My Dream

Yesterday at church our Pastor asked us this week to write down on paper what our dreams or dream was. He really stressed the fact to define your dream on paper so you can see it written out. He referred back to our favorite verse :

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

For most of us we say that
the expected end will be when we get to Heaven and how great it will be to be with our Lord and Saviour. I can't wait for that day but I also believe that he is showing us here to have Hope and dream. Well for our family we have had a very rough year. Through this year I have held onto this verse knowing that God only wants the best for his children. Their were many times were I had to really focus on the hope side of this but I never left my God.

I am still working on what my dream is for this year or the years to come. What comes to thought whenever I think of this it is children and more of them. We will wait but also hope and know that our Father in Heaven only wants good for his children.

My prayer for you at the end of this year and the coming of this New Year is to hold onto this verse and have hope , peace, and dreams. I would love to hear from anyone who would like to share their dream/dreams with me.


Happy New Year and I will post again next year.

My Birthday

Well today is my birthday and it has started out to be a very eventful day. My husband had to work at his second job this morning but he will be off by 1:00 p.m. so we can spend the day together then.

My morning started with my 11 year old making me breakfast in bed and ooh was it yummy. She made me fried eggs and English muffins with orange soda to drink. She is going to be such a good mommy someday.

After breakfast I came down stairs to post about my birthday and got distracted by the smell of a burning pan. The 11 year old had forgotten to turn off the burner and the empty pan was a smoking inferno. As I was helping my daughter get the smoke out she looked at me and said mom," I think you should ground me from cooking for a while." I think she is right.


Just to let you all know that lately she has had a bad habit of smoking up the kitchen. First it was a bag of popcorn that she overcooked in the microwave, then it was a piece of toast that got stuck in the toaster, and then yesterday it was croissants that she put in the oven and turned the broiler on to get them done faster, but this just caused them to come out looking like charcoal. So I think the 11 old will be removed from the kitchen for a while and this will be torture for her since it truly is her favorite place.

Thanks my beautiful 1st born for helping me to always remember my 34th birthday. And I really do mean Thank You.
I Love you girl.

Our Lazy Day

I started this blog as an idea to help my family and friends who are far away, be able to look into our daily happenings. I also wanted to have a journal of my families life so when the kids get older it will be there for them to look back at. Well I was looking at my past posts and I have not done a very good job of making this happen. I noticed that there were months were there is only one post. I am going to try to get better at this and post about our everyday happenings even if it is as little as we did school today and prepared for Daddy to come home.

So I will start this today. My day started at 6:30 with the five year old crying and telling me that her tummy hurt. I was half asleep and took her down stairs so she wouldn't wake up the baby. About an hour later we were dealing with the dreaded episode that comes with an upset tummy. Thank God this only happened once. I told her that she needed to rest today and that we were all going to have a lazy day and watch movies.

Well that is exactly what we did. We watched "Charlotte's Web" and 8 episodes of "Little House on the Prairie." 8 episodes can you believe that. I am so sick of hearing Nellie whine that by the 8th episode I told the kids this will be the last one. I tried to say it without screaming and yelling because I wanted to pull my hair out if I heard Nellie say one more time "Laura did." I can hear it in my head just typing the words. I think we will be taking a break from this video for a while.

So this was our day.

By the way the 5 year old is now bouncing off the walls and feels great.

Our Nativity

This was an absolutely awesome Christmas for our family. As everyone knows, we were spending Christmas alone. I hate to say alone because we are never alone when we have a Lord and Savior who is with us all the time.

I wanted to make this special for my children but also special for Daddy and me. About two weeks before Christmas we started practicing a play that I found online about the birth of Jesus. We worked on it two or three times a day and really wanted to make it special for Daddy.
Well it turned out to be special for Mommy too.

About a week before Christmas we went to a fabric store and bought scraps of fabric for our costumes. I was very proud of myself for being creative on a small budget. Don't they all look the part.

