Happy Birthday Riley!

my baby


7 years. how has it already been 7 years??? hard to believe! my little riley just turned 7 and i can hardly believe it. he has brought so much joy and LAUGHTER to this family and we love everything about him.

a few of my favorite things

*the way his whole face lights up when he smiles
*how sarcastic he is
*how HILARIOUSLY FUNNY he is
*how active he is
*how sensitive he is
*how inquisitive he is
*how smart he is
*how snuggly he is

shaking the present to guess what it is...

kahlen helping out a little bit...

have i said he likes legos?

trying to unwrap nanny's gift!!







he is amazing and i love being his mommy. every time i tell him that, he gets all snuggly and says "i love being your son".

oh he makes me so happy.

is it a light thing?

i found something interesting while i was reading for my 90-day-reading the other day.

the first verse was in 1 Kings 16:31. it is talking about ahab, the wicked king. "and it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam..." then he takes jezebel as a wife. what stood out to me was the part that said "as if it had been a light thing". he considered certain sins to be light things in the sight of God. well, i highlighted it in my bible and put a star by it, because i wondered how many things i took lightly that God does not! do i take gossip lightly? God doesn't. do i take inconsistency with disciplining my kids lightly? God doesn't. the NIV says "considered it trivial." hmmm...good wordage there. how many times have I not even thought twice about how my words might affect my husband? ouch. ok. now on to later in my reading. in 2 Kings 3:18, i found myself reading the same words, yet in a different context. it says "And this is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord; he will deliver the Moabites also into your hand". hmmm...what does God consider a light thing that i consider a HUGE thing? do i consider needing enough money to pay the rent a huge thing? God doesn't. do i consider a close family friend dying of cancer a huge thing? God doesn't. see, we have it all wrong! the things that we take so seriously, God doesn't even see them as big at all! he can handle it all. but at the same time, the things that we consider no big deal, God could consider huge and it could be causing us to drift slowly away from that close, intimate relationship with Him.
i love the verse in Hebrews 3:13 that says "But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness". that's just it. sin is deceitful, so deceitful that we start taking things lightly that God is totally against, and we DON'T EVEN REALIZE IT!!! and then we start doubting and worrying about things that GOD considers light, and WE DON'T EVEN REALIZE IT! i do not want to be deceived! i need to make sure that i am taking things seriously that God takes seriously. and that i should just be dropping all my worries to my God who considers delivering an entire army into Israel's hands a LIGHT THING! wow. what an awesome God we have.

cute baby feet

just had to show these cute little shots i got of baby jace








isn't he darling???

crafty kind of morning

i decided to do art this morning. it wasn't necessarily on my schedule that way, but i was just in the mood. which is really saying something, because to be honest i am not a natural crafty-type person (sorry sarah and bethany). aj had gotten a bird house for christmas that needed to be painted and ry had gotten a paint by color. they both did a great job.



our really good friends jeff and natalya were celebrating their daughter kahlen's 2nd birthday at chuck e cheese on tuesday. the boys (all three:)) were thrilled to be invited too!

a little bit of this and that...

here is my aj getting ready for his basketball game (i think it's jeremy camp "i'm alive" getting him pumped up!)



and here is my ry playing with his legos. oh how he loves his legos!!




and tonight my amazing husband took me out to dinner at the olive garden. i insist on getting 5-cheese ziti every single time i go. i just hate the thought of trying something else that i might not like because i KNOW i love the ziti!! and it was delish.

my parents watched the boys and we got to have some time alone. then we went to the mall and i got some jeans (aeropostale is having a sale on their jeans - 9.99 a pair! you all know how much i love me a bargain!)

and now i am doing some laundry and getting ready for a crazy day tomorrow. ry has basketball at 9. aj has basketball at 1:30. we have youth group from 3-5, then ry has soccer from 6-8. and as of right now, my poor baby ry is sick. so we'll see what tomorrow brings! i am just thankful. grateful that God has blessed me so much. oh and for all my homeschooling friends. go out and buy this book for your husband. no seriously. do it now. (thank you erika!!) adam read it in one day, and he has been amazingly understanding about everything to do with homeschooling. not that he wasn't before, don't get me wrong. but he said he learned so much.

ok. i guess i'm done for tonight. ry just came into my room, so i guess it's snuggle buggle time.

what are you doing?

click on the picture that says help for haiti to donate to an awesome ministry that my family had the privilege of staying with 2 summers ago.

ps. these are aj's hands :)

creation

aj made this great poster of all the days of creation. it was so awesome how hard he worked on it, and i LOVED the picture he drew of day 7. God resting in a big chair!

i am learning so much about creation vs. evolution in FBI. one thing that was talked about last night in class was this.

