Happy Birthday!

I have a bunch of posts to catch up on, but today, Mom gets the spotlight!  

Mom, I hope you have an awesome day...you certainly deserve it!  Thanks for being my mom, my friend, the one who is always there for me.  You are amazing, and you always make time for me...no issue is too small and you always make me feel like you have time (even if you are busy).  You are an awesome wife and I have no words to describe the love, time, and energy you have from your grandkids...the adopted ones too!  Thank you for being you, no matter what!  I love you!

Thank you for being you, no matter what!  

I love you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all have an awesome day...a day where you take time to thank God for everything you have, a day where you spend time with those you love.

November Field Trip

If you ever get the chance to go to the MOST museum in Syracuse, do it!  We will be planning another trip there soon with some friends, as a family so we can take a little more in and see some things that weren't up and running the day we went.  Regardless, the girls had a blast!  

They loved this butterfly wall, especially with their latest experiment with the Monarch!

They couldn't figure out how to work this wall...on our way out we realized how it was supposed to be done.  That is on our to do list for when we go back.

They loved that EVERYTHING could be touched and messed with.  

This picture, although blurry, is a pretty good description of John from our trip...he never stopped!  LOL

Madalyn's favorite part was this heart...

...and this was John's LOL

They got to dig for bones...

Marissa worked hard to uncover this

So many cool things!  

My birthday...

Thank you to EVERYONE that made me feel special on my birthday.  

You are all amazing :)

Playing catch up...

It's been 11 days since Doug's birthday, but since I was sick I'm play catch up still.  Better late than never right???

I love this picture of him and the girls.

And of course, you have have a birthday without candles and a song!

I love you Douglas ;)

Extremely thoughtful

Doug is a great man.  

After everything the girl's did while I was sick, he walked through the door on Thursday with these ;)

I love them all and again am so grateful!

Very blessed

I've said it over and over again..I have it really good.  

While I was sick, I thought about all the things I could be doing if I had the energy to do it.  I never expected, nor did I ask, for that slack to be picked up.  However, between Doug and the girls, they stayed on top of everything.  Dishes, dinners, laundry, plus waiting on me....they were amazing!  Both girls helped out a ton on Monday with John as well, and continued to look for ways to help.  

I'm blessed, and feel extremely loved!

I've turned into a baby

Saturday morning we woke up planning to head to Watertown to get replacement springs for the overhead door...turns out they are closed on the weekends.  Then we planned to head to Mike's to take him the wood splitter and pull a couple things out of our camper and a friends' that are stored up there...turns out you can't manually lift a garage door without springs to help you.

So we called on the girls' bikes to see if they were finished with their warranty work and ready to be picked up...turns out we were good to go there.  

Once we got to Dicks, we waited around for at least 20 minutes for someone to help us...which turned out to be a good thing for us because during that time we realized they hadn't actually done what was asked of them.  This is the second time we have taken the girls' bikes in for work and they haven't done to them what we asked for.  We bought a 3 year warranty on them when we bought them from Dicks for this reason.  Warning....DO NOT BUY A BIKE FROM DICKS!!!  At the very least, don't buy a warranty from them...it's pointless.  Maybe I'm being unfair and it's just our local stores that stink in the customer service department, but honestly, once they get things righted, we won't be back.  They would have to really do something big to change our minds.  Seeing as we spoke to the manager on Saturday and he was not behind Doug at all, I don't think that will happen.

So again another wasted trip...so we headed to Home Depot to pick up some weather stripping for our doors to seal up some moving air before the snow flies.  We took the dogs with us, knowing we would be stopping there.  Not only did we find everything we needed, but the socialization for the dogs was great and I was really proud of Molly.  She can have some fear issues, but she is really doing great working through them here lately.  Getting mature in her age ;)  

We came home, ate some dinner and then started working on the doors.  As soon as I got home, I COULD NOT GET WARM!!!  It was awful....I was the only one cold so I should have known something was up.  We got pretty much everything finished, and headed to bed at a decent hour.  By this point in time, I felt pretty nasty.  Praying that I would sleep it off, I settled in.  Sunday morning I woke up feeling horrible.  I hopped in the shower, hoping that would help, but quickly realized that I needed to find a replacement for me at church.  Once I had that settled, I planted myself on the couch...where I really didn't leave until Monday night.  My head hurt, I was congested, I had a fever, the chills, and aches.  Sunday when the girls and Doug got home from church, I had my hoodie on, over my head, wrapped up in 3 blankets, and I still couldn't stop shaking!  LOL  I've turned into a wimp I'm telling you!  I haven't been sick in years, and apparently I've lost all tolerance.  

I'm so thankful that I'm 100% again.  I'm sorry for the lack of blogs.  I've missed being on!!!

