Double Digits, Continued

I decided that Violet's "10 Month" post didn't really do her justice.  She's grown so much and hit so many milestones over the past few months and I don't always have time to write about them all.  So here goes:

She can walk!  Violet started walking about a month ago, the first week of June, when she was nine months old.  She'd been flirting with the idea for about a month or so, cruising around the couch or anything else she could get her hands on.  She would let go, but really, every time her brothers would see her do this they would get so excited and freak her out.  And down she'd go.  On her big night, she and I were in the kitchen.  I was loading up the dishwasher.  She loves to sneak and get into the dishwasher when I'm not looking and that's just what she did that night.  I got her out of there, closed the door, and walked across the kitchen.  And she followed me for a few steps!  Of course, the boys and I were ecstatic.  We called Daddy at work and told him the news and he was ecstatic, too.  It took her a few weeks, but now she's a pro at walking.  

And, she's talking. Some of her words:  

Dada

Mama

Bye

Hey

Bite
Mike-this just happened today.  We were at lunch after church at our favorite pizza place and Chris called out Hey, Mike! to the owner. And Violet followed suit.  Adorable. I thin she has a few more words, but I'm pulling a brain fart at the moment.  

She weighs around 16-17 pounds.  She's slowly outgrowing all of her 9 month clothes.  I actually packed away most of her "baby clothes" yesterday to make room for her "big girl" clothes.  I cried a lot while I did this.  

She gives kisses.  This is pretty much the most adorable thing I've ever seen.

She's learned how to click her tongue. 

She wears a size 3 diaper.

Her little personality is coming out!  She loves to be the center of attention and shows off her skills a lot so everyone will oooh and aaahhh over her.  She's also a little drama queen.  When things don't go her way she's been known to throw herself on the ground and cry.  We are trying to teach her the concept of "no".  Surprisingly it's going pretty well.  She acts as if she wants to please us, which I'm pretty sure will change as she gets older.  Ha!

Favorite foods... she's such a good eater!  She eats whatever we put in front of her most of the time.  She really loves her leafy greens. Spinach, broccoli, cauliflower are favorites.  I have to sneak peas in, but she'll eat them if I put them in a bite with something else.  She also LOVES soup beans and spaghetti.  The old stand by, mac and cheese, is also a pleaser.  Milk and raw cheese, however, are not pleasers and hurt her stomach so we're avoiding them until she turns a year old.  We are praying that this issue solves itself when we investigate it again.  

Her favorite toy is "Violet", pictured in the previous post.  She literally plays with her all day, every day.  The dog Violet is programmed to say the real Violet's name and sing songs about her and the real Violet is so amused by this.  She laughs and laughs.  Thank you to Mama Susie for the wonderful Christmas gift!

Sleep.  This is still a struggle.  We haven't had a full nights sleep in months.  I think it's the teething.  Or maybe a growth spurt.  Violet goes to sleep between 8 and 9 by herself in her crib and wakes up at 1 like clockwork.  And then again at 3 or 4.  And she wants a bottle each time. I make sure she's full before bed and I can't keep her up later because she's so ready for bed by 9.  I'm open to any suggestions!  Naps are a bit better.  She will go to sleep by herself in her crib around 9 in the morning and then again after lunch.  She doesn't nap for as long as I remember the boys napping...she will rarely nap for more than 30-45 minutes.

Teeth. She has 4!  The front bottoms were first, followed buy the front tops.  She looks so different with teeth!  We're also big fans of the amber teething necklace.  But that's worthy of it's own post!

I still can't believe our girl's 10 months old!  We are planning her fist birthday party already and can't get over how time is flying.

Double Digits

Sweet baby Violet.  

How can you be 10 months old already?

We love you, beautiful girl!

Oh, what a day!

Today was... weird.  Although there's only about 8 more minutes left of today, Wednesday, and by the time I click PUBLISH, it will be Thursday.

Anyway.

 A friend of mine stated earlier tonight that she felt like she was walking in a fog all day. I feel the same way.  Probably because of all the rain.  We took Chris to work this morning and when we came back home my house key was missing from my key chain.  

?!?!

