Project 365 Week 12

It is amazing to me how even when doing Project 365, I still feel like there are so many things I leave out... Like Elia has her second bottom tooth... she has had it for about 3 weeks now.

This week she has been a big milestone week in that she is clapping now and rolling over. She has rolled over 3 times so far, so it is not her choice for transportation, but she can do it. :) She loves to sit for long intervals, I don't know, half an hour at a time, all day... she bounces on her bottom when she is sitting like she is getting ready to lunge forward and start crawling. When she is on her belly, she finds her way around by scooting and kicking her legs to reach things. She also loves her Jumperoo so much and when you hold her in your lap she loves to bounce on her bum and jump and lunge forward towards things and people out of reach. All in all, she is a busy girl, still showing a great sense of independence, patience about life and the sweetest, quiet content disposition ever. AWE! So, Week 12, here we go...

March 13, 14 & 15

No Picture...???... I have no idea how that happened! :) March 14th was Elia's 6 month birthday.

Wednesday, March 16th

Bath/Chore Day... ha. Here is Elia watching the kids take a bath.

Elia's first time eating squash and she LOVED it! She was diving in for each bite and ate up the whole container!
Thursday, March 17th
Sait Patrick's Day! :)
Here the kids are awaiting a surprise from mommy...

Gardening Gloves! Yay! It was so nice out! We played/worked in they yard ALL day! Then topped it off with a walk around the nearby pond with our neighbor friends. :)

Donnie and his friend took the tent down and made a couple of dump runs. It is so clean now... the was before the final clean-up of the day. FUN!

The kids also got rakes... I love Christmas Tree Shops! :)

Love this picture, the sun was in her eyes. AWE! Look at that dimple...

Friday, March 18th

Another nice day! We spend a few hours at the park that morning. Liliana spent a lot of her time on the swings learning to pump. She was so proud!

Neighbor Friends at the park with us joined us for a little stroll. We had LOTS of friends join us at the park for a "reunion"... fun!

I did not realize till I saw these photos how uncomfortable Elia looks. AWE... I think I need to tighten the seatbelt or something. :)

Conked, nonetheless... and baby socks just don't stay on. :)

Remote time later that day. YUM! Ha!

Saturday, March 19th

Big milestones! I brought Elia to the nursery at church for the first time. I stayed in there with her most of the time, but she did not even flinch a bit about it! AT ALL... she just sat there and played and interacted with the other kids, all much bigger than her. She smiled and played uninhibitedly (a word?)... She is so content, secure, peaceful, friendly, social and simply uninhibited in every way. I love her!!! :)

Not only was this a milestone day at church for Elia, but mostly for Mommy as it was also Liliana's last day at church as a 4 year old... AWE... she is getting so big!!! Mommy had a few moments of reflection and tears today as we take big steps forward... AWE!

Full-Time MOMMY!

For the past two and a half years I have had the honor and pleasure of serving our church as the Nursery/Toddler Division Coach. This meant that I was responsible for recruiting volunteers to staff 8 classes per week. In a church our size, we have somewhere around 100 children under the age of four (fluctuating) and at least 75 volunteers... in real terms, this is the size of most churches in America. I loved getting to know the moms and dads of the children and the workers and seeing people become more fully devoted followers of our Jesus! :o)

All this to bring me to the news that I have felt the Lord's direction to have me step down from this role for the time being to concentrate on being the wife and mother He has called me to be! :o) I will continue to teach, preach, write, work on marketing my dvd, hospital visits, etc, etc...

All in All, I am blessed beyond measure and anticipate God to use me to bring His Love and Life to people in some way each and every day.

Oh Holy Night...

One of my most favorite things about Christmas is the Christmas Eve Candlelight services we have at church! They are so special...one hour of reflection, carols, prayer and wishing your friends and family a Merry Christmas!

