Buckeye...

In case you haven't seen on Facebook...here is the newest addition to our family! I cannot believe that I let my husband and kids guilt me into a dog....but he is pretty cute. Now, if we can just get him potty trained....life will be good!!!! Thank goodness we have hard-wood floors!

All of the kids love him...even Gracie! We just got him yesterday and she is already carrying him around the house. Thank goodness he is good with kids. He just lets Faith and Gracie carry him around like a baby.

Well, not much time for a long update...just thought I would share pictures of our new baby!

Testing...Is this thing still on?!?!?

Yes, that is right. Don’t adjust your screen….this is a new post! And yes, this is a Christmas background still on my blog. Unless one of you can tell me how to change/get rid of this, I will have to live with it. I can’t remember for the life of me how I did this and therefore, I can’t remember how to make it go away! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

So…what’s it been? A year or so! Geesh! Time flies when you are having fun! To be fair, I have never stopped reading those that post….I just stopped posting. I think at first I was busy and then it was just so long that I didn’t know where to start and that was overwhelming to me…so I just kept putting it off. But I decided that I need to do more blogging…so here I am!

Life is good! I mean, seriously…life is good. Now, that doesn’t mean that life is perfect! HA! But who wants to listen to all my problems….and the problems that I have are so minute compared to the struggles that others face. I just have to look at my life and be amazed at how much God has blessed me. I have a husband who treats me like a queen…now that doesn’t mean he is perfect (who is?) but I fall more in love with him every day and I appreciate how he takes care of me and the kids. I have three beautiful kids who amaze me every day. I have a house…and lots of debt….but then we both have jobs….and God provides for our NEEDS. I feel so blessed.

My job is going good. In January, my work-load basically doubled which really threw me for a loop. I spent most of the month working 12-14 hour days. I would work all day at work with no break and then go home and get back on my computer as soon as I could. Not the best work/home-life balance, but it was necessary. I am in a better groove now, so it isn’t as bad. I like being busy and feeling like I am adding value, so it has been good for me professionally. Personally, I am going through one of my spells where I feel like a bad mother. I just go through this periodically, but some days I feel so guilty because I feel like work gets the best of my day and the kids and Scott get what is left over. I have to work really hard to not allow that to happen and to not let myself get so guilty. I know that I could never be a stay-at-home mom….but there are times I wish I could just take a break to spend more time with the kids. Ahh…like I said, I go through this every few months and then it gets better. I just have to work through it and work on cherishing every minute I do have with the kids!

Speaking of the kids…they are really doing great. I love giving a play-by-play of each of them…so here goes:

Isaac
Well, I didn’t get to share here….but he had a really great football season last year! His team was nearly undefeated (lost one due to a bad call) all season and made it to the SuperBowl! That was a ton of fun (I actually painted my face! LOL). They lost that game, but it was so cool to make it there. He had a lot of fun with football last year. He is doing really, really good in school. I laugh now at how much we struggled with our decision to send him or to not send him to Kindergarten early. I believe we made the right decision for him. He is at the top of his class and just really likes school still. He just had his first science project (or should I say WE just had it!) and that was fun. We studied the Wii to determine if playing video games can be considered a form of exercise. The three games we tested were bowling, baseball and boxing. Bowling was NOT exercise (raising our heart rate to at least 50% of our maximum heart rate) for any of us….Baseball was exercise for me and Scott, but not Isaac….and Boxing was exercise for all three of us. That was a cool experiment! I just went to google and typed in something about science projects and video games and poof….there was the idea! He thought it was really cool. So, anyways…he is doing good. I am just so proud of that little guy! He has such a big heart!!!

Faith Anne
Oh, my little DIVA! She had so much fun cheering last year for football. She took it very seriously and does a great job. Right now she is on the fence about doing it again this year because she says she gets too thirsty and hot (LOL). However, she and Gracie both still go around the house doing cheers and their cheer dance. So, we will see! I am supposed to be the assistant coach, so hopefully she decides to do it! LOL She is doing great in school too. Funny thing…on her report card the only area she received a minus on….self-control. HA! She tends to want to get her own way and not be very happy about it if she doesn’t get her own way! She is very stubborn and determined and I just have no idea where she gets it! RIGHT! We recently went to Bounce-U (an indoor bouncy house place) with our new church (another story) and there was this huge slide that all the kids wanted to go down. HOWEVER, in order to get to the huge slide…you had to climb up this insane ladder made of bungee cords. It was REALLY hard. I guess the older kids were all struggling, but were able to do it. Well, when it was time for the younger kids (Faith’s group) to go to this room….not many of them could do it without help. Well, Faith was determined that she was going to do it by herself. And by golly, she had to work at it for 15 minutes or so….but she did it all by herself….3 times! I was so proud of her and that just said a lot to me about her character! She will not let anyone tell her she can’t do something (which is not always a good thing) and she will keep trying until she can do it. This has been evident in her learning to tie her shoes and play games on the Wii and just lots of things. It is so cool to see her learn and just so interesting to see how different she is from Isaac. She loves all things GIRLY and just keeps me on my toes.

