Put on a new roll, Puhleez!

If your house is like our house, this is a familiar sight in the bathroom. How it gets that way in your house might be slightly different, however . . .

"Oh, Mom! I don't know what happened! It just wouldn't stop unrolling -- for 10 minutes!"

Our Life in Pictures

I LUV pudding!

Momma said, "Try walking in my shoes for a day!" I'm taking her up on it!

"Quit touching me!"

Who's the bigger Princess - Abi or Bella?

Who's the boss, now, Bruddah!

I just can't reach it!Cousin Katie's baby shower!

Absolutely exhausted!

Look, Mommy, what I colored for you -- my face!

Cam: Jekyll and Hyde Style

Camryn has two sides to her seemingly-two-year-old-but-not-quite-there-yet self:
furiously irritated and ecstatically happy!
Here's a sampling of each (and a few sweet kisses):

Bragging Rights

After dinner Wednesday, Nick and I decided to take the kids on a quick, spontaneous fishing expedition to the small lake here in town.
Almost right away, Brandon got a nibble on his line, and, with Daddy's help, he reeled in a nice little catfish. He was incredibly excited and simultaneously very apprehensive. He wanted to eat it and not throw it back -- it might have counted as a light hors d'oeuvre. Abi likes playing with the worms, bossing Camryn around, dragging the dog around by her leash, and occasionally holding a pole, just long enough to sufficiently tangle the line that I have to spend several minutes undoing what she did in seconds. So, I figured I deserved a cast or two with her pole. Lo and behold, I caught a whopper!! of a catfish! The problem is in who owns bragging rights . . . she kept calling it "my fish" and even posed with said fish in a photo (to be able to show Grandpa and Grandma). I said, "But, Abi, I cast the line, I hooked the fish, I reeled it in -- I believe that's MY fish." She said, "But, Mother, you caught it with MY pole!"

Maybe Uncle Matt can give us some legal advice on who actually owns the Bragging Rights to this fish!

Give my husband a new wife

Our pastor's wife gave us an excerpt out of the book "Power of a Praying Wife" a few months ago that I've found a great summary of how I should be praying for my husband and a great summary of what my Biblical view of my marriage should be. Too good not to pass on . . .

Lord, help me to be a good wife. I fully realize that I don't have what it takes to be one without Your help. Take my selfishness, impatience, and irritability and turn them into kindness, long-suffering, and the willingness to bear all things. Take my old emotional habits, mindsets, automatic reactions, rude assumptions, and self-protective stance, and make me patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. Take the hardness of my heart and break down the walls with your battering ram of revelations. Give me a new heart and work in me Your love, peace, and joy (Galatians 5:22, 23). I am not able to rise above who I am at this moment. Only You can transform me.

Make me my husband's helpmate, companion, champion, friend, and support. Help me to create a peaceful, restful, safe place for him to come home to. Teach me how to take care of myself and stay attractive to him. Grow me into a creative and confident woman who is rich in mind, soul, and spirit, Make me the kind of woman he can be proud to say is his wife.

I lay all my expectations at Your cross. I release my husband from the burden of fulfilling me in areas where I should be looking to You. Help me to accept him the way he is and not try to change him. I realize that in some ways he may never change, but at the same time, I release him to change in ways I never thought he could. I leave any changing that needs to be done in Your hands, fully accepting that neither of us is perfect and never will be. Only You, Lord, are perfect, and I look to you to perfect us.

Teach me how to pray for my husband and make my prayers a true language of love. Where love has died, create new love between us. Show me what unconditional love really is and how to communicate it in a way he can clearly perceive. Bring unity between us so that we can be in agreement about everything (Amos 3:3). May the God of patience and comfort grant us to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus (Romans 15:5). Make us a team, not pursuing separate, competitive, or independent lives, but working together, overlooking each other's faults and weaknesses for the greater good of the marriage. Help us to pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another (Romans 14:19). May we be "perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment" (1 Corinthians 1:10).

I pray that our commitment to You and to one another will grow stronger and more passionate every day. Enable him to be the head of the home as You made him to be, and show me how to support and respect him as he rises to that place of leadership. Help me to understand his dreams and see things from his perspective. Reveal to me what he wants and needs and show me potential problems before they arise. Breathe Your life into this marriage.

Make me a new person, Lord. Give me fresh perspective, a positive outlook, and a renewed relationship with the man You've given me. Help me see him with new eyes, new appreciation, new love, new compassion, and new acceptance. Give my husband a new wife, and let it be me.

Kickin' It!

Nick wanted us to do the P90X Kenpo workout with him one night. Abi was totally into the workout, and so was Cam! My children selected the strangest workout wear they could find -- not that Nick was exactly modeling great workout fashions himself.
Other than watching the hysterics of small children doing martial arts, in general, the best part was when Abi said, "Wow! That guy (the instructor) talks alot -- almost as much as me!" At least she knows she's a chatterbox, I guess!

Laughing Through the Terrible Twos!

Camryn, at the ripe old age of 17 1/2 months, is now smack in the middle of the "Terrible Twos!"
While I'm not laughing too hard, at least she's entertaining people everywhere we go.