The baby was supposed to be a wise man but wanted to hang out with Dad instead of do her part but that was o.k. because we still had a great time.

My oldest was Joseph and a wise man, the next in line was Mary, the next in line was the innkeepers son and a wise man, the next in line was the Angel, the next in line was the shepherd and the baby was a wise man who didn't cooperate.
That is all right because we had a great time and a great Christmas. We have also decided that we will do this every year from now on and remember that we are blessed to have such a loving God who gave us such an awesome gift that Christmas night.

Merry Christmas

Its Christmas eve and all through the house every creature was stirring even a mouse.


All the stockings were hung by the staircase with love


In hope that this household would shine with Jesus' love


To all of us that are not together this year I will just imagine you sitting right here.


Listen real carefully for a whisper in your ear


Saying have a " Very Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year"


I love you all,
Susan

The Nativity Story

Last night we watched the movie the Nativity with our children. I t is a great movie and it really opens up your eyes about how Jesus came from a very humble group of people. I know that we all know about him being born in a lowly manager and all the rest that goes along with the story.
But when you see it played out on big screen and see how plain Mary and Joseph were it gives me a different look at Jesus.


He really came for the hurting and the sick and the poor and he came right to them. These people had nothing, but they had a faith like you would not believe.Through everything Mary and Joseph were available and continued to believe that God would provide and he did.


This Christmas I am so thankful for My Father in Heaven. He orchestrated such an awesome event and the whole time he was thinking about you and me. I pray that you will have Hope this next year to come. I think it is one of the most important elements of our Faith is to have Hope.

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Jeremiah 29:11

My Big Sis

I had asked my sister to read my blog today because I wanted to see if she remembered her Billy Joel 8-track. O f course she did,and she also mentioned that she still cries over it.

Then she had to comment about my book Anne of Green Gables. She asked me if I had forgotten that she was the one who had gotten it for me. DUH!!! I said that was my favorite gift, I don't think I will ever forget who gave that to me. Thank you sis for that wonderful gift.

I guess I just wanted to let her know how special she is to me by blogging just about her.

So here you go Sis.

Love ya.

I was on another ladies blog this week and found this really fun post that she had done. She called it Holiday hoopla and she had to list 12 things about herself that are relative to Christmas. I thought this would be fun to do and I hope my blogging buddies will follow. (Allison, Heather Lori,and Tanya.)

1. My mother always read the Christmas story from the book of Luke before we opened up presents.

2. My favorite Christmas present was the book Anne of Green Gables the year before I joined the Navy.

3. One year my sister and I opened up all of our gifts and rewrapped them so our parents would not know.

4. My mom always made crab for me for Christmas dinner because I did not like ham. (What a spoiled brat.)

5. My Great Grandpa Clifford came to our house every year and helped us put up our Christmas tree.

6. We were a family that opened our gifts on Christmas Eve.

7. I always got a book of lifesavers and nuts in my stocking.

8. My sister cried like a baby when she got the 8-track of Billy Joel's Glass Houses.

9. My mom thought my best friend Leanne had stolen the movie Footloose from our house, but my mom had just forgotten where she had hidden it.

10. I started a new tradition in my home with my girls and that is: I give them a keepsake ornament every year that has to do with a new mile stone that they have accomplished.

11. I like to put my tree up right after Thanksgiving and take it down right down after the new year.

12. I try to keep my mind and heart focused on Jesus because he is the reason for the season.

God bless and have a Merry CHRISTmas.

Bearing Fruit

Today was our final day of Christmas shopping. I had to go to quit a few different stores and knew it was going to be a long day. As we were driving into Omaha I just kept telling myself to be patient and remember they are kids and they are not going to be perfect.

I don't know what happened today but they all obeyed. Not just one or two but all six of them were obedient. Four different stores and one hour in the car each way, now that is a miracle.

