A Girl After Daddy's Own Heart

I just had to tell this quick little story...Ben took Isabelle with him to Lowes today and let her get down and walk. He said she was in AWE of all the tools, and kept wanting to hold all of them and saying "I lub tools". He said all the men in the store who heard her say that were cracking up. She already had Daddy wrapped around her little finger...that just sealed the deal. :)

Free Entertainment!

Here is an idea for some free entertainment for the kiddos: Wendsday, we picked up my mom and niece Ainsley, and Daddy met us over at Tractor Supply Company on his lunch break (or the "farm store" as my mom calls it) to look at the baby chicks, ducks and rabbits!

You're even allowed to take them out and hold them!

Izzy loved it!




Petting the bunnies:

Millions and millions of baby chickens:

Baby ducks: These were soooo cute!

Here's Isabelle torturing, er, I mean, petting one of the ducks:

Ainsley got to hold one of the ducks, too!

And here's some more free entertainment: My mom pulled this giant box into the kitchen at her house, and we fit all three girls in it. They had a blast!

I also wanted to include this picture of Isabelle wearing her "glubs". The other day she wanted me to put them on her before we left the house to run some errands, and she wore them ALL day. She wore them while eating chicken nuggets, and while grocery shopping at Wal-mart. It was too cute.

More free entertainment for Izzy:

Daddies are better than any amusement park ride.

And here is a little video of Isabelle's reaction to the baby chickens:

Got any more ideas for free or cheap entertainment?

Morning Routine

I came across this challenge, called the Making Your Home a Haven challenge. Tammy at Tammy's recipes just took this over, and this week is the first challenge she has posted, so I thought it would be a great time for me to get in on it. I am one of those people who DESPERATELY needs structure and accountability. I am not a naturally organized or motivated person, and lately I have been really struggling with my time management, and I feel like my home and family (not to mention my own sanity!) are suffering because of it. So that is why I want to do this challenge every week, and I feel that if I post about it on my blog, it will make me accountable, and motivate me to really DO it. I hope this is going to work wonders for my home-making skillz. :)

This week's challenge is to make a morning routine for yourself. I think this will really help me, because morning is the time that I tend to wander aimlessly. Sure, I might get a few things done here and there, but if I had a routine and were more focused, I could accomplish a lot more.

So anyway, here is my new morning routine, for all to see. (I decided to try to keep it simple, since I am new at this.)

1. Wake up and make bed immediately.


2. Eat Breakfast


3. Read Bible for at least 15 minutes and PRAY.


4. Shower, get dressed, take vitamins.


5. Start a load of laundry and/or dishes.

Ideally, I would like to get up early enought to do all this BEFORE Isabelle wakes up, but I'm sure that won't happen EVERY morning. We'll see. Wish me luck!

If you want to participate in the challenge, check it out at Tammy's Recipes.

Catching up...

Well last week started out kind rough, but it ended on a good note. Ben left Monday morning to go to Dallas for work stuff, and Monday night, I started getting a really bad sore throat. I had already made plans for Tuesday morning, and thought it was just one of those sore throats that would go away on it's own, so we kept our plans to go to the library and lunch with a friend from church. By Tuesday afternoon, my throat was hurting MUCH worse, so I got my next door neighbor to watch Isabelle and I went to the doctor, and found out it was strep throat! ugh! Luckily the doc put me on antibiotics and they kicked in pretty quickly, so by Thursday when Ben got home, I was starting to feel like myself again. Let me tell you, strep throat and pregnancy nausea is not a fun combination!

Here are a couple pictures from Tuesday. The local zoo brought some of the animals to the library for story time. I thought Isabelle would really enjoy this, so we invited one of her friends from church to go with us. She liked seeing the animals, but was not all about sitting still or being quiet. The lady kept saying, "okay, we have to be really quiet and still so we don't scare the animals." About that time, my little angel would wriggle out of my arms and run away, or start yelling something like "play, play". So maybe she wasn't quite ready for story time, but that's okay, we still had a good time.

Tree Frog:

Snake:


Owl:

There were several other animals, but I didn't get pictures, cause I was too busy chasing my child around.

Isabelle was so excited when her Daddy got home Thursday night. She would run up to him and show him all her toys, as if he had never seen them before. It was so sweet. They had a good time playing together. That night, she also put on my purse and said, "I go work." Guess it looks kinda like Daddy's briefcase, because mommy never says that.

Trying to put her clothes on:

Late Friday afternoon, Ben left again, just for one night, to go on a men's retreat with the church. Saturday morning I was feeling much better, so I was able to go to the first workday of the season for Ekklesia Acres. (For background info, click here.) We had a great turnout! There were probably around 50 people there to help (if you include the kids), with close to 150 volunteer hours altogether!

The garden is actually in a different spot than it was last year, and is 4 times as big! Virginia Tech owns several hundred acres of land in Catawba, and they were looking for a way for it to be used. My brother met the lady in charge of it just by chance (or I guess you could say by Providence), and she got really excited about Ekklesia Acres. He got to meet with a board of people from Tech, and I guess the rest is history! There is so much excitement about this work this year, whereas last year, he was having a hard time getting people to show up for workdays. God is so good! Thank you for the prayers!

My brother Don, Executive Director of Ekklesia Acres:

Even the kids helped pick up trash:

There were a lot of VT students from the Blacksburg church of Christ that showed up to help:

My sister and brother-in-law working on the fence around the garden (To keep deer out. There are lots of them around there!)

