Micah's Drinking Problem

Micah is so cute these days and we are fully enjoying him. He gets a lot of attention. I hope that's a good thing. Some people think that when you have a large family, then the more kids you have, the less attention they will get. You can't possibly spread yourself out equally among them all, right? I say, the more you have, the more attention is paid to each one because there are more people in the family to spend time with. They are never alone but always with someone. We don't have TV so we spend our evenings playing together and mostly laughing at Micah.

I love so many things about him. I really hope I remember all of this when he is older so that I can tell him what he was like as a toddler. My older children love hearing about themselves when they were younger. Here are 10 new things that I love about Micah:

1. I love the way he smiles and runs in place when the music begins.

2. I love it when he claps after a hymn is sung at church

3. It is absolutely adorable when he raises his hands during worship just like those he sees around him worshiping.

4. I love it when he folds his hands to pray after he has already started eating. We all finally sit down at the table to say grace, so he drops his spoon and folds his hands too. But he usually sneaks food during the prayer time.

5. I love it when he says "Oh!" with great inflection in his voice.

6. He has just started blowing kisses to us which is way cute. He kisses his hand and then throws it out in the air.

7. I love it when he sits on the step of our sunken living room and pats the spot next to him signaling that he wants me to sit next to him.

8. I love it that he sits and reads books, babbling off and on, just as if he is reading. Usually the book is upside down but he doesn't care.

9. I love it when he plays peek-a-boo by covering his eyes with his hands and then peeking through his fingers.

10. I love it when he coughs and sputters when taking a drink of water with no lid and then goes back for more!

Micah, Art, and Sacrificing

I know this is a weird title but I have 3 things to share that have nothing to do with each other. My brother titles his e-mails this way sometimes. A random list of topics, makes others curious what you are talking about. So I decided to try it. Curious?

First I wanted to share these few recent pictures of Micah. They came out good and show how he is changing. He is 18 months now and went through a stage where he liked to wear hats. He was toddling around the kitchen one afternoon barefoot, with his winter hat on, holding this football. I grabbed my camera!

These next few pictures are a few of Olivia's art work. This one on top is the latest one she has been working on in her art class. They are learning how to use charcoal and deal with lighting and shading. She loves to use charcoal and has been experimenting with it outside of class too.

Don't almost all girls love horses?

Olivia likes to draw pictures of animals for friend's as gifts. This is the elephant she drew for a friend's birthday. She framed it and gave it to her. Her drawing has improved so much since she started art lessons. It's fun to watch and see so much progress with practice and training. She is entering an art contest for fun. We'll see if she wins?

I've been learning and process so much these past few weeks. Do you ever feel like God is showing you things. . . here . . . and there. . . but it's hard to figure out how they relate? My life is busy with a large household to run and I don't get large chunks of time to sit and think or even sit and talk to others about what going through my mind. It takes time to merge all these teachings, thoughts, and feelings into one subject. It must be a part of my personality that says I need to organize my thoughts. Otherwise they feel chaotic inside and I can't keep track of them! Whenever God turns the light on a subject and then another, there is usually a theme. I think I figured out the theme well enough to put something on paper! You guessed it. . . it's sacrifice.

Without writing too much and boring you with too many details, I'll try to get right to the point. What is the Christian life without sacrifice? Is there not a narrow road and a broad road that Christ speaks about in the Bible? The broad road leads to destruction but the narrow road to life! The size of the road signifies the difficulty of it. It's not easy to live on the narrow road for it involves sacrifices but this is where we find LIFE! The broad road might be easier but did you notice the end of it? Destruction.

This week a pastor came to Gospel for Asia's headquarters to visit. He flew in from California for a day and was asked to share with the staff. Maybe you know of him? Francis Chan is his name and he pastors a large church in Simi Valley. God really spoke through him. It was the kind of sharing that makes time fly too fast. You are soaking it up and before you know it, his hour is up and you are left wanting to hear more. Anyway, he shared about these two roads and it really got me thinking. He shared that sometimes he gets accused of being too radical. How can you be too radical for Jesus? Some Christians believe that there is another road, a middle road between the narrow and broad. You live a nice life, going to church and taking in all the benefits of being an American but no sacrificing is happening.

This caused me to think about my own life. God is asking me to sacrifice. I cringe when I think of that word and yet when I have the right perspective on it, it's music to my ears! There is LIFE in the very sacrifices made and that, my friend, is beautiful. What are the sacrifices that I'm referring to? Time, money, dreams. Right now I'm thinking through daily sacrifices. How I spend my time. My schedule is mine, right? Not really. If I'm going to walk in the good works that God has prepared beforehand for me (Eph. 2) then I need to be ready to change my plans.

I'm reading a book called Open Heart, Open Home by Karen Mains. It's about Biblical Hospitality. I'll end this with a quote from her book and then a prayer:

"What a sin it is that many Christians know so little about this broken world. They have isolated themselves from the starvation of nations, turned their backs on battered and abandoned babies. Little do they care that children grow without a gentle touch, that old men haunt park benches dying from loneliness rather than age. This world, to many believers, is one large, silent scream."

O God, help us to hear, to hear those cries without fear for ourselves, and with compassion for those who mourn. Help us to listen to those in need, without thought for our own material treasures. Help us to seek to be like Christ, upon whom was the Spirit of the Lord!