Our final stop is every one's favorite store Zooper Wal-Mart. (Just joking.) We have nicknamed this particular store as you can see Zooper Wal-mart. It is always a madhouse and by the time we are finished I always want to pull my hair out. But not today. We had a great time shopping for Daddy and buying all the ingredients for our Christmas dinner. It was a moment to stop and Thank God for how blessed I am.

As we were checking out the cashier was a young lady who looked to be about 18-20 years old. My 7 year old pulled the empty cart around and started loading up the groceries while the older girls helped the little ones put on their jackets.
This young lady looked at me and said, "I hope I have kids like that some day."

I sit here tonight and think I did not say anything special or remarkable I just said, "I guess they just know the routine."

Well the hard work of training up your children to love the Lord, and Glorify Him in everything they do is starting to bear fruit.

Today was a great and glorious day!!!!

CHRISTmas

This Christmas season has been a very interesting one for me. I was very excited to get our tree up and all of our little decorations set in place. I was in the Christmas spirit and excited for this joyous holiday, and as the days have gone by something has happened. Last night as I was sitting down with my girls my 5 year old looked at me and said, "Mom I think we are focusing to much on presents right now." I looked at her kind of puzzeled because we weren't even talking about presents or Christmas. I said, "Yes, I think your right.
She then replied, " I think we need to focus on God more."
I replied with, " You are right honey, we will do that this week."
As I sit here writing this post I am so blessed for the gifts that God has given us. But I will be perfectly honest I am also sad. I thought this would be a great Christmas, and I know that it will be but there is something missing this year. I was on the phone today with my Mom and it hit me that we are not going to be with family this year at Christmas and that is what is missing. This is our first year without any Grandparents here and in the 12 years of our marriage we have always been with family. It has really hit me lately how much I miss all of them.
I remember as a child spending every Christmas with my Grandparents and I long for that for my children. I don't know why families are so spread apart but my prayer for this coming year is that family becomes important to people again. I am not the only one longing for that. I talk to many of my friends who do not spend the holidays with Parents or Grandparents.
I know we will have a wonderful CHRISTmas because we will keep our eyes focused on Him. My hope is that next season we will be with family.
Right now I am focusing on just "counting it all JOY..."

ICE (I really hate it)

The winter weather here is more than what I expected. We are going on our third winter here in Iowa and I absolutely love the snow. But there is one aspect of winter that I have never experienced and it is called ICE. I absolutely hate the ICE.
I am not a very talented writer so creating a word picture for how much I despise Ice would be very challenging. I am going to make it very simple instead.

ICE STINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The other morning I got up to go to the store to buy ingredients for our baking day, and let me tell you that was a huge mistake. It was the day after we had a storm that created freezing rain, and snow. Well I am a California girl and I have never had to deal with ice before. I continued on like I always do and went out to the van to start it up so it would have a chance to warm up. When I went out there it looked really cool like someone had sprayed it with water and then froze it. It looked cool but that was about it. This process of warming up the car took 40 minutes. Can you believe 40 minutes to just get out of the drive way. Now to me that is just ridiculous. It made me think to myself what am I doing here in Podunk, Iowa.


I had to laugh as I finally drove out of my drive way. I was thinking to myself how my life has changed over the past three years. In Phoenix it took me 40 minutes to go to the local store because of all the traffic, now it takes me 40 minutes to go to the local store because of all the ice. I really am not sure which is worse.

I do know that this season to will pass and in a few months I will be complaining about the heat and how I would love to have cold weather. But no ICE!!!!!

Happy Birthday

Today was my oldest daughters 11th birthday. I can't believe she is 11. I spent today just watching her and enjoying the young lady she is growing up to be.
We were blessed to have my Father-in-law in town this weekend to celebrate with us. I spent many times thinking about the day I gave birth to this beautiful little girl. I had mixed emotions today, as all of you know about our recent loss.I seemed to daydream at times about what Baby Charlie would have added to our family.
Back to the birthday. It was AWESOME. The day started out with a big breakfast fixed by Grandpa, flowers from Dad, and lots of gifts. After all of that we all just hung out as a family and had fun laughing and playing a new Wheel of Fortune game(which mommy is addicted to.)
Dinner was the birthday girls pick: Reuben's, vegetables and dip, and chips.
Of course cake and ice cream and movies to end the day.
We had a wonderful day and can't wait till next year to do it all over again.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I LOVE YOU LEMILY

