A Time For Every Season....

Lately Drew has been enjoying praying aloud. Tonight his sweet prayer went like this, "Thank you Jesus For my Mommy & Daddy And Gabe and Mrs. Bethany. And for this day. Thank you for Mickey's Townhouse, Because Mommy let me watch it today. Thank you for Daddy, He played Lego's with me today. Help me to obey my Mommy & Daddy. Amen! "The Honest Prayer Of a Righteous Man Can Accomplish Much"

Gabe on Left Drew on Right

My best friend Bethany is here visiting! We've been to Fort Hood to visit some friends and then to Waco for more visiting. We saw our old youth pastor and his sweet family for a few hours. Its been a great visit with facials and Goodwill shopping! Drew is loving having "Mrs. Bethany" and Kayla to play with. The kids are off their sleep schedules so its been very interesting around here the past few day. Drew even "sleep played" ... I think? I went in his room around 11:00 pm when I was going to bed and he was sitting on the floor, all his toys were on the bed, even some books? When I asked him what he was doing he said "playing." I took down the toys from his bed, tucked him in bed and he rolled over asleep? It was the oddest thing? I posted a few pictures from our week. ~Melissa~

:: Drew to Nana (on the 4th of July), "Look Nana, there are spiderwebs in the sky!" :: Drew after waking up with a messy pull-up, "Oh no, mommy. my poop woke up before me." After sitting on the potty Drew exclaimed, " Mommy, my poop must have gone back to sleep, it won't come out." :: "Look Mommy, my fingers are praying!" As I look into the backseat, Drew has his tiny fingers laced together -- smiling with glee. :: Mommy to Drew, "Drew, we don't run around the house naked, take the underwear off your head and put them on your bottom!" :: Drew pulling the Q-tip out of his ear, "Yuck mommy, there is pee in my ear!"

When Drew reached the ripe old age of 3 we finally decided to tackle the whole potty training issue. I taught Drew that little boys sit down to go potty - he never knew there was an alternative until a few months ago. A few months back I heard bellowing from the bathroom, "Mommy, come watch me!" I walked into our very small 1/2 bath and found Drew standing on top of a chair, peeing into the toilet - he was so proud of himself. When I asked him why he was standing up he replied, "Mommy, boys don't sit, they stand!" Drew didn't inherit any "tall or even medium height genes" so he is presently the size of an 18 month child - too small to actually stand up and make it into the toilet. For the past three months I've been in denial - I kept thinking that the pee on the floor was an "infrequent accident." Unfortunately for Drew three "infrequent accidents" in 1 day have sent mommy out of denial. So, tonight after cleaning each b...

Gabe is 10 Months old! He weighs in at 22.7 pounds. Such a chunk! He is standing unassisted and crawling all over the place. Gabe loves to laugh, especially when your tickle his chest. Most days he still takes 2, two hour naps and sleeps from 7:00 pm - 7:00 am. I love it that my children sleep! I'd be one grouchy mama if they woke early! We're so blessed to have Gabe in our family. So far, Gabe has two bottom front teeth and enjoys eating anything you put in his mouth. He eats table food and loves yogurt. He take a bottle 3-4 times a day and is so wiggly that you can't hold him while he drinks the bottle. Gabe;s tantrums went away when the teeth arrived so I'm hoping his personality stays sweet and relaxed! Gabe is such a joy and loves life's daily adventures!

John is such a servant, he just called to tell me he would be late because he stopped to help change the flat tire of an elderly couple. I am a fortunate woman to be married to a man like that!

Well, I thought I'd update you on my quest for arising with the clock instead of the children! All week my alarm has gone off (that's the good news), the bad is that Gabe's clock is about 5 minutes earlier than mine! All week I've looked over at clock to realize that the loud voice wasn't my alarm but my sweet son who somehow knew this week I was aspiring to get up early. Oh, I also re-read my last post and realized that I spelled "bare," "bear.!" Very nice! So the reality this week was that I woke early, the bad was my time with the Lord was still in the evening while I was tired and uninspired! I did manage to play with the boys today, ignoring laundry and floors, I played "Hide & Seek" the only problem was the dog kept finding me instead of Drew. We also " buried " Gabe in the sandbox and danced around the living room while Gabe laughed hysterically (really he fell over from laughing so hard!)! Now, I'm off to laun...

(1 Year Ago!) John told me this story tonight and I had to share. Lets just say its a good idea I wasn't there. When your the mother of boys life isn't ordinary! Yesterday, John took Drew to his favorite store - Home Depot! While John was collecting the wood he needed for his latest project, Drew scurried over to the bays and asked if he could play. John replied, "Yes, just stay in the bay, no crawling under the bays and scaring the customers on the other side." Now, with that response, can you tell that Drew's done this before? John then grabbed an associate to help him with his large purchase, Drew played contently in the bays pretending to be a monkey. Now, 10 seconds later (John's exact words), the associate all of a sudden look up and points, "Is that your son?" John turns around to find Drew 15 feet in the air on the top rack of the shelving! Drew seeing that he had an audience, exclaimed, " Look Daddy, I'm a little monkey and I staye...

