I'm tired...

Two weeks ago this Wednesday we headed up to Michigan -- cut the traveling in half since it was a 16 hour trip. We went up for my inlaws 50th wedding anniversary party. (More about that later) We were there until Monday afternoon, traveled a little Monday and then the rest of the way Tuesday (with some fun stops on that day), got home Wednesday morning at 2:30am, and then Kenny had to work on Wednesday and I had to do laundry and clean getting ready for company on Thursday. My cousin, her husband and daughter came to visit and were here until this morning. We had a good time, wish we could have stayed longer in Michigan, then wished our company could have stayed longer, but now..... I'm tired. I'll be posting some pictures later, but right now I'm going to go curl up in bed next to Isabella and take a little rest. :) Hope the last couple of weeks has been good for everyone!

Daddy

Here's what I had the girls do for Daddy for Fathers Day:

I think have 2 great little future artists. :) Isabella picked out the colors of paint for them to use (which is funny since she mixed hers together to make the gray background) and I gave them some sequins, the little gems and the little sayings from my scrapbooking stuff, but they put it all together by themselves. Although, I think if I would have let Amelia continue, she would still be painting. She didn't want to stop. :)

After church Sunday morning, we grabbed something to eat and then headed out to the lake. It was the first time we had taken both girls out in the kayak. We had so much fun. We didn't get a great deal of actual kayaking in since Isabella kept asking to go swimming. So we went for a little while and then pulled into a little cove and had fun swimming, fishing (we forgot Isabella's fishing rod, but our little lucky charm "happened" to find one on the shore) and climbing the rocks. This is probably the only lake in the area that I actually enjoy swimming in (again, I like to see my feet :) It was a beautiful day and a great time together as a family. It was also special for me because Kenny and I used to go kayaking a good bit before the girls and this was one of our favorite places, we would love to just see all God's creation, enjoy our time together, and talk about different things. I know we had plenty of talks about "One day, if the Lord blesses us with kids, we can bring them here..." etc. So to be in the kayak with him and now our 2 precious girls, made it extra special for me. All the glory belongs to God!

I thought I would let the girls write letters to Daddy for Fathers Day. This is what Isabella dictated to me (I will admit, she might have said something about you taking her places and buying her things a couple more times :)

Dear Daddy, I love you! I love you really much, .... this big! And you are really sweet to me. Thank you for building me things and buying me stuff. Thank you for sharing things with me. Thank you for bringing us to the lake, and when you bring me to gymnastics. And Thank You Daddy for all your givings to me. And for taking me to lunch and to the sports and to the pet store. I like you to take me places in your truck. Thank you for playing with me really much. Thank you for all the work you do at your work. Thank you for letting me sleep with you all the time (LOL!! I think she is trying to weasle her way into sleeping with us Honey. :) Happy Fathers Day to you Daddy. And I want to sing a song to you now. "Happy Fathers Day, Happy Fathers Day, Happy Faaaaattttthers, Happy Faaaaaathers,..... Happy Fathers, Happy Fathers, Happy Faaaaathers Day, Happy Faaathers, Happppy Fathers Day to you Daddy...... (she's still singing....... now she's marching, now she's dancing and adding hand motions......) Happy Fathers, Happy Fathers, Happy Fathers, I love you, Happy Fathers, Happy Fathers DAYYYYYYYYY! " (This has gone from the Happy Birthday tune, to Oh My Darling, and it is still going although I've stopped typing. She has now slowed it down and is doing ballet to it. )

I love you! You're the best daddy in the whole world. Isabella

Wish I could have taped that one, she's so cute singing Happy "Fotters" Day,

(What just happened: "Amelia, do you want to tell Daddy anything...." "Nah, go poo poo" And she goes running through the room. Me: "What?!" And then I get to go looking around for her diaper and praying she already didn't have some in it, because thats her new thing to take her diaper off AFTER she's gone potty in it.... gotta figure out how I can catch this child BEFORE and get her to be potty trained.)