Hopefully that was it for another couple years!  

Bragging a bit...

...even though Doug doesn't think I should bother!

It's not always the easiest working away from home for the past 5 years, yet Doug always gives 100%.  I'm proud of all he has accomplished and excited to see what the next 5 years bring.  

I LOVE YOU Doug and I'm so proud of you.  Thank you again for all you do to make it possible for me to be home with the kids!  You mean the world to me!

Happy Birthday...

...Douglas!  You are such an amazing man!  You always say how blessed you are to have me, but honestly, I'm the blessed one.  You work so hard so that I can stay home with the girls and homeschool them.  You are humble, selfless, and always right there to lend a hand to someone that needs it.  You give your all no matter what you are doing.  You love the Lord!  You love us and put us first and really want to spend time with us.  I'm so excited to celebrate you tonight!  Thank you for being you, and thank you for choosing me!      

Paused

I'm sorry for the pause in posts, I've been a little under the weather.   Thankfully I'm feeling much better!

So, I'll backtrack to last Friday.  Doug and I took 5 teens to a youth event in Liverpool, NY.  They were all pretty hyped up for it and they had good reason...it was an all nighter!  We had a blast.  The church had two speakers...they were both good, but one was phenomenal.  They also had skits, specials, games, delicious pizza, and some homemade videos that they put some decent amount of time into.  The church did a great job organizing and putting all this together.  

Around midnight, we headed out to our first destination...Get Air!  I've never been to trampoline park, but it was amazing!  We had a ton of fun and although I woke up a little sore Sunday morning, I loved it!  At 3:30, we headed to the Laser Tag facility.  We had some fun games and some not so fun games, but overall, it was fun to "be a teen again".  

When the night was all said and done, I walked away with such an appreciation for our teens.  We are so blessed and honored to be our teens youth leaders.  What a great group of "kids" we have been blessed with.  I had my back and forth feelings about going, but I'm so thankful we did!  

Prayers of a child

I have a couple of hard-core prayer warriors on my hands.

I don't remember all the specific details of when I was a kid.  Was I a prayer warrior too?  I have a lot of memories, but some of those details I just don't have.  Maybe being a prayer warrior is something every child is blessed with?  I don't know.  What I do know is that if the girls catch wind of someone that has a need, it gets added to the list.  Whether its breakfast, lunch, dinner, bedtime, or sometime in between, the whole list is included.  The FAITH that they have is incredible.  I wish I had half of it, honestly.  They know that God doesn't answer things the way they want, when they want, yet they don't pray that way.  Whether it be someone that has a burden for their kids' souls, a desire for a baby, a healthy pregnancy, the adoption...(or more specifically a baby boy), or safety from fires (which Marissa has faithfully been praying about since she was probably 2!), each and everyone is brought before the Lord with such care and surety.  

Honestly, I feel honored that one of my heart's desires is included in their prayers.  

My prayer as they grow is that they won't lose their child like faith, especially when it comes to praying.  

We need more prayer warriors today like the girls!

Marissa's 1st real blanket :)

Marissa has been working on this for a while now, and I'm so proud of her that she finished it.  She kept it smaller since she made it for the cat...priorities you know! ;)

BEAUTIFUL!  I'm so proud of her!

Pumpkins!

Since the girls have been old enough to take an interest, we have tried to make an effort to carve pumpkins.  This year a farmer down the road offered us pumpkins and we were so grateful!  We got some pretty awesome ones and made Sunday afternoon our day to carve.  This year was probably the best year ever because the girls were old enough to do just about the whole thing themselves.  We started off on the computer picking out our designs.  Then Doug cut our tops off, but other than that, the girls did the rest on their own!  

The dogs kept stealing our guts that didn't make it to the bucket so they hung pretty close to the kitchen!

My finished project!  It took me a while to figure out which face I wanted to do, but I'm pretty pleased with my selection!

Madalyn's prized pumpkin!

There was some discrepancy as to whether it was a cat or a mouse, 

so in case anyone is curious, it's a cat!

Doug's pumpkin...it leaned the wrong way so he decided to carve it this way.  

I think it adds to the goofy face for sure!

Marissa picked a puppy...she did the whole thing by herself, minus the spot around the eye.

The whole line up!  Some of our pumpkins leaned the wrong way so we had to prop them up a little bit.  I love them and love how they turned out!  What a fun day!

We got almost all the way home from church Sunday night and Madalyn asks me if I think that Chloe would eat our pumpkins.  I told her I didn't think so since this wasn't the first time we had carved them and she hasn't in the past.....

....and then we came home to this LOL!  I'm so glad she didn't pick one of the girls' pumpkins to eat!  

She knew!  LOL  

All lit up...AFTER Chloe helped with Doug's pumpkin :)