Some Weekend Pictures

For our weekend we drove up to Phoenix to spend time with my mom, family and have a baby shower. It was such a great time and so much more than I had expected. Especially the sweet time with my husband and going out to some great restaraunts! I sure love to eat, whether pregnant or not. :) It was great just to be with him.

So here are some pictures of what the weekend consisted of:

This was one of the little gifts I made for the two dear ladies in my life for their gift baskets. They are fleece balls that are filled with different textures.

This is one of the baby quilts I made to go in the gift basket as well. I made two of them with matching burp cloths. They turned out so cute.
Here is Hunter riding on the carousel at the Railroad Park.

Lauren and Emma with their cousins, Jessica and Rachel. Oh, behind them in their Uncle David and a portion of our new purchase...a van. :)

My lovely husband. He is so handsome and kissable. I love him so.

Emma on the carousel at the Railroad Park.

The pink cake is mine...mmm, it was chocolate and sweet Elizabeth made it. Can you believe how beautiful it is. I didn't want to cut into it, but once I did, I am glad I did, it was delicious!

The wonderful generosity of family and friends, and many I didn't even know. If you look on the bottom from the left, my basket to my sweet ladies, is the 5th one over.

I received so many beautiful gifts I couldn't belive it. Many were handmade which I will treasure greatly.

The food! My mom went all out and made so much delicous food. She is in the back with her bright skirt. :)

Bret, Danielle, Emma and I at the Railroad Park. It was so beautiful outside. The other kids are in the car behind us.

My husband and Danielle enjoying the carousel. Danielle loved it! She was giggling the whole time.

So here is my weekend in a few snapshots. It was wonderful and I really enjoyed myself. In 3 weeks my husband and I are going away for 4 days and 3 nights just the two of us! We are flying to San Diego to enjoy some time together before Madeline comes and to celebrate our 7 year anniversary!

I am counting down the days. My wonderful mother and 2 wonderful women will be watching and helping with the kids while we are gone. It will be so nice. I hope you all are having a blessed Monday, as I now return to reality and do laundry and other little things. Luckily we cleaned our home before we left, so there isn't much to do.

Many blessings...

Something Fun to Read

To Be 6 Again...


A man was sitting on the edge of the bed, observinghis wife, looking at herself in the mirror. Since her birthday was not far off he asked what she'd like to have for her Birthday.'I'd like to be six again', she replied, still looking in themirror.


On the morning of her Birthday, he arose early, made her a nice big bowl of Lucky Charms, and then took her to Six Flags theme park. What a day!


He put her on every ride in the park; the Death Slide,the Wall of Fear, the Screaming Monster RollerCoaster, everything there was.Five hours later they staggered out of the theme park.Her head was reeling and her stomach felt upside down.


He then took her to a McDonald's where he ordered her a Happy Meal with extra fries and a chocolateshake.Then it was off to a movie, popcorn, a soda pop, andher favorite candy, M&M's. What a fabulous adventure!



Finally she wobbled home with her husband and collapsed into bed exhausted. He leaned over his wifewith a big smile and lovingly asked, 'Well Dear,what was it like being six again?'


Her eyes slowly opened and her expression suddenlychanged. 'I meant my dress size, you retard (not my words)!!!! ' The moral of the story: Even when a man is listening, he is gonna get it wrong.

My husband sent this to me and I chuckled. I love my husband dearly and this no way reflects how I feel about him. Though after a day like that I just might be a little exhausted as well. He is a wonderful man and I am so blessed to have him. Hope you enjoy.

What I Have Been Up To....

We have not been to busy this week, which has been really nice. So I have been finishing up projects and pampering myself.

Here is the top of my sister in law's quilt. She is due in about 4 weeks, so hopefully it will be a welcomed little suprise.

I made the quilt from scrap fabrics that I had. Mainly from my mother in law, who is a interior decorator and had a ton of sample fabrics that she gave to me to use for projects. So the only cost is the backing. :)

My pampering was getting my hair done. It is so cute and I love it. Cut short and colored. I felt like a new woman coming home!

Here we are at 6 1/2 months pregnant with my new do.

That belly is getting big, but not too bad still. Love that hair! :)

The rest of the week is getting prepared for our trip to Nana's up in Phoenix. We are really looking forward to just hanging out and no cooking or cleaning. Don't we all love being taken care of and no one does it better than mom. :)

Have a great Wednesday!