Don't know why, don't know how- but it was definitely not where it needed to be when I was ready to unlock the door.  In the pouring rain.  I wanted to cry.  Shaun had an appointment in the afternoon and we needed showers and acceptable clothing! I couldn't even call Chris because I had kept his phone today so that I could use the GPS.  I miss my phone!  I pulled the car super close to the kitchen window so that Jordan could try to get in.  Never mind that I was 90 percent sure that the window was locked...I was desperate.  Only Jordan couldn't reach the window.  Ha ha ha!  He was standing on the hood of our Explorer in the pouring rain, yelling at me to "make the car turn a little".  I tried to explain that I couldn't make the car turn or it would "turn" into our house!  Shaun offered to try but I was afraid he would put a dent in the car. The highlight of my day was watching my 13 year old stop around the yard yelling, "This sucks!  This sucks!".  And he says I'm dramatic!

Suddenly I remembered that I had taken Chris' keys with me yesterday when I walked up to visit my sister.  I prayed so hard as I dug through my diaper bag... and found the keys!     

We went inside and went on with our day.  We were just about to begin getting dressed for the appointment and church when my sister called to tell me that our dogs were up at my Granny's house on her front porch.  Sigh.  We have two dogs.  One is a wanderer.  She wandered to my Granny's house once and Granny fed her a hamburger.  No wonder she trots up the road to Granny's every chance she gets.  I piled everyone in the car and we drove up to Granny's and the boys herded their wet, smelly dogs into my car.  Ew, ew!  They needed another shower after that!

We got dressed and left for Shaun's appointment.  The boys became famished on the way so I went through the drive through at Chick fil a.  By this time the rain was coming down in sheets and I was getting uneasy.  I hate driving in rain!  We left CFA and I was stopped at a red light, minding my own business when I felt someone starting at me.  I glanced over at the vehicle beside us and found myself staring into the eyes of Creepy MckCreeperson.  I quickly looked away, but he kept staring.  I decided I must know him from somewhere... why else would he be staring that way?  I took another quick peek and he winked at me.  I had never seen this man before in my life and let me tell you... this was the longest red light in the history of the world!  

The light finally changed and I sped off, in spite of the rain.  Thank goodness he didn't follow us on the express way.  I'm not sure what I would have done!

Thankfully, the weirdness subsided then and everything else about the night was relatively normal.  

Going to bed now. 

14

The Sanctuary by:  Ted Dekker

I'm a HUGE Ted Dekker fan.  Remember when I met him last year?  I blogged about it here in case you're interested.  

I usually fly through his books, but it took me six whole weeks to finish this one.  The Sanctuary is the sequel to The Priest's Graveyard, which I read last summer and absolutely loved.  I think I read it in a week.  But then, I was pregnant and had a lot more time to read.  I'd been excited to read more about Danny and Renee for a while, but it took me a while to get into it.  I had to renew it twice from the library and then I had to push myself to finish it yesterday so that I could turn it in without a late fee.  

I generally don't read a lot of Christian fiction because I find most of it to be cheesy and unrealistic.  And Amish.  There are a lot of Christian fiction books about the Amish.  Dekker's are edgy.  Dark.  Most of  his novels remind me of Dean Koontz books minus the sex and foul language.  This one was a little too dark.  Even for me.  Great story, just not my favorite read.  This wasn't a book that I couldn't put down and I probably won't read it again.  

Forward 2013

This weekend was Forward weekend.  Shaun's first Forward Conference! On Thursday morning Jordan went to stay with my sister. Shaun, Chris, Violet, and myself headed to Duluth for the weekend.  Our friends from church, the Morrows, hooked us up with a good deal on a hotel room and it was sooooo nice to not have to drive 45 minutes to and from the Gwinnett Arena before and after each session.  Chris was a "tribe leader" and had to arrive early, and I loved having the option to stay in the room with Violet if I needed to.  

We had a great weekend.  I loved watching Shaun experience Forward for the first time.  The music was great, the speakers and messages were better.  And of course, the people!  We love our church family so much and spending the weekend with them was fun!  We are blessed.

