Showered with Blessings

Wednesday we were showered with many blessings! Chad's school, The Connection School, hosted a baby shower for us. In addition to a wonderful lunch, a plethora of cards (full of money and gift cards) and gifts for Jude and Shiloh, I was privileged to see and partake of a wonderful community.

We visited with the elementary students and then they prayed blessings over us and  I almost cried several times as they were praying. You see there is something so special and wonderful about hearing children grades K-5 voicing their requests to God. They don't use big fancy words (ok one did but he is obviously a genuis child) and try to make their prayers sound respectable - they just ask for what they want and that is so refreshing.

It made me think of the story I was reading Jude from his Bible (The Jesus Storybook Bible!) just the other morning. It was about Jesus and the Children. I love how this Bible draws connections - it is awesome - go and buy it now if you have not! Anyway the story starts with the Jesus' Disciples arguing over who is the greatest and how they had forgotten that God's love is a gift and there is nothing you can do to earn it. But then it tells of how the children just wanted to be with Jesus and it says, "You see, children loved Jesus, and they knew they didn't need to do anything special for Jesus to love them. All they needed to do was to run into his arms." Then Jesus told his Disciples, "No matter how big you grow, never grow up so much that you lose your child's heart: full of trust in God. Be like these children. They are the most important in my kingdom."

What a great reminder from the elementary students of what it looks like to have a child's heart. I think it was the biggest blessing of the shower!

 

A Sinister Bug, Spring Blossoms and Menchie's!

We have survived an invasion of a very nasty stomach bug. Grrr. It started with Jude and Shiloh throwing up around midnight on Friday. We were convinced it was food poisoning from a restaurant that we have gotten sick from before but by the end we pretty knew it was a sinister bug. The boys seemed to recover by Friday morning and we thought la de da we are done with that. But they threw up again in the after noon. Boo. Saturday night I caught the lucky bug and spent the night feeling just horrible and not far from the bathroom :( Chad caught it on Sunday night. So now it has made its rounds. We are all much recovered I am happy to say.

We cleaned and disinfected bathrooms today and we washed all the sheets and blankets so our house should be de-contaminated!

In other news (not that it has been very exciting around here with all the sick people laying around) our plum tree that we planted three years ago has blooms! It has never had blooms before. I am thrilled. They are so cute! Welcome Spring Time!

Cute bloom! 

We also went to Menchie's tonight to celebrate our return to health. Shiloh thought he should share his sticker with baby Asher.

We are feeling much better!

Kids say the darndest things...

One of the greatest things about little kids are the funny things they say. Here are some of Jude's best lately:

"I scooted." -which is to say he farted. Chad dislikes the use of fart because it is not proper, as if that body function is proper by any other name, and is trying to get Jude to say "toot." I don't have a problem with fart but whatever.

"Mommy your tummy is huge." -hmmm yes thank you.

"The green ones make you fat." -so I had mentioned my dad (to my shame) paid for my girl scout cookies the other day and in an attempt to not feel like a 12 year old free loader I offered him some thin mints his favorite. But he turned them down and told Jude they would make him fat. So now Jude won't touch the cookies in the green box. I wonder what else I can keep him out of?

"When we went to Canada we saw the cows and rode the four wheelers and the blues ones tires popped." -this one had me really confused because Jude has never been to Canada. But then I realized he meant Crockett, TX. Canada, Crockett really not much different they are both north of Houston.

What is not so funny is how quickly and early kids learn to use words to hurt people. The other day Jude threw a major tantrum (who on earth could he have inherited that from...). Anyway it lasted over 40 min and involved time out, spanking, and a mommy that was in need of her own repentance and forgiveness by the end (parenting is definitely not easy and a good way for God to do some work on the parent). Needless to say I got angry, really angry but then with just a few words shouted at me from my sweet, loving (ok not at the time, he was a little fiend, kicking and hitting me, running away from me, etc.) little three year old I felt defeated and wanted to quit, give up and let him win (though if you know me I pretty much never quit and I usually win).

"I don't love you."

"Go away."

"I hate you."

