Thank You Notes

I know I'm late in getting our Christmas thank you notes made and sent out this year (in all fairness one of the reasons is because some of the gifts for our kids arrived late - so that's part of the excuse I'll use for the delay). Anyway I thought I'd make a quick post sharing what I've done for thank you notes the past for gifts. Our kids are all really little (too young to write their own notes) and this Christmas we were away from all of our family so they were unable to see the kids opening the gifts.

So I decided to make photo collage thank you notes. I took the picture(s) of each child opening their gift and made it into a thank you card for each person. Wal-mart.com makes it super easy and quick to make up these 4x6 collage prints so you can include more than one picture and a small caption. It cost me just a little over $2 to make 9 of these cards (that is including the cost to have them shipped to my home since we live 30 min away from Wal-mart and it wasn't worth the gas to make a separate trip to pick these up). When we lived closer to a Wal-mart I would order them one our photo and be able to have Scott pick them up the same day at the store. Or if you aren't in a hurry you can order then and have them delivered to the store for pick up (which is the cheapest way). Anyway all that to say they aren't super expensive and each relative who sent us gifts gets a thank you note with pictures of the children opening their gifts.

Here is a picture of how they turned out.

Oh and for any family members wondering where their thank you cards are they should be sent out in the mail tomorrow :)

Messy Project #1 Cornstarch and Water

I likely won't document all of these on my blog but here is the first of our 52 messy projects for this year.

Will wasn't sure at first if this was such a fun idea.

 As soon as he discovered how it turns from solid to liquid in your hand he was sold and had a blast playing with it and describing it to me.

James was not a fan of this at all. He is autistic and has some sensory issues but he did touch it a couple times before deciding this was not his type of activity.

Ellie wasn't quite sure what to think of it. She just looked at it for awhile before finally deciding to touch it.

She finally warmed up to the idea a little and played for a few minutes. Here she is spreading it on the table.

And this is when she decided she was done having her "princess" hands all dirty and told me "I done Mommy"

The great thing about this is that while it did get all over and on their clothes and hands it washes out easily. :)

Goals for 2013 (and an update on 2012 Goals)

Well as most of you know it has been a crazy year for our family with many changes which is one reason my blog has been all but forgotten this year. This next year I am hoping to get a few posts written but it is still not a huge priority in my life right now. Last year I posted four goals for 2012 and as of a few days ago I finished the last of those four goals. My four 2012 goals were:

• Read 2,012 pages of classic literature/biographies aloud to the children - This was so much fun and we met our goal at the end of October and went on to enjoy reading a couple hundred more pages of Thanksgiving and Christmas books in November and December. I especially enjoyed seeing how much my four year old came a long in his ability to understand and follow the stories we read throughout the year. Two of his favorite books were Mr. Popper's Penguins and Charlotte's Web.

• Declutter 2,012 items from our home - I ended up going way over this. I stopped counting when I reached the 2,012 mark but ended up getting rid of at least double that much as I did some major life style changing purging this year. I love the freedom I now have after having minimized our life so much. There is still a lot more that needs to go but one in one out and regular purging of unnecessary items has become a habitual part of my life largely because of this goal.

• Listen through audio of the Bible with the children - We would put on audio while we worked or played around the house and listened through the entire Bible together. My 4 year old would often stop to listen and ask what section of the Bible it was or what it was talking about which spurred some great conversations.

• Read through the Bible in my personal devo time - I finished this a few days ago and as always it was a wonderful blessing. I think this is the 5th or 6th time I've completed reading through the Bible and it as a wonderful challenge and encouragement.

Now onto my goals for 2013:

• 1. Read 500 Picture Books to the Children - The goal is for Scott and I combined to read 500 different picture books (so it doesn't count for 10 books if we read the same book 10 times). I found last year with being so focused on reading chapter books that the picture books were sometimes neglected. 

• 2. Read 2000 Pages of Chapter Books to the Children - I'm working on getting a list put together to get started on but I think the first book we will start on this year is The Little Princess.