“When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” ~ Chesterton 411. Discipline that was accepted graciously and a sweet prayer of heart change. 412. John’s men’s conference, John really enjoyed all the worship! 413. Routine date nights, John even calls and arranges the sitter! 414. So grateful for Gabe’s front teeth.... finally! 415. Power, we’re so blessed to have hurricane Ike miss our area, there was little rain and only slight wind. 416. I’ve been frustrated with the slow speed Drew has been memorizing the catechism’s and took a week off from working on them. Today we started working on them again and Drew new the first 10 without help or guessing! 417. Drew talking to Gabe while playing in the bath tub, “Gabe, focus...focus Gabe on playing with me!” So cute! 418. New bookshelves and storage for our new “library/school room,” I'm thankful for handy husband who can build anything! 419. Drew’s new teacher, she is wond...

“In these pages I tell secrets about…myself because I believe that it is not only more honest but vastly more interesting than to pretend that I have no such secrets to tell. I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are your secrets.” Frederick Beuchner I read a post today by Ann @ Holy Experience. It tugged at my soul. She wrote a post called, " Of blogging, secrets, porn and truth ." The post started me thinking about why I blog, why don't I just write my thoughts down in a journal unseen by the world? I use to, I wrote a lot about life, thoughts, and the real truth on a blog site unseen by anyone. It held my deepest desires, shame, fears, thoughts. Quiet different that most of the post I put up. My children may read them someday when I am gone, I wonder what they will think of me? Will they see a hypocrite? Will they be astonished at some of the things I wrote? I started blogging the months before my first son was born. The last trimester was hard, isolatin...

This weekend has been wet, thanks to Hurricane Ike! The perfect weekend to start decorating for Fall! Drew had a lot of fun helping me get the box out of the attic and look through all our long lost treasures. The only treasures that didn't make it were the pumpkins from last year. Evidently they were real! I thought the tiny little decorating pumpkins were fake so I boxed them up. Well, they spent the hot summer molding and smelling up all my beautiful fall decorations. It was very funny watching Drew pull out the dry, molded, green pumpkins and exclaim, "What is it mommy?" John spent his Saturday at a Men's conference in Fort Worth, one of the singers was Steven Curtis Chapman - our favorite artist! Our friends the Tyson's made our day extra special. Nicole and Ethan visited with us while Zac went with John to the conference. Nicole and I had fun working our grocery list for Albertson's (73% savings) and then enduring the Cabella sale so the Tyson's c...

Gabe's 2 nd tooth broke through today! Now he has his two front bottom teeth! John so sweetly dressed the boys today, there were dressed in white t-shirts and jeans!

Gabriel's first tooth finally arrived today! It is his bottom front right tooth. Finally progress! The tooth next to it looks promising too! Maybe he will have two teeth by his 10 month birthday? Drew and I took Kitty for some pond swimming yesterday and some men were there fishing. They were catching fish right and left! Drew was fascinated! He ran over, ignoring the whole "don't speak to strangers" rule and asked if he could try. They were so sweet, for about 20 minutes they would catch fish and let Drew reel them in. Kitty enjoyed the process too, after chewing up her tennis ball she decided to chase some fish around the pond! Drew had such a great time! Now, he wants to become a fishermen! On Monday I headed out for more bargains. Lets just say that people are getting hygiene products in their stockings this year! I think I ended up with 192.00 worth of products and I spent out of pocket 38.00, but I'll receive 45.00 back in rebates, so I really made 7.00 on 1...

I really love Friday's! Friday is our Pizza night, we also just added movie night to the equation. Drew and I wandered into Family video while our Papa Murphy's pizza was being made and discovered that they have Free movie rentals - yes I said free! We studied the "Arctic" over the summer and they had a documentary on "Antarctica" so we claimed that movie as well as "Green Eggs & Ham." They had a ton of other free movies that Drew drooled over. We rented the "Bee" movie for a whole 1.50 and watched that for family night. It was fun, except John fell asleep before the movie started. Lets see, John took me out on a date Thursday, we went out to eat and then to Home Depot where he purchased my Birthday gift a little early. We are working on snazzing up the downstairs and since John works for an interior decorator she came over and gave us some great tips. For starters, John fixed my under counter lighting, added a light under the sink (...

I wrote this piece for the Interactive Bible Reading; I love what John said so I thought I'd post for those who aren't participating in Northwood's walk through the Old Testament . 2 Samuel 9, Psalms 63 I had only seen this boy less than a dozen times my entire 4 years of High School. I remember our first encounter vividly because he had a bright smile on his face, which detracted from his awkward walking tempo. He would drag his crooked right foot behind his body and both knees never fully locked into place. I learned later that this boy was a Christian, which explained his bright smile and cheerful demeanor. This boy, who I came to know three months before graduation as John, had endured six surgeries since birth to help minimize the effects of his muscular disease - Cerebral Palsy . John's most invasive, yet beneficial surgery, included the removal of three vertebrates from his lower spine. Tonight I asked my husband to share openly about how people with disabilitie...