Fun Pictures

Here are some way cute pictures I took this morning. D loves having her pictures taken as long as she can look at them when I am done! :) Thank goodness for digital.

That is the best smile. :)

D loves playing with Emma, they are each other's best friend.

She loves having her own hair brushed and now she loves brushing her baby's hair. She is going to be such a good mommy.

She loves playing with her baby doll.

A little girl time with their nails. D sat still through the whole time and everyone just smiled and said, "oh so pretty."

Can you believe the chunk on those legs...oh and what about those cute toes. Gotta love painted baby toes.

Enjoy your day.

This Week...

I am so thankful that this week is nice and slow because last week was crazy. What was the lesson that I learned this week? Well, that it is okay to say NO. I am not good at that, and I always find things that need to be done and the Lord is showing me that things don't have to always be perfectly in order. So it is nice to let go.

On Friday we are heading up to my mom's for a baby shower for two sweet ladies in my life. One is expecting her first, so I surely hope that it will be a wonderfully, memorable time for her, and the other is expecting her second. They both are expecting boys, and I a girl. So it will be a wonderful time for all. All of our family will be here and it is always fun at Nana's house. It will also give my beloved and I a couple of date nights. Which will be a welcomed treat!

As for projects, well just finishing up my shower gifts and hope to also make a small gift for my sister in law who is also expecting #5 and its a girl. We have always been pregnant together and just a couple months apart and always expecting the same. :)

Today is going to be busy in the afternoon with a treat of getting my hair done, my dog is getting groomed and we might be purchasing a bigger vehicle to house all the kids and gear that go with them. I will post pics if it is the Lord's will. :)

So as you can see this week isn't so busy at all, and once I get the shower gifts done I will post some pics, they really turned out so cute!

I hope you all enjoy your week as I know we are enjoying ours. Have a blessed day.

My Busy Week

This is my back patio now with my old kitchen table set. We have been looking for patio furniture but it is so expensive, so with a new table cloth, we can finally sit outside and enjoy the Arizona sunsets. (and they are worth it).

Well, this week has been extremely busy and has taught me even more. I drove up to Phoenix on Thursday because my darling mom decided that we will need a bigger table to host our soon to be 5 children and perhaps have some extra room for guests. :)

So this was my kitchen table before. It has been a great table and with us for over 8 years!

This is our kitchen table after. I love all the different chairs and eht ecclecticness of it. It is rather larger and so that takes a bit getting used to. But it is really nice and I am so excited it all worked out the way that it did.

Along with that project, I finally finished the girls room. There are some nick nack things I need to purchase to fill some gaps on the wall and I would love to find a dainty desk that I can paint white to match. I love thrift hunting...

So here is the canopy I bought and then put a chalk board over it, they can unhook the canopy to drape around like a tent. I am hoping to find a couple big floor pillows for them to sit on.

Good bye to pink and white stripes and hello brown. I really like the transformation, it turned out great and I don't have to worry about the dirty walls.

This is what their beds look like against the brown. I love it. They are too cute!

My remedy for the shoe shelf was to get rid of many shoes that weren't worn and let everyone keep 3 pairs, (fun pair, church pair, and play pair). I think it worked out just fine.

So what projects do I have next, well touching up some baseboards of walls I painted a bit ago. Painting seems so soothing to me. So off I go to rest and put the little one down for a nap and hopefully get a little rest myself. I hope you all enjoy the blessings of the weekend.

True Repentance

This past Sunday at church our pastor was talking about repentance and what it looked like. I am always seeking those "golden nuggets" that God uses to speak to my heart. And while so much was said, my heart was awoken.

Here is what stirred my heart:

1.) Are we as concerned for others as we are for ourselves?
I personally have a hard time with that one. It isn't that I don't care, but I am home and keep myself at home that the only people I have time for are my family and close friends. I don't do much as far as reaching out to others that I don't know. Jesus died for me while I was still a sinner, even now He loves me as I sin, so my concern should be to share that love with others.

2.) True repentance is followed by action.
This one was a big one. I keep falling into the same rut, doing the same things over and over again. I feel like I will never overcome what God is asking of me. But if I am really sorry for what I do, and do it again, am I really sorry at all. Action is hard. It is easy for me to be harsh, demanding, and selfish, but to lay those aside and take what God is calling me to do, well that seems impossible. Ah, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." So my being truly repentant is shared by my action.