• 3. Make Five New Items Each Month for My Doll Clothes Shop - I put as much time towards my little online shop as I used to but between Oct-Dec I do still have quite a few sales. Of course that is also when I'm busy with my own family holiday celebrations so my goal is to make five things per month to help get my store stocked with some new items for the holiday rush (of course if they sell before next fall I'll also be happy) :)

• 4. Pay Down $6500 in Debt - This past year most of our extra income went toward a down payment on our new house and moving expenses. We currently have 13,000 left on student loan debt and the goal is to pay down half of that this year. That averages to right around $540 a month. We have another grid chart on our fridge to help us track it just like when did for our 6 month challenge a couple years ago.

• 5. Memorize the Book of James - This was going to be one of my personal goals then as Scott and I started discussing it we decided to work on it as a whole family. I will probably move a little quicker than the kids and hope to do about a 1/2 chapter a month to ensure a little extra time at the end of the year. I'm looking forward to working on memorizing a longer passage of Scripture with our whole family.

• 6. Exercise 12 Days a Month - Yeah I know an exercise goal for the New Year is really overdone but it's something I want to work on being consistent with this year. So I'm aiming for 3 times a week. 

• 7. 40 Hospitality Meals - One area of ministry I have enjoyed getting more involved with this past year is having people from church into our home for meals. Our goal as a family this next year is to serve 40 hospitality meals in our home (so 3-4 per month). 

• 8. Date Night with Scott Twice a Month - We don't get out much to do dates but my goal is to have at least two fun at home date nights with Scott after the kids are in bed. I'm working on putting together a list of ideas. Ideally I'd like this to happen every week but with the way our schedule is right now twice a month is probably more realistic. 

• 9. Do 52 Messy Craft or Project with the Kids - With four kids 5 & under I'll admit I struggle to make time to do the fun messy projects with my kids. It is a struggle most days to just keep the dishes and and laundry caught up but I don't want them to miss out on all the fun art and science projects just because of the mess they will make. So my goal is to do 52 messy projects this year (so about 1 per week). Bring on the glitter, glue, paint, etc! I'm working on putting together a list of projects to choose each week. We may have some duplicates but I am excited about trying some new things with them also.

• Read 12 "Grown Up" Books - I read a lot of kid books so this year I wanted to make the goal of reading 12 books (one per month) for me. I am still working on finalizing the list (it's about half way there) but the first book on the list is Ann VosKamp's One Thousand Gifts book. 

Well there you go my goals for 2013. I'm looking forward to seeing what God has for our family this year! Hopefully I'll be able to do a little better with keeping the blog updated (not making any promises as it didn't make the cut for one of my official goals this year) :)

2012 Goals - January Update

Each month I want to post an update here to let you all know how I am progressing on the four goals I made for 2012. It is a way of giving me some extra accountability to stay on track.

So here are my four goals for this year and a quick note on how we are doing:

1. Read through the Bible - With the plan I am using this year I will read cover to cover. I am at Leviticus 3 which is right on track with the schedule. I missed a few days but was able to make them up to stay on track.

2. Listen to through the Bible with my children - We have made it to Exodus 15. My goal for this month was to make it through Exodus so we fell a little short. I find that often we get busy doing stuff and I forget to turn it on for us to listen. As the month progressed I started doing better and I think we will be able to catch up soon.

3. Read 2,012 pages of great Christian biographies & classic literature aloud to my children - So far we have read 139 pages. In order to make our goal we need to read about 168 pages per month but for about a week I was sick with sore throat and scratchy voice and was not able to get much reading done. We started reading about 30 min a day after lunch but it not ends up being at least 45 and a couple times we have read an hour. We finished reading a biography on the life of Hudson Taylor we started last year. When we finished that we read a couple of stories written by Hans Christian Andersen.

4. Declutter 2,012 items from our house - This month I have decluttered 1,016 items from our house! Scott took our kids for a day and allowed me concentrated time to work on some major purging of things around here. While I have the 2,012 goal for this entire year I would love to reach it much sooner in the year as we are praying God would lead us to a church soon and I want to have the house decluttered as much as possible before a move. It has been so freeing to get rid of so many items cluttering our lives.

