Prayers please!

I have so many thoughts running through my head right now that I don't even know how to start this. I hate how the enemy can just slip in and take what was a great day and totally change things around. My heart is very heavy tonight and I am fighting fear, but I know that greater is He that is with me than he that is in the world. I had a great day with my family today, which I will share with you in another post. Right now I must confess that as the night came to a close we dropped of a very dear little friend of ours. There was a comment made by someone at their door and I have been having a very hard time dealing with it. I know this is not easy to follow, but for right now I am not able to share all of the details. I guess, right now, I am asking for prayer from you. I need you to step up for me and pray as the Lord leads you for the next 3 days. My husband and I are going to be talking with this family on Wednesday evening and I am just having a very hard time with it. I am battling fear and trying not to let it win, but I must say that I am not doing very good with it. This is something that is very near and dear to my heart. I am trying with everything in me to hold onto promises that the Lord gave to me a couple years ago, but I am struggling. I am trying to turn my thoughts and emotions over each and every time they overwhelm me. Please, if you will, pray for me. I would greatly appreciate it, more than you know!

Kids :)

We had my nephew and a little girl spend the night last night. So we had 5 kids in our home last night and it was full of excitement! We went on a hike at a park and made some smores there too. We figured we would load them up with load them up with sugar then take a 2 mile hike to burn it off. It worked too! Came home, showered them down, got in their pajamas and watched a movie. They were nice and tired for bed so no rough playing while they were in their rooms. Today has been another adventure! It has been very interesting watching them all play today. We had some inside play time and some outside play time in the pool. My nephew and our little girl friend are both "only" children, so they don't always know how to play with other kids, if that makes sense. The really interesting part is the little girl lives with her "Grandparents" who are 87 & 91. It is fun watching her transform into a little girl. Today they broke out in dance as we finished a movie. Now they are pretending to be zoo animals and are crawling around on the floor making very unusual sounds as they are trying to escape from the zoo. Time with kids seems to go so very fast, so it has been such a precious time watching and enjoying these children play together in my house. I can't wait for the next time!

Keep finding more...

Well, this morning I need to vent a little bit. I need to release this frustruation somewhere so today, it is going here. There are times that you get work done on your house and things go so easy that you are thrilled. This is not one of those stories. About 3 or 4 months ago a storm came through here with some heavy hail. We were one of the fortunate ones to have damage to our house, our siding to be more specific. So it begins, we call the insurance company and they come out to estimate the damage and quote us a price. We got more than we thought but not as much as we needed to replace the siding on the entire house. So we hired a contractor to do the work, signed the contract and then waited for it to begin. And we waited, and we waited. Finally, about 3 weeks ago, they came! They brought the siding out to our back yard on a tuesday and we were told that they guys were going to start on the house the very next day. They did too! However, there were only 2 guys working on our house. So, by friday, they had only finished one side of the house and began working on another side, but were not going to be completed by the end of the day. Week 1 done. Monday morning came and they came back, and worked hard every day that week. By friday they were done with 3 sides of the house. Week 2 done. Monday morning came again, and they came to the house to begin working on the back of the house... finally! After they tore all the siding off, they realized that they did not have enough siding to finish the job. They finished what they could and left. Oh, I should say, they did not leave this night until almost 9pm. Tuesday, no workers. Wednesday, no workers. Thursday we were finally told that they had to order more siding and it would be there Friday morning. Oh, after we called the contractor to get on him that it was taking WAY TOO LONG! So, Friday morning came, and workers came and began to finish the back of the house. I would like to tell you that they got it done, but I cannot. Week 3 done. Now, we enter week 4 and monday the come and actually finish the job. Well, the siding that is. The gutters should be here by friday, we were told. Yes, thats right, they still are not done. Now here is the exciting part. We have been keeping the kids inside for this entire time because they are in the back yard and they cannot play because of all of the equipment and nails, which are still there! Also, we have been working on the inside of our house, painting walls, fixing up things, putting in a back splash in the kitchen. Now, we get to go around and fix all the damage that was caused by them banging on our siding so hard that it knocked dry wall nails out of the dry wall. Yes, it is true, I now get to put the nails back into the walls, patch them up and re-paint all of them. Some of the walls will just need touched up because I just painted them. One of the walls was still in good shape from when I painted it a couple years ago so I was not going to paint this wall. The catch is, now that a nail has come through it, I have to fix it and I don't have that same color of paint anymore, so I get to repaint the entire room. Oh, this is my bedroom too, so not looking forward to that at all. I guess it just seems like every time I enter into a room I find more damage that I have to fix from the workers. Lastnight, I went down into my basement to discover a huge leake somewhere. I think it was from the dishwasher, but am wondering if they knocked something loose? All I know is that I am very frustruated with this job and very much ready for them to go away and never see them again. Thanks for listening to my story. I feel better just getting it out there even though there is still much to do in my house!

