True Love

Matthew 25:35-40: 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. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The King will reply, Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

God has a funny way of grabbing our attention when we least expect it. I happened to be in the middle of the road, the back of my car jutting out into a busy intersection when he grabbed mine. I take this road daily as I travel to pick up my children from school and most days I see the same man standing on the corner quietly begging for help. This particular man has obviously suffered tragic physical loss. He is missing 1/4 of his skull and has obvious bilateral lower leg injuries/deformities. Like most people, I see him, I feel sorry for him, but I keep going. I have places to be and children to pick up from school. However, today was a little different. Just as I pass through the intersection, the car in front of me slows up beside him. I see a man get out of his car and ask this broken man if he could take him to lunch. I will never forget this precious soul who showed Jesus to this man. He was a tall, stocky, older gentleman. White hair, beard, red plaid shirt. The kindest eyes I ever saw and a smile that said he was the happiest man on earth. It's been quite a while since I was able to look into someone's eyes and truly see the love of Christ shining through them so undeniably clear. But it was there. Believe me...IT. WAS. THERE. I think what caused my tears to begin to fall was seeing this large, confident but gentle and caring man unhesitantly wrap his arms around such a small, debilitated man. It was the perfect picture of what Christ does for us. We are broken, many times beyond repair. We aren't pretty to look at and who knows what past failures haunt us daily. But, Christ comes along and covers us with himself. He wraps his strong loving arms around us making everything ok.

It was like the world around me had faded. Although I could hear drivers around me honking their horns, angry this man would cause a traffic block during the busy noontime lunch hour, it was only dull background noise. I had a front row seat to something amazing. One thing I have learned is that when God speaks, you can't help but hear it. It may be "still and small" but it is NEVER without impact. I was convicted; challenged: don't care about what others think-even in a busy intersection. Showing Christ's love to others in this self absorbed world is seldom comfortable but it is ENTIRELY necessary. And dare I even say, required.

So, am I going to stop and allow the next homeless person I see get in the car with me and my small children? Probably not. I struggle with this alot actually. People say in this day and age it isn't safe for women to stop like this particular man did today. I would tend to agree but then God's word doesn't say "do to the least of these when it's safe" either. That is something I may always struggle with, but one thing is certain. God has called me to love (John 13:34) and show compassion (Luke 6:36) and spread his good news (Matthew 28:19-20). He promises us this in Psalm 147:3-He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds.

What an amazing God we serve. He doesn't care about our past; who we are or where we come from. He doesn't look at my outward appearance but at my heart. He always sees me for what I am...HIS PERFECTLY CLEAN REDEEMED CHILD. And I am able to be that because of his son. Good news like that is meant to be shared. Thank you God for teaching me today through the actions of one completely willing man. I can love...I must love...because you first loved me (1 John 4:19).

Turkey Fingers

Today, we switched out our artwork from ghost feet to turkey fingers! I used each of my children's fingers to make the feathers. We had so much fun making it. All you need to create your own little turkey is a canvas, paint, brushes, a hot glue gun, ribbon, spray gloss, and willing participants! We threw in some google eyes because they make everything funnier :) Happy crafting!

SpOoKtAcULaR Family Fun!

For Real?!!? I'm blogging?!?! YES YES YES!!! I know it's been a LONG while, but you know how life can be.....BUSY!! But, here I am and maybe (that's a BIG maybe) it won't be so long til I do it again :) Fall is definitely here and we've been doing some super fun things!

We had a 2 day fall break. While most people enjoyed a nice week long time off, we crammed all our fun into 2 days. The first thing we did was some painting...with our feet!!


If you haven't heard of Pinterest, you've been hiding under a rock :) But in all seriousness, the website is GENIUS...and addicting! You can find all kinds of wonderful ideas you can "pin" to your board. When you find some spare time, go back to your board and pick something fun to duplicate! You can even pin your own creative ideas for others to see and give a try. Who knew people were SO creative and crafty!! That's where I found all these fun things we did.

This Thankful Tree is a wonderful way for me to actively work on instilling a heart of gratitude into my children. It's so easy to get caught up in the hecticness of the holiday season. This is a way for us to DAILY remind ourselves to be thankful: to recognize all God has blessed us with. Each day, we trace their handprints and they decide on one thing they are thankful for. They write it on their handprint "leaf" and then go attach it to the tree. Every morning thay wake up excited about what they are going to put on the tree that day! This is our tree after several days:

We still have an entire month until Thanksgiving so I'm thinking this wall of my dining room is gonna be one BEAUTIFUL sight! SO many things to be thankful for!