New Look

The new look to my blog is not my own. I want to thank all of my friends and family who have commented on the new look, but it is not my doing.
You see I have a dear friend who lives in Texas, and I in Iowa. Even though we are thousands of miles apart she is still more than willing to help a friend who is not computer literate make her blog site look pretty.
So I just wanted to say thank you Lori for making my page look AWESOME. I love it.

SNOW!!!!

I love the snow!!!!
I know that sounds crazy to some of you but for me I feel like a little kid again whenever I see it snowing. I think it might be because I grew up in an area where there was no snow.
This is going to be our third winter here in Iowa and I just absolutely love it when it snows. Every time it begins to snow I can still remember the first snow we got when we moved here. It was a Tuesday morning and my husband had the day off(which is rare). I had gotten up and was coming up from the basement looked out the window and saw the snow coming down. I was so excited I went and woke everybody up to let them know that it was snowing. I really did feel like a little kid on Christmas morning.
Today we were anticipating snow and it finally came. Again when it started to snow I got that giddy feeling and said to all the kids, "It's Snowing, It's Snowing!!!" Just wanted you all to know that it is snowing here and all of us kids here are giddy and happy(even the big kid

Love and not Disrespect

Well, I am not really sure if I should be blogging about this situation that my husband and I just went through, but it is hilarious and I laugh just thinking about it. This last Saturday we as a family had a lazy day and did absolutely nothing. The weather forecasters (who know absolutely nothing) were calling for this huge ice storm. It turned out to be a little bit of freezing rain and that was it.
As the day went on I could tell something was wrong with my husband but he wouldn't tell me what it was. Towards the late afternoon he could hide it no more and he had begun to start groaning. At that point I knew he was in pain and I insisted on knowing what was wrong. He told me it felt like he had a broken rib but he couldn't figure out why the pain was not consistent. We both tried to figure out what was wrong; a broken rib, pleurisy, gas, kidney stone,etc.. I told him that it seemed like it was getting worse and we should probably go to the doctor and find out what was wrong. Reluctantly he decided that was the best thing to do.
Walking into the hospital I have to tell you all that I was embarrassed for him. Here is a grown man talking in a whisper because he doesn't want to take a breath, afraid of the pain he gets each time he breathes. I say to myself God knew what he was doing when he had women bear the children.
After the Doctor had gotten done poking and prodding and taking x-rays we found out that hubby had pulled a muscle near his rib cage.
Give me a break all that moaning and groaning for a pulled muscle. I was sitting in the ER trying my hardest to show respect and not laugh. Then you will never believe this. They gave him Valium. Can you believe that? I didn't say this but I was thinking I gave birth to six of your children and three of them completely drug free and they give you Valium for a pulled muscle. At that point I realized why God is the one in charge and not man. I truly believe there would have been an end to the world because men would never make it through the pains of pregnancy let alone childbirth.
Now let me explain myself I love my husband and he is a great and Godly man, but he is a WIMP when it comes to pain. Honey, this is said out of love and not disrespect.

Time

I have to tell you all that it is so interesting how children do not understand the concept of time. I was talking to my girls yesterday about some dear friends of ours who are going to Africa on a mission trip. I told them how God was opening all of the doors and that they were going as a family. They all said wow, cool, awesome, etc... Except my ten year old who gets this concerning look on her face (remember she is the mother hen in the house) but Mom isn't Sydney still a little young. I said "She is going to be 7!" My 10 year old looks at me and says with a surprised look, "Really I thought she was still 5."
O.K. This is the funny thing we became friends with this family right before this little girl turned 5. So I guess my daughter thinks time stands still for everybody else and she is the only one who gets older. Don't we wish.