The four of us walked up on stage to open the service.
Afterwards at home, we worked on a gingerbread house...super sweet fun! I vaccumed up the mess to ready ourselves for our sweet friends, Lloyd and Diane Nott. They wanted to come over to bring the children gifts. I am so thankful for their thoughtfulness towards us, especially during times like this with us being so far away from family. They try to fill in that gap of "grandparents" and we help Diane with her missing her daughter and 2 grandkids the same ages as our kids in Tennessee. God is SO good to us!!!
Christmas Morning!!!
The first gift Noah opened was these shoes, so every gift after that he would point to and say "shoes". Awe! He put these on right away and wore them half the day! After the kids opened their gifts Liliana said "this was really nice of you guys"...so sweet and simple and grateful! Awe!
We spent a lot of the day right here on the couch! There was about a straight hour that all four of us were on there together! Liliana and daddy all tuckered out!

In the evening we made an attempt to visit with Grandma and PawPaw over the webcam to open the gifts they sent the kids but I could not get it working, so we did a video of it!

Liliana loves the dinosaur that Noah got from them! Thank you for all of the perfect gifts you sent...you sure have that grandma's touch! xoxox!

We had a wonderful day! The kids watched Rudolph and Frosty for the first time and we enjoyed just being together and listening to lots of Christmas songs all day! Honey baked ham and all that goes along with it filled our tummies and the Love of Jesus filled our hearts!

As daddy said in a text a few minutes ago "this was the best Christmas ever"...awe!

My favorite moment of this Christmas would have to be this one:

Tonight as I was tucking Liliana into her bed and saying "goodnight" I asked her what her favorite part of the whole day was and she pointed to her new dolly next to her and said "this doll is my favorite and this dog is my favorite and baby Jesus is my favorite gift"... Hearing her say this was my favorite gift!

Our Little Preachers

(Notice the bible in Noah's hand)

I must start off with the cutest thing Liliana said today before bed as I was reading some prayers to her (a cool book called Prayers for Little Hands or something)...as I was reading the one that starts "God be in my head and in my understanding"...she then stopped me and said "Does God eat the food that is in my stomach when Jesus lives in my heart?" AWE!!!! Tooo Sweeet!!!

Yesterday, after church, I found Liliana coming down the stairs with the two red chairs pictured below. Thinking she was just "doing whatever she so desired to rearrange the entire house", I stopped her and said "no, bring that back upstairs".....then she said in a very urgent and mature tone "but I need to preach"......"WELL, in THAT case...go for it...here I will help you"...lol! (see Liliana's pink NT on the couch...and the charmin on the floor...I had just gone to BJ's...ha!) We lined up some tiny happy meal stuffed animals in the chairs and had church!! :o) She had me lead worship, she preached and ended the service in prayer. We held two back to back services. Her first sermon was on a miss-mash of Bible truths in her head...anything that came to her mind "God loves you, deep and wide" and a little 3 year old tongues in between. Her second sermon was more eloquent..."you need to hold your mommy's hand when you are in the street or a car could come and there's lots of cars and they could give you a booboo and so make sure that you always hold you mommy's hand..." A very good and important lesson to "preach", indeed!

Then we had quiet/nap time (Noah had been napping all along)...The above photo was later in the evening when we played church for at least an hour. Lots of singing, running, preaching, praying...Woooh! The best! :o) Noah is in preaching mode too. Since yesterday evening he has had his Bible with him almost non-stop. He layed down in bed with it last night and had it in his hand when I greeted him first thing in the morning. He later took a nap with it and I found him awake 2 hours later sitting there talking by himself and looking through his bible. He then layed down for another 10 minutes and just flipped the pages over and over again...so peaceful! Tooo Sweet!!! He says "Bible" His Aunt, Donnie's Sister Darla gave him this bible for his first Christmas, 12/25/07.

Fallin' Asleep in the Car

Noah fell asleep on the way home from church today. Irresistably sweet!

Super-Cool Church Chick

In the toddler room at CCC!