Top Ten Things I Have Learned From My Friends

1.  How To Blog - Blogging was a new and scary thing for me to learn.  Luckily, my friend Melissa walked me through the process which turned out to be one of the easiest things I've every learned.  I still ask her questions all the time as I learn more about the blogging world and she is always patient with me and never makes me feel like my questions are silly or stupid.  Thank you, Melissa.  You are a great friend.

2.  How To Work Hard - Just like her mom, Rachel, is a very hard worker.  If it needs to be done she does it with all her heart and as best as she can.  She doesn't waste any time and does things that need to be done as quickly as possible.  She is always ready and willing to learn something new.  Since she has had her children she has studied and passed the tests to become a realtor and a Special Ed teacher.  Thank you, Rachel.  You are a great friend.

3.  Useful Advice - My friend, Michelle, is like a walking baby book.  If she has wondered about it then she has read about it or looked it up online.  If I'm curious about anything having to do with children then I can always ask her advice.  Thank you, Michelle.  You are a great friend.

4.  To Enjoy Every Minute With My Kids - I don't have a lot of memories from when I was a kid.  I'm not sure why, but I don't.  My friend, Lisa, is a great mom and as I watch her be a mom she reminds me to constantly make memories with my kids.  I really look up to her and ask her advice often.  She has taught me to take time to just be with my kids and enjoy them.  Play with them.  Do the things they want to do.  Listen to them.  Thank you, Lisa.  You are a great friend.

5.  Go The Second Mile - The Bible tells us "And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two." Matthew 5:41.  Christi is the perfect example of this.  She is always willing to help others no matter what.  And she often does more than she is asked to do.  She has not only been my friend, but for the last 3 1/2 years, she has been my boss.  When you have a boss that goes the second mile for you, you love your job!!!  Thank you, Christi.  You are a great friend.

6.  Walk With The Lord Daily - My friend, Melissa, is the perfect example of walking with the Lord.  She serves him everyday with all her heart.   She is a daily witness of our Lord and shows kindness everywhere she goes.  She is a great example of taking up your cross daily.  Thank you, Melissa.  You are a great friend.

7.  Teaching Strategies - I taught 5th grade for five years before I had my first child.  My friend, Shelley, was my mentor teacher.  She is a fabulous teacher!  I just soaked up everything I could learn from her those five years.  More than anything else, I learned from her to teach more than just the book work.  Life lessons are way more important and will probably be remembered more.  Thank you, Shelley.  You are a great friend.

8.  Patience - I have lost my temper with my children more than once.  I hate to admit it, but I have.  I don't always calm my self down before I discipline.  My sister, Rebecca, is very patient with her daughter.  She always takes her out of the room to discipline her.  I like this technique.  It gives me time to cool off as well as not embarrassing my children.  I am trying to remember to do this more often.  Thank you, Rebecca.  You are a great friend and sister.

9.  Be Merciful - My mom is a great mom.  Of course, I didn't realize this until I became a mom myself.  I remember all the times that I have said hurtful things to her and she would just turn around and walk away.  There were so many times that I should have been punished for something but my mom chose to show mercy and grace.  I want to be this way to my children.  Because, as I am trying to be like my mom, I am also trying to be like Jesus.  The Lord, daily, chooses to be merciful to me and give me grace.  Thank you, Mom.  I love you.

10.  Unconditional Love - Ronny and I have known each other for 15 years.  He has been my acquaintance, my friend, my boyfriend, my fiancé, and now my husband.  We have had our great years together.  And he still loves me.  We have also had those not so good years.  And he still loves me.  We have shared secrets with each other that only God knew.  And he still loves me.  I know that he will love me know matter what I say or do.  He has truly been sent by God to my husband and best friend.  Thank you, Ronny.  You are great friend and husband.

10 Words Will Mispronounces But Are So Cute!

My son was an early mover but a late talker.  He was army crawling at 5 months and crawling on his knees at 6 months.  But, talking was a little more of a challenge for him.  Because of this, he still struggles with some of his letters.  He is improving every day, but these are some of my favorite mispronunciations.

First, names of family members.  Lots of kids can't say family member's names correctly and what they come up with are very cute nicknames.  Here are some of my sons best!

1.  His cousin Sarah has been nicknamed "Setah".

2.  My mom, Grammie, was a struggle so he says, "Gigi".  (This may never be corrected.  I like it!)

3.  His sister, Katelyn - "Katewin"

4.  And of course, our King of Kings, Jesus is called, "Keysus".  :o)



Of course, my favorite words that he misspeaks are just normally everyday words.

5.  Okay is "ohay".  He has been doing this forever.  He does say it correctly too.  But every once in a while, ohay comes out again and I smile.