Ella Kate wanted to do something for her class at school so we made these cute little treats:

PINTEREST, PEOPLE!!!! This is smores in a bag. You put graham crackers, ghost peeps, and snack sized hershey bars in a treat bag, tie it up and there you have one unique little happy!

That's it for our Spooktacular Family Fun, but I thought I should mention that my last post was about me breaking my wrist. Turns out my fairy tale didn't have the immediate happy ending I had hoped for. I ended up having surgery because my bones wouldn't stay put long enough to heal properly and with full function on their own. July 1st I had a plate and seven (I think?) screws put in my wrist. I get to keep them forever :) FUN TIMES!! It was crazy around here for a while, but my wonderful husband and mom were incredibly patient. They cooked, cleaned, changed poopy diapers, and brought me my pain meds just to name a few things :) It was a process, but eventually I progressed from a cast to a hard brace to a soft brace to perfectly whole again! Oh it's wonderful being fully functional! I was completely cast and restriction free before we got to celebrate our 10 year anniversary in September in HAWAII!! Yeah....I'm WAY behind on blogging!! Oh well....

Another thing I have picked up since breaking my wrist is running. I NEVER in a million years would have thought I'd be telling you "I'm a runner", but here I am screaming it from the mountain tops (or my cushy recliner...whatever) I AM A RUNNER!!!! I thoroughly and completely enjoy it-so much so that I ran my first 5K yesterday with one of my closest friends, Stephanie.

Here we are at the finish line. She finished in 31.40 and I finished in 33.35! Not bad! It was crazy how many people were there for the Race for the Cure 5K! Looking forward to keeping this up!

Tomorrow is Halloween. Hope you have your costumes ready! I know my little ones are ready to stock up on candy :) Have fun and hopefully I'll be posting again soon !!

Candice vs. The Grill

This is a wonderful appliance and has made me several oh-so-delicious meals in the last week, however; it tried to take me out....seriously....TAKE. ME. OUT.

For those of you still wondering what happened as well as what causes my nearly every facebook post to be somehow cast related-well, here is the story (fairy tale style...just to make it more interesting):

Once upon a time there was a wife named Candice. Father's Day was fast approaching and her husband's current, elderly grill was burning all the meat (or so he said *wink wink*). A grill was a pretty nice gift, and Candice was all about making Father's Day unforgettable, seeing as she was married to the most fabulous father in all the land. Little did she know this Father's Day would indeed be unforgettable as the evil grill she purchased was boxed and ready, planning his destruction of the fair wife.

Candice, with every well meaning bone in her body thought it a great idea that she would unload this box (unbeknownced to her at the time it weighed more than she), drag it around to the back of the house, where she would then assemble the grill and surprise her better half. It was a grand plan, but the evil grill had other plans and was determined to thwart her every effort. As the fair wife attempted to pull the grill out of her van, the plastic strap surrounding the box broke in half , causing her momentum to propel her backwards onto the inclined driveway where she caught herself but not without serious damage to her wrist. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! laughed the evil grill as he still sat content and unmoved in the back of the van.

Thankfully, Candice was not home alone with her four children. Her Mother and Grandmother were there where they quickly grabbed a bag of ice, placed it on the crazily deformed wrist and sent her on to the hospital in the care of her grandmother. She was taken back quickly, where her husband was waiting for her and given excellent, expedited care as she was obviously in an incredible amount of pain.

Candice was given a wonderful drug called Dilaudid through her IV that took away every bit of her pain and made her forget all about the evil grill and his wrong doings. The doctor took some xrays and verified that Candice's wrist was indeed broken. In fact, both bones were horribly displaced and needed resetting before casting.

Etomidate, yet another fabulous drug, was given through Candice's IV successfully knocking her out long enough for the doctor to reset the bones and splint the wrist. When she came to, she had no recollection of the procedure or the pain involved and all was well, except for the large contraption of a splint she now wore.

Candice got to go home a few hours later where she soon discovered she could do...well, not much of anything with one operating hand. Her family pitched in to care for her and her children until a couple of days later when Candice got to see an orthopedic doctor who at least gave her the ability to use her fingers which had turned a nice purplish color.

Green seemed to go nicely with purple, so her splint received a new wrapping to at least make it a little prettier.

A couple of days later, the most fabulous father in all the land put together his own grill while Candice watched from a distance, still harboring much anger towards the evil grill.

Despite her mother's warnings, the youngest daughter, Maggie, didn't seem to be scared of the evil grill at all as she played in his box for quite a long time, having the grandest of times!

