Christmas Time

We had a great Christmas season celebrating our Savior's birth, hanging out with family and friends and heading south to enjoy some warmer weather!

 

It's a tradition that my friend Alissa and I always make Christmas sugar cookies together. This year we decided we better let the kids join in on our fun! Then we did dinner and exchanged gifts...Chris and Alissa hit a home run this year and the kids LOVED everything! Thanks sweet friends!

 

 

Then we celebrated with Mike's dad. Kara is so into baby dolls and finally got a baby doll and stroller for Christmas!

 

 

What's it going take to get a good pic of these kids?!? I love how the boys look like a choir singing in the middle pic! :)

 

 

No seriously what's it going to take?!?!

 

 

 

Obviously something was very funny!! Probably me yelling at them for not smiling right just made them laugh harder! :)

 

 

I love this pic! And I kind of want a big, puffy, soft jacket just like Kara's!

 

 

On Christmas day we headed to Tucson with my parents. Mike's aunt and uncle were out of town on a cruise and so graciously let us use their house! We were out of cold weather and snow so immediately we headed to the parks!

 

 

Who says parks are just for kids?? My mom and I couldn't resist getting on this spinning toy and seeing how many times we could go around without putting our feet down. It wasn't easy I might add, we had to keep those legs swinging!

 

We had a blast just hanging out with my parents and getting to enjoy some beautiful weather! But all good things must come to end so it was back to freezing Flagstaff we went!

Polar Express

There's a nearby town that has the Grand Canyon Railway. Every year around Christmas time they do a Polar Express train. We've been wanting to take the kids and thanks to some sweet friends, who gave us tickets, we were able to take the kids this year. Grammy and Papa came too so that was really fun. So we put on our pajamas and headed for the train.

 

At first when we got there it felt like we were the only adults wearing our robes! It seemed like everyone was giving us funny glances (they were just jealous of how comfy-cozy we were!) but then we started to see some other adults in their pj's too!

 

 

We are all bundled up because it was REALLY cold this day! But the cold made it super fun and we were all ready for the hot cocoa and cookie on the train.

 

 

I absolutely love this pic of Mike and Jason!

 

 

We all had so much fun!!! We don't do Santa at our house, not because we don't think its right but neither Mike or I grew up doing it in our houses.  So we've talked with the boys about Santa and how it is something fun that some families do. So this polar express train takes you to the "North Pole" and we pull up and they have Santa standing in a sleigh waving. Well, Trenton yells, "he is real!!" It was SO funny! With all the other kids on the train I was not about to yell "No he's not!" :) So on the drive home we chatted more about Santa and then we talked some about Jesus and celebrating His birth.  So Trenton says, "Mom, I wish Jesus came down and put presents under our tree." I love that kid! Sometimes I ask the same question instead of truly grasping that Jesus IS our present! What a fun night we had!

 

 

 

Winter Time Fun

It's hard to believe that winter time is in full swing! Ok, I'm actually way behind on my blogging so I have to pretend that we are greatly anticipating Christmas (though it's over!) at the time of these pics!

 

First of all, whenever you look at pics on my blog and wonder why on earth did I pick the picture where one of the kids eyes are closed or someone has a goofy smile, just remember my kids are the HARDEST kids in the world to get to take a good pic!

 

The people who owned our house before us left a TON of Christmas decorations! So we decided to use the big bulbs they left  and put them on our big pine tree outside. The kids were waiting for their turns on the stairs to go outside with daddy and hang their bulbs.

 

Our fake little tree is getting more and more full each year with homemade decorations! It takes a little restraint on my part to not move all the homemade ones to the back (I know I'm a bad parent!) but it is SO much fun watching the kids decorate the tree now. They get so into it.