Girly Fun!

Fingers, toes, face and hair

bring a brush and comfortable wear

You can relax and soak your toes

chat with friends and eat Rolos!

Julia's 10th birthday we will celebrate

it starts at two so don't be late

Come on January 24th

where we will proceed henceforth!

This was Julia's birthday invitation message. One of the best party's I've ever thrown. Thanks to a friend on Facebook for providing the idea, we had a Spa day for Julia and her 6 girlfriends.

These were my helpers for the afternoon and we couldn't have pulled off facials, pedicures and hair-do's for all without them!

Hope and Grace are sisters. They are friends with Olivia from our church. I'm not sure who had more fun, Julia and her friends or my helpers and I!

A few of the guests, Harmony, Makayla, and Alia waiting for the party to begin. Actually they were being entertained by the dancing in the picture below!

No one really needs to entertain 10 year old girls. They are the perfect party guests because you don't have to worry about a lull in conversation or providing activities for every moment they are there. They'll come up with their own! We had some beautiful classical music playing and so it was just natural to start dancing, right!

So the party progressed with facials . . .

Hair-do's. . .

Soaking feet and sipping smoothies together.

Julia had to go first since she was the birthday girl. They were all a little apprehensive about the facial part and putting cucumbers on their eyes. Julia just giggled and everyone laughed with her. At one point she said, "Do I look good with green eyes?" Ha Ha!

Doesn't she look relaxed!

These pictures still make me laugh!

Ahhhh . . . Don't you want to make an appointment at the Lodi Spa?

Makayla would not sit back and relax. First of all she was too short to reach the bucket of suds and her cucumbers kept falling off. She wasn't my best client but was a good sport anyway. She talked the whole time and really cracked me up!

The snack table makes me hungry!

Notice Julia's and Lauren's hair-do's. Very nice!

Gift time!

Julia has been waiting to take ballet lessons for a few months now. For her gift this year, I registered her for lessons. One of her friends gave her a necklace with a ballerina slipper charm and some pretty hair scarves.

Beautiful, pampered feet!

All of Julia's girlfriends together. They all got along wonderfully even though some had never met.

I couldn't have wished for a better party with a more pleasant group of girls. I love this age with all their excitement and happiness. Parties for 10 year olds are much more enjoyable than parties for 2 yr olds!

Happy Birthday Julia! We love you!

A White Christmas Morning!

Christmas and kids just go together. Don't you think? The anticipation for the receiver of the gift is too much sometimes, but also the gift giver is equally excited to give the gift! My children, now that they are older, like to drag Christmas out because they love the surprise factor of it all.

Micah's first Christmas was last year but he was only 4 months old! This year at 16 months he could really get into it. I'm not sure he understood what we were doing but he went along with it no problem!

It finally stopped snowing on Christmas Eve around 9:00 p.m. so it froze and stayed all night long. This is what we woke up to! A White Christmas! A first for Texas since 80 years ago!

Looking down our street.

The backyard does not get as much sun so it stuck around much longer.

I won't bore you with all of us discovering our stockings but Micah was too cute to pass up.

He got a few toys and a banana in his stocking. I guess he wasn't impressed because he kept trying to steal all of the chocolate that came out of other people's stockings! Here he had finally gotten away and ran to a corner to check it out. He was hoping that I wasn't looking but of course, I see everything!

Rolos were the prized possession.

No, don't take my picture!

While I made breakfast the kids went out to play in the snow.

What a wonderful gift from God to have snow on Christmas morning!

It has been so long since I've heard and felt the crunch of snow beneath my shoes! This is Micah discovering the powdery white stuff!

The boy's main goal was to have a snow ball fight.

The girl's wanted to build a snow man.

Julia is having a good time!

She looks so savvy in her red jacket!

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Snowman. We actually named them after friend's who announced their engagement on Christmas, Nathan and Susanna.

Eating snow is a must . . .

But it's really cold!

This year the kids drew names out of a hat of who they needed to buy for. No one knew who had who until Christmas morning. This was one of the best surprises of all!

I took each of them shopping for their person and then out for a treat. It was great fun. AJ had Olivia and he bought her this drawing book and a necklace.

Olivia drew Julia's name and she bought her fuzzy slipper socks, gloves and some of her favorite crackers.

Reece drew AJ and he bought him two science kits.

Julia drew Reece's name. She bought him a craft to paint.

I've finally learned that toddlers don't need a lot of toys to be happy. All they do is clutter up the house while the child goes and unloads the tupperware drawer in the kitchen! I did want to give Micah something new for Christmas so we got him this phone. He loves to push buttons and hear music. He always wants to play with our "real" phone which is off limits, so we got him one of his own.

Hello? Hello?

This is a hammy down (not sure if that is spelled correctly) toy. I drug this out of the shed and wrapped it up for Micah. All of my children have played with this at his age so I figured it was time to get it out. It comes with 3 balls and it's your basic castle maze. Kids this age love to watch the balls drop down the different shoots and roll out the bottom.

Where did that ball go? Here it comes!

More importantly than the gifts, candy and snow, is the reason we celebrate. Jesus came to earth, born as a baby, to redeem his people from their sins. With a forgiven heart, we can live in peace, knowing our Savior's love and good plans He has for us.

May we live with a thankful spirit and reflect that joy to those around us. He is the reason for the season!