Four Goals for 2012

Four goals I have for 2012:

1. Read through the Bible - I have done this several times but it has been a few years and decided this would be a good year to do this again.

2. Listen to through the Bible with my children - I plan to play audio of the Bible for my kids while we are playing/working around the house. I plan to get through the entire Bible at least once and then will likely repeat several books. It is a passive way to surround my children with Scripture.

3. Read 2,012 pages of great Christian biographies & classic literature aloud to my children - I started reading reading biographies to our children this year each day before nap time. I didn't keep very good track which book or how many pages (we read 3 or 4 biographies). This year I plan to expand it to include some classic literature and do a better job recording what we read with the goal of 2,012 pages in 2012.

4. Declutter 2,012 items from our house - This past year I have been convicted by how much time the "stuff" in our lives takes away from time I could be using to be a better wife and mother. I purged & donated over 30 garbage bags of stuff this year. This year I plan to keep track with the goal of purging 2,012 items in 2012 (about 38 items per week). I am super excited about this goal to help move us toward a less cluttered life.

There are a few other goals that are floating around in my mind but I haven't taken the time to sit down and flesh them out into manageable steps. I've also found it is much more successful for me to set a few goals at a time and once they have become habits then add more. If I try to bite off to many changes at once I am tempted to just give up on all of the goals. I am excited to see what God has in store for our family over the next year!

Happy New Year!

Four Years Ago...

Four years ago today my eyes welled with tears as the doctor placed you in my arms.

Four years ago today I became a Mommy.

The past four years have been filled so many precious memories as I have watched you grow.

I love how you make me laugh.

I love to listen to you pray.

I love to see your eyes light up when you are excited.

I love to watch you take care of your little brother and sister.

We chose the middle name Matthew because it means "Gift from God" and you have truly been a precious gift from God to our family.

Happy 4th Birthday William Matthew!

4 Days Old

1 Year Old

2 Years Old

3 Years Old

4 Years Old

Waiting...

This is a continuation of the story of this past weekend. On Monday we headed on a few hours north to my aunt & uncle's house to pick up my grandma (the original reason for this trip). We knew that the pastoral search committee had a meeting scheduled for Monday night to discuss if they wanted Scott to return to officially candidate.

Waiting is hard.

As we drove Monday we talked about how we were already falling in love with the people at Colon Baptist Church. We felt like we were leaving a piece of our hearts at the church which was so hard because we also knew we may never return. We were so surprised that we could become so attached to a church in just one day.

We spent a lot of time praying and waiting for a call from the chair of the search committee. The call finally came Monday after their meeting. He told Scott that there were several people who really think that he is the guy for their church but they have three other candiates already lined up to speak and after discussing it they decided to wait until they have heard the other men before they take a vote on whether to have Scott return to candidate.

Of course that means more waiting...waiting 2 months until the middle to end of January.

God led us to this church to minister for a weekend. We got a taste of full time ministry. We enjoyed sweet fellowship and after just a day felt that we were leaving a piece of our hearts with this group of believers.

And then God asks us to wait.

I mentioned in my previous post that Sunday night Scott preached on Caleb. As Scott and I discussed how hard it will be to wait 2 months God used that sermon to encourage and challenge us.

Caleb was given a taste of the Promise Land as one of the twelve spies but then God told him he would have to wander 40 more years in the wilderness before he would be allowed to enter and conquer. Two months is nothing compared to 40 years!

While our heart's desire would be that Colon Baptist Church would call Scott to be their next pastor we are trying to hold that desire with open hands. We truly want God's best for our lives and for the people in this church. We are praying if Scott is not the person for this church that God will make that clear both to us and the people at this church.

We will be praying daily for Colon Baptist Church over the next two months. It is hard because our hearts ache to serve there but we are learning anew what it means to pray "Thy will be done".