Wowzers.....

What a week.....

My amazing family was here for Thanksgiving. It was the first holiday together in 3 years. It was wonderful, loud, messy and soooooo fun. There were 16 of us, including 8 kids - ages 8 and under. That is a lot of baby wipes and bibs. :) We stayed up late and laughed so much. Everyone headed home on Saturday. Jacob was sick all day Saturday and Audrey is sick now. Eventually I will write more about our Thanksgiving and post pictures. (and in the midst of it all, Audrey turned ONE on Saturday!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Happy Monday....we'll chat soon! :)

Tuesdays

I love Tuesdays.

Truly.

I love them.

Each and every Tuesday my husband comes home at 12:30 p.m. and stays with the girls until I pick Jacob up from school. I leave the house ALL ALONE. I go wherever I want. I drive in a car ALL ALONE. I get a cappuccino to drink ALL ALONE. Did I mention I am ALL ALONE from 12:30 until 3 p.m. every Tuesday?? :) My amazing husband is so thoughtful. I am blessed. I never do anything spectacular with "my" time....usually just browsing at the library, or walking through a store with many breakable things. Those kind of things are so much easier to do without baby hands reaching and wanting. It is enough to deal with MY hands. :) Yesterday I had errands to run....the post office to mail eBay stuff......the CAP office (our 'goodwill'-type store) to drop off a load of outgrown baby clothes and then the scariest stop of all --- WAL-MART just a few days before Thanksgiving. WOW. It was crowded, but it didn't matter because, did I mention I WAS ALONE???? :)

Now, some might read this and think that I don't like my children. Every MOM reading this, however, understands EXACTLY how I feel. I adore my kids - most of the time I just want to kiss them to death. :) I love them MORE after I have some time away from them. Make sense? I knew it would.

Happy Thanksgiving.....isn't God so good to us?

Saturday Randomness

Random thoughts and things from today....

~Our chest freezer died today. The Lord was so good to us, though. He allowed us to make this unfortunate discovery while 99% of the food was still frozen. The 1% was put on the grill tonight and we were able to enjoy a great meal with my brother-in-law and his family. A nice impromptu family time.

~Deer hunting season started today. We now live in the country and you could hear many, many gun shots all morning. (I hope someone got that big buck that I almost hit last night!!!!!!!!!! :))

~Jacob got a much needed haircut. I am so thankful that I started cutting his hair when he was little. The boy has MOUNDS of thick hair and it needs to be cut often. Every time I cut it I am thankful for the money we save by not going to the barber.


~Audrey is walking EVERYWHERE now. She had pink-eye this week. While at the doctor's office to get the drops for the pink eye Audrey was weighed. She is just 20 pounds. I know that may be HUGE for some of you, but my kids are NEVER small!! Audrey is the smallest at this age - by a good chuck. I think she is almost petite. Almost. Her FIRST birthday is next Saturday. How on earth did a year go by so quickly?!?!?

~When Audrey and I weren't at church on Wednesday night one of the ladies asked Emily if Audrey was sick. Emily told the lady that Audrey had 'purple eye'. :) Emily is my sweetie.

~I was reading about "Black Friday" sales today. I wish that the nearest 'city' to shop in wasn't 60+ miles away. I am NOT leaving my house at 3 a.m. no matter how cheap that blender is.

~MY WHOLE FAMILY is coming to MY house for Thanksgiving this year. I am thrilled beyond measure. I haven't seen my sister in EIGHTEEN months and I am dying to see her face-to-face!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is going to be a crazy few days, but I can't wait.

~Tomorrow is Sunday. I love my church. I love my Sunday School Class. I love my Pastor most of all. :) He is sure easy to look at while he is preaching! HA HA!!!

Have a great Sunday.

Mini-Blinds

I strongly dislike mini-blinds. I don't like for my kids to say 'hate' about anything (except the devil....we hate the devil!!!), so I won't say 'I hate mini blinds', but if I could say it, I would! Let's back up a bit first......

We are still in the process of putting together the house we bought this summer....window treatments (still don't have those), rugs (still working on those), etc.... Most of the windows in the house needed mini-blinds, so I buy one each week. My husband, who is incredibly busy and who has done every.single.thing to make this house wonderful, has installed each one that I have bought. Today, however, I decided that I would help by installing the mini-blind in the girls' room. Please note that I am NOT handy with tools. I am NOT mechanically inclined. I am VERY MUCH a girl when it comes to that sort of thing. Phillips vs. Flat screwdriver.....all Greek to me. I have tried to learn a bit so that I can be somewhat of a help to my husband, but not much has sunk in through all this hair on my head. ( I think all that hairspray I used in the 90's burnt up some precious brain cells. :)) Anyway, since I had watched my husband install several blinds, I thought that this would be a no-brainer.....'no problem', I thought, 'won't Andy be surprised'. Well, he was.....