My sister Susy (in the blue) and my two nieces:

Unloading materials for the fence:

This guy belonged to one of the Tech students who is working on the land as part of her school project:

My brother working on the fence:

Digging up old posts:

Digging up weeds next to the building that will be the new office for Ekklesia Acres:

Scraping paint off of an old barn that will be used for storage:

Anyway, it was a great day! You could feel the excitement in the air! We didn't get to do any planting, because it was too cold, but we still got lots of work done! Can't wait for the next one!

Baby Update #1

We had our first checkup and ultrasound today. We have a healthy little bean with a fluttering little heartbeat! We found out that our due date is October 25th, so we still have quite a ways to go! I was hoping that I would be a little further along than that, but that's okay, we are excited about having an October baby! That will make Isabelle almost 2 years and 3 months old when the baby is born, which I think is a pretty good age difference. I guess we'll find out for sure when the time comes! :) We don't know the sex yet, of course, but my guess this time is boy, because I'm feeling a lot sicker and tireder (if that's a word) than I remember being with Isabelle, and I seem to be gaining weight faster, but maybe those are just the joys of the second pregnancy. Maybe some of you more experienced mothers can tell me.

Ms. Manners

In an earlier post, I was bragging on Isabelle and how she has started saying "thank you Mommy." We have been trying to teach her things like "please", "thank you", "excuse me", "I'm sorry" and such. We also sing songs like "Jesus loves me" and when I pray with her at night we always thank God for Jesus.

We were doing a little shopping at Goodwill today, and Isabelle wanted something and I said, "what do you say?" Then she says "scuse me, Jesus". I think she's got things a little mixed up, but I'm glad those words are part of her vocabulary. Come to think of it, maybe she's got things figured out better than I thought. :)

Matthew 18:3: And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

PS-Don't get me wrong. My child is no perfect angel. Just five minutes before saying "excuse me, Jesus" she was having a little screaming fit and not being very nice to her Mommy. I think she needed to repent. :)

CVS trip

I finally got back into the couponing game this week! I have been slacking lately, and was really itching to get back at it. I had a really good CVS trip yesterday! Here is what I got:
8-pack of Bounty Basic paper towels
2 cascade dish powders
1 dawn dish detergent
2 boxes puffs tissues
1 small bottle tide liquid
9 pack charmin ultra (free for purchasing all the above listed items)
2 packs Pampers

The ad actually said you were supposed to get a 6-pack of toilet paper free for buying $20 worth of the products on that page, but my store was out of the 6-packs, so I got a 9-pack for free! Score! You know how much I love free toilet paper!! The retail value of all this if I had paid regular price at CVS would have been $65.32. By buying while it was on sale and using mfr's coupons on each item and using $18 worth of previously earned CVS coupons/ECBs, my grand total, including tax was: $17.93!! And I got a $5 ECB(for buying the Pampers) and a $3off/$15 coupon to use later! Woo-hoo! I love CVS!

"You Better?"

It's unusual for me to post twice in one day...but since this blog is kind of like my family journal, I wanted to post this story while it is fresh in my mind.

I've started kissing Isabelle's "boo-boos" now, then I ask her if it's all better. So when something just slightly brushes up against her now, she says "hurt" so I'll kiss it. Then she says "its better."

Yesterday all day and then part of the day today I felt like I was getting easily frustrated with her because she was being soooo clingy and needy. I understand that it's because she's sick, and so I have been really patient and maybe even spoiled her a little too much, but by the end of the day yesterday, I could feel myself getting a little overwhelmed and frustrated with her, with my house, with various things. (I'm also hormonal, so that doesn't help.) Well, Ben left today for a training conference for work, and Izzy has been acting a little more like herself today.

Tonight, I rocked and cuddled her for a few minutes before bed, and just before I put her in her bed, I leaned down and said "give me a kiss", so she made a smacking sound with her lips and gave me a kiss, then asked, "you better?"

YES, I am much better! I left the room with tears in my eyes. Sometimes the smallest thing can make you realize how blessed you are. Thank you God, for this sweet little child you have given to me.

The abominable pink snow girl

This is what our front yard looked like this morning:

They scraped our street pretty early.

So I know Isabelle is sick, but we have been in the house ALL weekend (with the exception of going to the doctor), and we BOTH DESPERATELY needed to get out of the house. Isabelle was literally pawing at the door crying "go, go!" I guess she wanted to see something besides her Mommy's face, so I put her snowsuit overtop of her jammies and put a warm hat on her and we stood out on the carport to look at the snow. We were out there for a total of about 2 or 3 minutes, and we never left the carport, but it was still fun. We needed the fresh air.

Here are a couple videos from our trip to Georgia: The first one is from the pig show in Perry, and the second one is the kids' sweet dance moves after Noah's birthday party.

Hope you are all enjoying this snow day!! Ben is leaving this afternoon for a training conference for work, so please pray for safe travels! He'll be back tomorrow night.

Molly's First Birthday

First I just wanted to show you a picture of what's going on outside our house this morning: I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but it's still coming down: (It seems a little weird to me that on the first day of Ben's "spring break" from school, it's snowing.)

This is Isabelle's 2nd (I think) cousin, Molly. She turned 1 year old last Sunday, so we went up to C'burg for church with Ben's mom, then went to his Aunt and Uncle's house for Molly's birthday party.

Cousin Emily reading some of Molly's new books to Isabelle:

Izzy was great at "helping" Molly open her presents:

"Happy Birthday to you...."

This was the best picture I could get of them together:

Anyway, we had a great time and want to wish Molly a very happy birthday! Hopefully she and Isabelle will turn out to be good friends!

I am home from church this morning with Isabelle. I took her to the doctor yesterday, and she has her first ear infection, sooo it has been a fun weekend. :/