Dada, Wuv Dada (Love Dada) , Du, do, diddy, DADA, (?? Dada) UH, sissy, Da Da, Wha Tha? (UH, Sissy, Dada, What's That?) And off she goes to figure out what "That" is. I think what she was meaning to say was I love you Dada and you're the best daddy ever!!! :) Amelia

Isabella decided to add more: Daddy, I love you really much. Thank you for taking me to Mighty Moo. I know you get gas in the car. (??) I'll draw a cross for you (and she just did) I love you!

And I love you too honey, for all the things that were on your card and so many more. Watching you with our girls and the daddy you are to them, just makes me love you even more!

Oh, and she's still singing. :)

Father's Day Weekend

I hope you all had a wonderful Father's Day weekend. We had a reall nice time both days. On Saturday, we got together with my parents and my brother's family and started the day off watching Tyler race in a Soap Box Derby.

We watched him a few times, but it was SOOO hot and when you start seeing your already brown little girls cheeks start turning red, you know its too hot for them to just sit in the sun. So, we were right next to a park, so Kenny and I took the other 4 kids down to ride on the train and then play at the park, while the others continued to watch Tyler. The kids loved the train -- although Amelia doesn't look like it, she was having fun and was squealing part of the way. She is now going through the lovely stage of putting her head down or looking away when mommy says "Look at the camera" (Stubborn little booger!) Isabella and Garrett are such good buddies (I have a cuter picture of them on the train, but must not have downloaded it) and loved riding together, Kenny got some Daddy time with Amelia, and Olivia and I got to bring up the rear with our extra cuteness--- ok her cuteness, my rear. :)

Then we had planned on cooking out at another park, but really it was just that hot, so we opted to go back to Mike and Meredith's and we ate there and the kids had fun playing. I love this picture of the girls in the back of Mike's Scout

And here are my sweet girls.... although the picture is blurry. :(

Afterwards we went to a small fair and rode a few rides and Kenny and I learned a couple things:

1. Isabella is going to be our daredevil when it comes to rides, she was asking to go on some that she wouldn't have been allowed to ride on and even the one she and I rode on, spun around pretty fast and she wanted to have us spin our heart seat (you can spin it like you would the teacup ride) as well.

2. The older we get, the easier our equilibrium or something gets messed up. Kenny has always had a problem with spinning around in circles (like on a merry go round), but he rode with Tyler on this one that took you up and you went upside down and he was a little green after he was done. I, have never had a problem with the spinny rides, love them! and while Isabella and I were spinning around, I was ok, but when she said she wanted to spin our "seat" as well, I got a little funky feeling. I just convinced her we were spinning. :) And then when we got off, I was dizzy for a little while. Really, we're not that old..... I thought this wasn't supposed to happen for YEARS. I wasn't green though, so I WILL try again. :)
Amelia on the other hand, screamed and would not even ride this ride with Olivia -- even with mommy holding onto her. Looks scary though doesn't it......... :)

And here's Papa with all the grands... Its late, so I'll post a couple pics from Sunday tomorrow. Just wanted to say we had a great day on Saturday celebrating Fathers Day with my dad. And I'm so thankful for the Godly father I have, as well as Papa for my girls. I know it is a blessing to have a dad who loves the Lord, whom we get to spend time with and who my girls just adore!

Do you remember.....

..... what it was like before you had kids? More specifically, do you remember what it was like to kiss your husband before you had kids. The other night, Kenny went outside and I went and joined him on the porch to talk, without the girls. Within seconds, Isabella was at the patio doors with a pitiful look on her face, which then turned to falling on her knees pouting. Then Amelia joined her and was trying to open the door and then started pressing her face against the window. It was like they thought they were missing out on something great by not being right with us (which is also why I always have an audience while I'm using the bathroom) Then once we were inside, we were standing in the kitchen and I put my arms around Kenny's neck and kissed him and Amelia started pulling at my leg, then wedged herself in between us, saying "Nah, my mommy", then Kenny gets hit in the back with a little ball from Isabella. Just as I was about to say it, Kenny said "what was it like before we had kids...." :) Amelia is especially jealous of mommy, she doesn't want Kenny to hug or kiss me, and she doesn't want to share me with him. Isabella on the other hand, just wants to be a part of whatever is going on. When she was around Amelia's age, she would cry if we were hugging, but instead of seperating us, she would say "group hug."

