Balloon Animals

Last week we went out to dinner all together. It went amazingly well, and there happened to be someone there making balloon animals. We had him come over to our table & he made some incredible things really quickly with the balloons!

Here's Isaiah's Elmo! Colby has a Spiderman. The picture doesn't do it justice - it looked really amazing.

Abigail got a princess, of course - Arial, the Little Mermaid.

The man said he and his family of 10 children are missionairies living on the TX-Mexico border. I found their website: www.frownbusters.com

Have a great week!

Seven Prayers for Seven Days

Since I've started my blog earlier this year, I've also started ready a handful of blogs. My friend led me to one: www.audreycaroline.blogspot.com It's pretty amazing. The woman who writes it is Angie Smith. Her husband is in the Christian group, Selah. She has 4 young girls, the last of which passed away a few hours after being born this past April. She has lots of good ideas on how to lead a better Christian life. If you have a few hours and some Kleenex you should read through her blog, you too will be hooked.

This past week she came up with "Seven Prayers for Seven Days." She challenged her readers to say these prayers over her children throughout the days when they were doing 7 specific things - and to do it every day for a week. The prayers are listed below. (I copied if from her website) I am going to try and do these throughout my upcoming days and would love to encourage you to do the same. I really like that she took specific verses from the Bible to create these simple and powerful prayers. She also mentions that she says the prayers outloud so whether consciously or not her children are listening to what the Bible and she are saying she and God wish for her children.

By Angie Smith:
If you are a mom (or have someone else you want to pray for specifically), I hope you will join me as I do this for the next 7 days. It struck me that I need reminders during the day to be praying over my girls, and I decided to choose 7 events in a day that would remind me to do so. Then, I chose verses that had to do with that time of the day (for example: as my kids are getting dressed in the morning) and then I put them on notecards.

Here are the events and verses I chose:
1. When they wake up: "Let the morning bring (child's name) word of your unfailing love, for she has put her trust in You. Show (her/him) the way (she/he) should go, for to you (he/she) lifts up her soul." (Adapted from Psalm 143:8)
2. When they are getting dressed: "Therefore, as God's chosen child, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Lord, help (him/her) bear with others and forgive whatever grievances (he/she) has against others. Help (him/her) forgive as the Lord forgave (him/her). And over all these virtues, help (him/her) put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." (Adapted from Colossians 3:12-14)
3. While they are eating: "Teach (child's name) the secret of being content in any and every situation whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. Teach (him/her) that (he/she) can do everything through him who gives (him/her) strength." (Adapted from Philippians 4:12-13)
4. When they go out of the house: "(Name of child), do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-His good, pleasing and perfect will." (Adapted from Romans 12:2)
5. While they are taking a bath: Lord, give (name of child) clean hands and a pure heart, and let (him/her) not lift (his/her) soul to an idol or swear by what is false. Let (him/her) receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God (his/her) Savior. Let (him/her) be part of the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob. (Adapted from Psalm 24:4-6)
6. When they are going to bed: "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, be will rejoice over you with singing." (Zephaniah 3:17)
7. While they are sleeping: "I pray that (name of child) will do everything without complaining or arguing, so that he/she may become blameless and pure, a child of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which he/she shines like a star in the universe as he/she holds out the word of life-in order that he/she may boast on the day of Christ that he/she did not run or labor for nothing." (Adapted from Philippians 2:14-16)

Halloween Carnivals!

Yes, I apologize for not blogging lately. Somehow life has been busy! Here's a few pictures from the past month:

We went to a local pumpkin farm a few weeks ago & had lots of fun! It was really a neat place!

Here's Dan & Isaiah on the hay ride to the maze and pumpkin patch. Brigid & Colby on the pedal carts.

Isaiah enjoying the corn sand box!

Climbing up the hay pyramid.

Riding the cow train.

Our church had a carnival a few weeks ago. After waking Isaiah from his nap, he did not want to get into his costume. So, we just took him in his diaper & Abigail's boots he had put on. Thanks to Dan's great idea on the way, we stopped by the Dollar store to get a bow & arrow. So, he went as cupid! It got even funnier when he entered the costume contest. He got 1st place for the kids 0-5 years old!Colby went as Stich from Lilo & Stich. I think it was a pretty good find of a costume. I try to get good deals after Halloween from Disney's online store. He got 2nd place in the costume contest for kids 6-12 years.

Abigail posing as Princess Sleeping Beauty.

Here's Isaiah before we left the house with his Elmo basket.

We went to another carnival at the kid's cousin's school too. Here's my princess after some amazing face painting.

Here's Colby as Jack Sparrow with some pretty cool face painting too!

This time Isaiah agreed to get dressed up as Superman!Here's our dog, Gretchen on Halloween night as a witch. Amazingly, she didn't even mind the costume!

Picture Update

Alright, get ready for pictures from this past month!
Here's Colby & Abigail with Zalen on Colby's birthday evening.
Colby happy with his birthday surprise!
Abigail riding on her birthday surprise!
Colby & Abigail had their birthday at Brush With Art.
Colby's very large 6 year old handprint.
Abigail's 4 year old handprint.
Isaiah very amazed with the paint 21 month old handprint.
My silly children after the party.

Isaiah sleeping on his daddy.
Our fair outing.
Isaiah dressed up like a cowboy.

I know it's kind of sad, but cute monkey. You hold out a quarter in her hand and the monkey comes by and gives you "five." Abigail also did this and the monkey took her money, licked his hand, and then gave her five.

The family birthday party this year at home! Here's Abigail with her great-grandmother, Mum.
Abigail with her Grandma Mary.
Colby with his flaming cupcake. I think this will be the last year to get that many candles on the cupcake!
My 4 year old princess.
Isaiah greatly enjoying the green icing.

