The Sweetest (random baby updates)

"Watch out Phelps!"

...drawing... wearing a rain coat (lol)... she looks like she is on a ship out at sea! She cracks me up! :o)

Noah, just chillin' on sister's bed.

My Little Artist

Liliana loves to color and draw! She will color and draw for hours at a time! She draws faces and beds... I will scan in a couple of her masterpieces soon and post them. Here are a couple that I took pics of with my phone for the mean time:

Mommy

$$Priceless

Donnie said this one looks like a pizza guy. :o)

Crumbs from my Sister's Table

It is so funny and kind of sad to look back on how deprived your first child was because you were so consumed with doing everything perfect and being overprotective. Because of this Noah is enjoying the sweet pleasures of life at a much earlier age....

The other day Donnie bought Liliana some Lucky Charms
(something I would probably never buy... that's what daddy's
are for)... and, well, she loves them, of course. She loves the fennow-fennows (her word for marshmallows! :o) Well, today she was eating a bowl of them at the table and next thing I know I see that Noah had made a great discovery under the table... he was eating the cereal that missed her mouth and ended up on the floor. I am sure he was thinking "thanks sister!"

Sooo sweet!!! :o)

Bzzzzz.......

Yes, Bee Movie is cute, but today, I am not buying it... today was the day of Liliana's first bee sting, and hopefully last... I have never been stung (as far as my mom and I know). She is such a tough little goose - she did not shed a tear, just did a couple of "ouch" jigs and hid her hand under her shirt and asked for a bandaid. The incident happened this morning at our favorite park. She was sitting at the bottom of the slide and I looked over at her and saw a big bee, just like the one in the picture. I was sitting on the ground a few feet away with Noah in my arms, so I said "Liliana, you have a bee in your hair - go like this - showing her to wave at it with her hand, but instead she grabbed it as any innocent two year old would and boom - in goes the stinger right into her right hand. He then fell dead to the ground, as bees do after stinging and I plucked the stinger out of her hand. I did not make a big deal about it, just said "that bee wasn't very nice was he".

Pull up a Bush

One of Donnie's roles at church is he is the Pastor of our Keenagers group who meets every Thursday morning for Bible study. They finished going through the entire NT verse by verse in July and now they are going through the entire OT. Today they finished Genesis 4. Well, once a month they go to Hometown Buffet after their class and the babes and I joined them. I always love hanging out with the Keenagers... they are a seasoned and loving and FUN bunch. :o) Well on our way to the van Liliana saw a bush that looked like a good seat... she has been sitting on bushes lately - cracks me up!!! :o) Well, this bush was no bush, it was a mum plant and couldn't take the weight of a goose, so the bush lost a few branches. The Keenagers saw all of this go down and I am sure they loved it!

Noah, The Big E

I have a lot to say about all of the cute things Noah is up to these days, but first a quick note about our fun family day at the Big E yesterday. It was a perfectly gorgeous day out. We enjoyed lots of ridiculously expensive food and Liliana and I went down a gigantic slide... 4 stories maybe??? It was surprizingly fun! I screamed out of excitement all the way down and Liliana just sat there. Ha! I just did not expect it to be that fun! :o) Of course Noah was a super good boy all day as usual! He is amazing! He fell asleep in his stroller on the way to the car with a plastic cucumber in his hand. Oh, and yes, we did spend $7 on a blow-up Dora that Liliana LOVES! She slept with it last night and brought it to Kohl's with us today and held it the entire time. She teaches her to walk and tells her she loves her all the time... so yes, it is well worth the $7. :o)

Here is our Noah pushing along behind the grocery cart as Liliana pulls it backwards. They have been doing this a couple of weeks now and he also pushes it by himself - sooooo cute!!!! Look at that face. He just laughs and laughs, he is so full of joy. He especially gets giggly right before he is ready to go to bed at night... he just gets snuggly, laughs and relaxes so sweetly.

Noah loves the vacuum - the one at home and the one at church... he just has to be right in on the action. He sits right in the middle and watches and holds onto the cord. It looks like he will take after his daddy and his love for vacuuming (however you spell it). Liliana gets her little toy vacuum out and helps daddy too.

Like I said, he is my climber!

I wonder what flavor grey is? :o) I remember eating crayons... that dry, weird wax stuck in your teeth. Actually, as kids, we use to put crayons out on the driveway and watch them melt before our eyes, that is how hot it is in South Texas.

Loving Every Moment and Praising God for them!!!

Momagoose

Trinkets

Okay, so Liliana's latest new thing is when she gets mad, she says "COW!" and storms off. Cow??? Where in the world did she get that? Sometimes she says "bad cow". There you go... she is on my lap right now as I type and I told her to sit still and she just said "cow!"...

Now I need to go clean her mouth out with soap! ha! We have to keep the rod out and stay on these little ones.

Loving Every Moment!
:o)

The Lord Our Righteousness

This weekend we were blessed at church by the ministry of Teen Challenge. Rodney Hart, the director for the New England District (I think) spoke and people from 4 different teen challenge locations formed a choir and a few of them gave their testimonies. It was such a refreshing service to hear the miracles God has done to transform their lives... their faith is so real and raw because it was birthed out of a desperate cry for a life change.