We also took the girls on a little hike the other night and instead of lugging my big Nikon, we took Kenny's small digital camera with us. I don't know what it is about small little cameras that make me feel like I'm in high school and I have the need to turn the camera around and try to take pictures of myself, Kenny and I, etc, but I did that half of the evening. :) When we did want to take a picture of the girls after they climbed up a rock, these are what we got:

But, when I would revert to my 14 year old self and would try to take a picture of Kenny and I, this is what happened, all of a sudden she was ready to smile. :)

We actually tried to get Amelia in one of these pictures as well, but she wasn't interested, she was more interested in playing in the creek, oh yeah, and we sat her on daddy's lap instead of mommy's and that made her mad. Crazy kids.

New favorite pastime

Don't look at the "artistic" qualities of these pictures, because there is none. These were taken from inside my house looking out the patio doors - if I open them, the birds then fly away.

Recently, this is mine and Isabella's newest favorite pastime -- bird watching. Well, at least in our backyard. We had one bird feeder back there, which we forgot about for the past couple years and this year Isabella wanted to see birds, so we decided to fill it as well as get another one. We hung them on a pole thinking the squirrels couldn't get to it, but those little boogers are horrible and would climb up the thin little pole and would eat the food (as well as part of the bird feeder) After a recommendation from my aunt, we then got another favorite past time which was watching the squirrels, jump, then slide down the vaselined pole. Oh, how I wish I could have gotten some video of that. We had lots of laughs at that. Anyway, we then went and got a finch feeder, which is not attractive, looks like a big white sock, but it said it would attract finches to our yard -- and amazingly it has, I had never seen a finch in our backyard before, but now we've seen several, such as the goldfinch and house finch in the pictures above. We also see lots of cardinals, wrens, bluejays, robins and today a black bird and a pigeon (whom Isabella named snow cone) The past couple days we've seen a little gray and black bird in the backyard so I decided to look up bird "websites" with Isabella so we could try to find out what kind of birds we might see. When I opened one website, Isabella saw a picture and let out a little gasp and said "Do you think we will have EAGLES come to our bird feeders? Papa LOVES eagles" :) I'm thinking we'll just stick to our finches. I think she agrees now, since I told her that Eagles don't like bird seed, they like to eat fish and little animals. She then gasped in horror and said "Do you think they will eat Tucker?" Tucker is our 100+ pound black labrador, so I think he's safe from the Eagles. We're now trying to convince Daddy we need a hummingbird feeder, we asked him last night and he said "How many birdfeeders do you crazy women need?" Surely he can't resist our charms for a $5 birdfeeder for long though. :) Anyway, thought you'd enjoy my silly little girl. We sure have fun creating new hobbies together.

Another dress up day

Something about little girls and dressing up...... it happens quite regularly around here, the girls will have little princess dresses on, tiaras, or for Amelia its always a cute pair of shoes. For the last few days Isabella has been asking me to play dress up with her --- but not just ANY dress up, I had promised her last week that I would put some makeup on them sometime when they played dress up. And she remembers everything!! It was the first thing she asked me this morning after breakfast. So they got their little dresses on, little tiaras, which Amelia refused to keep on her head and off we went to Mommy's room for hair and makeup. :) I'm not sure how or why I happened to have some 80s looking light pinks, blues, greens, but it came in handy today with my girlies. And Isabella wanted lipstick today not lip gloss -- you know, the REAL stuff. So here they are in all their glory.....

This is normally what happens if I say "Ok, now get closer and hug your sister" it always turns into play time in front of the camera. I love it!

After Isabella was done playing dress up, she went into her room and got dressed for real. She was so proud of herself. She came into the kitchen and said "Look, and I did it all by myself and I did it all right" (We have had issues before of items of clothing being on backwards :) The only problem was....... this is what she had on........