About a week and a half after the incident, Candice is doing well, except for the fact that having her elbow immobilized is driving her batty and causing her to go into extreme fits of psychosis. She is very hopeful that the new orthopedic doctor she will see will remove her current splint and replace it with a shorter, non elbow immobilizing cast, where she can begin to live happily ever after...and forever make the evil grill make her delicious food for as long as he lives.

THE END

Summer Break Begins!

Today was the first official day of summer break! We celebrated by going to play at the new playground at Shelby Farms. It is really neat and I can tell already we are going to have many more fun times over there! If you are in the Memphis area and haven't been, you should really go check it out. Here are a few tips:

1. Take lots and lots of sunscreen! It's already in the 90's here, so it's going to be a long, hot summer. There's not a ton of shade here yet. I am really excited to see this area in a few years and here's why-You can see a little of what I'm talking about in the first picture below, but there is a tunnel of sorts built that is silver and looks cage like. I wish I had gotten a good picture but hey, I was outnumbered 4 to 1 so you're lucky to have these few :) These tunnels have walkways that lead to each section of the playground. Along the outside of the "cage" there are newly planted vines that I am guessing are being trained to grow up and over the cage tunnels. All that greenery, fully grown, is going to make for a lot of shade which will be super nice!

2. Wear tennis shoes-most everything is on a serious incline and I tell you from experience today that flip flops, while stylish and completely wonderful summer attire, are not the best thing to wear here, unless you LIKE twisting your ankle :)

3. Bring a change of clothes-the sand and water area is quite the popular place to play but mark my words...YOU WILL LEAVE WITH WET, SANDY, DIRTY CHILDREN! The bathrooms are right next to the playground, so running in and having the option of changing into something more...well....clean for the car ride home is nice.

4. Bring a blanket or towel for sliding. In early spring and fall, the slides will be nice and cool, but as we learned today, when the sun is beating down on them, they are HOT!! OUCHY HOT!! Noah went down once and then wouldn't go anymore because they were so hot. Something to sit on while you fly down over and over again would be much more comfortable during these summer months.

5. Don't forget your water bottles! Hydrate Hydrate Hydrate so no one gets cranky and overheated :) This pointer I actually did today and I'm glad I remembered it.

This is where the water comes in. Everyone had to have a turn pumping the water! The water flows down wooden "tables" that connect until it empties into the sand (see Maggie below).

Maggie getting in on the sand action. I think I'm gonna have a beach lovin' girl!

Maggie is WALKING everywhere now. She really liked walking up and down this tunnel-probably because it was shady!

I think this was one of Noah's favorite things. He held onto the rope and walked down the incline...

...then he ran back up through the "monster toes". That's what he called these :) His imagination cracks me up sometimes! You can see one of the many slides in the background. Eli was the only one brave enough to keep sliding despite the searing metal.

There is so much more there to do that I just didn't get pictures of...remember? I was outnumbered 4 to 1 :) There's spider web rope walks, swings, a tree fort, and more! It was so much fun! The playground opens at 9 am and closes at 7pm I think so definitely find some time to go play this summer! Lots of fun to be had here!

Once we got home, we had lunch and then went outside and enjoyed some nice COLD popsicles.

Maggie Beth did NOT want to be left out of this!

I really didn't think she'd be into popsicles or hold onto them. Well, I was WRONG. I gave her most of my fudgesicle, and I'm not sure what I thought the bib was going to accomplish for me. She was covered in sweet, sticky chocolate!

After she finally finished the last bite, I just picked her up and plopped her in the tub where she was then stripped down and scrubbed clean...and I started yet another load of laundry-it's never ending with a family of 6! :)

As I finish up this blog post, the two little ones are snoozing (going on 2 hours now). I think our exciting funfilled morning wore them out! Neither one of them protested when I said it was naptime. And today was only the beginning. We have an entire summer of activites and vacations ahead of us and I am thrilled I get to enjoy it with these four wonderful little people!! I hope the start of your summer break has been just as great as ours!

Making it Fit

Lately I feel as though I'm treading water just to stay afloat. I'm struggling big time with sorting through what's important and what's not, how to make changes based on those conclusions, and then be able to live with them.

I am a person who likes commitment. I mean who doesn't? I like giving myself wholeheartedly to something and knowing that because I did, things turned out succesful or at least the way I wanted them to. This year my life has just "caught up" with me. I have 2 school age children, one preschool child and one infant. I am dabbling in three different stages of childhood all while trying to be and give my best as a wife, nurse, daughter, friend...etc, etc, etc. Point is-I'm failing, miserably. It's completely not possible. I can't give myself fully to the school age...or the preschool...or the infant. I can't wholeheartedly plunge into being a wife or a nurse or a daughter or a friend. I give what I can to everything and I come away at the end of the day feeling inadequate in all areas because I can't give my all to even one.

