Happy 8th Birthday, Zachariah!

Happy 8th Birthday, son. We can hardly believe that you were struggling for your life that long ago. Sometimes it seems just a little while ago that we were standing over you in the special care nursery with your tubes and wires, even an I.V. in your tiny forehead. What a scare you gave us! We knew there was a big possibility for you to have breathing problems coming 5 wks early. Mommy was so sad to be in a different hospital than you, and I couldn't wait to sign myself out after 2 days, even with sky high blood pressure. I think the Dr. figured out it would only get higher if he kept me away from you any longer. You entered this world at 5lbs9oz, kinda big for being early. When you dropped down to 4lbs5oz, it was hard to imagine you being as big as you are today,and overall healthy!
So even though you are growing up very fast, you'll always be my little man! We love you so much, and are so thankful for the day God blessed us with you.

Been awhile

As the rain falls outside, I remembered it has been awhile since I have posted to my blog. Sorry for the delay, things are a bit busier here than normal. Both of my sisters had the exact same surgery done a couple of weeks ago, I am trying to help them, doing 2 cleaning jobs for my one sister. I was very surprised how little assistance they needed, both are doing more than they should!
My dad is also scheduled for surgery the first of April for a heart procedure.
It sounds like it can be quite risky, learning again to leave all in the Masters hands.
The weather has turned spring like lately(had several sunny 80 degree days!), we've taken the children on a few walking adventures, one on a trail that leads to a huge wooden playground, and a few times on a fitness trail. So good to be out burning extra energy off of 3-ready for summer children!
Also had the strange experience of watching our vehicle getting backed into! Strange in the way I heard it happen, was standing outside near it and watched it, and I still was like, Did that just happen?... A shorter fellow with a handicap was dropping his nephew off and didn't see my truck setting there.( I think because he could barely see over the seats!) Good news was he did have insurance and they are paying to have my front bumper replaced.
Children are healthy (now anyways!), Shawn is extra busy at work, and I enjoyed hanging laundry out to dry a couple days ago. I think that brings you up to speed, will try to take time to post sooner, next time.
Signing off!

Happy 1st Birthday, Noah!

Happy 1st Birthday to my dear sweet baby boy! Wow, one already. Such a busy one year old, too. Crawling everywhere, and eating everything. Literally! Yesterday in his diaper I saw, carpet fuzz, a long piece of carpet fabric, paper, a piece of plastic from a Wal-mart bag, a hair ball, and even a solid piece of dog food! I honestly can't tell you how many times a day I say, "What's in your mouth?" And this is after I sweep the floors and spot check to make sure there is nothing around. I have raced to the phone a couple of times to call for help after he has something stuck, and I have done the finger sweep more times than I remember. Today when Shawn left for work he told him happy birthday, don't eat too much carpet fuzz today! After he gets us all excited with, "Mom somethings in Noah's mouth!" and I pull out his treasure he looks at us and grins, and then we forget what a good little carpet cleaner he is, till next time! Hannah thinks the new rule in the house should be we always hold him. Noah thinks otherwise, and I'm hard pressed to cuddle with him anymore. How I wish I would have treasured the 4 little warm babies that let me wrap them in my arms more, and spent more time hugging them. Here is the busy 1 yr old and as a baby!

New Look!

Sorry it has taken so long to post. The project we started of switching our children's rooms around took as much time and effort as I was expecting, and then a little more(ok, a lot more) time than I thought. But, good news! It is DONE! We are all so thrilled with the results. The children love their new bedrooms, and the parents do too! We love to go in and sit on their floor and just watch them play and enjoy their new space, and smell the new smell of fresh paint and new area rug-carpet smell. I will post some before shots, and after. Then you might appreciate the way we feel! We couldn't believe how beat up the walls were after almost 8 years(our builder recommended flat paint, and since we weren't familiar with paint back then, we painted flat. BIG MISTAKE!New rooms are now semi-gloss!) Shawn did all the wall repair work(mudding) and bed assembling, and I changed the closets around,painted, and decided where to put what! The kids ran around all excited about their rooms, with "Done yet??" all the time.

We bought the boys a triple bunk. It is a wonder. Such a space saver. They have room to sleep and play. Not to mention the new bunk is so much sturdier than the old one. I actually broke the weld on the last one when I tried to move it to take it out of their room. And did you notice Hannah's beautiful bed?(Thank you so much Grandma for the loan!) I was also sorta impressed with myself on Hannah's night stand. We tried a couple different things and had settled on a bar stool that matched her bed perfectly. Then (at 1:30 a.m.!), I was just finishing cleaning up the rest of the things in her room when I had the idea to turn her cedar sweater/shoe storage unit that we weren't going to use anymore into a night stand. I put the units front to bottom and fit them together with the add on pegs (for additional units, I bought these two at a yard sale for $5!). It looks so cute and matches perfectly. I put her horse statue in the bottom, and it appears like they are in a barn!We were hoping to get new carpet for both rooms since we originally started with pink and blue. Due to lack of funding, :-), we just used 2 large area rugs to cover most of the pink carpet for the boys (pink doesn't match John Deere too well), and kept blue for Hannah, which matches her bedspread and curtains anyway!Special thanks go to Aunt Angie for putting up the new border, Grandpa for use of his truck to bring home the triple bunk, Aunt Diana for the horse pictures and other misc. items, Grandma for the bed and Papa for delivering Hannah's new bed! I bet you can tell how excited we are by the length of this post! SO, back to the laundry pile that sorta piled up during this project!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to my Honey and my Sweethearts, and to all of you! Shawn and I are trying to decide what project to get into. Well, my cell just rang and I know what we are doing for the next few hours anyway. We have the privelage of having Irving come for lunch and a visit! We are so excited, it has been awhile since we have had the workers visiting. So, this is such a pleasant devirsion of what we were thinking of. We hope to go to purchase paint for the children's rooms today and start stripping of border so we can do the switcharoo! Anyway, this was to be a short post, but I will add, we sure miss you today Ken & Megan, and boys, and hope you are all getting better!