One of the things he said that I really loved is that "we as christians are all just beggars telling others where to find food." I love it! The Word of God says "For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not recieve? Now if you did indeed recieve it, why do you boast as if you had not recieved it?" (1 Cor. 4:7). The entire chapter is very rich on the subject of taking preference, comparing and boasting within the church. He alone is our righteousness! (Jer. 23:6)

The speaker at church also said there are no superstars in the body of Christ exept for Christ Jesus alone! We all have the same free access to the word and power of God.

Thank you, Jesus!

Liliana Lingo

Liliana is an exceptional talker but as a two year old, there are those words that she says her own way and I love it. I thought I would write them in so I can look back and read them later on in life.

coffcoff - washcloth

gahberries - strawberries

cayyots - carrots

bike - bite ("can I have a bike")

foon - spoon

fennowfennows - marshmallows

wan - van

doowa - Dora

d'again - again - she says this one very drawn out. it came from her saying "do it again... do-i-d'again...

I know there has to be more but can't think of them now.

July Beach Day

We had such a wonderful summer! One of the many fun things we did was spend a day at the beach with some other moms and kids.

Liliana had a blast! She loves the sand and the water.

Noah has not really complained much about anything yet either. He too loves the water, the sand, the pool, the grass. He is just ready to explore! Here are his sweet chunky legs and feet standing in the sand. I love them!!! The sweetest!

A Beautiful Day

Yesterday was such a beautiful day. It was a simple day really, we went to the park for a couple of hours and then to Stop-n-Shop. I have just recently started going there and I love that store. I know it sounds cheesy, but I love everything about it, the purple vests, the produce and even the club card has a pretty picture on it. Oh, and I have been looking for flip-flops small enough for Liliana all summer... I looked everywhere and yesterday I found them - at Stop-n-Shop of all places! They are my favorite green color too! I wanted flip flops so she can just put them on herself. The kids even love that store. On our way out Liliana said "I don't want to leave." Wow!!!

Okay, so back to what made the day so beautiful... special moments completely focused on the moment - my two babies! and Strangers smiling and striking up conversation. I am a very social person and I just love it when other people are comfortable enough to... well, break a smile... sometimes Donnie and I just want to say to people "it's okay to smile." I have made it one of my missions in life to get people to smile. :o) I use to take it personal when someone seemed "rude" or "grouchy", but now I see it as a challenge to shine the love of Jesus into their day and bring a smile to their face and it really works... most people look shocked to see that a stranger took the time to look them in the eye and say a kind word.

Lord Jesus, help us to be concious each moment that eternity is a breath away and that this life is all about bringing others to know you. :o)

American Idol in our future??? :o)

Who needs an iPod when you have Liliana around. She LOVES to sing. She remembers just about any song she hears and makes up her own songs either with new lirycs to an old tune or her own song all together. Today she probably sang about 20 different songs including:

Mary Had a Little Lamb
Many Colors
This Old Man
I Love You (the one Barney sings)
I Love Trash (by Oscar the Grouch) :o)
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Old MacDonald
Noah in the Ark
Jesus Loves the Little Children
She's even singing "It's raining, it's pooring, the old man is snoring"... I have NO IDEA where she learned that one. :o) So cute!
and a few others she made up. One she made up was "Lets make up songs"...

Chaning the subject a little, today when Donnie left for a

meeting at church he told Liliana, "fold those clothes" while pointing to the laundry. Next thing I know I look up and see a pile of folded clothes and Liliana folding more. She can fold clothes! Never underestimate a 2 yr. old.

Oh, another random thought... yesterday she told me "I want to make you happy". Ha! Where do they come up with this stuff??? :o)

Well, back to the show... I never lack entertainment around here. :o)

Loving every Moment!
Momagoose

My Climber

Noah is definitely my climber. Here he is in the dishwasher... he just kept climbing up there. He is such a charmer. Check out that sweet smile.

Loving every moment!

Perspective

Jesus loves me this I know...

Today I did a couple of things - well, they just kind of happened - and I could either dwell on those things and say "I had a terrible day - what is wrong with me?" or I could focus on the many, many things about this day that made it beautiful and the many, many things I did right. I choose the later.

Thank you Jesus, for your unconditional love towards us and for empowering us by your Holy Spirit to show unconditional love towards each other and towards ourselves when we don't quite measure up to our human standards of perfection.

It is so important that we let go of the expections of who we need to be and what others need to measure up to, to merit our love.

The best part of my day was the time spent with friends and the precious moments I had with my babies. I am overwhelmed with love for my two babies!!! :o)

Thanks you Jesus for this day and for the one to come!

Blueberry Picking

Blueberry picking with great friends - this is the life! Liliana's Alley (as she says) is the little girl in the picture along with her sister Juliet and friend Nkailu and let's not forget Liliana's babydoll, her name is Sarah.

Liliana and Noah ate the whole time and Noah even picked a few off of the bushes himself and ate them.

Check Liliana out - no shoes and a bucket on her head... we could really get into the farm life. We had a blast... and have already eaten all of our blueberries, even the frozen stash. :o( We love blueberries! Thanks Bethany, for the awesome pictures!

Labor Day

We had a great day yesterday as a family! Family time is my favorite! We went to Shady Glenn for the first time and loved it! It reminded us of places you find down south. Then we cleaned out the van and went to the park for a couple of hours and then went out for ice cream... Liliana had cotton candy flavor.