It started out alright and then quickly went downhill. By the time I was done (I was done, the mini blind was NOT) I was crying, all sweaty and sooooooooooooo frustrated. I had wanted to help so badly and I ended up making more work for my already busy husband. He was so kind. He praised me for trying. Bless his heart. I know he wanted to kill me. I am sure he was thinking "DUH!!! It is a MINI-BLIND not a rocket....how hard can it be???" For me, oh so hard. He encouraged me to keep trying. We'll see. :)

No moral of this story, really, just to say that I am blessed to have a handy husband. One who doesn't mind cleaning up my messes and fixing my mistakes. He has had a lot of practice.

Cast your burden

As a pastor's wife I have the unique privilege to know the specific burdens of many people, to pray for these burdens, and to hopefully encourage those who are burdened. It is a daunting task at times. Life is hard. Walking through life with Jesus at your side helps bearing burdens more "bearable', but it doesn't take those struggles away. There are times that I am overwhelmed by the burdens that others are bearing......not to mention my own personal struggles.

In my Bible reading I came to this verse:

"Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee...."

Psalm 55:22a

I looked up the word "CAST".....

Webster defines it as: to cause to move or send forth by throwing

I then looked up the word "SUSTAIN".....

it is defined as: to give support or relief to also to keep up, to prolong

In other words, when I have a burden I should THROW it on Jesus, and HE will keep me going. He will give me support and relief. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it???? YES!!!!!!!!!!!

BUT -

How many times have I prayed and GIVEN my burdens to the Lord, only to get up from my knees, PICK UP MY BURDEN and continue to carry it with me? I do this so often. I ask the Lord to bear the load, but I WON'T LET GO OF IT. How foolish I am. I get tired, overwhelmed and stressed because I won't allow God to do what He says He will do. Today, let us all purpose to cast our burdens on Jesus - give them to the Lord - and leave them there. Remember the hymn?

"Leave them there....Leave them there....

take your burdens to the Lord and leave them there....."

"Burden bearing" is a part of life, but today I have decided to not only take my burdens to the Lord, but I am also going to leave them there!!

(I have also decided to bookmark this post, because I KNOW I am going to need to remind myself of this almost daily!!!)

Have a great day!!

Monday

Monday mornings are a little slow at our house. Sundays are a huge day.....church in the morning....home for lunch and most of the time company.....a quick nap for the kids (and if I am really lucky, a nap for me!!!!!!!!!!!!) and then back to church. We get to bed late on Sunday nights because of music practices and 'fellowshipping' (is that a word??? My spell check says no, but I'll use it anyway. :)) after church. I LOVE SUNDAYS, but we pay for it a bit on Monday mornings.

A worthwhile exchange.

I am so thankful for my church. I am thankful for the amazing friends and family that are a part of our church. I am thankful for our pastor.....I know, he is my husband, but I am thankful for him as a pastor, too. He is so wise. From time to time someone will ask me if it is weird to have my husband be my pastor. My answer is always the same, "Not at all." When he is preaching he is the Man of God.....he is the Pastor delivering God's message. I am thankful for his preaching.

Tomorrow night and Wednesday night we are having special meetings at church. Dr. Chuck Harding ( http://www.awakeamericans.org/) will be speaking. Being the history nut that I am, I am especially looking forward to hearing him speak again.

Here we are.....

Hi....I guess that is how I am supposed to start out. :) I opened this blog weeks (maybe months) ago and just never posted anything. I debated over and over if I wanted to even be a 'blogger'. I had decided that I wasn't going to be...that I didn't have the time to be, and then yesterday happened. I was looking through my kid's baby books. All through their books were sticky notes.....sticky notes full of cute little things that they had done or said. As I read through them I came to the conclusion that I had better start writing more things down so that in my geriatric years (HA!) I can look back and remember.......so, here we are.......blog land. (is 'blog land' one word or two?? :)) All in all I guess this part of the blog will be more for ME than for YOU.....if YOU do read, let me know, but if not, that is okay, too. :)

We'll start out with an introduction. (this is for YOU.....hopefully even in my nursing home years I will at least remember ME! :)) I have been married for 11 1/2 years to the love of my life....Andy. He is amazing, fantastic, out-of-this-world. I love him MORE today that I did the day we got married. (okay, I am hearing all of you groan now, so I will stop with the lovey-dovey stuff.) I am sure I will be writing A LOT about this handsome man. We dated for almost 3 years before we got married. It seems that I can hardly remember a time when it wasn't "US", and I like it that way. I love my husband and I love being on his team. We have 3 amazing kids.....Jacob turned 7 in May, Emily is 4 and Audrey Grace will be a year old on the 28th of this month. We live in beautiful Wisconsin, which is truly GOD'S COUNTRY!! Andy pastor's Bible Baptist Church - which explains the title of this blog. I have often heard of the pastor's home/family referred to as a "goldfish bowl" because people are always watching you. So, through this blog you will get a bit of a view into our 'bowl'. ;)

So, with that intro over, I must go tend to the 'bowl'........ :)