW).  Anyway, I turned off the radio and turned on my iPod.  The song that came on was "Mighty to Save" - you might know it, it's one of my favorites! "Savior, He can move the mountains.  Our God is mighty to save..." etc.  Anyway, it stuck in my head!  The rest of the afternoon, there it was.  Driving to the meeting, still there - in fact it was in the back of my mind throughout the meeting.  I had to leave the meeting a little early and had a sort of unfinished feeling.  I justified that with "Oh well, it always works out - we'll come up with something..."  Well at 3:17 am I woke up - I remember the time because I was so awake I looked at the clock thinking it must be about 6:00 - nope!  Immediately I started thinking about MOPS again.  You know how things always explode in your mind in the middle of the night...  For the next 2 hours I was awake.  Doing everything in my own power to will myself back to sleep.  Finally at around 5:00 it dawned on me that I needed to pray - so I did.  Nothing really came to me regarding MOPS, but I immediately fell asleep.  There is just something very calming about handing everything over to my Heavenly Father.  I don't know why it took me 2 hours to figure that one out - but I digress...

That next morning I went on with my day and around 2:00 pm I started checking email and was kind of overwhelmed by the number of emails I had from friends or forwards that spoke of "worry" and "stress" at this time in their lives.  Then I opened up an email from our Staff liason that echoed this as well, but in regards to our MOPS group and it seemed to hit both of us at the same time that we need to make some changes for November and bring in someone that can speak to our mom's about "stress" and dealing with it from a Biblical perspectives as both moms and wives.  I tell you all of this to remind you that just when we think we can fix everything on our own and in our own strength He reminds us that He is in control and He is the one that holds the future.  He already knew He didn't want us to stay on our original topic for November - I was just very hard of hearing!

That afternoon, after we made the decision to change the meeting and the wheels were in motion, I went where I should have gone from the start - to scripture.  That song was STILL in my head so I decided to look it up!  I knew it was in Zephaniah, but didn't know the reference so I "googled" it... there is was right on the screen in BIG BLACK LETTERS!  Zephaniah 3:17 - I had seen that number before!  It is amazing how God speaks to His children, if only I would have listened sooner, I would have saved my self from a sleepless night and a little anxiety! 

Zephaniah 3:17 "The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save!  He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing!"

How wonderful to know that in these troubling times He holds the future!!  The God who can move mountains delights in little old me and just when I think I can't do it any more He quiets me with His love and shows me how much He cares.  Cool!

Knee pits!

My kids are just like everybody else's kids - except they are much more witty, intelligent and sweet than everyone else's (I'm the mom, I can say that!).  That being said I have collected quite a few "kidisms" over the years.  I love to look back at them and remember the circumstances in which they were said or the hidden laughter (by me) when they were overheard.  Some of my favorites usually take place when my kids don't know I am listening.  Like the time I was babysitting one of Luke's friends (both were under age 2 at the time) and Jack was also home.  Jack was in the playroom with the friend while I was changing Luke's diaper.  When Luke returned Jack had an exasperated look on his face and said to Luke, "Play with your guest, I'm tired of him!".  Then there was the time Gwen & Jack (ages 4 & 2 at the time) were discussing bath time, which was coming up soon, and Jack said to her "I don't want to take a 'bass' " she laughed at him and said "No silly it's not 'bass' it's "baff'!".

Well, 2 more occurred today, both from Luke... Luke and I were at home and decided it was time for a "tickle match".  We were tickling and laughing when Luke said to me, "Now tickle my knee pits"!  Apparently, he figured the area behind his knee cap must be the "pit" since that is what the area under his arm is called :).  I was howling!  He didn't think it was all that funny.  

The second one occurred when he told me about 2 of his friends in school.  Usually he refers to them as Conner "T" and Connor "F" (actually he uses their full last names, but I figure I should try to protect the innocent).  Apparently today he got a good look at how each of them spells their first name, both are spelled differently, and came to the conclusion that they should be pronounced differently as well.  Now he refers to them as Conner (traditional pronunciation) and Conn'OR' (with heavy emphasis on the OR).  Again I started laughing and he just looked at me like I was looney, since it all made perfect sense to him!  

Never a dull moment!  Poor Luke, I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of those "my mom is looney" moments for him over the next several years...

Luke's First Goal!!!

This morning was a blistery October morning, ok, so it was 60 and a little windy, but frankly I've become very thin skinned...  This is Luke's first year of organized soccer.  Yeah, I know 4 is a little young, but he is so tired of watching his brother and sister play, that we opted to let him try it out.  The past few weeks he has basically taken his years of "sideline play" and brought it to the field.  Needless to say there is a lot of airplane arms, grass picking and generally running around in circles...  His father hides his frustration VERY well and in fact has found humor in it.  

Today, for the first time, we were so excited to see that possibly he is starting to get it...  There he was out there on the field moving with "the mass" (for those of you that have never seen a bunch of 4 year olds play soccer that is how the game is played - EVERYONE moves with the ball - no offense/defense), when all of sudden he made a break with the ball.  Rich & I were so excited!  He was running and the only people chasing him were the players on his own team!!!  Then we realized why... he was running towards the wrong goal!  Well, we have such a soccer prodigy on our hands, that not only did he score a goal for the other team, when the ball was kicked out of the goal to start the game again, he took it all the way to the other end and scored there too!  We were so proud - so was he :).

Rich and I came to a conclusion a long time ago...  We would have to start saving money for college, because there wasn't much hope of any sort of sports scholarships coming our way.  How blessed we are to have 3 healthy kids who love life and humor their parents, by participating in organized sports.