Man, how does a three year old know how to hurt you with words. Well I was a little surprised at how much it did hurt. Especially since I know he doesn't really mean it and that it is not true. Also he was pretty much demon possessed at the time. But hurt it did. Words are like that. Words can wound and cut deep into you. And once you release those words you can't take them back. Sometimes it is through carelessness but often we use words to intentionally wound others. I am reminded that the book of James tell us that we should not use our words one minute to praise God and the next to curse people, people who are in fact made in the likeness of God.

Anyway thanks to Jude I have a new appreciation for the power of words.

"Words have power in matters of life and death and those who love them will savor their fruit." - Proverbs 18:21 (The Voice Translation)

Zoo Babies!

Yesterday was President's Day and even though we had some bad weather days here in Houston Chad still got the day off! We decided to enjoy the beautiful spring like weather, seriously it was sunny with a high of 75 (since you took my heavy heart and made it light...Relient K anyone?), and we went to the zoo. It is exciting times for the Houston Zoo because in three months times they have had 4 new baby animals born!

First we went to see the monkeys. Shiloh likes the monkey forest because he gets to walk pretty much the entire time since it is a trail and he can't disappear from my line of view (mostly). There are two new baby monkeys. Neither of which I got a picture of. The first was a Safika, the little white and black monkeys in the movie Madagascar. He was very cute all snuggled up in his mommy's arms. We didn't get to see the baby De Brazza's Guenon because it was not out in the exhibit. This was a surprise baby at the zoo. They had no idea the mommy was pregnant, though I am sure the mommy knew she was pregnant, I mean pregnancy is very apparent to me :)

"Ehhhh?" Which is Shiloh's was of saying look Jude. Not at the monkeys of course, only a bird, which we see plenty of at home.

Sweet brothers.

After the monkeys we had lunch and then if was off to see the giraffes. I love the giraffes. They are so pretty. It's also nice they are so big because then Shiloh knows what he is looking at. There is a new baby giraffe.

See the baby sitting there. This was the most I could zoom my camera. It was a very cute baby!

Looking at the Chimpanzees.

We saved the biggest and newest for last. Just this month a baby elephant was born. He is so cute. And little compared to the other elephants but he was born at a whopping 385 pounds. Now that is a big baby! I'm sure glad I don't have to have a baby that big. Also if I was feeling a bit inpatient and sorry for how long I've been pregnant I only need to remind myself that at least it hasn't been 2 years like an elephant. How horrible!

Little baby elephant!

There were two young boy elephants playing in the elephant pond. Pushing and shoving and dunking each other...it reminded me of two young boys who live in my house...

Snacks after the zoo!

Lots of walking made us thirsty.

You know it was a successful trip when both are out cold before you hit the highway!

Celebrations!

I'm a little late but whatever. Last week we had a little Valentine's Day Celebration for Jude and his cousin Haylyn at my Granny's house. In preparation:

Jude made animal valentine's and beaded hearts on Wednesday. My favorite was the fox and I tried to convince Jude to give it to me but he chose to give it to Granny. Jude gave the elephant to Haylyn, the penguin to Mimi, the turtle to Daddy and the lion to Jude...no card for mommy...

On Thursday we had a little party at Granny's house, which was mainly eating lunch and Jude, Haylyn and Shiloh playing.

Haylyn and Jude made cookies and decorated them. Haylyn simply poured sprinkles in a huge mound and tried to eat them. When I intervened she was not to pleased.

Our little party at Granny's was great because Jude and Haylyn love playing together!

Friday was spent at the chiropractor and then running errands and buying gifts and cupcakes (from Gigi's - so yummy). 

Jude had received some valentine money from Granny so he bought with his own money his first remote control truck. He obviously loves it!

Friday night we had homemade hamburgers and sweet potato fries then we watch Toy Story as a family. No sappy love stories here as we are a house full of boys.

The celebrations continued on into Saturday as we celebrated Chad's 28th birthday! I asked Chad if he felt older and he responded, "not as old as you." Rude. But it was his birthday so I refrained from kicking him in the face. And in case you are wondering yes and almost 37 weeks pregnant I could still kick you in the face.

Batman joined us for lunch making it very special.

Bike ride to the park.

Climbing.

Crawling through.

More climbing.

  

Batman on his bike.

It was a very nice day and weekend. And I will leave you with a super cute video of Shiloh on the slide.

He loves me, He loves me not, He Loves ME!

