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......

Are you a "chutter"?

As we were eating lunch the other day, Isabella "shared" Amelia's grapes. When I saw them Isabella said "Look, Mommy, we're sharing because we're chutters" I said "You're What?" --- "Chutters, you know we love each-utter, we're chutters." I wanted to laugh, then I wanted to correct her grammar, but I just couldn't, it was too cute. Sooner or later she'll learn that it is each other, but for now, I'm just enjoying that she actually is listening to Bible verses. And honestly, I really don't have THAT much of a southern accent and my husband is a yankee, where is she learning to talk like this?! :)


On a side note, I promise I haven't forgotten about my blog. I have pictures to post and things to talk about, just getting back to "normal" right now. With St. Patty's Day (not a huge celebration here, but still a holiday), Amelia's little family b-day party, going away for Amelia's birthday, coming back to celebrate Easter, having my cousin come in for a few days then going to a ladies conference with her over the weekend..... we just now are finally back to schedule and yet somehow it is already Thursday this week. I need to post some pics soon though because I am in the process of making an outfit for Isabella right now so she can wear it to the CIRCUS this weekend!! I think it is going to be just a mommy date because Amelia has become fearful of things lately (another subject I'll talk about later) and I don't know how she would enjoy it. Our church has gotten some free tickets though so I think it will be just her and I. I'll try to post some birthday pics and things later tonight!!