Just today:
Almost immediately after walking into the dentist's office, Camryn found a not-so-private location near to an older gentleman in the waiting room and proceeded to grunt her way through her "stinky business." She does not like the feeling of poo in her diaper anymore, so she comes to me, walking across the entire waiting room, stench following closely behind, holding her bottom, pelvis pushed forward and nose scrunched up. I discreetly said to her, "Did you poop your boo? We'll change it in a few minutes." She started to stomp her feet, obviously thinking I didn't understand her booty-holding charade. So, I quietly repeated to her that I knew she'd pooped and that we'd change it in a minute. So, she then clenches her fists by her sides and lets out the loudest imitation of "I'm having a ginormous b.m." grunt I've ever heard! I thought the man was going to fall out of his chair he was laughing so hard!

Then, less than 30 minutes later:
We're having lunch with friends at a local restaurant, and Camryn drops her crayons in the floor and gets down to retrieve them. She decides that she'll just stay down in the floor, instead of getting back up in her chair. I asked her to get back in her chair, and she just gave me the silent stare and stood there. So, I began counting (she knows that if I get to "3" she'll get a spanking). I said, "One." And she put up one finger and said, "One." and then opened her hand a bit and said, "Two." and then spanked herself on the bottom! And then climbed back up in her chair and went about coloring. The grandma and mother in the booth next to us just died laughing.

Nice.

Superhero X-Ray Vision

Brandon now has Superhero X-Ray vision because he can see his "teef" on the computer!

The double good news for Brandon, besides having a new super-power, is that there is no portion of the tooth left and it looked broken on the edges because his teeth are already starting to resorb. That means that he might lose his baby teeth early anyway, so he might only have a couple of years, as opposed to 3, of looking like this . . .He also pulled at the heartstrings of the tooth fairy, who paid out big time because of his traumatic tooth loss. He is beyond excited to have a police car that transforms into a robot policeman -- and three "monies" (aka dimes). He has told everyone we've passed today - stranger or not - that he lost his tooth and that the tooth fairy gave him a police car that . . . . yeah, the whole story again!! :o) And the other good news is that the tooth fairy has to come back again tonight to claim the tooth since we had to have it for the dentist visit this morning!

And then there's precious baby sister who has been such a trooper today, with all of our running around! She was so sweet last night when Brandon was crying, and his mouth was bleeding. She kept touching his mouth and looking sad.

The Tooth Fairy is Early!

We are receiving an early visit from the tooth fairy, and I think big sister is jealous!
Brandon knocked out one of his front teeth tonight, and will apparently be snaggle-toothed for the next 3 years or so! Now, why couldn't I have had family pictures taken last week like I had planned to do?!?!
He was initially pretty panicked, and we followed Mrs. Sherry's advice about putting it back in the socket until we could talk to the dentist about options. However, he said it was pretty much a done deal. We're going to have an x-ray taken in the morning because it looks like he broke part of the root off that will likely have to be surgically removed.
So, I am eagerly waiting to see Dad in his Tooth Fairy tutu in the wee hours of the morning, gingerly placing a Police Car Transformer under Brave B's pillow!
Pictures to follow tomorrow!

First Chair

It has taken me a week to get around to this post, and I often just don't post something I intended to post when that much time has passed because something new has come up to post about. But, I'm forcing myself to postpone those other things and step back a week to our pastor's sermon and share with you because it did speak so loudly to me!

Ronnie's sermon was based on Judges 2:7-13 and was about reaching the next generation for Christ.

⁷ The people served the LORD throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the LORD had done for Israel. ⁸ Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of a hundred and ten. ⁹ And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath Heres ^a]">[a] in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. ¹⁰ After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. ¹¹ Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. ¹² They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the LORD to anger ¹³ because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.

We just finished a study of the book "Crazy Love" in our life group, which really challenged me about the concept of "lukewarm" Christianity, and God has called me to choose whether I'm going to be hot or cold for Him because lukewarmness is not an option.
Ronnie's sermon built upon what God has been working out in me lately -- a tendency toward lukewarmness for Christ does not have effects that are limited only to my own life. It affects my family, my friends, and especially my children.

Ronnie used three barstools as a simple, and very powerful, visual of the consequences of lax faith. The first stool represented where the devoted, committed, faithful, obedient Christian would sit. It's a seat where the people who served God and saw His Works would be seated (v. 7).
The second stool represents where the "lukewarm" Christian sits -- the people who know about God but who don't necessarily have a relationship in which they truly know God or have experienced His Works (v. 10). Ronnie challenged us, as Christians, to honestly evaluate which chair we would be seated in.
The third seat was reserved for those who abandoned God altogether, worshiping false gods and doing things that anger God (v. 11-13).

The point that what seat I'm in really affects those who are watching me, not just myself, is what spoke so deeply to me. Ronnie used the example of King David and the two generations of men following him. David would have been in that first chair, a man who, though sinful and faulty, was committed to God. His son, Solomon, however, was a man seated on the middle stool because he knew about God, but didn't really know God. Solomon's son, Rehiboam, was completely confused and lost when it came to Spiritual matters.

An entire generation is being lost for God. There are so many distractions, so many other things to worship, so many other things to seek to fill the inner void that only God is meant to fill. This generation is seeking something authentic and meaningful in our throw-away society.

However, if they are only met by a group of un-passionate, bored with God, hypocritical, middle-seat Christians, they are going to pass on what we are peddling --- and end up in that third seat. Without the One True God.

God wants us to get off of our stools and move to the first chair if we're not there. He wants a deeper relationship with us. He wants us to live our lives with a true measure of faith. He wants us to make people want what we have through our joy, passion, and love.

Which chair?