Psalm 37:4-7a

"Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He will do it. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and our judgement as the noonday. Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him." This is where I am at right now and I wanted to share the verses that is ministering to me. Psalm 37:4 is a verse I have held on to for about 8 years. It is a promise that the Lord gave to me and He has been fulfilling it in various ways for the past 6 years. He is not finished yet, and it is overwhelming and amazing all in one breath. I don't want to make any moves or decisions with out hearing from Him first, so I am resting patiently for Him!

Random thoughts...

I have several things running through my mind tonight as I sit here thinking about what to write. I have been praying that the Lord would give me dreams for some time now. Not silly ones, but ones that mean something to someone, or to me. Well, last night He gave me one! Although, I am not able to share the details, I can say that not only did He give me the dream, He gave me the meaning of it too! I don't completely understand it, but I am excited none the less and can't wait to see the final results. Mostly, I am just excited to have just one more way that the Lord speaks to me. I don't know about you, but sometimes I question if I really do hear from the Lord or if He even speaks to me. I know He does, but sometimes I listen to the enemy too much and then begin to believe the lies that he plants in my head that I don't hear Him and He is not speaking to me. Anyway, I want to encourage anyone who is reading this to keep on pressing in and hang in there. He is listening to you even if you don't "feel" like He is. He loves you and you are His favorite!

Kids...

Kids are so precious. Sometimes you forget just how much they have changed, or grown up. Today I had the privilege of braiding a new friends daughters hair. She did a great job for a 5 year old. It reminded me of when we first got Joyona and how hard it was to get her hair done. All of the emotions we had in the beginning are now just grunts and groans. Joyona has come such a long way and is turning into such a beautiful young woman so fast. She is also starting to really get "into" boys, so we have begun talking about what that means. So not ready for that yet!!!

Tra, well his stitches are out and he is back into being a high speed little boy! We still keep a band aid on it because it is still healing, but he is thrilled to be able to play again and take a bath. He did not like taking showers at all!

Elijah, well he really wants to pee in the potty. His head does anyway. His favorite movie to watch right now other than Thomas the train is Elmo's potty training video. He loves the idea of pulling up and down his pull up, however the rest of his body has not gotten in sink yet. They are all so precious and they are growing up so fast. I thought I would share a brief update on what is going on here in our house right now

Birthdays!

January not only starts the new year, but it also starts the beginning of birthdays for our family. Our daughters birthday is January 27th and she turned 8 this year. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that she is my big girl now and not my little girl anymore. She wants to wear her hair differently and wear more grown up clothes. She really wants to wear a bra, but I am not ready to go there. Next she will be asking me to shave her legs.... anyway, she is growing up so fast on me and she is turning into a beautiful young lady! February brings our next birthday, our youngest son turned 3 on February 14th. He is our valentines baby and boy does he know how to love his mommy! I love the way he says "mommy, love you" sometimes just for no reason. He is growing up really fast and each day it seems like he has new words that he is using that I did not hear the day before. He has definitely lost his "baby" look and is definitely into the toddler look. We get March off, and then comes April. My oldest son turned 6 on April 26th, and boy is he growing up so fast too! He learned to ride a 2 wheeler right before his birthday so we bought him a new bike. Unfortunately he has not been able to try it out because of his stitches, but he looks at it almost every day and can't wait to try it out next week. He is changing so much too as he now has lost all of that "little boy" look and now looks so much older to me. I feel so blessed to be called their mom, and humbled that the Lord would allow me to be their mother! I love you Joyona, Elijah and Tra!

