"All I want for Christmas is my right front tooth"

Avery has pulled another tooth. Her right front tooth came out in the back seat of the car with much drama and triumph!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Are your children doing the count down to the big day? Visions of scooters, Pixos, and Barbie's dancing in their heads? I know mine is. Here are some pictures from our gingerbread house assembly and a trip to my best friend's in Gatorland (no not the zoo).

Katie & Cami were the hostesses with the mostest for a fun weekend. We built a gingerbread house and went to a Grossology exhibit where we learned about boogers, snot, burps and poop. Probably too much information right? :)

I can't believe how big they are getting!

Merry Christmas to all our family and friends! I hope that you are all doing well and are happy and healthy. We are counting down the days till school is out and then we'll be able to play and enjoy each other. For those of you we will not be able to see this year, we miss you. God bless you all.

Avery and her babysitter Sarah love to go to the duck pond. While there, they made up a song about the mama and baby ducks they saw.

Ok, my friends we are in the thick of holiday preparations. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving on a beautiful day. My mom hosts turkey day and we all ate too much and enjoyed each other's company. I got to be home with Avery the whole week of Thanksgiving and we went on a picnic, to the library, to the movies and worked on our homemade Christmas gifts. I got my whole house decorated for Christmas and CLEAN! We went shopping and I have presents wrapped before Christmas Eve. It was a wonderful week.

I hope you all are taking at least a little bit of time for yourselves. Stop and enjoy the Christmas lights, quit work early and go get a pedicure, or pretend you have a stomach ache and disappear into the bathroom to read that novel you've had sitting for months. Most of all slow down and remember the reason for the season. I hope that the love of Jesus wraps around you and your families.

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun filled Halloween, with sculpted pumpkins (that the squirrels ate!). Rice Crispy treat candy corn & spiders and fun trick or treating with our friends.

MamatoMama's Caps to Cap Haitian Project

My friend is always looking for a way to serve others. She found a website that asks people to make baby hats out of old t-shirts to include in a safe birthing kit for Haitian mothers. This was a LOT of fun and soooo easy! I'm grateful that she is geared this way, because I would just stay focused on my own microcosm if it wasn't for her.

Not the one I wanted...

"I didn't get the president I wanted." That's the way my bible study leader started our session today. I nodded my head..."Me neither". Then she did something that really got my attention. She said, "Ladies, we have to get on the same page and look at what the Bible says about this. " She read to us from Romans 13 which tells us about submitting to the authorities. Our job as Christians now is to support the new leader of our country and his wife and children and pray for them. People will be watching us to see what we are going to do. God is bigger than any president and His work will be done through this. I'm grateful to my Bible study leader for being able to bring us back to what is important...the Truth.

I don't know how you voted and it really doesn't matter. God is bigger than our worldly government and thankfully He is in control! So, I encourage you to add Barack & Michelle Obama and their daughters to your prayer list.

Live Deliberately

I don't know if its my age and stage, or the fact that we're coming to the end of another year that has flown by, or if there are other influences bringing this thought to mind, but lately the recurring phrase that continues to come to me is "Live Deliberately". So much of the time I feel like I am being tossed along each day in my life without a plan, without priorities. It occurred to me that it doesn't have to be that way. Priorities have always been a challenge for me and a lot of anxiety comes from conflicts between my roles and priorities. I try as hard as I can to control and schedule and I can never seem to follow through on the plan. I get distracted, it's like I suffer from adult ADD. Maybe the distraction is really avoidance. I KNOW I avoid all kinds of things right down to going to bed at a decent hour...how silly. How long I waited to be a mom and I find myself looking for ways to avoid that too. Why? So I know that it is human nature to move as quickly as possible from discomfort to comfort. Who said life was supposed to be comfortable? If we're really living to fulfill the purpose we've been called to then NOTHING can be comfortable.

So, here's my approach. Identify my priorities...God, my husband, my child, and my calling. Every day I will choose to live deliberately according to those priorities. How? I'm still working on it. One thing I know for certain though is that it's going to take some thought, some prayer and some major behavior change. For so long I have allowed this haphazard existence and it's going to take time to change. But if I just take one challenge at a time and build on the discipline then I will get there.

"In all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us." Romans 8:37

My little model

Avery and I were playing around one Saturday. She got dressed up and wanted to play in my wedding veil. I got my camera (that I'm still learning to use) and just started snapping pictures. The poses below required no coaching on my part, just my amazing little girl's personality showing through.