November 2012

November was a busy month, but I forgot my camera when we went to Thanksgiving so I have very few pictures.  I made a new wreath for our front door, I thought it was cute :).

 Anna basically potty trained herself, I think in late October/early November.  This was her first #2 on the potty.  Yes, I take a picture, tried to cover the business ;).

 After Thanksgiving in Salado, we came home, made chocolate popcorn and put up our tree. 

Cara 

 Anna

Micah man. 

Cara's big day - 10/15/2012

Saying one of the sweetest prayers I've ever heard.

Sitting on the couch talking about our Jesus.

October 15th, 2012 started just like any other day in our house.  Kids up, chores started, breakfast, clean up, school started, etc.  We enjoy listening to the bible read aloud at breakfast (from the great bible.is app), and then Micah and Cara and I read aloud a few bible verses and work on our Grapevine Studies curriculum, stick-figuring through the bible. It's a great way for the kids to learn the great topics of the old testament.  We were still in Genesis, learning about the patriarchs, but I try to tie the story back to Jesus, our redemption, his sacrifice, etc.  This day, Cara said she was ready to commit her life to Christ.  The spirit was moving in our little school/play room that day.  She had asked before, but we prayed about it, and I asked her questions like 1) are you ready to follow Jesus for the rest of your life? 2) are you committed to obedience at any cost? 3) do you feel the Holy Spirit prompting your heart right now?

I was concerned with her having a faith of her own, not just ours!  Yes, we teach them the bible, and yes, we teach them Jesus is the Son of God, so as children, of course they are going to say that they believe that, because it is what we have taught them.  But we really wanted to know that the Lord was leading her to make this decision.  And this day, 10/15/12, her new spiritual birthday, she felt God moving.  It was a great experience to get to be a part of with her, I am so blessed!

sorry, only iphone photos

We went out to a special lunch (burger king...ick, but what she wanted), and later that day went and talked to our children's minister to make sure Cara really understood key concepts, like sin, sacrifice, baptism, etc.  She was ready to get baptized and make her profession public, but since we are a part of a brand new church plant, we had to wait.  But now, things are lining up and it looks like she will be baptized 5/5!  We are so proud of our big girl!

My reader

Yesterday Cara started a new chapter book. She's reading the Piper Reed series now. We started by listening to a few on cd in the car and they were cute. At the library last week we found a few more books in the series so she got a few. She started another one and couldn't put it down last night. All three of our kids share a room and it works out great! The only thing I dislike is that Cara can't stay up reading. Every night she begs for more time. If she had her own room I'd let her. I bought curtains to make around her and Anna's bunk, I should do that!

Anyways, last night she asked for a book light, but we've done that before and it keeps the little 2 up. She said she was going to wake up early and read then. She typically gets up between 7 and 7:30. The rule is when you wake up, you make your bed and get dressed and stay in your room until 7:30. Now understand, I read to her everyday and she reads alone for 30 minutes every afternoon. So this am I'm up doing my quiet time and she comes out of he room at 6:30 fully dressed ready to read.

I couldn't turn her away so I let her go into the play room. And now she's quietly reading her new book :)

October 2012 -- part two!

We had Micah's 4th birthday party, his Super Hero birthday party, at home after his soccer game that day.  

It was the first time I really used my Silhouette I have from 5 years ago.  I had fun making cute signs! 

 I grabbed a lot of ideas from pinterest.  This was a strength punching game. 

Some decor Eric made :) 

 Good thing we did batman and bat girl for halloween :).

 All the cousins!

 Aunt Misty with Jack and Anna

 This was fun, we turned the play room/school room into an agility course :)

 About to eat our cupcakes

 Micah got some great gifts from friends.

 He got 'Thor-ed out' from Nana.  He was so excited.

I have to thank my friend Amy Daniel, she saw I was doing a super hero party, and let me borrow a bunch of the decorations because her son had just had one!!  It was perfect!

 A few nights later we did our pumpkin carving for the year.  Eric had fun doing a great creative carving.

 This was just one of our normal evenings ;).

 One Sunday after church we went up to Splendora to say goodbye to Aunt Grace and Uncle Jim.  They were moving to Oklahoma.

 Nana and Anna

I think they're pretty cute.

Most of the family

My friend Jenny did some free photo sessions in the local pumpkin patch of my big two one day.  They love each other :).

Anna's cuteness strikes again

Sitting here on this Sunday morning not at church, again.  Last week I at least got to go for prayer team early to pray over our families at Bethel.  Last week Cara had gone to mom's for a few days and Micah and Anna both were coughing and had some drainage.  This weekend started Friday night with an up-a-lot-of-the-night Anna.  I thought an ear ache was coming on.  She was crying and crying, but never told me what was wrong.  She ended up cuddling in bed with me for the rest of the night, something I have RARELY done.  And it was so sweet, she is such a precious little cuddle-er :-).  Saturday started off fine enough.  Then we got to Cara's soccer game at 11:30, in the blazing sun with a nice cool breeze, and she fell asleep on me.  This has NEVER happened.  Maybe when she was a baby, but in the fun, loud, outside, she would never normally fall asleep.  She slept the whole game.  Then came, wasn't really hungry for lunch, and took a 3 hour nap and woke up with a fever.

She is so snuggly when she's sick.  Eric took the big two to a playground with a picnic dinner and I cuddled Anna all evening.  We gave her medicine at 7, with a bath and she seemed to perk up to her happy self and cool down.  Went right to bed.  But then at 10 when I checked her, she had a 104 fever under her arm.  She seemed to be breathing shallow and was so hot to the touch.  We tried to lukewarm bathe her but this time she wanted nothing to do with the water.  We called the doctor (only because at this point I was worried it was another UTI and we wanted to see if she thought we could wait until morning or if we needed to take her to the ER).  She thought we could wait until morning, but we needed to check on her a lot and try to get her to drink/eat.  We decided to take her in as she wasn't really eating or drinking.  I had cranberry juice watered down for her and she'd take a sip when I asked, but she's usually a pretty heavy water drinker and she wanted very little today.

We headed tot he ER around 10:30, and she was still burning up.  We went through triage, and her fever was down to 102.  We sat and waited.  She was so patient.  Talking to all the parents, watching the tv, just snuggling.  Then, she got hungry.  She ate the pretzels I had shoved in my bag, and drank her whole cup of juice.  She perked up, fever went considerably down and that's when I decided to go home before we saw the doctor.  Mother's intuition said we probably didn't need to go, but as she kept going potty without any pain, I knew the UTI was probably not the case.

So, now we are home, playing and reading books.  With our jammies and cowboy boots on, of course.  I have been so bad at recording things for Micah and Anna, so I wanted to hop on here and record some cute things she's been saying.

 We were reading a book the other day that had beads on the top.  She's got all her colors down, except for black and brown.  She calls them both Chocolate.  She's like her mommy ;).

A little of her obsession with "My Ponies"

Much like Cara had no concept of time at her age and said everything happened 'last night,' Anna has followed in big sister's footsteps and now says everything is happening tomorrow.  She's going to my mom's in a week or so and when she talks to my mom on the phone she says "I'm going to your house tomorrow!!" :)  It's quite cute.  Ok, there's a post so I have something recorded about my sweet 3rd born.