6.  Thanks is "Kanks".  When he says, "Kanks, Mama"  out of the blue without being prompted, it melts my heart.

7.  Open this is "ope this" - Once again, he can say "open this", but habits are hard to break.

8.  Mailman is "mailguy" - He used to say firetruck guy, and police guy.  The mailman is a new community helper that he has learned since we have started letting him get the mail.  I guess it's easier to say mailguy.

9.  This one is not a mispronunciation, but a wrong word that he uses.  He calls mushrooms, "marshmellows".  I have no idea where this came from.  You should see the looks we get at the grocery store.  Hee hee!

10.  My favorite one...  The one that makes me laugh every time...  Monster truck is pronounced "Monster cock"  Ha ha ha!  Don't you just love it.

Please don't misunderstand me.  I am not trying to make fun of my sweet boy.  These little imperfections are some of my favorite parts of him.  When he first started talking, any word that he mispronounced and then started to say correctly, a little part of me was sad because my little boy was growing up.

Do you have favorite words that your kids say?  What are your favorites?

Do you have a Top Ten list.
Link up at Oh Amanda
 http://ohamanda.com/about-2/top-ten-tuesday/

Will and Katelyn Update

It has been forever since I've blogged.  I think Katelyn was 4 months old and now she is 11 months.  I can't believe I've taken so long to get back to it.  This past few months have been crazy busy and I'm so glad it is summer and time seems to slowing down.  I think another reason I've been putting it off is because I get overwhelmed when I get behind on something.  I kept thinking, "I've missed two months of my kids updates.  I don't have time right now to do that"  Soon it was 3 months, then 4 months.  I just got so overwhelmed and so I just didn't do it at all.  I finally had to tell myself to forget about making up those months and just start fresh.  That makes things feel more doable.


Will turned 4 in April and he had such a fun birthday.  My sister and I did a combo birthday for him and her daughter, Sarah (who turned 3 in May).  We had their party at Build-A-Bear.  They had a lot of fun, but it sure was a lot of work.  I'm still at the point where I'm saying, "I'll never do that again."  We'll see....   We had the cake and present part of the party in the food court of the mall.  It was sooo loud in there.  I felt like I was yelling to everyone and they still couldn't hear me.  That part of the party was the reason why I can't imagine doing a party there again.  But the kids had a great time and I know that is all that matters.

Will and Sarah giving there stuffed animals a bath.

Will and Transformer the Dog!

We had all the kids paint preemie diaper shirts for there stuffed animals.  

(It was cheaper than buying all of them a shirt, and more fun too!).

Will has also started T-ball.  He team is called the Angels.  When he first heard that he said, "but Mommy, Angels are girls"  Isn't it funny how kids pick up on these things even though we really have not ever talked about angels before.  I just told him that the angels in the Bible have boy names and I told him about the angel that was at Jesus's resurrection.  What do you think?  Do you think angels have a gender?  I tend to think that they don't.

My shy little boy who doesn't like getting his picture taken.  ;)

I hate to admit that I don't have nearly as many pictures as I would like.  I have a lot of videos though.  It's hard to take pictures when I have to hold and entertain Katelyn also.  

Katelyn is 11 months old now.  I can't believe she is so big.  I'm looking forward to her walking.  She can stand on her own for a short time but she has not been brave enough to take a step.  She will, however, walk anywhere she can holding on to something.  She is a mess.  She could have every toy she owns on the floor but she will only want the one dog toy or the one toy that is Will's that she can't have.  She is just a doll though.  So sweet and funny.  She will wrinkle her nose to smile and she claps and says "Yea".  I just love it.  I can't believe that it took me so long to decide to have a 2nd child.  What was I so afraid of?  I've really come to realize why the Bible says that children are a gift from the Lord.  He gives them to us and he will help us provide for them.


Here are some of my favorite pictures of Katelyn from the last few months.

Will is sharing his ice cream with Katelyn.  So sweet.  He is really sweet to her.

I just love this picture.

Will decided to put his tent on top of Katelyn while she was in her excersaucer.  The next picture shows them both under it.  

I told you he was sweet to her.  :)

Another favorite picture.

Kateyn and Will

I can't believe how fast the time has gone.  Katelyn, you are 4 months old now, and Will, you are 3 years old.