Gracie
And then…there is Gracie, our God’s great sense of humor!!! Let me just tell you that there is NEVER a dull moment when Gracie is around. It is funny…she is the third child, but she is like a little hurricane making waves wherever she goes! Where do I even begin with her?!?!? She is Faith Anne’s shadow, but also walks to the beat of her own drum. She wants to be wherever her sister is, but wants to do it her own way if that makes any sense. She definitely tests the limits and has so much spunk that I don’t know what to do with it half the time. She has all of my stubbornness and Scott’s in one little body. For example, she LITERALLY screamed for 30 minutes straight one day because she wanted to open the garage door but couldn’t because she had gloves on. So I made the mistake of opening it. Well, she was screaming and crying and so I put her in her room. She had an absolute temper tantrum for 30 minutes…then she was very quiet. I nearly went to check to see if she was still alive, but then she opened her bedroom door….walked out of her room and out to the garage door. She opened it and went out into the garage and then closed the door behind her. She opened the door and walked into the house and said…"Hi Mommy”. I was like….are you kidding me? Yeah, so that is a taste of Gracie! OMG…. Half the time, I am not sure whether to hug her or spank her, but one thing is for sure….our lives would not be complete without little miss Gracie!!! She cracks me up because she will come and find me after playing in make-up or jewelry or whatever and ask me if she looks FABULOUS. LOVE IT!

So the kiddos are great! Scott and I are doing really, really well! We will celebrate our 10th anniversary in April. That seems so hard to believe. We are planning a weekend get-away, but not really sure where yet. We are toying around the idea of going to Chicago. Scott wants to go to a Cubs game (woo-hoo) and I would like to see a show or shopping or something. So, who knows. He isn’t much of a beach person and since I am going on the girls’ cruise in May….I am not pushing him for a warm spot! I will get my beach fix in May!

Well, one of the biggest changes in our lives came last year in September. The church we had been attending (and the one that Scott grew up in…for 28 years) had some issues that we did not agree with, so we left and started “shopping”. We actually only went to two other churches and quickly found our new church home! It is funny how God had to KICK us out of our comfort zone to put us where we needed to be. Oh my. There are just no words to describe how wonderful this has been for our family. It is like a breath of fresh air….and it has strengthened my relationship with Christ and Scott’s relationship with Christ and therefore, our relationship with each other. It has just been amazing to see how this has all worked out according to HIS plan. It was certainly not our plan. And I will tell you that I still miss so many of the familiar faces and friends that we left behind, but I just KNOW that we are where God wants us to be right now. We are both part of the praise team at our new church and loving every minute of it. And I start teaching a Sunday School class (once a month) in March. We actually go to a Sunday School class together…for like the first time ever…and it is really nice. It is neat to go to a “bigger” church that has lots of things to offer and you don’t have to do everything. So, it is a new and exciting experience for us! It was really hard initially, but is so good now!

There is so much more that I could go on and on about….but I probably better get back to work. I will just add in that I have been working on Weight Watchers for 28 months now…that is a long time. I am not at my goal weight yet. That is a bummer. But I have lost close to 130 pounds from my heaviest (right after having Gracie). I still struggle sometimes, but I am sort of settling into this new way of living for me….healthier. Now my problem is that I don’t know if I will be able to get to the number on the scale or the size of clothes that I would like to without addressing a situation called loose skin. Yep, I have a lot of it. I guess that is to be expected for all the years I was not nice to my body. So…that would come by the way of surgery and that just isn’t in the cards for us unless I can figure out a way to get insurance to pay for it. So…that is a bit depressing. On one hand, I am very proud of the hard work I have done to get here…and I know that I have not done it alone. It is not by my strength…FOR SURE. But on the other hand, it is frustrating that I can’t really get past this last hurdle. Not sure if that makes any sense or not….but I LOVED something that Mandy posted not too long ago and it can really be applied to SO MANY aspects in life. She said something to the affect of… “I don’t have to be perfect, just persistent.” That is so true in my weight loss journey….but probably more importantly in my relationship with Christ. He doesn’t expect me to be perfect, because He knows that I can’t be. But He does expect…and deserve….for me to be persistent. So…thanks Mandy for sharing that! It has meant so much to me!!!

Well, toodles! I am going to try to be a regular poster again….so we will see how that works out! Any help on removing the Christmas theme would be greatly appreciated!!!!