Silly ;)

So many times times we share things we need help with, or we share personal things that we just need to get off of our chest. Sometimes we take some time to share something very personal about our self that only the closest of friends know about us. Well, this is not one of those times. Actually, this time, I am going to share something very silly about myself. Sometimes we just have to laugh at ourselves, and I laugh at myself daily! Tonight I was eating a late night snack of chex mix and realized that no matter what I am eating, I eat things in a certain way. For instance, I eat chex mix one thing at a time. I eat the pretzels, then I eat the bread sticks, and then I eat the chex cereal. I do not like the bagel chips so I throw them out. I eat every plate of food in a certain order and I don't like my food to touch each other. Mixed veggies and a salad are just about the only exception, unless it comes "made that way". I always eat my french fries before I eat the sandwich or pizza. I cannot eat fries and take a bite of other food, yuck! Oh, and I separate the colors of the M&M's and eat one color at a time, unless I am driving and can't separate them. Anyway, just a silly post about something that is very corky about me that I thought I would share. Feel free to share anything about you that is fun. I would love to hear it :)

A new adventure!

Yesterday I took my daughter to her trampoline and tumbling class and about 15 minutes into the class my darling husband called me. He informed me that Tra, our oldest son, cut himself with a pair of scissors on his knee and is not sure if it needs stitches. So, he had our neighbor look at it and she thought we should take him to the emergency room. So, Tim packed up our boys and headed over to the gym where I met them and took Tra to the emergency room. We checked in at 7pm and finally got to a room to be worked on at 9pm. Lets just say that Tra was great in the beginning. First a nurse walks in with a bag of goodies to help "entertain" him. Then in walks in the tech who is going to performing the cleaning and stitches, if he needs them. Well, they soon found out that he is pretty strong so they stopped and got reinforcements. We had to change rooms so that there could be people all around the table to help keep him secured. So, we entered our new room, and got Tra settled down, again. Then in walks one more nurse and the tech, with the plate of equipment needed to clean his wound and then stitch it up. Well, Tra was good until he saw the needle and he was so strong and fast that he pulled out the top of the needle where the medicine goes and the liquid went all over him, me and the table. Out went the tech and the extra nurse, so now it was just me, Tra and the entertainment nurse. We got him calmed down again and we got him to lay down and relax for a minute. Next, the door opened and in walks the tech and two more nurses. Now, we are ready for battle! The entertainment nurse and I were on the upper body and the other two nurses had one leg each. The tech worked fast, I was impressed. Tra, well lets just say that he did not like anyone in that room and was THRILLED when it was over! He did like the stitches when he was able to see them, and was even more excited that he got his first, very own bandage to wrap around the stitches. Because it is on his knee, he is not allowed to really bend his knee and definitely not allowed to do any rough playing or crawling on his knees. Thankfully, this should only last for 2 weeks, but for me it is going to be a long two weeks. Today Tra is doing good, but is in some pain. So, we went to the library and have some movies to watch and some Motrin to take for the pain. I can say that he does not want to play with scissors any more. Oh yeah, I guess I never did say how our trip began. Tra decided that he did not want any of the strings on the hole that was in the knee of his jeans, so he took a pair of scissors and tried to cut the strings off, like a knife. He removed the strings and got a one inch deep cut in his knee! These were child scissors for school, so today, all of the scissors are put up where not one child in my home knows where they are, and that includes the really big child ;). No more trips to the ER this week for me!

Hmmmm....

I would like to say that I am a dedicated blogger, but as you can see, I am not. There are so many things I want to say, but can never seem to find the time to put them down into words. In the past few months so many things have happened to me and my family that I am going to try my very best to share them with you. Honestly, the reason I have not put much down here is because I have been trying not to be too personal in my blog, but that just is not working for me anymore. Starting now I am going to be sharing all of my heart with you. I have realized that I am very guarded with my thoughts and sometimes the Lord wants me to share them. Here is a brief summary of what has happened and what is to come, along with anything new that comes along. My daughter turned 8, my youngest son turned 3, Belize, Midwest home school conference, and more I am sure that I can't remember. So, if you are interested in hearing more about my heart keep checking back! It should be pretty interesting stuff :)