Living Lovely with Family-Special Times

Our favorite time of the year is summer.  We spend more time outside and doing fun things.  It's also when special treats are most likely to happen!  

The boys go to soccer camp and have fun being crazy with friends.  The last day they get to have their faces painted by Mom!  Last year was flags, so we decided on flags from the state where they were born.  

They play baseball and have fun learning about teamwork.  I LOVE baseball, so it's fun to get to watch some with my favorite players!

Sometimes we go for ice cream from an actual ice cream store.   The boys love the variety and cones.  

We go to an airshow.  Too bad there isn't a picture of Daddy looking at the planes.  He's the one who taught the family to love planes.

Since we live far from family we enjoy the special treat of spending time with them when they are in town for special occasions like Thanksgiving.

Heidi at Mt. Hope Chronicles is continuing her series on Living Lovely with Family.  I am so glad to have this as a chance to look our life, to remember and realize what fun we have together.  Hop on by her page and see what others are saying, it's truly inspiring and fun to get a peak into others lovely.

One Year Old

Wednesday was Esther's birthday, but since we continued to have internet difficulty I wasn't able to post them.  Oh, well.  At least when the internet does work,  it works fast!  It was fun to find these amongst the pictures from the last year.  

I have been blessed with a wonderful, beautiful daughter.  We opened her presents last night.  One was a tea set from us.  It was so fun watch her play with it.  Girl fun to be had!

Oh, the internet!

For the past couple of days we have been without internet.  On Sunday our internet worked for about 5 minutes.  Then on Monday we decided to switch providers.  Because of that we had to wait until Tuesday to have it hooked up.  So today I have internet again.  I am grateful because we have been battling the internet for a couple of months now.  Also I am amazed how quickly the new internet was connected.  When we lived in Florida it took two weeks just for the cable people to call me back.  Then another couple of weeks for them to come and connect the cable/internet.    

Morning Talk

Samuel and I have had some fun time together this morning because Esther is taking an early nap.  We were listening to some music and one song was said that God will never leave us.  Samuel and I were talking about it.  His response for why God will never leave us is that He is invincible.  I wonder if in some part of his mind Samuel thinks God is a superhero.  

So many people see God as a kindly grandfather who says, "It's okay, don't worry about that sin.  I've taken care of it.  You don't owe me anything."  While that's a nice and true enough, one doesn't think that their grandfather is invincible.  I tried to explain to Samuel that God is more than invincible.  How do you explain to a 4 year old that God has more facets to him than just one?  I want him to have a dynamic faith that includes a full picture of God, not just a small box that feels comfortable.

Daily Family Life

Heidi at Mt. Hope Chronicles is having a series about living lovely with family.  Today is about our daily lives.  The last couple of months I have been trying to live with intention.  Before now I never would have thought about the time spent with my family.  We don't have many wonderful, brand new traditions, but we do eat dinner together nightly and read the Bible at the table once we are done.  The boys usually ask for more than one story to be read.  That makes me feel as though we are making an impression on them.  For awhile our attention was diverted to other things, but Peter and I have recently been having discussions about how to have more intention filled relationships with the kids.   

Better

Yesterday I was in a funk.  I just could not get out of it.  I complained within myself, I complained to those who would listen, I grumped.  It was not pretty.  There was much anger and frustration coming from within me.  I am REALLY ready for spring.  The snow and cold and is starting to get to me.  Since it seems that spring is not on the horizon for us I decided to buy myself some spring yesterday.  It was a good price at Costco, you can go get yourself some spring there too.  

A little Madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King

Emily Dickinson

Isn't my store bought spring wonderful?

Some Fun

Yeah!

So the mechanic called Peter today to let him know that we will be getting a NEW transmission.  Hallelujah!! Isn't that wonderful?!  The Yukon is still under extended warranty and we will only have to pay a very small deductable to have it completely replaced.  They wanted to try and rebuild it, but that would have cost them too much money.  It was cheaper just to completely replace the entire thing.  The wiring was bad and didn't let us know there were problems so it got completely destroyed.  The mechanic would have had to replace all the parts save the casing.  The Lord really protected us on this.  We would not have had the ability to replace it otherwise.  Yeah for extended warranties!!

Will I ever learn?

So it's 8pm here and my kids haven't eaten!  Yes, I know I'm a bad, bad mommy.  There are extenuating circumstances.  One is that I couldn't go shopping for food until 6pm because we were down to one car today.  Our Yukon is having a tizzy and decided that the transmission had to go.  So we are waiting while her tempermental self gets a new one and can be driven again.  Tomorrow I will have a vehicle so dinner won't be so late, maybe.  

Back to the dinner lateness.  We went shopping late.  I knew that I wanted to try a new recipe, chicken tetrazinni.  I had chicken left over from chicken soup and there's only so many sandwiches I can make myself eat.  I usually try to have all my chopped things chopped and minced before I turn any appliance on.  I'm just not that good to chop and watch things, especially in a new recipe, at the same time.  So Peter stood in as a sous chef.  Talk about different styles!  He's bucket chemistry, I'm precise.  Sometimes I will tamper with the amounts, but only if I have made the dish before and have a pretty good idea about the taste ratios.  

So the dinner turned out okay.  Not enough flavor, but that's because of differing styles by the cookers.  If there had been less chicken and linguini then it might have tasted better.  Oh, well.  Now I have learned to do it myself.  I should have made this tomorrow and had sandwiches for dinner.  I guess you live and learn.  Now if I could just learn a bit more often.

The ridiculous law has been made useful

So the CPSIA law that got my feathers all a fluff has been suspended, kinda.  What the commission has decided to do is to not enforce the law with anyone making items out of natural materials.  I knew natural was better.  LOVE COTTON!  I am pleased to see that our system of government has worked, at least for now.  

I really wanted to buy things online, but I didn't.  I have a hard time actually buying things online, sometimes even in stores.  I'm odd like that.  So it took me two months to actually buy a carseat cover for Esther.  But I finally did.  I love it.  She loves it.  She spent time yesterday just playing in her carseat while it was inside getting it's makeover.  

I got it on etsy.  The seller, Lollipop designs, emailed a few days before she sent it out.  It was a great experience.  I am so happy to have a girl cover for a carseat we bought for Samuel.  And the picture does not have a tungsten glow.  The cover has a yellow background.  I will definately be using etsy again.  Mainly since I don't know how to sew dresses yet.