Katelyn, you are now 14 lbs. and 21 in. long.  You wear size 3-6 mo. clothes. You are doing so many fun things now.  You have rolled over from your stomach to your back twice.  You like to lay on the floor and look up at your toys.  You try to get them in your mouth and you are often successful.  You are cooing and trying to talk a lot and when you do I can see your tongue moving continuously.  It is so funny.  You have begun a new way of talking that sounds a lot like yelling.  Your sure have found your high pitched voice!  You also like your excersaucer.  You have been playing in it since you were 3.5 months old.  I know it was a little early to be putting you in it, but I was desperate for you to stop crying and none of your other toys were interesting to you.  I tried your excersaucer and it worked like magic.  You sat in it and looked at all your toys for about 10 minutes.  Will enjoyed you sitting in it also.  He just talked to you and showed you all the toys and how they worked.  About a week later, I put you in it again and you actually played with the spinning toy.  I was amazed.  You still seemed too little to be able to play like that.  It was not accidental.  You actually reached out and spun the toy over and over.  Very cool!  You also like to lay on the floor and you will wiggle yourself around in a circle.  You are starting to sleep through the night more, but sometimes you wiggle and squirm because you want your pacifier.  Once I give it to you, you go right back to sleep.  I have started giving you rice cereal before your last feeding of the night.  You are eating it very well.  So far it has not helped to keep from waking up for your pacifier at night, but I'm hopeful that soon it will.  

Will, my big boy, you really need to stop growing.  You are wearing 4T clothes and size 10 shoes.  You are still way into sports.  You have started a Sports For Shorties class at the Rec center.  You absolutely love it!  So far you have played soccer, football, kickball, ,and volleyball.  You are learning to recognize your ABC's and numbers, which is a lot of fun for me to teach you.  You can write your name although your W looks like a M and you call it "double S".  You are started to talk more in complete sentences and say funny things.  We just finished Halloween and you had so much fun getting ready for it.  You always asked to go to the "scary guy store".  We did go several times and unfortunately now you fight us to go to bed because you are afraid.  You have had two bad dreams lately.  When we asked you what you dreamed, you said, "A scary guy poked me on my face!"  Ha!  I'm sad that you are having bad dreams, but it is hilarious that your bad dream is that someone poked your face!  One of your favorite things to do is box with your Daddy.  When he comes home from work, you and him go into the bedroom and you "help" him change his clothes and then the two of you box each other.  You probablly spend about 20 minutes boxing.  You have also been going to high school football games with Daddy and Papa.  You look forward to every Friday night and ask each day if you get to go.  You also love to play with Sarah.  You always want her to come over after school.  You and Sarah love each other so much, but you two also know how to push each other's buttons and you fight all the time!  But no matter how much you fight you still love to play with her.

I can't believe how much fun it is to be your Mommy.  I love the both of you sooo much.

Love Dare Giveaway

Hey everyone.  My friend Melissa is giving away a copy of the Love Dare.  If you want to be entered to win, check out her blog.  http://www.simplymelsblog.com/a-love-dare-giveaway/.  I've been told it's a great book and can really strengthen your marriage.  Check it out!

Our trip to the State Fair

Tuesday, we all went to the State Fair.  I absolutely love having family outings.  I love watching Will do and learn new things and have fun at the same time.  We had a great time.  The first thing we did was go to the car show (of course) :)  Will enjoyed getting in and playing in the cars.  We also saw a dog stunt show, ate lots of junk food, the petting zoo, a kids pretend farm and saw a parade.  Another fun thing that we did was we went to the backyard circus.  This was great!  The ring master chose kids to be apart of the circus.  Will was chosen to be a tiger.  He was given a T-shirt that said "tiger" on it and a tiger mask.  I was so shocked that he actually wore them.  There were other lions and tigers and a lion tamer was to tame them and make them lie down and play dead, show their terrible claws and jump through a fiery hoop (a hula hoop).  Will did all of this.  I couldn't believe it!  Unfortunately, I didn't charge my camera battery before we left and I didn't get any pictures.  We stayed all day and Will only had one meltdown.  It was after his last ride.  We let him ride four rides.  Ronny took him on the Super Slide and he loved it, even though his face coming down had a concerned expression on it.  I took him on a roller coaster and he did not like it at all.  He almost cried the third time we went around the track.  After that he rode the log ride and a race car ride.  I can't believe how much fun I have just watching him have fun.  It was a very long, but fun day.

Oh, and if you are wondering, yes, we took Katelyn too.  She did great.  She slept a lot, but when she was awake I either held her or we carried her in a sling.  She was such a good girl at the fair.

Making Cupcakes

Will and I made cupcakes! He loves helping me in the kitchen.  I haven't let him help with dinner yet, because I'm afraid of him touching the hot skillets and such, but I've let him make cookies and cupcakes.  I am so surprised at how well he does.  I let him try to crack open an egg and he did it perfectly!  No shells at all.  He added 2 eggs and I think that this will always be his job now when we are cooking!  We only made 12 cupcakes and we had half the batter left.  So, when we were licking the bowl (our favorite part), I decided to paint Will a little bit. He thought that was funny.  Next time, I may let him go outside and paint himself with the leftover batter.  (The 2nd picture is a close up of the 3 cupcakes that he frosted).