Thankfulness

Today I was texting my sister and I realized that I am not thankful nearly enough for all Christ has done, or provided, or given up for me.  SO I decided that I will start being thankful every day for October and November and see if I can make it to the end of the year.
Thankfulness day 1: I am thankful that Joel has a job and that enables me to stay home with my kiddos.

Dedication

Tomorrow will mark the 3rd time we will stand up on our church stage and dedicate this third child to our Saviour.  I keep thinking about how fast time has gone since we dedicated Lydia.  Now God has blessed us with 3 wonderful kids each with a different personality but each special in their own ways. I wish that we had time to share the journey we have had with Clay.  So I will share it again on here.  God has created each one of our kiddos with specific things to teach us about our God and his Mercy.  God showed us that trusting him and he can make beautiful things out of the dust.  Clay has been a great ride and a great show of God's mercy.  So I am thankful once again to dedicate one more miracle back to God.

No more wildman!

Clay has been sick for about 2 months now.  Just one virus after another it seems and part of the one virus he has had was goopie eyes.  As you all know his hair was crazy long and it was crazy full of colics.  The goopie eyes made it so his hair would get stuck in his eyes.  Well we both had enough of that, so off to Great Clips it was.  He freaked out, cried and tried to get out of the positions we put him in.  One lollipop and 3 combs later we finally were finished.  Enjoy the before and after pictures.

 Before

After!

Date night with Lydia

I (Michelle) had the opportunity to take Lydia on a date just the 2 of us this past week.  Chick fila put on a girls night out for Mothers and Daughters  and I signed up so Lydia and I could go.  Joel came home and I gave him all the instructions for the boys and off we went.  Chick fila was decorated in pink and purple.  We walked in the door and they had a very nice young man greeter told us to order are food assigned us a table and off we went.  When we got to the table they had these secret boxes and in side of these boxes were ways to start communication with mothers and daughters.  We had a free breakfast, seeds to plant together, matching hair ties, paper to leave secret notes for each other, and Lydia's favorite a free ride in a limo.  Thats right a LIMO!!! I have never ridden in a limo so this was perfect for us.  After asking Lydia some questions like if she could dye her hair purple or pink for a year what would it be?  Can you guess what color she chose?  Another question was How many times you can tell each other you love one another in 10 seconds.  It was SUPER fun.  So after we ate we got in the limo for our free ride and she thought it was the best thing.  She said, "Mommy, can we buy one of these instead of our van?"  It's soooo amazing to have this little girl in my life.

Happy Resurrection Day

What a whirlwind of a weekend. The best part of the weekend is that Our God is ALIVE and we get to share this news with our kids. Thursday, Joel called me at 5, which is when he gets off of work.  He told me that his car wouldn’t start. Ok a little bit of bad timing since we are saving up to buy a van.  So I prayed that God would provide for us the money to fix Joel’s car.

He had Good Friday off so we decided to try to figure out what was wrong with our hot water heater. It turns out the hot water heater was dying. So we went out looking for the part to fix it. When you buy a house that is now 14 years old your hot water heater will eventually give out. So we needed to replace the hot water heater. Joel worked very hard this weekend to get us hot water.

Friday night Clay was awake almost the entire night crying, crying, crying. We were super tired going into Saturday and we spent some time with our small group to then come home and finish hot water heater stuff. Then to go spend time with our good friends Saturday night. We came home Saturday night and went to bed only to be woken up by more crying, crying, crying from our little wild man.

Sunday I worked all 3 services in our children’s ministry, but I got to go to the service where our pastor shared the death, and the resurrection of our ALIVE SAVIOR. Death defeated death what a great testimony of our God. We came home after 3rd service with our little guy who continued to cry, cry, cry.

I decided to call our pediatrician to ask what in the world to do for him. I took him to Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati. After a long, tiring 4 hours they told me he had double ear infections and one of his ear drums was close to bursting. He hadn’t eaten or drank anything for a little over 12 hours so after working hard trying to get him to drink something we got to come home.