I didn't take many pictures.  My phone died and I can't upgrade for 9 more days.  A friend was nice enough to loan me an old phone of his until I get a new phone, but I can't figure out how to use the camera.  Since I mostly use my phone to take pictures, I was out of luck.  Plus, I was busy with Violet.  She is one of those babies who never really sleeps well unless she's in her own crib.  She usually falls asleep by herself as soon as we put her down in her crib.  We were ALL missing that crib this weekend!   She was so happy to see it last night.  I think I actually saw her hug it a little.  Ha!  She was really good.  I took her into the service on Thursday and this is what she did during the games, tribal wars, and the music:

She curled up in Bo's arms and slept through everything...until the preaching started.  Then she was wide awake!  She was distracting everyone, so I took her backstage with Chris and let her explore.  This is where she and I spent the rest of the conference.  She was able to crawl and walk and eat and nap and be held and loved on by her church family and we were still able to see everything that was going on in the service.  

As I mentioned before, Chris was a tribe leader for the Cowboys.  This is the only photo I can find tonight:

You can't truly appreciate the outfit in these picture...the huge, orange hat and the furry chaps.  He was quite the sensation. Ha ha!  He was a big hit with the crowd and was even recognized by some out of towners at church today while he was in his "regular" clothes.  He had a great time and has already said he hopes to do it again next year.  

Shaun had a great time too.  He even remarked that Forward is better than Summer Xtreme...his Daddy didn't really know how to respond to that!  Shaun was in the Pirate tribe and really got into the spirit of things.

He said his favorites were Rich Wilkerson, Jr. and Lacrae.  I have to admit, I was impressed with Lacrae.  We're not really "rap people" but he was genuine and as a friend of ours said, "he has a story".  Jesus radiated from him, and that's good enough for me!  He's coming back for Forward 2014, so maybe I'll even learn some of his songs by then. 

Even more important than all the "fun stuff", the word of God was brought to our teenagers this weekend.  Jesus was poured out to them and I know many of them will never be the same.  The adults, too!  I know I was encouraged.  It was a wonderful weekend but we are worn out!  Looking forward to sleeping in a little tomorrow.  

Here are a few more pictures, all courtesy of my friend Rachel.  

Girl friends, face punches, and drugs. Oh, my!

Jordan has been so funny this week.  Here are a few of our conversations, to the best of my memory.

Jordan:  Mom.  What would you say if I had a girl friend?

Me:  You mean when you're older?

Jordan:  No.  Now.

Me:  You're too young to have a girl friend.

Jordan:  But if I did.  What would you say?

Me:  I'd say there's really no point in you having a girl friend since you don't have a job or a car.  Flash backs of Judah Smith sermons filled my mind.  Anybody remember that one?  J-O-B?  

Jordan:  Well I want one.  And just to let you know, I'm on the lookout.  

Here's one more, from later the same day.

Jordan: When Violet gets a boyfriend, I will tell him to leave my sister alone or I'll punch him in the mouth.

Me:  Wow, that's really harsh.  What if I said that to your girlfriend one day?

Jordan:  Mom, you could never say that.  Unless she was on drugs.  Then you could say it.  He then got up and ran out of the room.  

Me:  Wait.  What?!?!

I love this funny, feisty son of mine!   

On how God provides

I've been thinking a lot lately about provision. The Hubs and I have had our share of hard financial times throughout our almost-14-year marriage.  We married young.  I was only 18 and he was an older man.  21 whole years old.  They say hindsight is 20-20 and it really is.  I do NOT recommend getting married so young.  I know I married the right man, but sometimes I think about how much easier everything would be if we'd waited and established ourselves first before we tied the knot.  

But we didn't, and here we are.  We've "made it", despite the odds.  Not that we're letting out guard down and expecting everything to be smooth sailing from here on out, but 14 years is a loooong time to be married in today's time.  We thank God every day for holding us together.  We couldn't have done it without Him.  

Back to provision.  When we married, we had no money.  Zilch.  We totally existed living paycheck to paycheck, even with both of us working full time.  Back in those early days, Chris was in a rock band.  We were "walking the fence" with our faith, attempting to get in church and do right but we really struggled with letting go of "worldly" things.  One particular night Chris' band had a paying gig.  For those of you who know anything about struggling musicians, those are sometimes few and far between.  Most gigs were played for exposure and free beer.  This particular night, though, the band was paid hundreds of dollars.  Chris, as the front man was given the money and he put it in his pants pocket.  See how responsible we were with money??  Ha!

