I'm still alive!

Well, as you probably already know, blogging has taken a backseat to life for a while. It has been a crazy couple of months here. I feel like I did at the end of Dec. I don't know what happened...well actually, I do know...a full life happened. Here is a FAST update. I hope that more will be added to this at a later date. I'd love to share some details about some of these big events, but I can't make any promises right now that I will have time to. Ok...so here it is in a totally random order  :)

TWO Bridal Showers:
Yup! I hosted two different bridal showers this last month. Here are a couple pics from my sister's shower.

A baby girl, so excited to be actually sitting in the cart for the first time instead of just in her car seat in the cart. :) She was SOO excited about this. It was a couple months ago and she only got to sit there instead of her car seat because big sister Mayme wasn't with us.

Mayme girl...cute as can be cuddling with Pooh Bear on the stairs one morning. These kinds of things keep me very busy if you can't tell. The best kind of business by the way. 

Our Birthday Girl! Lucy turned seven in March. We had a birthday boy too, Tyson is now...well you can guess his age. He was too wiggly though to get any good photos. : ) I guess he just really liked his gifts this year. 

A Trip to the Children's Museum in Milwaukee. We went with some friends and had so much fun! This is such a great place! It was even better once I went and sat with Mayme and Selah in the all enclosed toddler/preschool area! :) Let's just say Mayme was quite "explorative" that day and we couldn't keep up with her.

Getting our baby girl to eat some solid foods! This was quite a process. She wanted NOTHING to do with baby food or spoon feeding. A great book: Baby Led Weaning!!! Seriously, check it out if you are in this stage of life. I hope to write a post about it some day, but don't wait for me, check the book out. :) Oh, yes, she is eating...feeding herself a bit of food now. She Loves it. 

We hosted an Andrew Peterson concert! Yeah. It was so much fun to share one of our favorite musicians with all of our friends. This is our little buddy Joe posing with Mr. Peterson. :) Poor Joe broke his collar bone. He still made the concert though...he wouldn't have missed it for the world. :) 

The reason our hope lives on is because He Lives! Happy Easter!

March Forth!

I may not have been posting about this lately (crazy schedule!) but believe me I have been studying and clinging to these verses. And now, mid March, I need them even more! Here are a couple more verses.

Psalm 37:3
Trust in the Lord, and do good;
dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. 

Isaiah 7: 9b
If you are not firm in faith,
you will not be firm at all.

If you read these verses in context, you will find many other verses that you'll want to tape up around your house! Here is one:

Isaiah 7:4
Be careful, be quiet, do not fear,
and do not let your heart be faint.

That's all I'm going to say about that. :) I hope you have some time to study God's Word today. You won't be disappointed.

Painting Pottery

Several weeks ago, I had a chance to go with a bunch of friends to Paint It Pottery. We had such a fun time! I can't wait to go back there again. Well, we all painted and painted and admired and encouraged each other, but left without getting to see everyone's finished product. So I offered to post any pictures I received from them of their pottery pieces, so that we could all admire each other's work. So, here they are:

Amy:

Brooke:

Carrie:

Linda:

Courtney:

Heather (me):

Penny:

Sharon:

Jessica:

Thanks for sharing ladies! I love how they turned out. 

It is so neat to see how they reflect the uniqueness of each one of you!

Foto Fridaday

This week's Foto Friday Challenge was captioned. 


Jude has been walking around with 4 hats on his head all week.
It cracks me up. :)

Selah loves to help me hang up the clothes, or rather, play with hangers.  :)
Next week's challenge is green...something we are all ready to see outside. :)

Scrapbook Sunday

Here's a card for Scrapbook Sunday. :)

No time to upload any cute kids' pictures right now, but maybe next week...Lucy painted 

a lovely little picture of ME that I can't wait to show you all. :)

Catie...notice...no bird?! (next week)

Foto Friday

Extremely Edible!! And Delicious!

Jeff's famous pecan crusted bacon...mmmm!

Mexican Omelet, yum!

Eggs Benedict Florentine, wow!

Today's Foto Friday challenge was Edible. This was a bit of a stretch because I don't capture pictures too often of food. I have lots of cute pictures of incredibly edible babies, but I really want to try to get food shots this week. So this was the perfect place to showcase some dishes from our new favorite restaurant! You might think we are biased because some dear friends just opened this place, but really, the food is GREAT and the atmosphere so comfortable, relaxing and extremely pleasant! We are so excited for our friends. We had to go there for breakfast to have our favorite- Jeff's pecan bacon!! The kids shared an order of French Toast and even that was so good,  that I don't think I ever want to make it at home again...we'll just go there. So where is this place? What is this place?
It's called "Let's Eat ...Where Friend's Meet"
And, for you locals, it is just a short scenic drive away. So I highly suggest you head on over to Portage and check it out. And tell Janet that your good friend Heather sent you. ;)

Next week's challenge is: captioned. Hmm...I'm going to have to think about that one.

March Forth!

Tyson, you knew this was coming didn't you? He's been telling me for a few days that I needed to listen to track 8 of volume 1 of James MacDonald's Daily Drive CD. Well, today after a good workout, I did. Here are some highlights:
This is how to handle a hard time- trust in the Lord, do good, stay put.
Keep doing the right thing
FEED on faithfulness
Do everything you can to be faithful
Make faithfulness your goal
your pursuit
your satisfaction
if I was faithful for another day, that is good
more than your satisfaction,
make faithfulness your admiration!
I admire faithful people.

Faithfulness is hard! The Lord allowed me to exercise that muscle yesterday. I should have expected it, right!? Exercise, working out, is hard. We rarely enjoy it...until it is over...and then...it feels so good! To have done it, to  have done it faithfully. I've been trying to exercise every morning. I'm getting to the point where I don't really want to get up and do it anymore. I've had some success with it and that feels good, so I can take a little break now, right? Each new day that I get up and force myself to endure that workout, to push my weary body on for one more day, I'm met with reward, with satisfaction. Faithfulness is good and satisfying. What a great reminder MacDonald gives us to keep Marching Forth in the Lord, to be faithful. You know, maybe I'm strange, but I kind of like tests. I always have. I remember in school...didn't like the homework so much, but when the test came, I was ready to see how much I really knew. I don't want to repeat those tests now because I think I've forgotten just about everything. I still in many ways however enjoy tests. Don't get me wrong, they are HARD, they are not fun. I cry a lot. I fail many. But, in the end, it feels so good! To bear through it with the Lord, to commune with Him in the hardest and darkest times, to allow Him to prove to us His faithfulness and His goodness. He is good. Afterwards, I look back at each test, each hard and difficult time, and thank the Lord for it, for growing me, for loving me enough to not leave me where I am. He loves me just as I am, but He also loves me enough to not leave me there. Thank you Lord! Let's see how well, I can be faithful and endure another night with a fussy baby who wants to wake up and eat way too often for a tired Momma. Maybe I'll have a better attitude with this perspective.

I was going to try not to add words, to simply state the next scripture, but I see that the Lord has plans to teach me through this. What was I thinking? I'm always too excited to share what He teaches me...how can I stay quiet? Next verse:

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.  1 Timothy 6:12