Do you ever get the feeling that maybe just maybe God doesn't really love you? Like you are playing some game of he loves me, he loves me not and you are just hoping that you end up on the petal that says he loves me. Well if you do then you are definitely not alone. This last month I realized that deep down in the core of my being I was questioning the love God has for me. Silly right? I mean I know in my head that he does. In fact I can quote and find a million verses (well if I could count to a million, or if there are even that many verses) in the Bible that tell me so. And there is a song, so obviously God must love me.

So it started innocent enough. A slight hiccup in my health/pregnancy (at least I thought so at the time, turns out it is not a big deal and shouldn't cause all the problems I immediately imagined, in fact it should be quite easily dealt with after Asher is born). In the midst of my fear I kept thinking I should ask God to heal me. Pause. No. Move on to next thought. And then I began to ponder why didn't I want to ask God to heal me? I pray for other people all the time. With sincere expectation that God will heal them so why not me? But every time I got close to praying for God to heal me I would move on to the next thought.

I tried to move on and just think that as soon as I have more information and know what I'm dealing with then I can freak out if I need to and I tried to shove my fear under the rug so to speak. And it was working to some degree.

Then I was reading Jude's new bible to him.

[Go buy this now! It is hands down the BEST children's bible I have come across. I love it! And it is only $10 and 2 days away when you purchase from Amazon (if you have prime).]

As I was saying I was reading to Jude the story of the fall, where Adam and Eve eat from the fruit that God had told them not to. The title for the story was "The Terrible Lie." This children's bible hit it on the nail. Eve believed a terrible lie. The heart of the lie: God doesn't really love me and is withholding something from me.

And I realized I have been falling for the same lie. That somehow God may not love me. That's why I didn't want to pray for healing because if I wasn't immediately healed maybe God doesn't really love me. Silly I know. Because the truth is God loves me. And the story of the bible is how God loves us and how we believed a lie and now we have to struggle against that lie constantly. Jesus came as God planned to rescue us from that lie and to show us that He does love us. He loves us so much that he died for us so that we could be restored to God and not doubt his love. Anyway I'm tired of the he loves me, he loves me not game and I choose not to believe that terrible lie. Instead I will constantly allow the truth to reign in me. HE LOVES ME!

That ship has sailed...

So I keep putting off writing a new blog because I really wanted to share some Christmas pictures and Cayman Island pictures however I cannot access either of these photo albums on my computer :(

So I will move on and you will just miss out on the great present opening of Christmas morning, first bike ride, etc. Also sorry but no wonderful retelling in pictures the shell and trash tree Jude planted on the beach that he watered every day to see it grow up to maturity with shells blooming the day we we left, or the adventures of lobster hunting and bench building. Oh well such is life. It is time to move on. That ship has sailed my friends!

Instead here are some pictures of what we did in January and the very beginning of this month!

Jude can ride his big boy bike like a pro. I don't have to make an effort at working out during my pregnancy anymore. Just trying to keep pace with him is all the exercise I need.

Shiloh is such a big boy. He has to be just like his brother. Except he constantly wants to put on and take off his helmet.

The neighbor girls across the street gave Jude and Shiloh this awesome John Deere power wheels. The boys absolutely love their "tractor". Also because the girls are so sweet I bought girl scout cookies from them (even though we don't eat girl scout cookies anymore but I had to help them out after they were so generous). Side note on the cookies when they delivered them I couldn't find my checkbook and I had to bum $12 off my dad. A little lame at 28 to be asking your dad for cash...

Shiloh's first haircut. Would have been better if he hadn't had the hiccups...

Jude discovered the joy of climbing trees. Proud mama of a rough and tough boy :)

Happy boy after drinking yummy hot chocolate!

Just like daddy. Minus pants. 

Fixing his new kitchen.

Washing his hands after a job well done.

 

Unexpected "snow"

Jude was very excited. Somebody get this boy some real snow. Also to parents who live where it really snows kudos to you because Jude drove me crazy with the coat on, shoes on, gloves on. Outside for 5 min. Come in take all off. Leave everywhere. Repeat. Also poor guy couldn't understand why daddy went to work that day since it actually snowed.

Finally I give you mud boys. The boys love the mud and if there is any to be found they will cover themselves head to toe.