The argument from man's conscience and moral nature. *the existence of man's conscience and moral nature demands a self-conscious and moral maker.

1.though man's conscience is often weak or ignored, it nonetheless exists in all men and tell us what we ought to do right. This implies a moral God who planted a moral nature within us.

2.Why would accidental arrangements of molecules have a conscience? why would highly developed animals ever feel guilty when they do wrong?

3.yet the universal presence of guilt evidences the universal moral conscience in the human race. there is a universal fear of judgment and a knowledge that we will one day answer to our God.

(taken from Faith Bible Institute notes Volume I)

i could go on all night, but i won't. just look around you! it would be foolishness to assume that everything in this amazing, intricate, detailed world happened by chance. the existence of this design indicates a...drumroll please...you might not guess this... A DESIGNER!!!! and how amazing that a God with the power to design it all wants to be our friend. amazing thought. how GREAT IS OUR GOD!!

sweet boys

i was just thinking today how blessed i am to have 2 healthy boys. i don't want to ever take that for granted. my boys are so sweet and fun to be around, i just love every second that we get to spend together.

the other night aj had a question for me. he said "if my coach tells me to do something but my dad has already said that it's wrong, what should i do? because i know that the Bible says to obey them that have the rule over you, but it also says to obey your father and mother". you know why i loved the question so much? because he was quoting scripture to me! he realized that it was important to obey God, and he wanted to make sure that he was doing the right thing. i am so thankful for AWANA and sunday school and family members who demonstrate the need to know God's Word! he sees his grampops preaching on sunday, he sees his dad reading his Bible every day (who saw HIS dad read his Bible every day!) and he is already reaping the benefits of hiding God's word in his heart. that is knowledge, and that is something that is lacking so much in today's kids!






remember - OBEDIENCE BRINGS BLESSING!!!

on being humble

i don't think that we think enough about pride. i like the idea of calling sin sin.
here are some examples:

*your husband says something that annoys you
*someone cuts you off in traffic
*someone starts looking at the same rack of clothes when you are shopping (seriously, this always happens to me!!)
*someone says something that hurts your feelings

whenever i start to feel those nasty feelings come up inside of me and make me want to say something i shouldn't, it all boils down to the fact that i don't feel like i deserve being treated that way, right? as if i am so special that my husband should only talk to me in sweet loving tones, asking what he can do for me. i should be able to own the whole road. that i was at this rack first. how could someone ever be so mean as to put ME down and hurt MY feelings?? aren't these just 11-year-old-girlish sounding feelings when you see them written down??

only by pride comes contention. if i am living to think of others as better than myself, and really living that way, none of these things would bother me. i love how andrew murray puts it, and i want to print it out and put it up as wallpaper all over my house to remind myself. i'm not, but i should :)


Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is for me
to have no trouble; never to be fretted or vexed or
irritated or sore or disappointed. It is to expect
nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me,
to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest
when nobody praises me and when I am blamed
or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the
Lord where I can go in and shut the door and
kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace as in
a deep sea of calmness when all around is
trouble. It is the fruit of the Lord Jesus Christ’s
redemptive work on Calvary’s cross, manifested
in those of His own who are definitely subject to
the Holy Spirit. - Andrew Murray

let's try it. don't you like the sound of PERFECT QUITNESS OF HEART? i do!

a first...

yay me!! i got my first really nasty ANONYMOUS (of course) comment!! i feel so special. it's strange, because when i blog, i really assume that just my family and a few other people read it. and i assume that those people are on the same page as me. i have "met" some really great people here who have the same loves and passions that i do. but obviously it is a public blog so anyone is allowed to comment. my goal is still the same. i make it my goal to please Him (Jesus). and if that bothers people, it's ok. it's not really me they are mad at. it's funny too, because the blog they were upset about is one that i got the most positive comments from! not only on the comment page but also in my personal email. i am opinionated, but i am 100% convinced that the Word of God is alive and active. i am also convinced that God's Word won't return void. so i will still share and hopefully encourage more people than i offend.