4 years, still miss Mom

Today makes 4 years since Mom passed away. Sometimes it seems so long ago, sometimes it still hurts like yesterday. But more times I can remember with a smile. I guess it is true, time heals all things. What hurts the most is Josh and Noah never getting to meet her. She at least knew about Josh. I suppose in her heart she knew me well enough to figure I'd have another baby if possible. Funny how Moms know more about us than we do. Zach always says, "How did you know that?" I say,"It's a Mom thing." Thankful that I had a wonderfully patient, super loving, dying to self daily type of Mom. One that loved me so much, and yet loved God even more. One that had equal love for each of her 5 children and all the grandchildren. Even the ones she wasn't around so much, she loved them all the same. Makes me think of God, and how he loves those closest to Him, and even those that don't remember Him or draw close to Him.
Today also makes 13 years since my (paternal) Grandma passed away. They both passed away from the same thing(pancreatic cancer). My heart goes out to Dad, losing the 2 most important women in his life on the same day, 9 years apart.

Duck tape it!

Josh is so funny! I was checking news on the net while he (and Noah), was going through my desk drawers and he came across scotch tape. You could just see the wheels turning when he looked at me and said,"Can I duck tape something?Huh, can I?" I laughed at him and informed him he had scotch tape. That didn't seem to matter, he quickly replied, "Well, can I tape something???"
Kids are treasures, and I'm so thankful I have been blessed 4 times over. No matter how irrated I may get at 8 in the morning when we dash for the bus, or 2 in the afternoon while convincing Josh he does need a nap, or all day long chasing Noah saying NO!NO! or reminding Zach he is getting older now and it isn't so cute when he tries to be like Josh, or even giving Hannah's newest science fair project a bath and hoping for no pinches!(hermit crab), I am so very thankful that I do have these moments with them. I wouldn't give them up for anything, no time to myself could ever be as satisfying as the time with my little family. They are literally growing before my eyes, and I know it will happen before I'm ready, Shawn and I will be saying, "Remember when...".Oh, thats right, we already do. Sigh....

Goofy pictures!

I have been waiting to get a good picture of Shawn and myself, so when Hannah volunteered I said sure. Well, Shawn made some pretty goofy faces I thought were worthy to post. I told him I was going to publish those and he only laughed and continued to make faces. So here they are! Oh, the one with the hat, he told me to get his ball hat, and I grabbed the snow one for fun. I suppose that is why he thought funny faces would be ok!

Super Hyper Kids + Mobile Baby=Tired Parents!

After all the snow and days couped up in the house, we have 3 very rambunctious kids. Then last week, Noah learned how to crawl Friday night while we were visiting Grandma and Papa's!. So poor Dad & Mom, we haven't found a good source of energy to keep up! SSo now Shawn is turning giddy on me and running around laughing like a hyena! More cappuccino for me!!!! This will be an interesting post as I'm using white words on a white background. Hannah wants to know why I'm wasting my time typing nothing. So if any of y you are up to a challenge, try typing with white on white!
After I posted, I realized my background was too light to show up, so I left the first post in white as is, and added this so I could let you know why it isn't in white. I guess I did pretty good typing without seeing what I was typing!!

Happy 11 Month Birthday, Noah!

Today Noah is 11 months old. Hard to think! He has been pretty sick this last week with a cold that all 3 boys have, and I've been debating taking him to the doctor. Last night he hardly slept for all the tossing he did. Shawn thought I should make an appt just to make sure, and I was ready to take him in. Glad I did! Poor little baby has the upper respitory infection that is going around, and that caused an ear infection. This is the first one he has had, we almost made it 1 year!

Still winter around here. The snow has started to melt with temp in the 40's. Yesterday, it was suppose to snow 1 to 3 inches, but we had a tiny dusting when we woke up and had clear blue skies all day! Then this morning it started snowing around 7:30, and we got another inch. The roads had a sheet of black ice on them, and I couldn't believe that just 5 miles down the road, they had no snow at all!

We have been studying in Isaiah for Wed. night meeting. I thought I'd share a thought from a letter Becky shared from a worker speaking on the 5th chapter at a convention.(Not sure how old this is but from several years or more ago,) This chapter deals with the vineyard and how everything was perfect and the vines still brought forth wild grapes. He asks what more could have been done? The reason vines bring forth wild grapes is due to a lack of pruning. This worker said there is one thing in the picture you have to look out for: that the wild root has a tendency to put out little suckers that will take you over again, just like our human nature. It just puts out a little, innocent looking sucker to start with, but unless you nip it in the bud, it soon becomes a branch. I was thankful for this reminder again, little things do matter, and they can add up. Its harder to take off a branch, than the start of a new vine. I want to be aware of the standard God sets before us and keep myself in line with that, and not try to change God's way to fit me,(like I have a tendancy to do), but fit me into God's plan.

Well, I best get back at rearranging. We are getting ready to switch the children's rooms around, and that is turning into a load of work. It sure will be worth it though! Good day to you all.