The next day it was time to divide up all that cash between the band members.  And Chris couldn't find the money.  Anywhere.  It wasn't in his pockets, his guitar case, my purse, our car.  Nowhere.  We searched and searched to no avail.  Finally it was just decided that someone had stolen all of the money and we'd never see it again.  A decision was made to purchase a cash box so this would never happen again and everyone went on their way.  

Years passed.  Our lives changed.  We had rededicated our lives to the Lord and were finally living in His will, but we still had no money.  We had both been in church before but we'd never been tithed our money.  When we rededicated our lives to the Lord we decided to go all the way.  Since the Bible instructs us to tithe, we began doing it.  

The concept of tithing did not come easily for me.  Honestly, I HATED giving up our money every payday.  It stressed me out.  That ten percent can sure seem like a lot, can't it?  It took a long, long time for me to get to a place where I didn't get nauseated at the thought of writing the church a check.  I would literally put our check in the offering plate and get a cold sweat from worrying about what sort of emergency we would surely need that money for. I pressed on and continued to tithe, mainly because Chris insisted on it.

Back to my story.  It was one of those times where everything happened at once.  Shaun was sick and needed medicine, I think one of our cars had broken down, and some other random things all had to be taken care of.  We did tithe, but at the end of the month we didn't have enough money for our power bill.  It was down to the wire.  Our power had been scheduled to be cut off the next day and we were about to have to swallow our pride and ask my parents for money.  We both prayed to God to somehow make a way for us to pay that bill.  

Chris was looking for something to wear and pulled on a pair of pants he hadn't worn in a while.  He felt something in his pocket, reached in, and pulled out a wad of cash.  The same wad of cash that went missing years ago. Our share was just enough to pay that power bill.  It's been ten years and I still get chill bumps when I tell this story.  

Here's another.  A few years later, same basic situation.  This time, the matter was food.  So many things happened at the same time again and we didn't have grocery money.  I was in a panic, Chris - of course- was calm.  We went to church that night and I was worrying about what we were going to eat until payday.  Granted, it was just a few days away, but we had kids to think about!  I was talking to a friend after service, about something totally unrelated to food, and she gave me a huge brown paper bag. "Would you like this food?  I made it for someone who was sick, but there was a mix up and they don't need anymore meals because several other people also brought food for them tonight.  I was going to just take it home, but you're welcome to it you'd like."

This friend of ours had no idea how much her kindness and generosity blessed us.  We certainly weren't going around announcing our hardships to everyone.  Quite the opposite, actually. We opened that bag when we got home that night and discovered that it held three complete meals.  Exactly what we needed to last until pay day.  

And one more.  Christmas time a few years ago.  We had already bought our presents, but were almost out of Propane at home.  This was a really bitter winter and we were having to have Propane brought out twice a month.  Crazy expensive!  I was in a panic (again!) about what we were going to do.  After church that night Chris received an unsigned Christmas card containing a thousand dollars.  Once again, we weren't telling people about our needs.  We had too much pride for that!  We were praying and trying to trust God to be on time with what we needed and He really showed out this time!  We filled up the propane tank, bought a ton of groceries and got tires for one of the cars.  

There are more.  I could go on and on, but these are the three stories that I feel led to share with you tonight.  I'm not sure why.  Some of you may not be able to relate to this post, but I know that some of you will.  It took a long, long, time but I am finally at a place of trusting God to provide what we need.    I have such a hard head.  Most people would have trusted Him after the first dramatic act of provision.  Ha! 

I am not proud of this, but there have been times when we've fallen off the tithing wagon.  This was my fault.  God has really put me in my place a few times.  I remember one time I sat in church and had a battle with Him during worship time before the offering was taken up.  I had written a check but it wasn't for ten percent.  I ripped up that check and wrote another one for a little bit of a larger amount.  It still wasn't ten percent though, and I was so convicted that I ripped up that check too and finally wrote another one for the correct amount.  I laugh when I think about that now.  What a control freak!  It's not like I was dealing with giving away huge wads of cash.  Anyway, all that to say that now our family is 100 percent faithful with our tithing.  God has shown me that if we give Him back what's His and don't waste what we have left, we will always have enough for what we need.  It may not come in traditional ways, but it does always come.  And it's always so sweet!

To anyone reading this-  please, please do not think I'm trying to come off braggy or "holier than thou".  I just felt led to share our story.