Video Clip- Brad counting

The twins are at a fun age where you start losing track of all the words they say and things they can do. Here's a video of Brad counting to 6..

Casting Crowns - Here I Go Again

I love Casting Crowns music. All their songs are so powerful, but lately this one has really been hitting me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQl1gEI8T0U&feature=related

Fun weekend

Rod, Adam, and I spent Friday night - Saturday night with good friends Bob & Nadene at their home in Easton, PA. Nadene and I have been friends for several years, and it's always good to spend time with her and catch up. This time was really neat, because i got to see her house for the first time. She got married last summer and moved to Easton. We enjoyed playing games, chatting, & relaxing. Saturday after breakfast we walked around town. They live only a couple blocks from the Deleware river so we walked down there and fed the ducks and birds our leftover pancakes.

Late Saturday morning we visited the Crayola Factory right in Easton. We got to see the final stages of crayons and markers being made. There were a ton of hands-on activities for kids, using all crayola stuff (paints, chalks, markers, and on and on!). It was a fun time for the adults too. You really could spend a whole day in there. Adam was a little young for some of the things, but enjoyed doing a lot of it.

Daddy even enjoyed the card-making station...

Of course there was a huge crayola store. I'm proud to say we spend under $10.00 :) They had little shopping carts for the kids...Not sure what Adam's total would have been, we had to put a lot of things back!!

The Crayola Factory was really neat, we'd recommend it if you ever have the chance to go. It's about 1 1/2 hours from Lancaster. There are coupons on their website. www.crayolafactory.com.
It was a very refreshing weekend for us. Thanks mom for watching the twins!!

chickens=eggs....yay!

Our chickens have finally started laying eggs!! We've had them since last April, and we were told they'd take 6-8 months until they'd start laying eggs. It took ours longer then that, but after researching, we realized chickens need lots of hours of sunlight to lay. They also need a certain kind of feed, which we just switched. We're only getting 1-2 eggs per day, but that should pick up as the daylight hours get longer. Neither of us knew anything about chickens before starting this project, so it's been fun learning. We have 6 layers and 1 rooster....if anyone wants a rooster, we'd be happy to give it to you, i don't think we're going to keep it around here much longer!

Also on our funny farm, we have skunks and possums, which randomly show up at our back door !!

Prayer, for Wives

On Saturday, our church held a Marriage Builders night, with a meal and teaching. Both the husbands and wives were given a laminated card with a prayer for us to pray. I really like the prayer....

Praying for Myself, As a Wife..
Make me my husband's helpmate, companion, champion, friend, and support. Help me to create a peaceful, restful, safe place for him to come home to. Teach me how to take care of myself and stay attractive to him. Grow me into a creative and confident woman who is rich in mind, soul, and spirit. Make me the kind of woman he can be proud to say is his wife.
I lay all my expectations at Your cross. I release my husband from the burden of fulfilling me in areas where I should be looking to You. Help me to accept him the way he is and not try to change him. I leave any changing that needs to be done in Your hands, fully accepting that neither of us is perfect and never will be. Only You, Lord are perfect and I look to You to perfect us.
Teach me how to pray for my husband and make my prayers a true language of love.

The boys had some quality naked time together this evening......
It's almost impossible to get a picture with the 3 of them together because noone holds still! It's fun to try though :)

1 year ago...

I have this annoying little habit of looking back at one year ago, seeing how things have changed, what's different, and what i was enjoying or going through then. i even keep an 08 calendar handy so i can see the things we had scheduled and what we were doing. This habit can be good or bad. This time it was a good looking back/reflecting time....Last year this time we were going through a lot of sickness in our household, especially with the twins. i didn't do hardly anything outside of motherhood, and i usually wasn't by myself with the kids. As i look back i remember wondering why the Lord wasn't protecting my boys of sicknesses. But now i can see He did!!...Last year, about the end of fall/early winter our pastor said to me "i had a strange dream about the twins last night & woke up praying for their respitory systems." He said, i continue to pray for that. I thought, oh that's weird, out of all the things that concerned me with them, their respitory systems never really crossed my mind. but i won't turn down prayers for my boys! i didn't think much more about it, then last spring our pediatrician commented that we can be very grateful the twins didn't get RSV (respitory *something* virus). apparently premature babies are very high risk for that, particurly over their first winter season. the twins even qualified for some type of preventative vaccine for RSV, because of their size at birth. A month or 2 later, our neighbor who is a doctor commented somewhat out-of-the-blue that the scariest part of having preemies is getting through their first winter because of the high risk of RSV! Sooo, all that to say, i wasn't realizing that the Lord in fact WAS protecting the little peanuts, of something rather serious. I am thankful for His faithfulness, and the prayers that were lifted up on their behalf. I thank Him every day for His goodness to them and us as a family. God is always at work!

Here's Ben and Brad 1 year ago.....

Here they are today.....Tried to get a high-chair picture for effect :)

Adam's Room

The past couple weeks, I've been working on painting and doing a border in Adam's room. The walls were too plain, i thought it needed something! I put up a border (with my mom's help!) and 'rag painted' underneath the border. i left the top the original neutral color. Rag painting is fun. You start with a base coat, which i used a light blue, then take a rag (or old t-shirt) and lightly dab a darker shade overtop the basecoat with the rag. it gives it a textured look. Adam doesn't like the room, he wanted purple! i think it's safe to say, he'll thank me one day for his blue room. i have a couple spots i want to touch-up, but overall am pleased with how it turned out.
You can kinda see the effect of the rag painting from this picture.....

Simple Reminders

The other Sunday on the way to church, Adam pipes in from the back seat..."DADDY, that light was red and you didn't stop!!" ooooooooo-k. so he WAS listening when i taught him what traffic lights mean. It reminded me of 2 things.....That kids DO pick up what you're telling/teaching them, even if it doesn't appear that way..... and we have to be so careful what we say/do around the kiddos, they are watching and listening! yikes! We sure did get a good laugh out of that one though! Rod did indeed run the light, and thanked Adam for reminding him.

When our neighbor girl's mom picks her up from our house, she always tells her mom she doesn't want to go home, etc. It kinda makes me feel bad for the mom. How would that make a mom feel? I have no idea, my boys still latch on to me everywhere i go! I need to enjoy it (or at least accept it) while i can...cause soon they won't want me! I'll try to remember that when the twins are screaming for mommy after we drop them off at their new Sunday School class.

It Bloomed!

For Christmas i got an Amaryllis Bulb. I was told it might not do anything....other people that she gave one to over the years didn't have success. So i was pleasantly surprised when it grew almost 2 feet and bloomed in just over a month! It's so pretty and i love having it sit in the kitchen to look at often. Adam came down this morning and said "it opened!" He noticed right away. It's amazing how something simple like a flower can just make your day. God has created beautiful things.