So where do I go? What do I do with those feelings? Is it just part of life? Our schedule is C-R-A-Z-Y!!! I added it up and I think I see my husband on average...24 hours a week. How do you build a thriving marriage on that?!?! He works 2 jobs during the week and is finishing up his doctoral degree. I work on the weekends so I can be home with our children during the week. This means that basically we are single parenting it-me during the week and him on the weekend. That can't be healthy for us...not to mention our children. I miss terribly being involved at church; having those connections and rejuvinating my soul weekly through corporate worship. Seven years now I've been at this and I'm not sure I can keep it up much longer.

It takes its toll.

Like everyone, we have an ever failing economy slapping us in the face daily. Gas prices are outrageous and we don't live near anything we participate in (school, church, work). We have chosen to place our children in a private school and while I honestly would not rather have them anywhere else (their school is amazing and I never question whether or not they are thriving)...at what point is the sacrifice greater than the reward? Or is it? Such hard questions that I just don't have an answer to right now.

So, my question is, are there other parents out there who are where I am? Are you struggling-mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically so much so that you feel completely lost in life? What are you doing about it? There is so much swarming in my head right now: knowledge I've hidden away from scripture, from people, from life experiences. I just don't know what to do with it though. I feel as though I'm at a crossroad completely and utterly dumbfounded as to where to go next. How to take all these pieces of my life and make them count. The road is getting bumpier and bumpier and the only thing I'm sure of is that I long for Heaven...for Christ's return...for all of my momentary troubles to dissappear.

For now...I am clinging to this:

Therefore do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are acheiving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

And hopefully soon, I can figure out where to put all the pieces of my crazy life so that they fit perfectly and create a life that counts and has complete purpose.

The Last "First"

It's official. My baby has turned the big ONE. We recently celebrated her first birthday party and being that it was the last one we were gonna celebrate in this household, I was a tad bit sentimental and therefore had LOTS of fun with it!

This was the invitation I picked out. Obviously this is not ours, as I figure it's probably not the smartest to post all our info for all the world to see :) You can personalize yours here at Tiny Prints.

This was our party table:

You like? I LOVED!!! We had all our family over for lunch, so we served turkey croissant sandwiches, fruits and veggies. I stuck with a color theme (pink and brown) as opposed to a character theme.

Remember the cupcake tower idea I gave you all here? Well, I rewrapped those boxes I saved and....VOILA!!!A perfectly pink and brown girly centerpiece to showcase your cupcakes!

I made my own cupcakes and while I won't say they were the most beautiful things I'd ever seen, these cupcake toppers drew in all the attention! I got them off etsy and you can get yours from Nicole here. Her store is called Party Treats and she does all kinds of fun toppers, banners, cupcake wrappers, etc. She will do a custom order just for you if you ask her!

She made me some toppers with an "M", some of these cute little birds, and some number 1 toppers-all in my pink and brown color scheme.

I got this idea from my co worker Sandra, and I loved how it turned out. All the kids in our family loved them too. I filled stemware with pink, brown and white sixlets (mainly because they were cheaper than M&M's). You can find them at any major party supply store. Then I bought some pretzel sticks, dipped them in melted pink chocolate and rolled them in chocolate sprinkles. Just lay them on some wax paper to dry and then stick them in the glass.

C-U-T-E!

This turned out to be one of my FAVS! Once again, I was clicking away through etsy and came across Heather who owns Chickabug. She custom makes these waterproof labels for any occasion. I thought since I was serving lunch, bottled water would be super easy as everyone could just grab their own. Her labels made the water even taste better!!! (ha ha-at least that's what my oldest daughter said) :) They WERE super cute! You can find her shop here.

Are you a fellow mom who has a bow on your girlie girl's head every moment of every day? Well, FYI:I got this one at.....HOBBY LOBBY!!!! Yep...you heard me right. I loved that it matched my color scheme (and her outfit) perfectly.

IS IT TIME FOR CAKE YET?!?!?!

Oh....she so has me wrapped :/

She appeared to be mesmerized by the fire :)

She didn't seem to be in the mood to get messy, but she sure loved her ice cream!

But...what good is a first birthday part without some really messy cake photos?

Portrait Innovations. They made my day when we took these!

What? Don't I look sweet all covered in yummy cakey goodness???