...... cute as can be, but this is what it was like outside today....
Thankfully, we were able to change it up a little before she played outside. :)

Few beach pics

Just a few pictures from our trip. We had such a good time (even with all the sicknesses going around.) I think all the sickness did make the kids a little more whiney than normal, but for the most part I think all the kids had a good time together. This year I think was a little more relaxed, we ate at "home" most of the time, which meant we could stay in our coverups most of the day and switch the kids from swimsuits, to tub, to PJs. The only negative to that was not getting the kiddos all cutesied up every night, but I think the more relaxed time and fellowship was worth it. Isabella loves pretty much all things at the beach, the sand, the water, the seashells, etc. Although, she is not exactly my little "fish" because she would prefer not to get her face wet. :) Amelia LOVED the sand, and after a couple days loved the water as well. She at first didn't want to get in the pool at all, screamed and pulled up her feet even if we tried to put her in, but then at the biggest pool, the kids could walk in, kind of like the ocean, minus the waves. So she felt like she was going at her own pace. The afternoon that I was sick, they had to run in after her because she decided maybe it would be fun to keep on walking. :) After that she wanted to go to the pool anytime she saw it and loved playing in the ocean.

Here's my sweet girls on the beach together, getting them to slow down and pose rather than ripping their cover ups off and running away is not easy. :)
I love this picture of Amelia and her cute little mischievious grin. Isn't she beautiful!!!!
The picture of Amelia above was when she was having so much fun running to the water, filling her bucket up and coming up and pouring the water on Noni's feet. She got the biggest kick out of doing this.

I don't know what they're laughing at..... maybe they're just showing their excitement for the BIG fish Garrett caught. (Inside joke)

And here's my beautiful little beach babe. She looks so grown up, I wish she'd slow down on growing up.

And what did Mommy do.......

...oh yeah, nothing like relaxing on the beach. :)

Still here having fun! :)

Thanks so much for praying for us, Isabella's pink eye is gone -- without any medicine. Which is a praise!!! I called my dr and he wouldn't call in any antibiotic. I was so frustrated. My kids rarely get sick at all, so its not like I've asked him to do this before, but the receptionist said after talking to him "The dr said he would have to see her to know that its actually pink eye" I told her, "Its definitely pink eye, my nephew had it, my niece had it, ... oh yeah and I'm like every other mother who knows what pink eye looks like" (Ok, so I didn't say that last part) She said "he said your only other option is to go to Urgent Care." I was so irritated that I'm tempted to find a new dr. I mean seriously, its pink eye, its not like I'm asking for some crazy drug or anything. I know lots of drs don't like to do that but still frustrating. So I just really prayed about it. By the next morning Isabella's eye looked better and so far Amelia, Garrett as well as the adults have not caught it. I'm really praising Him for that because I know this can be so contagious!

I still have a sore throat, but thankfully during the day I feel pretty good. We had a fun day yesterday at Harbour Town. We had gone there to go to the "Salty Dog Cafe" and did some shopping, then we came back and went to the beach in the evening. Which is nice rather than being so hot in the middle of the day. We did get to end the day with another....accident? drama? bad luck? :) My brother and Tyler were standing in the surf fishing and Mike was probably waist deep, he caught a fish, came out of the water kind of limping. So Meredith went down there and came back up to get a towel, saying Mike had cut himself. He actually didn't cut himself though, he was stung by a stingray. He was Ok for about 15 minutes and then it really started hurting, Dad ran to get the truck because Mike started hurting so bad he couldn't walk the couple blocks home. BUT its great having internet while you're on vacation, they got back to the room looked up stingray stings and found out that he had to soak it in the hottest water he could stand for an hour and that would bring the venom out. We all were saying "Praise the Lord it wasn't Tyler." It could have been worse. Today Mike seems to be fine. As long as we lived on the beach growing up and as much as Mike lived in the water surfing, he had never been stung by a stingray. I'm sure he feels proud. :) This is just more reason why I am NOT an ocean girl, give me the sand, give me the sun, give me the sound of the waves and the seashells, but I'll just swim in the pool where I can see my toes. :) Hopefully I got some cute pics last night and I will upload them when we get home!!