So now I am gazing on the fact that my hope is built on nothing less than a God who is ALIVE and helping us through these hard times.

This is a picture of our poor sick little guy after our time at Children’s today.

Happy Birthday Hubby

So my title isn't very creative, but what I think is funny is how when I post to this blog it shows up as if Joel wrote it.  So it looks like Joel is bragging on himself.  I want to use our blog to brag on him since tomorrow is his birthday.  When I went to college I swore I was there only to get my degree.  I had no intentions of getting married.  Boy, did God have different plans for me.  I met and fell head over heels in love with my hubby, even though at the time I swore I would never marry him.  Fast forward to today.  On the eve of his birthday I have been thinking about all the things I am grateful for concerning him.
   He is an amazing example of a Godly husband and Father to me and our kiddos.
   He is a very selfless guy.  He often asks me how he can help me or what he can do around the house that would be most helpful.
   He works incredibly hard to provide for us.
   He has so much compassion for all off us.

   These are just a few of the many things I am thankful for.  One of my favorite things about Joel is how if you are struggling with anything he shows mercy to them more than I could have ever imagined and that mercy spills over in to patience and love.  What a big blessing God gave to me when we met 10 years ago.  I have learned so much about God in the 8 years we have been married.  I always use to say hey I have a twin I am used to living with someone all the time.  I was so wrong being married is much different than having a twin sister.  Happy birthday Hubby!

Outer Banks

This past nine days we have spent at the outer banks at a house called Ha Sea Enda. It was a blast. We got there on Thursday of last week and we were prepared to spend 9 days with 16 people total.

My dad had to quickly introduce us to the pool table/ping pong table, which dad eventually fixed during the week. See one thing about my dad is he can't sit still idly by and do nothing when there is stuff to fix. So we quickly made a list of stuff he started to fix and the first one was the pool table.

Then on to Friday night when I made my first meal, white chicken chili. My good friend Jessica had made this amazing meal for us that I wanted to replicate. I went to the store, bought what I needed, and put it all together in the crock pot and boy did it ever smell so good.  Time for dinner and I served it up and Joel was setting it on the table and he dripped a spot on to his finger which he licked off as he was coming over to me and said is it supposed to have a bite? To which I responded no and tasted it. Boy, it set my mouth on fire and I said make sure you put sour cream in it. Yvette's family all loved it but the rest of us could barely eat it. Turns out that I put jalapeño peppers in it instead of chili peppers. So it became a running joke to make sure Michelle isn't cooking or we will definitely lose some weight this week.

We mostly just rested for the first couple of days to recoup from the drive down. Fourteen hours in a car was a bit much. Melinda came down on Friday and we went to the aquarium on Sunday and it wasn't big, but it was fun to break out and do something. Each night it seemed like a ping pong, pool table or air hockey game was going. Lydia and Seth loved running around with their cousins and there seemed to never be a quiet moment until they all eventually crashed.

Sleeping was somewhat of a challenge but it all worked out in the end. We all took a drive down the beach to try to see the wild horses but we didn't see any. But we enjoyed some waves and cold water.

My dad discovered a new game called Catch Phrase Scrabble. He was so fun to play with. Between his descriptions of the words/phrases and his body movements we laughed a few pounds off. Clay really loved to see Papa first thing in the morning, dad could always get a good smile or coos out of him.  Lydia, Seth, and Chloe enjoyed morning time cuddles with Aunt Yvette and afternoon cuddles with Mimi.

It was cold and windy most days but we made the most of it. Allyson and Andrew were mega helps to us with the younger kids. We got to play games a lot because they kept their eyes on the kiddos. Adam and Alex spent their time playing hide and seek, dolls and doctors with their 3 younger cousins sometimes playing mediator between the three. I always had a good relationship with my cousin Stacey. Lydia and Chloe are the same age apart that we are and so I am happy for their relationship and how much fun they had together since Lydia is surrounded by mostly boys.

We are looking forward to the next time we can celebrate being together and being thankful for the family God has blessed us with.