 

Also, thanks to pinterest I had the idea of making these advent trees and reading a part of the Christmas story from the Bible each night and doing some sort of fun activity or act of service. Wow, it seemed like a good idea until I realized this goes on for 24 days and is really hard to keep up with! The idea needs some work because instead of focusing more on Jesus with the kids, like I was hoping would be the case, the kids became more focused on what they got to do or what was in it for them. Oh well, you live and learn...that's the joy of parenting.

 

 

We went to the light parade downtown with some friends from our life group. Everyone bundled up and we brough hot cocoa and snacks and had a blast! Ok, well Trenton felt like he was going to throw up on and off but other then that it was fun. :) The bottom pic is from our Life Group Christmas party. We did a pj party and this sweet fam all came in footy pjs. It was a little hard to take them seriously and come on we all know only certain people can pull off the footy pjs and they did a great job of it. I LOVE our life group (what we call our small groups from church) and am so blessed by these great friends that we get to share life with!

 

 

We have had the perfect winter...so far! We had amazing weather until a few weeks before Christmas and then we got a huge snowstorm. We had so much fun playing outside. We continue to love our neighborhood and how all the kids head outside to play together. We took the kids sledding on this pretty big hill and after a good long while we had to drag them away cause it was getting dark. Playing in the snow takes a LOT of work to get everyone ready but it's totally worth it! The kids love it and I love coming back inside to make hot chocolate and all sitting around.

 

 

 

Pajama Ruuuuun!

Tim and Kristi came up with this great idea called Pajama Run. You wait until the kids are in bed and then you yell "Pajama Run" and they know that you means you jump out of bed and go crazy because you're going to get a treat in you pj's. Disclaimer: this is not meant to be done too often, due to the crazy kids this produces! :)

We are finally getting to the stage with our kids where we're not worried about waking a sleeping baby, so we're hoping to implement this more often. Flagstaff just got a Dunkin Donuts (yes, a big day for our small town!) so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do a pj run!

 

 

 

 

We had a blast...ok there were a few complaints about wanting more donuts but come on we already felt like super star parents for taking our kids to donuts at 7:30 on a school night. Two donuts might bring on a sugar high that would make us not like these pajama runs to much! I love getting to spend time with our little family.

Family Vacation!

The first week of October, we loaded up the van and headed for a small lake town in California that was 10 hours away! A 10 hour car ride is not always fun with four little ones but we survived!! We got to enjoy this beautiful house that a Christian family, we don't know, lets pastors use for only $95 for the week! It was probably our most fun family vacation yet because the kids are starting to get to ages where vacation can be fun and not all work. Oh don't get me wrong, there's still work involved, just not as much. The house was in the middle of nowhere near a lake. There was a pool and a playground, where we enjoyed lots of hours of fun! There were deer everywhere. Each morning we got to sit on the porch with coffee and our Bibles and watch the deer. The kids thought it was pretty cool.

 

We went on a couple different day excursions that both ended at the beach. These pics were at this ghetto aquarium in Morro Bay. The kids loved it and had no idea that it was pretty run down, which I guess is all that matters!

 

 

The boys at Morro Bay. So here's a funny story: While we were walking around the kids saw a pillow pet store and had to go in! So we headed in not realizing just how much pillow pets are in the actual store! Of course each boy found one that he absolutely had to have. So Mike and I tell them that we need to go to the car to count their allowance and see if they have enough. Really, the cheapskate in me is thinking let's see how much we can get these for on Amazon! So we check amazon and count their money and Trenton is the only one who has enough to actually go back to the store and buy the pillow pet. So Mike is giving him the whole talk about how if he waits and gets his pillow pet on amazon then he will save $10! But nope, T just wants to go buy the pillow pet. On the way in to the store Mike gives it one last valiant attempt to help T save some money by telling him he can use the extra money and go buy 10 things at the dollar store. Trenton looks Mike right in the eyes and grabs his face and says, "Dad, I can always earn more money! Let's go buy that pillow pet!" We have laughed a lot over that statement but it's very true of who Trenton is. :)

 

 

Here we are at Avila Beach...we LOVE the beach! And I love all my boys!