Every year, a month or so before Halloween I like to give my kids their costumes. This extends the holiday a little and they enjoy dressing up! I like to order from Disney's online store costumes after Halloween that are really reduced in price.

Here's my Incredible children:

Princess Abby.
In my last entry I blogged about Isaiah eating a ton of bar-b-que one night. Here's how his precious face looked after enjoying the food!

The First Girl Phone Call

Alright, this is precious - My mom picked Colby up today from school about 20 minutes ago & he immediately called me. The reason, get ready, this is pretty funny - because Hannah, his friend is going to be calling & he wants me to give her my mom's number to call him there! Oh, my goodness... 6 years old and getting a call from a girl. She is a very precious girl, I might add. So, she calls & says hi... I told her Colby wasn't here, but she could call him at my mom's. So, I hear her telling her grandmother in the background that she needs a paper & pencil quick to write down the number. I hear her saying, "Hurry, she's waiting!" So, it took quite a long time to give a 5 year old the seven digit phone number, but hopefully she got it right! After I think she got all of the numbers down she said, "OK I'm going to call him real quick."

I talked to Hannah's mom on the phone last week because she was scheduling parents to work at the upcoming school carnival. She told me that when she came home from work one day, Hannah was hard at work drawing a picture for Colby & his friend, Zalen. Her mom said she really worked hard at it. Anyway, she brought it to school to give to them, but their teacher didn't let her. The school has a rule that if you handout something at school, like birthday invitations, then every child must get one. So, pretty funny!

It is so cute right now to me about the phone call... can't imagine in the next 10 years... they grow up fast.

Last Night's Dinner

Isaiah is 21 months now & he would be completely content to live on Fruit Snacks, Cheese & Yogurt. But, at each meal I try to encourage him to eat whatever Dan or I have prepared. This hasn't gone over so well in quite a few months! So, last night was a great exception. Dan warmed up some bar-b-que roast, beans & potato salad. From the minute we put Isaiah's plate down, he was gobbling up the "meat" as he called it, dipping it in bar-b-que sauce first. It was cut into slices, which I cut into about 6 bites for him. I'm pretty sure he ate five or more complete slices of the roast. He couldn't get enough. He ate more than any of us at the table! I captured a precious picture after, so I will be posting it soon.

My mom is now home from visiting my sister, so I'm going to get her to upload all of the photos I've taken with her camera. Then, I'll post the fun from the past few weeks!

The Past Few Weeks

I apologize for not blogging lately - it's really for 2 reasons. One being I can't post pictures because my sweet Colby broke mine right before the surgery, so I still haven't had time to find the warranty and work on getting it fixed & because I just don't have any extra energy yet!

That being said, here's an update:

Abigail turned 4 on September 9th! I can't believe she is getting so big. Colby turned 6 on September 12th! He has days of great maturity, thankfully! We celebrated with their friends at Brush With Art last Saturday. It was crazy, but very fun! Everyone got to paint a plate and put their handprint on it. I really love having them make personalized items to display! Hopefully they will be finished soon!

This past week we went to the fair a couple of times. First on Tuesday, we took Colby & Abigail to ride the rides. They had a great time. I also got to sample a few fried treats too! We also went last night for the rodeo. As one of the events, they let 4-7 year olds sign up and try to ride a sheep. My brave Abigail said she would do it! She was put on the waiting list, so unfortunately I didn't know she was going to for sure be able to do it... so there's no great photo or video, but she did get to try! She just barely made it out of the shoot and then fell off, but that's about how good most of the other kids did too! There was only 1 girl who rode the sheep through the buzzer & she went right before Abby. Dan was back waiting with her & he said about 5 kids got out of line crying before their turn, so he was scared Abigail might do the same. Amazingly, she was so brave & said she wanted to try! She received a cute little trophy that she is very proud of!

One more great momento of the fair, is that we "won" a goldfish... the kids are really excited, I'm not too much, as it's one more thing to have to clean up after! But, we'll see how long he lives...

Today we're having a family get together for their birthdays. I decided this year it would be much easier to have smaller parties since I'm not too helpful! Anyway, I think the weather's going to cooperate & get to 80, so I'm warming up the pool. We really haven't swam but maybe once since school started, so this should be the last time for the season.

About my back - the surgery for sure did the trick, thankfully. It gets frustrating at times that I really still have limitations to what I should be doing. Yesterday I overdid it a bit. I can tell that because of how I feel today! But, it's getting better every day!!!

This week everything's started back at church for me. Amazingly, I have over 80 children signed up for children's choir! This is more than ever before! I think we ended up with around 50 this past Spring. We usually break the kids into pre-K-1st grade & 2nd-5th, but that would give us 35 & 45 in each group! This won't work with the space we rehearse in, so I'm adding another group with them. This will still give us 25-30 kids in each group, but much more manageable! It's so exciting seeing all the precious children exciting about music and serving their church. It's going to be a great year! I have a meeting with all of the youth that have signed up to be involved with the music program tomorrow. I think there will be about 40 youth there!

I've been able to borrow my mom's camera while she's with my sister in Portland, so when she returns next week, I'll be able to post the pictures!!!

A precious moment this morning - Abigail woke up early, as usual and joined us in bed. Then, Isaiah woke up, so we asked Abby to go and play with him in his room. I could hear her reading "Brown Bear What Do You See" to Isaiah. Very precious. Then, Colby joined them and read "Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar" to them both! I'm so thankful that Kindergarten has finally excited Colby to want to read and look at books more! Up until now, he really hasn't enjoyed it very much. So, thankfully he's finally starting to like it! I actually got this on video sneaking down the hall. :-)