3.) Because of God's heart we should want to share it with others.
I have never been a big talker. Just keep to myself and hopefully my actions would speak louder than my words. But if I really think about it, there are times I want to shout of God's love from the mountain tops, I want the whole world to know. And isn't that what God wants us to do. To share it with others, share our testimony, how we hope when others don't. To share what makes us different. That glow, that smile, the patience with our children, the unwaivering faith in God. God really spoke to me, to not be shy, but be brave and speak for Him.

So these are the things that stirred my heart. Made me wake up and smile. And though the task seems large, it will be worth in the end when I can walk a little more like Jesus. We are called to be holy because he is holy. I am hardly perfect and confess many times during the day of my many sins, but I am ready to be transformed and just love my Lord with His strength.

Have a blessed Wednesday!

Good News

Well, just got back from the doctor and the good news is that the placenta really isn't covering very much of the cervix at all. The doctor is very hopeful that it will completely move by the next visit. Thank you all for your prayers, God is so awesome!!

Goat Pics

I thought everyone might enjoy seeing our goats. They are getting so big!

Molly is the black one. She isn't happy since we are keeping them penned up more often because they are eating all of my plants and with the garden being planted I don't want them eating them. :)

Here is Lilly, the brown one. She is really shy. She is so sweet though. She just follows Molly wherever she goes.

Here is the picture of their home. It is rather palacious in comparison to some homes and even from where we got them. They sure love it! It is so much fun having them around, they are hilarious to watch.

Enjoy!

This Weeks Projects

Lauren and Emma share a room. I painted their room and really love it, however, my girls are as opposite as they come and one is clean and the other messy. So the walls, though you can't see it, are driving me crazy with how messy they are. So I will be painting their room this week, these are some before pics.

Lauren's bed.
Emma's bed.

These are bunk beds but we can have them down. They love sleeping so much closer to each other.

This is one of their walls and I will be doing a little fun decorating over there... Can't wait for everyone to see. I love seeing pictures of people's homes and how they decorate, so I thought I would share a little too.

This is another project, our shoe shelf in the garage... it needs a lot of work, but I have a great idea that will work!

This is our garden, doesn't look like much, but I will be planting this week as well. Last year we had such a bounty of so many different veggies, I can't wait to do it again.

So these are a few of the projects I have to work on this week. As for how I do this with my little ones... D usually sits next to me reading, Emma she loves to play or help, and Hunter and Lauren have school work. Once they are done, they usually help or take some free time. The kids love seeing the transformation of the house, so they just praise and love it!

Oh, just so you all know, I will have some really beautiful things in my Etsy store by the 29th of this month. So please be patient, but with 3 baby showers to make for I am making sure I get those done first and don't want to preview before hand. :)

Have a blessed Monday!

My Etsy Store

Come and check it out. There is one item on there as I am still loading some, but please check it out and let others know.

www.joyfully123.etsy.com

Have fun shopping!

First Swim Lesson

Here is Lauren all Speedo'd out! She was ready for her lesson. Now these aren't lessons to learn to swim, but the strokes and styles of swimming.

Hunter is behind her working on the back stroke.

Isn't she cute...she is so strong that when she wrestles with daddy and Hunter, one of them always walks away bruised. :)

Hunter working on the back stroke, taking it very seriously.

Lauren just finished with her lesson.

They both did great! They made the team that starts in April. So they will meet with their coach 1x a week to work on refreshing up and polishing up and away they go. We are so excited for them and the busyness that life brings with sports. They are also very excited as well.

Just a side note I will be having an Etsy store soon. I just need to upload some things and I will be ready, so stay posted.

Prayer Needed

We just came back from our dr. appt. If you think of us during the next 4 weeks we sure would covet some prayers. You see my placenta is laying low, which means many complications, most of all hemorraging and not a pretty ending. I understand that this is all in the Lord's hands and I leave it there, but unless I ask I won't receive. So I am asking for prayer that the placenta will move up on its own and at our next visit there won't be any worries. Because after that visit is where big decisions will have to made if it doesn't move up. Thank you so much.

Blessings~

Good Breakfast

I always try and make something delicious, filling, and somewhat healthy (though not a requirement) for breakfast. I find that it keeps the kids a little more full and active in the morning. Though we do love a good, sugary bowl of cereal. :)

Some delicious strawberry muffins along with my egg muffins....mmmm and who can resist grapes, or as D calls them "boom boom's"

These are my egg muffins. I put frozen hashbrowns on the bottom of each muffin and scramble together about 8 eggs with a little milk, cheese and bacon bits (or any other kind of meat) and mix it all together and pour a little on top of each muffin filled with hashbrowns. Then bake at 350 for about 30min or so. Then pop them out and they are delicious with ketchup or salsa or just by themselves. You can even make a few batches and freeze them, my husband loves taking them on the drive into work.

Hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday, I know that we are going to take it a little easy today and not clean so much. :)

Strawberry Day and More...

I love strawberries, though it seems the kids beat me to them and I hardly get a bit of one before they are gone. This time I think I beat them.

Delicious strawberry compote, good for yogurt, waffles, pancakes, and ice cream...
Strawberry muffins cooling....now those were so good! I used my large muffin tins to make them an extra special treat.

Playing around, who needs boxes for moving when you can ride in them like a car.

Emma and Danielle. They sure do love each other. Emma is such a wonderful big sister.

Here is my muffin recipe, just in case you get a hankering...

(You can use any berries you would like.)

Preheat 400

1/2 cup of softened butter

1 cup of sugar (I used 1/2 c. more if the berries aren't as sweet)

2 large eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp almond extract ( I didn't use it and they turned out great)

3 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup of milk

1 pint of fresh berries (I like to use a little more...:))

2 cups of all purpose flour

Beat butter, sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla, almond, and baking powder until creamy. Add in flour and salt until well combined, then gently fold in your berries. Put in muffin tins and top with streusel topping. (following)

Bake for 20 min or until golden brown and cool on rack immediately.

Streusel Topping

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/4 butter, softened

Mix together with a fork or pastry blender.

These made about 6 large muffins or 12 regular muffins. They are really delicious and easy. Emma is always the one who helps and she loves it!

Something Fun to Read

Black and White (Under age 40? You won't understand.) You could hardly see for all the snow, Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go. Pull a chair up to the TV set, 'Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet.' My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.


My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.


Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.


We all took gym, not PE .. and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.


Flunking gym was not an option even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym. Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.


What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything. I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.


I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.


Oh yeah ... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.


Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.


I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.


It was a neighborhood run amock. To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We didn't need to get into group therapy and anger management classes. We were obviously duped by so many societal ills that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?


LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, I'M SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING.


Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best

Weekend Clean-Up

Okay, this weekend was CRAZY busy!! I had Lauren and Danielle sick with colds and that was hard, especially baby because she doesn't like taking naps when she is sick. But that did lend itself to being able to run a lot of errands because she does LOVE sleeping in the car when she isn't feeling well. So that is what we did. I found a great lamp that was originally $45 for $19.99. I love those deals. It was for my little nook, but I decided to go with the red theme and change the lamp, but kept my sale one for my room!

Along with that I decided with the weather warming up to upper 70's and mid 80's it was time to go through and take out the winter clothes and put up the summer clothes. Emma always loves that because it is like getting new clothes for her. Hunter and Lauren get new because they are the oldest first for boy and girl...

Here is Emma in front of 7 of the boxes, what you don't see are the other 3 on the other side of the crib. That is Madeline Joy's new bed and bedding. It is from Pottery Barn and I got it from my neighbor for $20 the whole set, and the crib is from them as well, matches our other one, and that for $50 for the mattress and all! Great deals from neighbors.

Here is my beautiful nook. I am so happy with the way that it turned out and the extra personality it gives the house. I finished the cushion this weekend and though not perfect it works. Now I can sew, work on the computer, write and the kids have a small space as well.

That's the finished cushion, the picture doesn't do it justice, but it turned out nice and it is soft and cushy.

This is what happens when boys roll up their pants and forget to unroll them when they come in from playing! So you all with boys understand that neatness sometimes falls by the wayside. :) I told him that I am now hemming up those pants whether he wants me to or not.

This cap is hand made by a friend of mine. She sells them for $10. I couldn't resist getting one for D- she loves wearing it in the summer and it covers the back of her neck too which is important out here in Arizona. She was trying it on after finding it in the boxes. It was way too cute to pass up a picture!


So that was our weekend. And now I am hanging up summer clothes and putting boxes back out in the garage. I also am making two special gifts for two beautiful pregnant women in my life. We are having a threesome shower on the 28th of this month. (Sorry Himilce and Marie I won't be telling or showing until after you get it.:))

As for the Lord's insight, I have to say I feel awful because this weekend was so busy that it seems God took the back burner which I really didn't like. So here I am, going to sit outside after lunch and make up for lost "quiet time." And enjoy being in His unbelieveable presence.

This is our Monday!