 

 

More beach fun, Mike buried all the boys in the sand and fearless Kara would run as deep as we would let her go into the ocean.

 

 

Here's a different beach that we took a trip through wine country to get to. I love these pics of the boys!

 

 

 

We found a pumpkin patch while on the way to beach that looked like fun so we stopped. The boys weren't too thrilled at first because they were anxious to get to the beach but once they spotted those giant cookies and rice krispie treat they were happy as can be! :) It seriously was the most amazing rice krispie treat ever!

 

 

They also had putt-putt near the house where we stayed. Oh and a friend of ours recommended a restaurant in San Luis Obispo that served the most amazing tri-tip BBQ sandwich! So of course I had to take a pic and send it to her.

 

 

What would vacation be without some frozen yogurt?!?! The kids love getting to add their own toppings...actually I love it too!

 

 

Also, what would vacation be without some wii playing in underwear!

 

 

Last day at the beach the boys went on an adventure and found some starfish! So fun! And here's Mike trying to keep Kara from going too deep!

 

 

We had such a great time! What a blessing to be able to get away for a family vacation!

 

 

 

 

 

 





FREE Garage Sale - From 7 Book

I know some of you are wondering what ever happened to the last few chapters of the book 7! Sorry, the summer got crazy busy and I didn't have time to fully participate or blog about the rest of the chapters. BUT I did want to share something really cool that came out the book...we ended up doing a Free Garage Sale (I know that phrase is an oxymoron but I couldn't think of what else to call it) with our church.

It was really amazing...people from our church donated stuff, helped organize stuff, one family wanted to make sure we served the people who came donuts and coffee so they bought 12 dozen donuts to hand out! We had a table with free Bibles and a table where people could get prayer if they needed.

The whole goal was to be a blessing to those in our community who had needs. To be totally honest I started to get worried that we weren't going to get enough stuff and people would come and we would have nothing to hand out. But come Friday after four hours of organizing (with anywhere from 10-20 people) we still didn't have all the donated bags emptied!!! And people did not just bring their junk, they brought really nice stuff!

So come 8am Saturday morning the people were flocking in and they kept asking how much? To which we responded it's ALL FREE!!! They were amazed and we had the chance to share that the love of Christ compels us to want to serve them and be a blessing to them in any way that we can.

It was soooo cool to watch people being blessed by finding something they had really needed and watching lots of people from our church have a chance to work along side one another and to serve others. Here's a few pics:

I know it's hard to see but the parking lot was full when started! 

A Lil Heart Follow-Up :)

First of all, I just want to say thanks to everyone who has been praying for me! I went to the cardiologist and after doing a stress test she (in a very nice way) laughed and told me I'm in really good shape and my heart is just fine!

I do still have the ache sometimes in my chest, so I'm still not sure what that is from but I need to just start praying and asking God to take it away. I have felt a bit of anxiety rise up in me when I start to feel the ache or wondering if anything is wrong with me but I'm just asking God to not let anxiety creep in and to use this to help me just trust Him all the more!

What have I learned through this??? God has been showing me that I put too much confidence in my flesh and not enough confidence in Him. It's easy when I'm in really good shape to feel confident in myself and what I can do and what I can accomplish and rely less on God. God is just giving me a new awareness and challenging me with my need to rely on Him. I had the privilege of getting to do a talk at our women's Bible study and my talk was called "Uncommon faith in the Goodness of God." The trials that we go through don't change the fact that God is good! God always has been and always will be good. Preparing for the talk came at the perfect time...God tends to do that right!! God just showed me that when trials come we need to stay heaven focused - cause when you know Jesus this life is a blink of what's to come and second that when we turn to God in the midst of trials the result is that I come out looking more like Jesus. I could go on and on but I won't make you hear my whole talk! :) I praise God that nothing major is wrong and I'm so thankful for faithful friends who lift me up in my trials!