Children are a gift from God

and so is my husband behind the pillow:)

This is our Christmas family photo. It's amazing that both boys and Ryan and I are smiling all at the same time! It sure helped having a friend dancing with a fish puppet behind the camera!
Merry Christmas!

A Post for Tonight

I feel like I'm in such a weird place in life right now. Figuring out what it's like to be living in my old body again, minus a few reminders of pregnancies past. I don't need to eat as much any more so I'm figuring out what is normal food intake now. Plus, I have had so many physical changes in the past 4 years, with getting married, children and big moves, I feel like I'm still trying to figure out life. I don't know if this makes any sense...I feel so weird at times, can't really explain myself to anyone, other than God's teaching me things, I'm slowly learning, slowly whatever else is happening...I have had lots of emotional lows, and some ups, but mostly lows, that I often don't talk to anyone about it, just honest when asked that I have struggles and need prayer. ANyways, so if nothing else, you could pray for me. Just that God would continue to draw me nearer to himself, I want to be closer to Jesus so that no matter what I go through I won't sink because of Him. I just put motions to Natalie Grant's song "held" and after listening to it over and over and over again I really got the message and it was so good. No matter what happens, the promise he's given us is that we'd be held.

I'm back

It's hard to keep up with blogging, and other blogs. I seem to go in spurts. I need to just focus on a few blogs and that's it. I've gotten into myspace a little bit, mostly because my brother lives on the other side of the world for certain reasons serving our country and I wanted to have better connectionwith him. It's only helped a little. And I feel that my time is so limited when I get on the computer I just gave up on blogging altogether. But what do I do when I'm on?? Well since we live in the middle of no where we've done a lot of online shopping from the comforts of home sending gifts to family on the mainland. Strangest holiday season so far. Not really purchasing too many gifts from stores, but it's good to not deal with the crowds and feel overwhelmed by all the commercialism. And no matter what you still end up spending too much time just looking before you actually decide on something...anyways, it's late and I should be in bed since I've been up since 4:45 am but I'm running on adrenaline right now. I helped put together a bridal shower and we had the party tonight and there was so much involved in getting it together with the food prep and all of that other stuff. I'm tired, but it was good and I think the bride was very blessed by it all.
Elijah is now finally weaned at 16 months of age. It happened naturally, it was a good time, and maybe I'll write more about it, we'll see. It's so strange for me to not be pregnant or nursing and to just be me and have my boys. I feel so blessed to have this time, and Lord willing it will still be at least a while longer before we have another one. I really would love to have at least one child potty trained before we have a third. And I can't wait to enjoy a glass of wine:) Tomorrow night will be the special time:) Kendal Jackson Riesling. Good stuff:) Moses just learned how to say his name a few weeks back. Now he refers to himself in the 3rd person a lot of time. "Mo-es help, Mo-es sit" it's sooooooo cute!!

Vision Forum Giveaway

Kim at Life in a Shoe is sponsoring another Vision Forum giveaway. Three winners will receive up to $250 each in Vision Forum products. Check it out at http://inashoe.com/?p=1853 and post a link to your own wishlist on your blog to be entered in the drawing.

Here’s my wishlist:

Thoughts for Young Men $8.00 p. 21

The Wise Woman’s Guide to Blessing Her Husband’s Vision $16.00 p. 25

Why Satan Wants Your Firstborn and What to Do About It $10.00 p. 27

Be Fruitful and Multiply $15.00 p. 31

Rebuilding a Culture of Virtuous Boyhood $10.00 p. 90

Beloved Bride; the Letters of Stonewall Jackson to his Wife $15.00 p. 33

Verses of Virture $20.00 p.33

Poems for Patriarchs $20.00 p. 33

Bible Lessons for Manhood from the Battlefield of My Father's Youth $25.00 p.19

A Church in the House $12.00 p. 21

How to be a Lady $14. p.77
Continental Soldier's Field Drum $22.00 p.87

Fun Projects for you and the kids $15 p. 98

Four Horse Set $16 p.78

Teach Them to Your Children $17.00 p. 80

Communion Bread (unintentionally)

Ever forget to add yeast to your homemade bread? This is a picture of some bread I made the other day in our bread maker, but I forgot to add the yeast! Ugh, so it was just like flat bread that you get for communion at some churches. ANyways, I tried using it for things such as PBand J, but it was hard to swallow. We got through about half the loaf and had to toss it. It just wasn't worth it.

Random thoughts

Today was a long day. My husband had to get up at 4:30 am because our church did a Krispy Kreme fundraiser today and since there are no Krispy Kreme stores on the our Island, they had to fly them over from a neighbor island. So they picked them up at the air port and then delivered them to the designated sites for the sale. He has been gone all day and it's 9pm now. They didn't sell them all today so they took the left over boxes (about 400) to a festival down town and were going to try and sell the rest at half price. Aye me...I hope that they are able to sell most of them if not all of them. So I just hung out at home with the boys all day today. It rained alot today but it was clear for a little while so I got to get the boys out for a walk during the morning. We have pretty good hill down to the ocean by our house which makes the walk back treacherous, only because I am pushing a double stroller that has two boys in it that together weigh around 50 pounds, and the stroller is pretty sturdy to begin with. I come home sticky sweaty every time. It's a good workout pushing them around. Moses loves tractors and anything big and yellow, they are called "datch," that is his word for tractor. So there is often construction work around our neighborhood so we often have datches around so we go and visit them. He always waves hi and bye and likes to touch them. He is so cute. He just turned two yesterday. We had a fun little celebration for him. One family came over from church. They have two kids, a boy 10 and a girl 8 who really like Moses and they enjoyed playing in the big cardboard fort that my husband made. So, my son Moses is growing tall...they really do sprout up before your very eyes. He is really starting to talk alot more; he is getting quite chatty. So how do you teach your child to not talk with food in their mouth when you have been encouraging them to talk for so long?? That is my present question.
Have I mentioned here on my blog that our family is living with another family? We share one house and we've been here for 6 months and have 6 months left on our lease. It's really a different experience sharing a home with another couple. They've been married almost 2 years(they also have a one year old girl) and we just had our 3rd anniversary, so it is good that neither of us couples are newlyweds. Ha ha...anyways, I've never met anyone else that has lived with another family, but overall, it's been good. It's also been a blessing since moving to a new place and culture is so hard, it's been helpful to learn things from them and to have the daily fellowship, where being in a new place and not knowing anyone you can feel isolated really easily.
.....now I've hit a wall...I'm tired and I should go to bed soon. I woke up at 4:30am too, didn't really fall back asleep until 5 or sometime after, then Elijah awoke at 5:45am to nurse then he went back to sleep and then Moses woke up at 6:15am.