Hello.....

..... from the sunny beach!! I know I haven't written lately, I actually have had internet problems at home for the past couple weeks. Just a few weeks ago, my parents decided to do another family vacation at Hilton Head, so we all hurried to get things ready in short time. We will be here until Saturday. We're having lots of fun, but we are also passing sicknesses around. My mom was sick last week, then my sil got a sore throat the first day we were here, now I have the sore throat, my nephew, Tylerhad a very mild case of pink eye (or at least we're blaming it on him because his eye was pink on Friday, but it seemed to go away quickly), Sunday morning my niece, Olivia woke up with her eyes matted shut so she has pink eye and Meredith had to call to get some antibiotics, now Isabella has pink eye and I am going to have to call my doctor today for medicine, or atleast call and see if its necessary. I've been trying to do the other things I've read for pink eye, but I'm afraid that if I don't get the antibiotics Isabella's will just continue to spread to everyone else. Doesn't sound like a great start to vacation, but we still have been able to enjoy things, but if you happen to still be checking my blog out and come across this PLEASE pray that the other two kids, Amelia and Garrett don't get the yuckies and that we all can enjoy our time together. I'd post some pics, but my camera doesn't have a cord to download, I do it with my card and there's no slot on this computer for that. I think I can download some from my mom's camera so we'll see..... Hope you had a good Memorial Day!!

Things heard from Isabella today

At the breakfast table: "Daddy, we don't need to pray for our cereal because its not hot."

*apparently we only pray before we eat to let our food cool off.

On the way to the art museum with Noni: "When I was a baby and I was only three I couldn't do that."

*4 is SOOO much bigger than 3

While daddy was putting new light/fan in the bathroom: "DADDY! You're in the ceiling! You're in the ceiling with Jesus!"

*I guess our attic is supposedly heaven or awfully close. :)

Lots on my mind

We've had a pretty busy last few weeks like I mentioned before and in the midst of that I've also had lots of different things on my mind, thought I'd share a few:

Two weeks ago my cousin came into town and over the weekend we went to a ladies conference. It was so good!!! The speakers were amazing, the worship service was awesome, and the special music guests were Mark Schultz and Mandisa..... let me just say I don't watch American Idol, just not into reality TV, so I've only heard her singing on the radio, but I think that she might have been our favorite part of the weekend. And now my girls love listening to her too. :) The other thing that stood out to me the most at the conference was they had an organization there called World Help. This is what their website says:
World Help exists to fulfill the Great Commission and the Great Commandment through partnering, training, helping and serving, especially in the unreached areas of the world.

One of the things they do is raise money to help children that are victims of poverty, hunger, and disease (particularly AIDS). At the conference they had the "Children of the World" choir sing. They came out, singing some happy upbeat praise song and I sat there crying, I don't think I was supposed to be crying, but these precious children.... They are only here for 10 months touring, they will then go back to their home countries. All of them had suffered in some way. One little girl had lost both of her parents, one to AIDS, and was now living with her grandmother. Their goal is not adoption, although I would love to have taken some of those kids home. :) They said if they started that, then they wouldn't even be allowed to have the kids come over in the choir. They are hoping to raise support for these kids to educate them, to help prevent disease, and so they can be used in there country as they grow up. There were children from South Africa, Uganda, Phillipines, maybe others but those are the ones I remember them mentioning. The next morning they had another short little "concert" with them before the actual conference began. And the last song they sang they had us all sing with them and it was "How great is our God, sing with me, How great is our God, and all will see How Great is our God" and it was so moving. There was one boy in particular, he was probably 8-10 years old and as we are singing, he was in the back row of the group and He just lifted his hands up and was looking up in worship to God. And it wasn't like something he was told to do as part of the concert. It was just him praising His God. After that I just couldn't sing.... I told Kenny, here was a little boy at an age where kids here are going through the attitude stage, the "its all about me" stage, etc. and he has suffered and gone through more than we have and yet he really understands how great our God is. I can't even explain to you how convicting and moving this was. They then told us they had a free book for us if we wanted to stop by, so I got that and read it Sunday and Monday. :) Its called Children of Hope and I can't say it is a "good" book, but it definitely opened my eyes to the suffering in the world, to these poor children who have been victims of HIV/AIDS, poverty, war, etc. it was convicting and inspiring. Here's what the book looks like:

If you go to this link, I think they will send you a free copy of this book: http://www.worldhelp.net/defaultArticles.aspx?pageid=37084

Like I said, its not a "good" book, but I think if you read it with an open heart, you can't help but be changed. How convicting to read "only 3% of evangelical Christians said they would help an organization minister to an AIDS orphan...
Can these be the same people who profess to follow God, who according to Psalm 68:5 is a 'father to the fatherless, a defender of widows'? Are these the believers who model their lives after Jesus? .... 'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.... whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mind, you did for me' (Matthew 25:35-36, 40)"

"We have been slow to respond, Why? Perhaps because we have forgotten that we serve a God whose Son's life was all about compassion. Jesus did not care how a person became ill, or why they were suffering. He didn't ask if they had done something wrong that caused their suffering. He simply reached out, touched them and healed them."

That's all I'm going to quote from their book, you should get it!

(As for the other things on my mind, well I'll talk about it later, I've written enough for today and I don't want to take away from this.)

Birthday pics

Thought I'd post some pics of Amelia's birthday. We had my parents, brother and sil and kids over for a little cookout and then the kids decorated cupcakes. And yes, all the cupcake decorations are rather valentiney -- nothing like after holiday sales. :) I'm putting these in small, hope you can still see them, I just have alot to add. The first one of Amelia cracks me up, she is so much like her mama and so NOT like her sister. Everyone was singing to her and she wasn't sure that she liked being the center of attention (obviously, you all know that Isabella has No problem with this) I had to include a picture of her and her teddy because he might as well be part of the family.


Here's Isabella and Olivia decorating (pouring on the sprinkles)

Had to make this one a little bigger, here's all the kids together. Even my nephew Tyler, who is 11 joined in. Poor guy, he's surrounded by toddlers. You can't really tell in the picture, but the girls aprons all have cupcakes on them and the chefs hats actually look like cupcakes with a cherry on the top, my sil and I both happened to buy them at Target. You can see the birthday girl is enjoying herself. She could care less about the cupcake, she wanted more icing.


Then on her actual birthday, we drove a couple hours to a big zoo, the girls were all excited, the first animal we saw was an alligator, still excited, then we saw Snakes behind glass and this is what happened.






Amelia was terrified. You can't really tell in this picture, but she would SCREAM if we would even get close to the glass. We would try to get close to tell her they couldn't hurt us, they were in a cage, etc and she would hold onto us as tight as she could and scream "NAHHHHHHH" We actually even saw a fake snake and tried to show her it was fake and she did the same thing. And let me tell you, this girls got some pipes on her, everyone was looking at us. As horrible parents, we did find her scream amusing -- I know we're terrible --- no we didn't try to scare her or take her closer (well at least I didn't, can't totally vouch for Kenny :) , I really felt bad for her, but it was just the fact that she would be so happy and calm and let out this huge "NAAAAHHHHH!!" that kind of cracked us up. Just didn't expect it from such a little girl. :) Thankfully, she loved most of the zoo. She loved the little kidzone area where she could dig and play in the dirt. And both the girls loved the little playground, which I have to say is the cutest playground I've seen. I'm not going to post all the pictures, but they had a rope climbing wall, that actually looked like a spider web, the slide was a huge leaf, they had squash and other things to climb on, etc. It looked like a huge garden. They both really liked the sea lions, not sure why those didn't frighten Amelia, but she seemed to like them.
They both acted like they wanted to ride on the carousel, but once we got up there, Amelia started screaming again at the animals. Isabella was happy though - I think she mainly came to see the elephants and ride the carousel. Amelia did ride, sitting on mommy's lap on a bench. :)



And since the carousel had all kinds of zoo animals to ride, she being my, oh so girly girl, picked such a girly animal to ride, was it the cute otter, or the polar bear, oh no the giraffe........ yeah right......